Vietnam's
Children in a Changing World
Price: $23.95
Subtitle:
Author: Rachel Burr
Subject: Asian Studies/Anthropology
Paper ISBN 0-8135-3796-7
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3795-9
Pages: 256 pp.
Series: Series
in Childhood Studies
Description:
Like the majority of children living in the global South
today, a large number of Vietnamese youths work to help support their
families. International human rights organizations have focused on
these children, seeking to bring their lives into line with an
understanding of childhood that is generally accepted in the developed
world.
In this ethnographic study, Rachel Burr draws on her daily
observations of working children in Hanoi and argues that these
youngsters are misunderstood by the majority of agencies that seek to
help them. Most aid programs embrace a model of childhood that is based
on Western notions of individualism and bountiful resources. They
further assume that this model is universally applicable even in
cultures that advocate a collective sense of self and in countries that
do not share the same economic advantages.
Burr presents the voices and experiences of Vietnamese
children in the streets, in a reform school, and in an orphanage to
show that workable solutions have become lost within the rhetoric
propagated by aid organizations. The reality of providing primary
education or adequate healthcare for all children, for instance, does
not stand a chance of being achieved until adequate resources are put
in place. Yet, organizations preoccupied with the child rights agenda
are failing to acknowledge the distorted global distribution of wealth
in favor of Western nations.
Offering a unique, firsthand look at the experiences of
children in contemporary Vietnam, this book also provides a broad
analysis of how internationally led human rights agendas are often
received at the local level.
About the Author:
Rachel Burr is an associate lecturer at the Open University
in the United Kingdom.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: What Is Childhood?
Chapter 2: Background to Vietnam
Chapter 3: Child Rights and the International Aid Community
Chapter 4: Why Children Work
Chapter 5: Children on the Streets
Chapter 6: Life in a Reform School
Chapter 7: Childhood without Discrimination
Chapter 8: Institutional Life and Children's Coping Strategies
Chapter 9: Children on the Global Margins?
Bibliography
Index
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Price: $23.95
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