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WORK TITLE: Child soldiers in the Western imagination
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE: 1944
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http://view2.fdu.edu/academics/becton-college/social-sciences-and-history/faculty/david-rosen/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Rosen
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1944.
EDUCATION:University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D.; Pace University School of Law, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Anthropologist, educator, writer. Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, professor of anthropology and sociology, beginning 1981. Also was a lecturer at Ben Gurion University, Israel.
AWARDS:Distinguished Faculty Award for Scholarship, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2009
WRITINGS
Contributor of numerous articles to journals and of chapters to scholarly books.
SIDELIGHTS
David M. Rosen is a professor of sociology and anthropology at New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he has taught and researched since 1981. His research interests lie in the field of the relationship between law and culture, while his book-length writings have dealt with the subject of the young serving as soldiers in conflicts around the world. These books include Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism; Child Soldiers: A Reference Handbook; and Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims.
The recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Faculty Award for Research and Scholarship from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rosen began his interest in child soldiers as a graduate student doing field work in Sierra Leone. Later, as a lecturer at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, Rosen became involved in local civil rights groups. Having lost members of his own family in the Holocaust, he further developed a passionate interest in discovering insights into conflicts that turn deadly. A walk in the British Military Cemetery in Jerusalem, which holds numerous graves of young soldiers who died in World War I, sparked an interest in how often youth is sacrificed in wartime.
Armies of the Young
Rosen’s first book, Armies of the Young, examines the role of child soldiers in a new light: from a political rather than moral or psychological perspective. Children acting as soldiers is not a modern situation, as the author notes in the book. There are examples of child soldiers throughout history, from the American Revolution through both world wars. They have fought both as uniformed soldiers and insurgents. The question is, in human rights terms, whether these children are hapless victims of adult exploitation, or if they have made a conscious choice to go to war. Going against received knowledge and the human rights regime, Rosen argues that child soldiers are not always the victims; instead, many of them decide it is better to fight than not. He makes his case through three conflicts involving child soldiers: the youthful Jewish partisans of World War II; the child soldiers of Sierra Leone; and the young insurgents among the Palestinian Intifada. Through these case studies, Rosen steers a middle ground between viewing child soldiers as exploited and angelic youth or crazed demons. Rosen explodes these myths, demonstrating that children can be independent decision makers making rational choices in difficult times. Thus, the author argues that the traditional humanitarian view of child soldiers is an over-simplification, and he also warns against offering blanket immunity from prosecution for war crimes for soldiers under eighteen.
Writing on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Eugenia Kiesling had a mixed assessment of Armies of the Young, noting: “Rosen’s discussion of the nature of childhood ignores neurological development, the fact that the teenage brain is not fully wired to make rational choices.” Kiesling further commented: “Rosen presumably does not intend his book to promote the use of child soldiers but as a crusade against muddle-headed humanitarians and, especially, against the pro-Palestinian bias of the anti-child-soldier lobby. His logic, however, is certainly no better than theirs. Even cold-hearted child haters can come up with good reasons to keep children out of war.” Peace and Justice Web site writer Sarah MacDonald, had a similar criticism, observing: “Rosen’s main argument is that children reach adulthood socially at different times in their lives depending on their culture and therefore have agency and can make rational choices, and that humanitarians believe that children are ‘immature, incompetent and irrational’. However he does not go into detail about the actual physical development of the human brain during adolescence, where young people experience significant growth and cognitive development. Rosen makes use solely of the social sciences as evidence for his argument. However it is scientific knowledge that the brains of children and adolescents are constantly changing and developing and that during this time young people are susceptible to impression.”
Others had a more positive assessment of the work. Reviewing Armies of the Young in Library Journal, Dale Farris called it a “provocative analysis of child soldiers,” as well as a “solidly researched perspective on this global problem.” A Reference & Research Book News contributor also had praise, noting that Rosen “goes far beyond emotional reactions to seek the motivations of the child soldiers themselves.” Similarly, Ilsa M. Glazer, writing in Anthropological Quarterly, termed it an “eloquent, meticulously documented study, artfully crafted, deeply considered, and most certainly challenging.” Glazer added: “Methodologically, [Armies of the Young] weaves ethnohistorical detail, face-to-face interviews, and analysis based on the author’s familiarity with the settings of his case studies. It is a critique of the humanitarian view of child soldiers and a stinging analysis of the politicization of the issue of child soldiers by the UN and NGOs.”
