Life-Worlds and Childhood (A Critical Approach) (with Hedi Viterbo and Didier Reynaert)
Channel: Children in Theory
Date: 18/01/2024

Springing from the introduction to a Life-World approach to children’s rights, Hedi Viterbo and Didier Reynaert discuss the potential of critical approaches in providing new normative structures for children’s rights. Delving deeper into the relationship and tensions between the Law and the realities of childhood, and how critical legal theory and critical human rights scholarship can feed into this conversation. Among the issues addressed are the following questions:
• How can a Life-Worlds perspective of children’s rights be put into practice?
• What is the value and limitations of the fluidity and ambiguity in the law for creating new children’s rights practice more amenable to children’s life-worlds?
• How should we deal with the problem of essentialising the concept of ‘childhood’? Should we get rid of it?
• The conversation engages with issues of child poverty, child punishment, and children in residential care.

Viterbo, H. and Reynaert, D. (2024). Life-Worlds and Childhood. In N. Brando, D. Lawson and H. Stalford (eds.) Children in Theory: Theoretical Methods and Approaches to the Study of Childhood.  Online Masterclass Series. University of Liverpool.

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