Childhood Scholars In Turbulent Times: What Role for the Public Intellectual?

Our turbulent times call for the incisive contribution of social knowledge to the multiple crises that our dystopian present faces us with. The accumulative shortsightedness of generations, moved by colonial savagery and exploitation, supremacist hate for the other and dispossession of nature, nurtured by capitalism, have entailed appalling living conditions for four fifths of the humans. Children, almost one third of them, suffer the most. We have learnt with Michael Burawoy “the uphill struggle” that is involved in a public sociology concerned with alternative worlds. In a somewhat different vein, the late Edward Said did not hesitate to endanger his own public self-esteem as he voiced publicly opposition and disapproval of injustices. Our colleague Spyros Spyrou has called attention to the many difficulties of a public profile, among them, the discouragement levelled by academic institutional structures themselves. This session invites critical communications and reflections on what can, or should, be our role as critical public childhood scholars today. What are the personal, institutional, historical anecdotes to be shared and reflected on so that collective concerns can be grasped? Should we be content to research, publish and “adjust” to the demands of academic capitalism? How, in face of grave international and national crises should we stand up in opposition? How can, or should, research, teaching and academic activities be moved by political dissatisfaction? What are academics and scholars doing in terms of what Julius Nyerere once said -that we must return our education to the people who gave it to us.