Situating Children’s Rights in Cultural Perspectives on Childhood: Intermedial Dialogue.

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the recent 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this article proposes the use of an analytical approach that enables inquiry into and responsiveness to varied cultural perspectives on the meaning of “children” and “childhood” in the context of children’s rights. This method of inquiry, which we call “intermedial dialogue,” assesses conceptual convergence and divergence between stakeholders and facilitates the creation of common ground across different cultural and contextual perspectives. The article begins with a discussion of the limits of the current discourse of children’s rights. Cultural conceptualizations of “children” and “childhood” are introduced to show variation and the significance of context. We then present “intermedial dialogue,” which is both a method and an epistemological stance that integrates the views of those referred to as children, young people under the age of 18, in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.