Child Soldiers and Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination
In Child Soldiers, Rosen offers a resource overview of the subject, providing a background and history to children fighting as soldiers or insurgents, the major events and attempts at limiting the use of child soldiers, biographical sketches of numerous child soldiers, and a directory of organizations involved in the issue of child soldiers. Booklist reviewer Arthur Meyers commented, “This work fills a need…. The writing is clear, and the work is well organized.” Choice critic T.M. Marini also had praise, noting: “This well-written book provides good coverage of its subject, offering a chronology, historical background, and detailed material on legislation.”
With his 2015 work, Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination, Rosen returns to the arguments of Armies of the Young. Here he offers a critique of the changing perception of childhood over the past two centuries in the Western world. Where once child soldiers such as the Civil War drummer boys were viewed as objects of national pride, now they are seen as examples of cynical exploitation. Rosen shows how this changing conception of childhood in which the young are seen to be vulnerable and innocent is a recent invention. The very term “child soldier” is, according to Rosen, a construct of human rights organizations’ tacit acceptance of such a view of childhood. Rosen gives numerous examples to challenge this notion, including the etymology of the word “infantry”, which comes from the Latin for infant. Rosen argues that the humanitarian concept of the exploited child soldier actually undercuts one of the basic principles of child studies; namely, as Choice reviewer J. Newberry noted, “that children are agents of their own lives.” Newberry further commented, “Rosen offers a mature scholar’s command of the issues.” Similarly, Ralph Mag Web site contributor Carlos Amantea termed the book an “excellent, in-depth (and superbly written) study.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Anthropological Quarterly, spring, 2006, Ilsa M. Glazer, review of Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, p. 373.
Booklist, September 1, 2012, Arthur Meyers, review of Child Soldiers: A Reference Handbook, p. 65.
Choice, October, 2012, T.M. Marini, review of Child Soldiers, p. 256; April, 2016, J. Newberry, review of Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims, p. 1214.
Library Journal, April 1, 2005, Dale Farris, review of Armies of the Young, p. 114.
Reference & Research Book News, November, 2005, review of Armies of the Young; August, 2012, review of Child Soldiers.
ONLINE
Fairleigh Dickinson University Web site, http://view2.fdu.edu/ (February 22, 2017), author profile.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (May 2, 2017), Eugenia Kiesling, review of Armies of the Young.
Peace and Justice, http://peaceandjustice.org.uk/ (March 30, 2017), Sarah MacDonald, review of Armies of the Young.
Ralph Mag, http://www.ralphmag.org/ (March 12, 2017), Carlos Amantea, review of Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination.*
David M. Rosen
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David M. Rosen is an American anthropologist. Rosen holds a J.D. from Pace University School of Law and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Illinois. He is Professor of Anthropology, at Fairleigh Dickinson University.[1] He lived in Teaneck, New Jersey[2] and now resides in Brooklyn.[citation needed]
Rosen’s book, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, garnered considerable public attention.[3][4] The book discusses three case studies: Jewish children fighting the Germans in World War II, child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and Palestinian child fighters both in the 1930s and 1940s and during the First Intifada, in the context of political theories about the ethics of children becoming soldiers.[5]
Rosen was active in the campaign against blood diamonds.[6]
David Rosen
Professor of Anthropology & Sociology
Rosen Pic HALF
Courses Taught
Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology of Children and Childhood
African Peoples and Cultures
Law and the Family
Anthropology of War
Israeli Society and Culture
Criminal Law
Research Interests
Prof. Rosen's research interests are in the relationship between law and culture. He has carried out research in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Israel and the United States.
