Readings Newsletter
Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier.
Sign in or sign up for free!
You’re not far away from qualifying for FREE standard shipping within Australia
You’ve qualified for FREE standard shipping within Australia
The cart is loading…
When we hear the term
child soldiers , most Americans imagine innocent victims roped into bloody conflicts in distant war-torn lands like Sudan and Sierra Leone. Yet our own history is filled with examples of children involved in warfare - from adolescent prisoner of war Andrew Jackson to Civil War drummer boys - who were once viewed as symbols of national pride rather than signs of human degradation.
In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates why our cultural perception of the child soldier has changed so radically over the past two centuries. Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination reveals how Western conceptions of childhood as a uniquely vulnerable and innocent state are a relatively recent invention. Furthermore, Rosen offers an illuminating history of how human rights organizations drew upon these sentiments to create the very term
child soldier , which they presented as the embodiment of war’s human cost.
Filled with shocking historical accounts and facts - and revealing the reasons why one cannot spell
infantry
without
infant
- Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination seeks to shake us out of our pervasive historical amnesia. It challenges us to stop looking at child soldiers through a biased set of idealized assumptions about childhood, so that we can better address the realities of adolescents and pre-adolescents in combat. Presenting informative facts while examining fictional representations of the child soldier in popular culture, this book is both eye-opening and thought-provoking.
$9.00 standard shipping within Australia
FREE standard shipping within Australia for orders over $100.00
Express & International shipping calculated at checkout
When we hear the term
child soldiers , most Americans imagine innocent victims roped into bloody conflicts in distant war-torn lands like Sudan and Sierra Leone. Yet our own history is filled with examples of children involved in warfare - from adolescent prisoner of war Andrew Jackson to Civil War drummer boys - who were once viewed as symbols of national pride rather than signs of human degradation.
In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates why our cultural perception of the child soldier has changed so radically over the past two centuries. Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination reveals how Western conceptions of childhood as a uniquely vulnerable and innocent state are a relatively recent invention. Furthermore, Rosen offers an illuminating history of how human rights organizations drew upon these sentiments to create the very term
child soldier , which they presented as the embodiment of war’s human cost.
Filled with shocking historical accounts and facts - and revealing the reasons why one cannot spell
infantry
without
infant
- Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination seeks to shake us out of our pervasive historical amnesia. It challenges us to stop looking at child soldiers through a biased set of idealized assumptions about childhood, so that we can better address the realities of adolescents and pre-adolescents in combat. Presenting informative facts while examining fictional representations of the child soldier in popular culture, this book is both eye-opening and thought-provoking.