Agency as Vulnerability: Accounting for Children's Movement to the Streets of Accra
Agency as Vulnerability: Accounting for Children's Movement to the Streets of Accra
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机构作为脆弱性：解释儿童流向阿克拉街头的情况
DOI：
10.1111/1467-954x.12021
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Yaw Ofosu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Phillip Mizen;Yaw Ofosu
本文考虑的是加纳首都阿克拉街头流浪儿童的中介机构。作为一个被广泛使用但在很大程度上未经检验的概念，能动性通常被用于儿童研究，作为强调儿童选择做事能力的一种手段。在关于街头儿童和工作儿童的文献中，以及与儿童独立迁移有关的同源研究领域中，这涉及到通过参考理性选择理论或童年的规范力量而对儿童能动性进行有意义的描述。我们的论点是，这两种方法都没有解决重要的问题，为了反驳这些遗漏，我们借鉴了社会现实主义者的论点，特别是它们强调脆弱性是人类能动性的基础。我们通过对街头儿童的研究进一步发展了这一论点。我们的论点是，通过援引儿童们关于离开家庭前往阿克拉街头的叙述，这些儿童确实把他们的离开视为个人选择和自决的问题，他们这样做表明他们有相当大的行动能力。然而，更深入地阅读他们的证词也指出了孩子们对自己脆弱的理解。通过审查我们认为儿童无法依赖家庭和亲属的情况，我们强调儿童对其脆弱性、脆弱和需要的认识的重要性，这是更充分地了解他们离开家庭的作用的基础。
This paper considers the agency of children moving to the streets of Accra, Ghana's capital city. A much used but largely unexamined concept, agency is nevertheless commonly deployed in childhood studies as a means to stress the capacity of children to choose to do things. In the literature on street and working children, and a cognate area of study concerned with children's independent migration, this has involved accounts of children's agency made meaningful by reference to theories of rational choice or to the normative force of childhood. It is our argument that both approaches leave unanswered important questions and to counter these omissions we draw upon the arguments of social realists and, in particular, the stress they place on vulnerability as the basis for human agency. We develop this argument further by reference to our research with street children. By drawing upon the children's accounts of leaving their households and heading for Accra's streets, it is our contention that these children do frame their departures as matters of individual choice and self-determination, and that in doing so they speak of a considerable capacity for action. Nevertheless, a deeper reading of their testimonies also points to the children's understandings of their own vulnerability. By examining what we see as their inability to be dependent upon family and kin, we stress the importance of the children's perceptions of their vulnerability, frailty and need as the basis for a fuller understanding of their agency in leaving their households.