Untangling the Latin American child: heterogeneous temporalities of Latin American “modern” childhoods

ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyse childhood and modernity as both analytical tools for understanding Latin American childhoods and as hegemonic categories, central to establishing social hierarchies and identity formations. Instead of taking for granted modern/traditional or North/South as heuristic categories that guide understandings of commonalities, differences, and singularities, we explore the usefulness of temporality. We propose a focus on how heterogeneous temporalities contribute to the production of childhoods in a historical narrative. This narrative incorporates multiple temporalities in a hierarchical regime in which those seen as “modern” and “civilized” are assumed as the only possible temporalities, while at the same time becoming part of the processes of differentiation, order, and social change. The temporal dimension involves exploring the tensions between biographical, state, and institutional time scales, and the multiple temporalities of globalisation. This requires the unravelling of the complexities of the historical dimension of being a child to understand how, specifically, Latin American childhoods are caught between heterogeneous temporalities. We apply these categories to analyse the case of child circulation in Latin America, as a historical example in which heterogeneous temporalities are expressed. Together, modernity and time(s) are powerful tools for unpacking the unequal distribution of the future(s) through the production of the “Latin American child”.

KEYWORDS:

• Child circulation
• future
• inequality
• social time
• hegemony

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who helped to improve the argument made in this article, as well as the editors of the volume.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For instance, as shown in John Boswell (1988), a study that explores child abandonment in Europe prior to the rise of the foundling home. He argues that the legions of abandoned youngsters in the societies of late antiquity and medieval Europe were succoured by the “kindness of strangers” who incorporated these children into their households, monastic communities, and lineages. Also, the study of Arlette Farge (2008) on the abandonment of children in 17^th century Paris, which shows the use of foundling homes, “strangers” and neighbours to provide care for illegitimate or impoverished children.

2. The most important orphanage during the 19th and early 20th centuries in Santiago, Chile.

Additional information

Funding

On the part of researcher Ana Vergara, this article is based on the study, “The involvement of children in the circulation of family care: a case study in three regions of Chile” (FONDECYT Regular 1220133, ANID, Chile). We thank FONDECYT, Chile, for their support.

Notes on contributors

Valeria LLobet

Valeria LLobet is Full Professor in the School of Humanities, Universidad de San Martín, and researcher at CONICET (National Council of Research), Argentina. Valeria holds a PhD from the University of Buenos Aires in social psychology, a postdoctoral degree in social sciences, childhood and youth from COLEF, PUC San Pablo, CLACSO. She is Director of the Center for the Studies of Inequalities, Subjects and Institutions (CEDESI). Her research interests are childhood, gender rights and the politics of inequalities. Her current research project is “Children, youth and families: social transformation, care crisis and future(s) in the long-covid”. Her latest publications include Desde la Desjudicialización a la Refundación de los Derechos. Transformaciones en las Disputas por los Derechos de Niñes, 2005-2015, Teseo, Buenos Aires (2019); El encierro de los niños y la distribución desigual de la precariedad in Revista Sociedad e Infancia. Nro. 4, 2021; and Vergara del Solar, A., Llobet. V., Nascimento, M.L. (2021) (Eds.) South American Childhoods: Neoliberalisation and children’s rights since the 1990s. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ana Vergara Del Solar

Ana Vergara Del Solar is Associate Professor at the School of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, Universidad de Santiago, Chile. Ana has a PhD in sociological studies from the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research interests include childhood and parenting studies. Currently, she is the researcher in charge of the project “The involvement of children in the circulation of family care. A case study in three Chilean cities” (FONDECYT Regular 1220133-ANID, Chile). Her latest publications include Vergara del Solar, A., Sepúlveda Galeas, M., Ibarra Lara, M. (2022) The street, children and parents: the views of children from Santiago de Chile. Children’s Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2022.2101877 and Vergara del Solar, A., Llobet. V., Nascimento, M.L. (2021) (Eds.) South American Childhoods: neoliberalisation and children’s rights since the 1990s. London: Palgrave Macmillan.