Protecting Children in Time Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity

by Ferguson, Harry

• ISBN13: 9781403906939
• ISBN10: 1403906939
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Protecting Children in Time provides a highly original analysis of the origins and development of the taken-for-granted notion that it is possible through social intervention to protect children from avoidable harm and even death. By using case studies which span the past 120 years of "modern" practices and drawing on the work of leading social theorists of modernity and risk society it provides a new way of thinking about constructions of child abuse as a social problem and child protection as a late-modern expert system and experience. It proposes new ways of conceptualizing relationships between professionals, children at risk and families and deepens our understanding of what effective interventions have to involve.

Author Biography

Harry Ferguson is Professor of Social Work in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of the West of England, Bristol.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	x
1 Protecting Children in Time, or Failing To: Child Abuse, Child Protection and Modernity	1	(22)
Life and death politics: the contemporary state of child protection	5	(5)
Researching child protection, past and present	10	(3)
Theorizing child protection and modernity: 'solid' and 'melting' visions	13	(10)
2 Taking it Onto the Streets: The Discovery of Child Death and Birth of Child Protection, 1870-1914	23	(29)
Child protection in pre-modern times	24	(2)
Taking it onto the streets: child protection's modern roots	26	(10)
Protecting children in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century times	36	(7)
Changing strategies of practice: bringing child protection into the home	43	(4)
Prompt local action: the protection of children in new times	47	(5)
3 The Smell of Practice: Child Protection, the Body and the Experience of Modernity	52	(28)
Child protection, mobility and the culture of modernism	53	(5)
Child protection as the fleeting, the ephemeral and the contingent	58	(4)
The smell of practice: child protection as embodied action	62	(8)
The body and the new order of child protection	70	(2)
The tragedy of modernity: the failure to protect sexually abused children in time	72	(8)
4 From Day-to-Day Quietly and Without Fuss: Child Protection, Simple Modernity and the Repression of Knowledge of Child Death, 1914-70	80	(26)
The sequestration of child death and protection	81	(9)
Child protection and fateful moments	90	(2)
Child protection, trust and ontological security	92	(2)
Disgust, the grotesque body and exclusionary dynamic of child protection	94	(8)
Child protection and the legacy of simple modernity	102	(4)
5 Child Physical Abuse and the Return of Death Since the 1970's: Child Protection, Risk and Reflexive Modernization	106	(30)
The '(re-)discovery' of child abuse	108	(7)
From risk consciousness to risk anxiety: child protection in the risk society	115	(5)
The roots of anxiety: blaming systems and fear of children's suffering	120	(3)
Protecting children in late-modern times	123	(4)
Body projects: living as well as working with child protection and risk	127	(2)
Sequestration and death in late-modern child protection	129	(4)
Containing risk anxiety: rethinking bureaucracy in late-modern child protection	133	(3)
6 Child Sexual Abuse and the Reflexive Project of the Self: Child Protection, Individualization and Life Politics	136	(27)
Child protection, individualization and the reflexive citizen	137	(3)
Help-seeking, creative, reflexive agency and the complexities of child protection	140	(9)
Child protection interventions and life-planning	149	(5)
Men, individualization and child protection	154	(2)
Individualization becomes public: child protection and intimate citizenship	156	(1)
The ambiguous politics of child abuse and barriers to effective child protection	157	(6)
7 Into Another World: Child Neglect, Multi-problem Families and the Psychosocial Dynamics of Late-modern Child Protection	163	(29)
Violence and resistance in child protection work	164	(3)
The complexities of human agency and the psychodynamics of child protection	167	(8)
'That sort of neglect smell': the symbolic dimensions of child protection	175	(11)
The 'time warp' and other-worldliness of protecting children in (other's) space	186	(6)
8 Liquid Welfare: Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity	192	(29)
Modernity under a positive sign: the creative achievements of child protection	193	(2)
Time, space and the mobilities of child protection	195	(10)
Failures to protect in time revisited: the tragedy of Victoria Climbié	205	(7)
Liquid practices: towards a critical theory of child protection without guarantees	212	(9)
Appendix 1	221	(1)
Appendix 2	222	(1)
Notes	223	(2)
Bibliography	225	(15)
Index	240