Education
Ph.D, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
J.D., Pace University School of Law
Selected Publications
Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims. Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Child Soldiers: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012
Un Esercito di Bambini: Giovani soldati nei conflitt internazionali. Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2007 [Italian Edition of Armies of the Young]
Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. Rutgers University Press, 2005
"Child Soldiers in Medieval(esque) Cinema," in Sara Buttsworth & Maartje Abbenhuis (eds.), War, Myths, and Fairy Tales. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 (David Rosen & Peter Burkholder)
"Reflections on the Well-Being of Child Soldiers," in Asher Ben-Arieh, Ferran Casas, Ivar Frones & Jill E. Korbin (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being. New York: Springer, 2014
"Dumbledore's Army: The Transgressive Narrative of the Child Soldier in Harry Potter," in Christopher E. Bell (ed.), Legilimens!: Perspectives in Harry Potter Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013 (Sarah M. Rosen & David Rosen)
"Child Soldiers: Tropes of Innocence and Terror," Antropologia 13: 93-111. 2013
"Representing Child Soldiers in Fiction and Film," Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 24 (3): 305-312, 2012 (Sarah M. Rosen & David M. Rosen)
"War." Oxford Bibliographies Online: Childhood Studies. Ed. Heather Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012
"Social Change and the Legal Construction of Child Soldier Recruitment in the Special Court for Sierra Leone." Childhood in Africa: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (1): 48-57. December, 2010
"The Dilemma of Child Soldiers," Insights on Law and Society 10 (3) 6-10 Spring 2010
"Who is a Child? The Legal Conundrum of Child Soldiers," Connecticut Journal of International Law 25 (1): 81-118, Fall 2009
"Child Soldiers in Literature or how Johnny Tremain became Johnny Mad Dog," in Maartje Abbenhuis & Sara Buttsworth (eds.), Restaging War in the Western World: Noncombatant Experiences, 1890-Present. Palgrave MacMillan, 2009
"Children's Rights and the International Community," Anthropology News, April 2008: 5-6
Contact:
David Rosen
Professor of Anthropology & Sociology
Tel: 973-443-8724
david_rosen@fdu.edu
Department of Social Sciences and History
Fairleigh Dickinson University
285 Madison Ave, M-MS3-02
Madison, NJ 07940
Distinguished Faculty Award for Scholarship, 2009
QUOTE:
The writing is clear, and the work is well organized.
Child Soldiers: A Reference Handbook
Arthur Meyers
Booklist. 109.1 (Sept. 1, 2012): p65.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Child Soldiers: A Reference Handbook. By David M. Rosen. 2012. 323p.ABC-CLIO, $58 (9781598845266). 355.
This title from ABC-CLIO's Contemporary World Issues series addresses a vital and pressing global concern. Although the contemporary age definition of "child soldier" is dependent on local, cultural, and economic factors, young soldiers have been fighting for centuries.
The author teaches and writes in the areas of anthropology and law, conducted field research in areas of conflict, and published on the subject previously. The preface provides historical background on the shift of using young soldiers from nations to armed groups and insurgents in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Chapters cover the background and history of using child soldiers; problems, controversies, and solutions; and special issues pertaining to the U.S. Extensive references at the end of each chapter lead users to current websites, a range of books, and contemporary court transcripts. Biographical sketches convey individual child soldiers, prominent recruiters, and key figures fighting the scourge. Other chapters comprise data and documents, a directory of organizations, and resources, the latter including a list of child soldiers in fiction and film. A glossary and accurate index complete the work.
This work fills a need, as War and Children: A Reference Handbook (2010) is not as extensive. The writing is clear, and the work is well organized. It is current through 2011 and fulfills the goal of being useful for students, researchers, and the general public. For most collections.--Arthur Meyers
YA/C: Suitable for high-school students researching this contemporary topic. RV.
