Childhood

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Editorial: A new death of childhood

Chris Jenks
Childhood 2005; 12; 5
DOI: 10.1177/0907568205049888
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EDITORIAL
A new death of childhood
Childhood Copyright 2005
SAGE Publications. London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi, Vol 12 (1): 58.
www.sagepublications.com
10.1177/0907568205049888

The events that took place in Beslan, a town in North Ossetia, Russia during
the early part of September 2004 can hardly have escaped the attention of
anyone within the developed world. A large and well-organized group of terrorists, bandits, freedom fighters, rebels (call them whatever your ideology
demands) from Chechnya occupied a major school complex during the first
week of the new school term. Their issues and thus their motivation
stemmed from accumulated grievances concerning the Russian treatment of
their state and a long catalogue of historical injuries and political injustices
compounded by invasion, large-scale loss of life and the destruction of their
homeland and property. The Chechens seek independence and their fundamentalist wing expresses this nationalist longing through the random and
localized oppression of others. Middle school No. 1 was not their first target
and we must suppose that it will not be their last. The terrorists weaponry is,
at one level, propaganda but of course, the realm of ideas, when frustrated,
often speaks through force. As Mao Tse-tung once wrote, political power
comes from the barrel of a gun. In this instance, the Chechen rebels demonstrated their intent with the support of heavy-duty armaments comprising
rocket-launchers, rapid-fire field weapons and quantities of high explosives
and munitions much of which appears to have been secreted within the
school buildings in advance of the attack and occupation. The propaganda
will be our topic.
The strategy of this occupation, as with many previous related incidents, was hostage-taking but on a grand scale both quantitatively and qualitatively. The hostages amounted to in excess of 1200 individuals: some were
teachers and parents; however, the overwhelming body of this unfortunate
group were children, and relatively young children at that. The symbolic
combination and juxtapositioning of such destructive power with such powerlessness, of malign intent with such random innocence and manifest vulnerability provided a dramatic encoding of social and moral narratives that
burst through the international media both claiming and maintaining headline status. This is not to suggest, as did Baudrillard in relation to the Gulf
War, that the whole chain of events took place within the television. Far
from it, the tragic litany of brutality and destruction that was to unfold was
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CHILDHOOD 12(1)

all too real and material, nasty and brutish. The point is that the media coverage was not an incidental, parallel or unintended commentary on this piece
of history. It was, in large part, the very intention of the act, as were the discursive ingredients that combined to announce its monumental significance.
Over the 52 hours during which this tragedy unfolded, it was icily
clear that the central issue had become the cultural capital embodied in
childhood. The setting of this event was a school, an institution conventionally insulated from the structural violence of the outside world because of its
contents and purpose. Whatever the reality of school life, the symbolic
import of its population ensures the institution the status of a cathedral.
Children are not just people, they are not ordinary people, children are of a
special order such is our collective perception and our collective projection. The abuse of childhood exposes a form of sacrilege, the contamination
of the world of childhood reveals a violation of deeply held and often inarticulate moral values but they are fundamental and they are shared. As the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England stated on 4
September just as the nightmare concluded, this was the most evil kind of
action we can imagine, we were witnessing the nadir of a global campaign
of terrorism.
From the outset we were treated to images of hysterical parents and
relatives remonstrating with the armed Russian forces who were attempting
to contain, if not resolve, the complexity of this sequence of events. Some,
though not many, hostages were released, perhaps a good sign, then periods
of seeming inactivity were punctuated by gunfire, certainly a bad sign. As
we came to realize that perhaps there was no plan to arrest what was happening or any concerted strategy to intervene, the site erupted into an explosive
black hole that absorbed life, dignity and mercy. Partially clad children,
those that had survived, emerged running, injured, blood-soaked and
irreparably disturbed from the ordeal. One telescopically observed sequence
captured the utter pathos of the scene. Perhaps no more than 7 years old, a
small girl was thrown into the air by an explosion that launched her through
the window of the gymnasium where she had been held captive. Dressed
only in her underwear and a pair of new shoes that she had probably worn
for the first day of the new school year, she landed, miraculously unhurt
though dazed. When she finally regained her balance and stood up, instead
of escaping to the safety of the outside, she climbed back through the window to the imagined security of her mother or friends. Once inside she was
met by a second explosion that cost her life.
From the relative safety of the outside, tales now emerged of massacre
and obscenity: bayoneting; rape; target practice on human targets; children
drinking urine for sustenance real or supposed, all was imaginable within
this carnage with a death toll approaching 400. The transgressions were multiple and exponential, they were also paradoxical. It matters little that the
security forces may or may not have handled the situation with a degree of
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EDITORIAL

