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Local, Global or Globalized?

This article elaborates a conceptual framework for examining international child rights legislation and the concept of childhood that underlies it. The distinctions between local, global and globalized conceptions of childhood are analysed as central to consideration of the success, and limitations, of international policies and programmes. Drawing on analyses of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, conceptual limitations of a shift from generalization to naturalization are identified. These culminate in a globalization of childhood that is particularly evident in models of psychological development. The article outlines how assumptions about the separation of individual and society, and development from culture, play a key role in this process. At the level of practice, therefore, the article argues for the need to maintain a critical vigilance on the adequacy of the conceptual resources that inform policy and programmes for children. The article concludes by suggesting that, in seeking to promote children's well-being and welfare across the world, there is no escape from treading the difficult path between the globalizations of cultural imperialism and the cultural relativism of localized conceptions. While important and necessary, rights legislation on its own can work to obscure the inevitability and pervasiveness of such issues.