moral panics

The Politics of Child Abuse and the Legacy of the 1980s in the US and UK

Journal / By

By Dominic Dean “Today’s American and British Right owes much to the 1980s. Nevertheless, we are now in the future that the dominant politics of the 1980s failed to fully imagine, much as Ronald Reagan’s ‘Let’s Make America Great Again’ slogan laid the seed for, yet failed to anticipate, its Trumpist reincarnation” Photograph: A billboard …

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Children’s sexual citizenship: Changing notions of the sexual child

Journal / By

By Anna Sparrman “It seems as though a dark view of children and sexuality has arisen since the political changes of the 1980s. Our own contemporary worries about the omnipresent paedophile limits the case for sexual citizenship for children because it refutes the political space and agency that needs to be created for this to …

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The Great Robbery: Children and Television

Exhibition / By

“I find myself haunted (perhaps because I was a teacher) by a mental image of children’s faces pressed hard against the railings of a playground which lies silent and deserted behind them. The dull and child-like eyes gaze out forever upon the grown-up world they ache to join, never turning away even to look at …

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“Have they forgotten how to play?” Games, toys and children’s play

Exhibition / By

“Once upon a time, children pored over elaborate toy train sets, fortified camps in remote woods, played kiss-chase, tab and hopscotch in the streets and returned home in a heap to get stuck into Swallows and Amazons. In a single generation that age of innocence seems to have been entirely lost.” Clare Garner, The Independent, …

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“Parents Beware!” Children’s Independent Movement

Exhibition / By

“Just walking down a busy city street can be like running the gauntlet for a child. There are bullies of all ages and races: there are maniacs on the road, driving at 60 mph along high streets. Worst of all, there are the sadistic, the insane, and the perverted.” Quote: Walter Ellis, The Times, 1 …

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