Meyers, Arthur
QUOTE:
provocative analysis of child soldiers,
solidly researched perspective on this global problem
Rosen, David M. Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism
Dale Farris
Library Journal. 130.6 (Apr. 1, 2005): p114.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Rosen, David M. Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. Rutgers Univ. (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies). Apr. 2005. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-8135-3567-0. $62; pap. ISBN 0-81353568-9. $22.95. SOC SCI
In this provocative analysis of child soldiers, Rosen (anthropology & law, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.) reveals that the traditional humanitarian view of child soldiers as victims oversimplifies a complex problem. In three critically reasoned case analyses of child soldiers (serving as Jewish partisans during World War II, in the ten-year Sierra Leone civil war, and as Palestinian terrorists), Rosen draws on his own experiences, as well as first-hand accounts, to challenge readers to reconsider the situation of child combatants in light of circumstances and historical context before adopting uninformed child protectionist views. Showing that different cultures define when it is appropriate for youth to become soldiers, Rosen analyzes factors that contribute to the existence of child soldiers, including the assumption that modern warfare is especially cruel, the lightweight weapon that make it easier for children to bear arms, and how vulnerable children become soldiers because they are manipulated by unscrupulous adults. But Rosen's solidly researched perspective on this global problem indicates that in many cases children become soldiers as the only way to survive. Concluding with an analysis of international law regarding child soldiers, Rosen separates humanitarian issues from political ones, wisely reminding readers that pronouncing blanket immunity for anyone below age eighteen from prosecution for war crimes falls short of achieving justice for the victims of war. Highly recommended for university libraries supporting international law, public policy, and family and children studies.--Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Farris, Dale
Rosen, David M.: Child soldiers: a reference handbook
T.M. Marini
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 50.2 (Oct. 2012): p256.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association CHOICE
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Rosen, David M. Child soldiers: a reference handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2012. 323p bibl index afp ISBN 9781598845266, $58.00; ISBN 9781598845273 e-book, contact publisher for price
50-0647
U8418
2012-449 CIP
This reference work by Rosen (Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.) starts with a history of the use of child soldiers worldwide and various nations' attempts to develop organizations and legislation to curtail this practice. The book gives many examples of conflicts in which child soldiers are used and presents a rather interesting chronology of this practice, along with biographical information on famous--or infamous--child soldiers. Rosen does not excuse the use of child soldiers with references to societal and cultural factors but focuses on abuses by those in power. He goes beyond mere cultural or postcolonial rhetoric to demonstrate various governments' lack of central infrastructure and lack of control. He discusses the roles of warlords and drug cartels, which draw on cultural and family/tribal loyalties but mainly use threats of retribution to enlist children. This well-written book provides good coverage of its subject, offering a chronology, historical background, and detailed material on legislation and on organizations that are trying to make a difference. However, these laws and organizations, designed to rein in the use of child soldiers, have proved to be sadly ineffective, as evidenced by the growth of the practice in the many areas that lack central government infrastructure and good economies. At present, the war criminals and drug cartels in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Mexico, and Latin America that thrive with the aid of child soldiers have proven to be quite resilient, in spite of the occasional arrest or capture. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.--T.M. Marini, University of Michigan
Marini, T.M.
QUOTE:
Rosen offers a mature scholar's command of the issues
that children are agents of their own lives.
Rosen, David M.: Child soldiers in the Western imagination: from patriots to victims
J. Newberry
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1214.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Rosen, David M. Child soldiers in the Western imagination: from patriots to victims. Rutgers, 2015. 238p bibl Index afp ISBN 9780813563718 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780813563701 pbk, $28.95; ISBN 9780813572895 ebook, $28.95
53-3614
UB418
CIP
Rosen (anthropology and law, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.) returns to the familiar ground of his Armies of the Young (CH, Mar'06, 43-4185), which introduced his central theme that child soldiers have been misunderstood as a recent phenomenon that produces pitiful young victims. In this new work, Rosen specifically frames the issue as one of Western imagination to argue that recent depictions have reduced empirical and ethical complexity, often for humanitarian reasons. A leader in the reinvigoration of child and youth studies in US anthropology, Rosen offers a mature scholar's command of the issues. This is not an ethnographic treatment. Instead, the author combines histories of actual children and their popular representation in wars from the American Revolution through WW II with a consideration of the contemporary legal and moral issues of children in wars in the global South. Working against the expected binary, Rosen combines history and anthropology to challenge the image of child soldiers as particularly African or as the product of a new barbarism in war. He ends by noting that the production of a universal childhood in order to save children actually denies the central tenet of child studies: that children are agents of their own lives. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--J. Newberry, University of Lethbridge
Child soldiers; a reference handbook
Reference & Research Book News. 27.4 (Aug. 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
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9781598845266
Child soldiers; a reference handbook.
Rosen, David M.
ABC-CLIO
2012
323 pages
$58.00
Hardcover
Contemporary world issues
UB418
This accessible reference for general readers and students in high school and up uses plain language to explain the complex political, historical, and cultural realities behind the continued use of child soldiers. The book also addresses the psychological impact on child soldiers and looks at how international law and human rights organizations have dealt with the problem in recent years. Some of the problems and controversies explored are related to putting child recruiters on trial and US rules for treatment of detainees and unlawful combatants. The reference includes a chronology, a glossary, a directory of organizations, and a review of relevant international treaties and US legislation, plus biographical sketches of child soldiers, recruiters, and key figures in the movement to end the practice. A 30-page list of resources points toward research studies, sources on policy and advocacy, human rights reports, legal analyses, biographies and autobiographies, films and videos, and podcasts. Rosen teaches anthropology and law at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver, Canada.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
QUOTE:
goes far beyond emotional reactions to seek the motivations of the child soldiers themselves
Armies of the young; child soldiers in war and terrorism
Reference & Research Book News. 20.4 (Nov. 2005):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
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0813535689
Armies of the young; child soldiers in war and terrorism.
