Childhood in globalized India: A discursive discourse

Modern Indian Society is characterized by increasingly rapid social and technological change. Society's ability to coordinate change has exceeded its ability to reflect on the implications of the outcome. The ongoing globalization has created spaces not only for social interdependence but also for individuation. The issue is more multifarious and multidimensional. The concern is on the enormous changes it has produced in the lives of children- political, technological and cultural. Childhood as a ‘uniform and universal’ term is being reinstated by the multifaceted Childhoods, signifying  the intricacies of growing up  as it is incessantly being influenced by local, national and international factors.

The child is always in a state of conflict between the values learnt and the values communicated through the electronic and print media. Justifying childhood with innocence and androgynous with such exposure is becoming more complex leading to early identity formation. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of 30 children in the age group of 8-16, in middle class families in the city of Lucknow, India. It examines how the notion of independence, autonomy, agency, negotiation, identity and right to decision making which comes early with this exposure-constructive/destructive, is practiced and voiced in their daily social world. It also delineates structures for the children’s understanding and adapting to changes in technology, marketplace, and their own families and attempts to look into their everyday world, the nuances of growing up in both- family and non family relationships with regards to their interpersonal and social experience.

 It also addresses the issue of their gender construction with special reference to their body and sexuality in globalized India. Along with the changing contours of modern childhood, the paper also tries to examine how children place themselves in the given social space in Indian cities in local as well global context.