ERIC Number: EJ936931
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Aug
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0907-5682
EISSN: N/A
Adam's Escape: Children and the Discordant Nature of Colonial Conversions
Vallgarda, Karen A. A.
Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, v18 n3 p298-315 Aug 2011
The article traces the fundamental incoherency that structured the Danish Missionary Society's work at a boarding school for low-caste "heathen" children in South India in the 1860s and 1870s. Through elaborate disciplinary methods, the missionaries set out to Christianize and civilize the Indian children's morality, social behaviour and bodily comportment. Yet, the missionaries' perceptions of "the Indian child" also reflected the contemporary bolstering of racial thinking in Indian colonial society, resulting in doubts whether Indian children could in fact become true Christians. This paradoxical endeavour shows how children became a site for the production of difference that sustained colonialism. (Contains 17 notes.)
Descriptors: Social Class, Boarding Schools, Indians, Foreign Countries, Educational History, Christianity, Social Development, Social Values, Social Bias, Racial Bias, Gender Differences, World History, Human Body, Discipline, Punishment
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2814
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Denmark; India
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A