Rosen, David M.
Rutgers U. Press
2005
199 pages
$22.95
Paperback
The Rutgers series in childhood studies
UB416
Look at the news long enough and you will see children in uniform toting rifles, children in camouflage sniping at occupying troops, children in school uniforms vowing to serve as suicide bombers. The startling thing about these situations is that they date back throughout history. Rosen (anthropology and law, Fairleigh Dickenson U.) goes far beyond emotional reactions to seek the motivations of the child soldiers themselves in three case studies, namely the Jewish child soldiers of the Second World War and the children fighting in various capacities in the conflicts in Sierra Leone and Palestine. He finds that children may not be victims but instead have reasoned that the only thing worse than fighting is not fighting, and that fighting also provides an element of control, self-determination, and in some cases, leads to survival. He urges policy-makers to also study the cultural and historical contexts of individual situations.
([c] 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
QUOTE:
an eloquent, meticulously documented study, artfully crafted, deeply considered, and most certainly challenging. Methodologically, it weaves ethnohistorical detail, face-to-face interviews, and analysis based on the author's familiarity with the settings of his case studies. It is a critique of the humanitarian view of child soldiers and a stinging analysis of the politicization of the issue of child soldiers by the UN and NGOs.
Anthropological Quarterly 79.2 (2006) 373-384
Spring 2006
Ilsa M. Glazer
[Access article in PDF]
David M. Rosen, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005, 199 pp.
David M. Rosen is a cultural anthropologist and practicing lawyer. His timely study, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, is in the finest tradition of cultural and legal anthropology. It is an eloquent, meticulously documented study, artfully crafted, deeply considered, and most certainly challenging. Methodologically, it weaves ethnohistorical detail, face-to-face interviews, and analysis based on the author's familiarity with the settings of his case studies. It is a critique of the humanitarian view of child soldiers and a stinging analysis of the politicization of the issue of child soldiers by the UN and NGOs.
Humanitarian groups1 seeking to end warfare and to protect children serving as combatants have created a new myth, according to Rosen. They have valorized twentieth century warfare as rule-bound, with clear political objectives, well-defined beginnings and ends, and clear distinctions between civilians and soldiers. These were international conflicts and wars of national liberation, costing more than 100 million lives. In contrast, in this century, wars are post-colonial small-scale civil wars and ethnic conflicts. Humanitarian groups characterize these new wars not as authentic political movements, but as "irrational and atavistic explosions of hatred" (162, f.n. 35), terrorism targeting [End Page 373] civilians, in which children are deliberately manipulated by adults to join armed conflicts for the first time in history. Adults who recruit children should be tried for war crimes. Some of the children committed terrible atrocities. Humanitarians and legal scholars debated whether such children should be held culpable for their war crimes, and decided that they were demons because they were victims, and should be protected from criminal liability. The humanitarians and lawyers adopted the Piaget model of childhood accepted in psychology, education, and social work. The Piaget model conceives of children as pre-logical, immature, innocent, vulnerable and helpless. The humanitarians, however, extend Piaget's model well beyond the early childhood years that were Paiget's concern, adopting the "Straight 18" definition, that a child is a person from infancy to the age of eighteen. Rosen accepts the so-called "Straight 18" definition of "child" as humanitarian groups do. For him it is a heuristic device to show how unrealistic and difficult a definition it is. He then systematically challenges the assumptions of the humanitarian groups about the nature of warfare and children's roles as combatants. Three case studies of child soldiers and the circumstances under which they fought are Eastern European Jews, Sierra Leoneans, and Palestinians.
