History Department Workshop: Whose Children? Competing Conceptions of Childhood in Colonial Kenya

Ph.D. candidate Thomas Bouril will present a paper on:

Whose Children? Competing Conceptions of Childhood in Colonial Kenya

Abstract: My talk will be on my dissertation research, which examines how childhood became a contested social arena in Kenya during the colonial era. Colonial administrators, missionaries, British settlers, South Asian immigrants, aid workers, and parents and children from Kenya’s diverse African communities frequently debated questions concerning who qualified as children and what childhood as a stage of life entailed. As these debates intensified, I contend that Kenya became a “living laboratory” for childhood as many questioned the nature of parental responsibility, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the role of race in childhood development, among many others. These questions drove sociocultural conflict and policy relating to children throughout the colonial period (1890s – 1963). My research traces the continued impact of disputed frameworks of childhood through several aspects of Kenyan society, including coming-of-age, education, labor, law, and perceptions of young bodies. It demonstrates the critical and pervasive nature that discussions on childhood had in guiding colonial policy and transforming the role of children in Kenya.