Training “Safe” Bodies in an Era of Child Panic: New Technologies for Disciplining Bodies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 110
  In Roundtable Session: Reconceptualizing Quality and Fairness in Early Childhood Classrooms, Programs, and Systems

Abstract

This presentation addresses the complexities of the ongoing anxiety about the relationships between children and adults in early childhood educational settings. Borrowing from McWilliam’s work (1999) I initially outline the discursive context in which 'child abuse' and 'child panic' have appeared, and the new categories of vulnerability which these discourses produce. Then I will consider in detail the effects of 'child abuse' anxieties and risk management, and their effects on the training of masculine pleasures, the surveillance practices in early childhood centers, and how what counts as 'normal' sexual play amongst children is re-read through anxieties about abuse.

Author

• Richard T. Johnson, University of Hawaii