To begin, Rosen shows clearly what anthropologists have demonstrated for decades, that the concept of "child" and the qualities associated with "children" are culturally specific. Chronological age has no fixed meaning in nature or culture. The Piaget model is inappropriate—even for Western society, as current anthropological, sociological and historical research on the agency of children reveals. The agency model rejects the idea that children are pre-logical or irrational. Even young children are far more "sophisticated, knowledgeable, rational, and skillful than is assumed in the general culture or in the popular developmental models…"(133). By the age of fourteen, research shows, children are as competent as adults to make major decisions concerning their own welfare (135). A second issue is that child soldiers are not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, "children" were used in pre-industrial warrior societies. Teens were used among the Maasai, Dinka, Yanomamo, Cheyenne, and many other ethnic groups. Youth fought in virtually every African war of liberation from colonial rule. Younger boys and teens were used among the British from the Middle Ages ever onward, by Americans in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Children enlisted in World War One. Western military schools developed as apprenticeships to soldiering. In fact, the age of capacity and consent is varied in Western legal traditions. In the USA, every year over 200,000 children under eighteen are tried as adults. In...
QUOTE:
excellent, in-depth (and superbly written) study
Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination
From Patriots to Victims
David M. Rosen
(Rutgers University Press)
"Without doubt there are many circumstances where the recruitment of children has been criminal and cruel by any standard. The cases of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army as well as that of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front easily come to mind." But, writes David Rosen,
over the centuries many children --- heroes, villains, patriots and victims --- have been child soldiers. Joan of Arc, Carl von Clausewitz, Andrew Jackson, Moshe Dayan, Yasser Arafat, Ishmael Beah, and even Dr. Ruth Westheimer were child soldiers.
"Their stories cannot be reduced to simple formulas of abuse and exploitation. This book is a partial attempt to show how history, culture, and circumstance shape our understanding of their participation in war." A case in point is The American Revolutionary War.
The American Revolutionary War lasted eight years, from 1775 to 1783. It was, to all intents and purposes, a civil war, one fought by the Patriots (or Whigs, those fighting to make the United States independent of England) against the Loyalists (or Tories, those who wanted to remain part of the British Empire). British soldiers joined the Loyalists, were called "the regulars." Just to confuse things further, France, Spain and the Netherlands joined the melee, and we can call them "the allies," since they joined the Whigs.
"During the war," writes Rosen, "the armies, militias, and partisan groups of both sides were filled with children." In one study by Steven Mintz, it is claimed that "between 30 and 40 percent of adolescent males participated in armed conflict between 1740 and 1781." Records show that the First to Eight Connecticut regiments, for example, 179 of 655 soldiers (27.3 percent) were between ages twelve to seventeen.
Of the 922 soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line of the Continental Army between 1775 and 1783, 113 (12 percent) were ten to seventeen. . . . The vast majority of young soldiers across the militias and regiments of the revolutionary forces were fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years old. Many of the youngest were fifers and drummers, but many were also ordinary private soldiers.
Before the 20th Century, by necessity the young were seen as dispensable. The mortality rate among children born before 1900 could be close fifty percent: that is, only half could be expected to live to see their tenth birthday in what we call the Eurocentric world. Of the twenty-three children born to Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance, only ten reached full adulthood.
Children who managed to survive were assumed to be miniature grown-ups, non-verbal adults merely without the capacities of older people. By the time war and revolution came around, the boys routinely joined their fathers or older brothers to pick up a gun or a machete or a pitch-fork to protect their honor, their family property, their country.
Some of those who emerged as heroes were fourteen-, fifteen-, or sixteen-years old. For example, Andrew Jackson saw his first combat when he was thirteen. In 1780, the regulars from England descended on the Carolinas. In the Battle of Waxhaws, in which Jackson participated, one witness, a doctor by the name of Brownfield, reported: "there was indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the most ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages." Since Jackson's brother had been killed by the regulars, he and another brother embarked on a plan to "kill the fighting men, and thereby avenge the slaying of partisans."
The Civil War was little better. A recent study of the U. S. Natoinal Archives tells us that of a sample of over 35,000 soldiers, medical histories show that around twenty percent "were recruited into the Union ranks between the ages of nine and seventeen." By extrapolation, almost 420,000 of the total military force of 2,100,000 were what we now refer to as "underage." And this is a conservative figure. A career military analyst, one Charles King, estimated, in 1911, that the figure would be closer to "800,000 below the age of seventeen, 200,000 were under sixteen, and another 200,000 were no more than fifteen."
