Re-negotiating an ethics of care in Kenyan childhoods

• Authors: Sonja Arndt , Marek Tesar , Branislav Pupala , Ondrej Kaščák , Tata Mbugua
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Childhoods in contemporary Kenya are entangled with discourses of care in a post-colonial landscape. Such imaginaries of childhoods through discourses of ‘care’ and ‘charity’ are well established through Western lenses. Another lens that is often enacted is the lens of de-commercialised, un-spoilt, pure and innocent childhoods in the Kenyan landscape. In this study, the authors utilize Nel Nodding’s concept of an ethics of care, and a feminist lens, to explore this binary of Western views through real experiences of childhoods. This paper provides an analysis of childhoods as lived experiences in Kenya, and challenges constructions of children/childhoods as vulnerable, based upon observations and interviews conducted in Kenya in the remote area of Kwale County.

Keywords

EN

Kenyan childhoods; constructions of childhood; ethics of care; children’s agency; resilience

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 288-303

Dates

published

2016-09-01

online

2016-07-25

Contributors

author

Sonja Arndt

• Faculty of Education, University of Waikato, Gate 5, Hillcrest Road, Hillcrest, 3240 Hamilton, New Zealand

author

Marek Tesar

• University of Auckland, New Zealand

author

Branislav Pupala

author

Ondrej Kaščák

author

Tata Mbugua

• University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/humaff-2016-0025