Who's Afraid of Children? Children, Conflict and International Relations

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By Helen Brocklehurst Aldershot : Ashgate Publishing , 2006 ISBN 9780754641711 195 pp , £55.00 (hb) Social science engagement with issues of children and childhood, growing since the early 1990s, has so far been dominated by the methods and perspectives of sociology, social work/social policy and anthropology in particular. The relative silence of scholars in international relations has been regrettable: holding back the development of a much needed conceptual bridge between the micro-level study of children's everyday lives and theorisation about the actions of states in respect of warfare, security and defence. The appearance of Whose Afraid of Children? Children, Conflict and International Relations by Helen Brocklehurst is, therefore, to be welcomed as an important step forward. In this book Brocklehurst explores the ways in which children are, at one time, constructed as apolitical while they are also utilised — in rhetoric and practice — for their profoundly political value. She illustrates her argument by consideration of experience in Northern Ireland, Nazi Germany, Mozambique and South Africa (embracing both Afrikaner and African children), and draws upon a wide range of material from other settings around the world for amplification. The value of this book resides principally in the detailed accounts offered in three historical/ethnographic chapters. Here the author invites us to reconsider familiar conflicts in view of the children who were subject to systematic processes of ‘nationalisation’ and ‘militarisation’. In the final substantive chapter, Brocklehurst takes to task international relations for restricting consideration of children as political actors and, thereby, foreclosing any consideration of the consequences upon them of systematic action by political and military authorities. As she argues, ‘The direction of thought is that of states in relation to other states, leaving threat construction within and by the state largely unexplored’ (p. 143). While Brocklehurst opens up a potentially valuable line of critique, she fails to take it forward to any significant conclusion. Rather, we are drawn into a somewhat circular discussion, certain passages of which are hard to comprehend. Ideas and examples are put together with no obvious explanation of their relevance to each other or to the larger argument. The following sentence is illustrative: In Nazi Germany the homosexual concentration camp members were given pink triangles to wear and in the first edition of Baden Powell's scouting manual for boys it is written: ‘Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and obey orders, else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman’. (p. 163) In terms of presentation this book is very disappointing. For the price of £55 Ashgate Publishing are offering a volume replete with typographical errors, misquotes, incorrect referencing and poor syntax and punctuation. As well as copy-editing the book, the publisher should have worked with the author to ensure that her more provocative statements are properly supported by evidence. For example, on page 14 the author asserts that in Kentucky State, USA, ‘It is not unusual for girls … to become wives from age ten and mothers at age twelve’ (p. 14). No source is cited for this, nor are we given any sense of the kind of numbers that ‘not unusual’ might refer to. The argumentation in this book is also undermined by frequent recourse to conjecture in order to account for the actions of different political and military authorities. Furthermore, the author makes a series of assumptions about children themselves — their motivations and thinking — that are not supported. For example, with regard to Nazi Germany she writes of ‘children's sense of being childish’ (p. 159) without indicating what it might mean in practice and how she had come to acquire this insight. While Brocklehurst's questions and concerns are certainly topical and important, Who's Afraid of Children? is, sad to say, a missed opportunity for which the publishers bear a large measure of responsibility.