The author of Child Soldiers assumes that the figures for the Confederate states would be very similar, notes that even these figures may be artificially low. The urge to fight to protect family, friends, and entitlements encouraged younger men to lie about their ages and, in any event, usually, such was the need for cannon-fodder, their declared ages were accepted as true. The rate of mortality for both Southern and Northern armies was between 750,000 - 800,000 deaths: the war managed to kill off at least 160,000 American children.
One former boy soldier, John Lincoln Clem, stated that "boys were good for the army" and that the training and experience were valuable for them. "Most importantly, he argued that of all soldiers they had the highest degree of élan because of their ambition, skill, endurance, fearlessness, and willingness to obey order."
"War," he wrote, "is bald, naked savagery. Disguise the fact though we may try, it properly bears that definition. As compared with the adult man, the boy is near to the savage.
World War I is found to be not all that dissimilar. Although English army regulations specified a minimum age of eighteen, "during the first two years of the war, volunteerism was the norm and the army was filled with boy soldiers, as boys from all over the country sought to enlist in violation of army regulations. Scant attention was paid to any serious method of determining age. The army, hungry for soldiers, was a reluctant enforcer of its own regulations." A Punch cartoon shows an officer interviewing an obviously underage candidate, and asking "Do you know where boys go who tell lies?" The boy answers, "To the front, sir."
Victor Silvester, later a famous British orchestra leader, "enlisted in November 1914. He was fourteen years and nine months old. When asked his age, he said eighteen and nine months. He was examined by the medical officer, determined fit, and quickly sworn in. He returned home to inform his patents."
During the course of the war, some 8.7 million individuals served and 956,703 died from wounds, injury, or disease. By conservative estimates some 250,000 soldiers were underage, and about 55 percent of these were killed or wounded during the war.
§ § §
Then there is the 20th Century phenomena known as Total War. The Nazis killed over 1,500,000 Jewish children in the Holocaust. In addition , a systematic murder of children came about through the introduction of V-1 and V-2 bombings of England, the Japanese annihaliation of cities in China, the indiscriminate bombing of German cities 1943 - 1945, the fire bombing of almost 100 Japanese cities during the same period, and the ultimate atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Common estimate of civilian deaths during WWII "due to military actions and crimes against humanity" numbers approximately 28,000,000, and "deaths due to war related famine and disease" another 28,000,000 - 30,000,000. With the commonly accepted figure of 20 - 25% of these being children under the age of eighteen, approximately 13,000,000 - 14,000,000 children died between 1941 and 1945 through the aegis of adult wartime activities.
The thrust of Rosen's excellent, in-depth (and superbly written) study is to note the change between then and now. He sees some of it as a new vision of war "as a criminal enterprise." Thus, what was acceptable even a hundred-and-fifty years ago is now seen as a brutal violation of the childhood. This is reflected in the so-called "laws of war" that criminalize the recruiting or using of children under the age of fifteen in direct combat.
There are exceptions. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran brought in 95,000 children "above age twelve, some as young as nine, to be used as human waves to clear areas of land mines." Currently, the U. N. reports that there are seven nations that recruit child soldiers, those under eighteen years of age: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar (Burma), Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen. "A decade ago," states Rosen, "much attention was focused on conflicts in Africa south of the Sahara, but as even as some of these conflicts have waned, recruitment is now spreading across the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Sahel."
He concludes the book with the thought that although we have created peace (mostly) in the west, "we have, understandably and luckily, lost our visceral understanding of war." Even so, during the war in Iraq, it was the United States, Great Britain, and their allies who killed thousands of civilians --- not only men and women but, too, children.
Obviously, there is nothing new about warfare or hypocrisy, but in recent years all these processes of distancing, demonizing, sanitizing and "othering" have transformed us into distant observers, ultimate noncombatants, with little firsthand knowledge of the kind of warfare that often thrusts children into combat in their homelands.
One element of child soldiery not emphasized by the author are the conflicts now raging in American cities, where children, known as "gangs" --- well-armed by fiat of American law ("the right to bear arms") --- are engaged in a civil war that has been raging for decades. The law of our country prevents the military from accepting anyone under the age of eighteen from being on active duty, so the underage are left to battle it out on the home territories.
John Clem declared that children between the ages of ten and seventeen are perfect for the paramilitary warfare," the very hostilities that dominate our inner cities. "As compared with the adult man, the boy is near to the savage," he wrote.
