Abstract

BUSTELO GRAFFIGNA, Eduardo. Children in Defencelessness. Salud colectiva [online]. 2005, vol.1, n.3, pp.253-284. ISSN 1669-2381.

The work reviews the different ideological visions in relation to childhood and adolescence since the feeling of compassion, the concept of social investment, the role of NGOs and the emergent approach based on children's rights. The paper also deals with the tensions and conflicts between children and adolescents on one hand and the system of representative democracy on the other. The central argument all across the paper is based on Michael Foucault's approach on boys and girls as victims of the biopolitics of disciplinary control and since the adolescence, for the process of building up its subjectivity as "fastened subjects". In its turn, the approach based on children's rights can not surpass what Giorgio Agamben has called the "State of Emergency" in which the legal system includes and excludes those who are presupposed to be defended. Following Agamben´s arguments, it seems to emerge the "Child Sacer" as the one that since old times can be sacrificed or drastically disciplined and nobody can be legally demanded for directly causing such a situation. In order to overcome the state of defencelessness it is argued that there is a need for a new strategy based on an adequate equilibrium between autonomy and heteronomy in all educational processes jointly with a continuous political fight to conquer children's rights.

Keywords : Child Advocacy; Human Rights; Social Control, Formal; Social Control, Informal; Policy Making.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )