New in the Library

Children, family and thes tate
By: David William Archard
Published by: Ashgate, 2005
This book critically examines the moral and political status of the child by consideration of three interrelated questions: what rights if any does the child have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child do parents have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child does the state have? The author adopts two areas for particular discussion on the practical implications of the general theoretical issues: education within a multicultural context, and the medical treatment of children. Providing a clear legal context and a sharper, contemporary discussion of the question of rights, this book presents a clear introduction to key issues in the moral and political status of children

Haraka, Haraka… Look before you leap
Youth at the crossroad of custom and modernity
Edited by: Magdalena K Rwebangira & Rita Liljeström
Published by: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998
When members of the Reproductive Health Study Group at the University of Dar es Salaam conducted their first set of studies, they focused on the plight of teenage girls. In undertaking this second set of studies they have widened their focus to include the social institutions that regulate reproduction, initiation into adulthood, marriage, and parental obligations. In order to understand change to these institutions over time they have engaged in fieldwork in the villages and towns of Tanzania and have interviewed women and men of different generations. They have included potential boyfriends, husbands, and runaway fathers. When politicians, political scientists, and economists analyze change, they tend to neglect the long-term impact of the erosion of previous moral orders and the loosening of these mutual human bonds that protect women, children, and aged people. The authors report on single mothers, grandparents who take care of their daughters’ out-of-wedlock children, generational alienations, young men refusing to marry yet repeatedly conceiving and abandoning children, sexually transmitted diseases as proof sof manhood, and on girls generating money through sexual services. Differences in social and economic assets, in worldview and aspirations, in the perception of modernity and its offerings in the rate at which traditional life collapses and the demands of modernity assert themselves, result in social conflict and ambiguity. These are the main themes addressed by the authors of Haraka, Karaka… Look before you leap.

Defining children's constitutional right to social services
A project 28 working paper
By: Mira Dutschke
Published by: Children's Institute, University of Cape Town. July 2006