Angels and Devils: Moral Landscapes of Childhood

Abstract

What it means to be a child varies over space and time. Historically, the dominant Western construction of childhood has oscillated between representing children as the bearers of original sin—devils—or as innocent—angels, in the United Kingdom in the 19th and for much of the 20th century it was this latter imagining of childhood that took hold. But the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1993 has been pivotal in reengaging a demonised conceptualisation of what it means to be a child. The author begins by considering some of the contested meanings of childhood and then goes on to explore the contemporary ‘othering’ of children and some of the spatial restrictions being imposed on young people by adults in an attempt to (re)draw boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’.