professionalism; that some rebels had escaped; that the perpetrators may
have been connected to al Qaeda or even Saudi Arabia. The significant issue
here was the calculated death of childhood.
The planning of this siege and its execution involved a strategic election of childhood to iconic status. There was no mitigation here, the killers
were not crazed gunmen such as was the case in Dunblane in the UK
where a schizophrenic man shot 16 primary school children and their
teacher. In Beslan, the Chechen invaders had understood precisely the significance for and symbolic impact of childhood on the collective consciousness. Just as many contemporary social scientists seek to understand the
nature and origins of that very significance and impact in the contemporary
world, in Beslan it was fed back to us and met with near incomprehension or
disbelief. Having grasped the fundamental affective symbolism of childhood
and sought to capture and suspend that moment, the Chechen rebels pressed
right on and transcended that awareness. They did not ultimately release the
children and attempt to reformulate themselves around a new, albeit misguided, heroism that would have remained social by finally obeying the
order of things that resides in childhoods special ontology. No, they slaughtered real children but, at a different level, they killed childhood as zone of
the collective consciousness that proscribes the special and the different, the
good and the pure, the innocent and the decent. Belsan ranks at least with
New York 9/11 as a postmodern marker of the erosion of the social bond.
We have a most interesting collection of articles for this issue of the
journal, all of which were written before the outrage considered above took
place. The first article by Bai interrogates childrens play but within the historical context of Chinese systems of education. The article goes some way
to show how a traditional and predominant Confucian image of childhood
has imprinted itself upon toys, games and patterns of play in China and that
has determined a strict continuity in the history and development of childhood itself. Through this process, the normative child equates with the
Confucian ideal child. Clearly, such an understanding has implications for
modern concepts of childhood and education.
Ben-Arieh and Boyer look at the issue of citizenship in relation to
childhood and within the troubled context of contemporary Israel. They
argue that discourses around childrens rights have disguised more significant issues concerning childrens claim to citizenship and the implications of
this for childrens lives and well-being. The work provides a model for the
analysis of childrens citizenship that, though culturally specific, will be of
interest in comparative studies. Clearly, however, the diaspora that has contributed to the complex demography of Israel as a nation-state provides for
an intriguing case study in its own right.
In the article by Cheung and Liu, the authors look at the causal factors
that motivate children in seeking help from the social services. This work is,
once again, set within a specific cultural context, that of Hong Kong, but the
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CHILDHOOD 12(1)

analysis has clear implications for our research into childrens lives throughout the world. Major variables emerge, such as emotional concerns, interpersonal difficulties and, increasingly, educational problems. This investigation
of the childs relationship with the state is of considerable contemporary
concern.
Cockburn opens up the feminist ethic of care in relation to childhood.
This ethic of care, he suggests, stands in opposition to a more conventional
ethic of rights. The work treats the more recent feminist intervention to a
concerted and positive appraisal and while pointing to the weaknesses inherent in certain formulations, its intention, and indeed its achievement, is to
strengthen and relocate the potential of an ethic of care.
Fingerson looks at the sensitive issue of identity and conceptions of
the body. The work argues that although adolescent girls bodies are often
constructed in ways that are both negative and passive by dominant beliefs
and ideologies, it is also the case that adolescent girls, in interaction, are
capable of a form of resistance by formulating themselves and bodily functions, such as menstruation, in constructive and creative ways. This study is
achieved through an analysis of discourse and through group interview.
Finally, Luk-Fong addresses the narratives of a range of significant
actors in schools, namely school principals, teachers, guidance professionals,
parents and the children themselves in a search to reveal new ways of articulating the parent child relationship.
Chris Jenks

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