We find the drafting of "child soldiers" in Africa scandalous, yet ghetto warriors are a guerilla force scarcely hidden from the public eye. We can wring our hands over juveniles in the Congo or Liberia carrying AK-47s, enlisted by hardened rebels to fight in blood-lust inter-tribal wars. But we have a multitude of child-soldiers in our own center cities, sometimes drafted for battle because they are so young they cannot be prosecuted under laws affecting their elders.
Linda L. Dahlberg, the associate director for science in CDC's Division of Violence Prevention, notes that the gun murder rate is highest among male children and teens. According to the CDC, 25,423 murders by gunfire took place in the United States in a typical recent year. The rate of firearm homicides was higher in inner cities than in other parts of cities and higher than the murder rate of the country as a whole, Dahlberg said. "Children and teens aged 10 to 19 in these areas --- more than 85% of them male --- accounted for 73% of all firearm homicide," she writes.
A review of data compiled by the Children's Defense Fund documented that between 1979 and 2009, 116,385 children died due to gun violence in the United States. Extrapolating from recent numbers, by the end of 2015, Americans have allowed over 134,000 children to die from gun violence; 47 percent of these children were African American. And, according to Marcos Crespo in City & State Magazine (March 2016):
More recent data tells us that over 28,000 children and teens were killed by guns between 2003 and 2014. "In the two-year period from 2008 to 2009, 34,000 children and teens were injured by guns. This translates into one child injured by a gun every 31 minutes of those two years, equal to filling 1,375 classrooms of 25 students each. Today, one teen per hour is hospitalized due to gun violence in the United States."
Thus this war of child soldiers is not some distant tragedy. It is happening at this moment in a city near you.
--- Carlos Amantea
QUOTE:
Rosen’s discussion of the nature of childhood ignores neurological development, the fact that the teenage brain is not fully wired to make rational choices.
Rosen presumably does not intend his book to promote the use of child soldiers but as a crusade against muddle-headed humanitarians and, especially, against the pro-Palestinian bias of the anti-child-soldier lobby. His logic, however, is certainly no better than theirs. Even cold-hearted child haters can come up with good reasons to keep children out of war.
Kiesling on Rosen, 'Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism'
Author:
David M. Rosen
Reviewer:
Eugenia Kiesling
David M. Rosen. Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2005. xi + 199 pp. $22.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8135-3568-5.
Reviewed by Eugenia Kiesling (U.S. Military Academy)
Published on H-War (January, 2006)
Let the Children Kill!
"Humanitarian" efforts to ban child soldiers in international law are ill-conceived. Naively, they fail to recognize that armed children are not victims of adult manipulation but thinking agents of their own destiny. Ignorantly, they treat child combatants as a pernicious aspect of modern war rather than a natural human activity; at the same time they fail to acknowledge broad cross-cultural differences in conceptions of childhood. Cynically, they prohibit the use of child soldiers only by non-state actors, allowing organized states an unfair advantage. Hypocritically, and worst of all, they refuse to acknowledge, let alone condemn, the use of child soldiers by the Palestinians. Moreover, humanitarians, in their puritan concern about the victimization of children, overlook the positive energy that young people bring to war. Rather than heeding the seductive claims of the child protection lobby, serious people will think twice before depriving children of their right to bear arms.
In support of these propositions, David M. Rosen’s Armies of the Young offers a short essay on "War and Childhood" and three case studies of children in combat: Jewish children fighting the Germans in World War II, child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and Palestinians in the Intifada. Each section contains a striking argument for rethinking the conventional wisdom on child soldiers, and in each case the unconventionality of that argument draws attention from its fundamental flaws.
For example, "War and Childhood" accurately notes that "child soldiers have always been present on the battlefield" (p.12), but Rosen does not notice the difference between adult armies containing children acculturated to emulate adult behavior and child armies lacking institutional standards of conduct. Moreover, Rosen has put some thought into defining "child" but none into defining "soldier." Child soldiers are a concern not only for those who want to protect children from abuse but also for those who wish to protect adult soldiers from having to fight against children. Children are a difficult enemy, not only for emotional and moral reasons, but because they lack adult rationality and will fight not only in hopeless situations but in pointless ones.
But Rosen’s discussion of the nature of childhood ignores neurological development, the fact that the teenage brain is not fully wired to make rational choices. It seems strange that can suggest that adult military enlistment hardly represents "free and unfettered rational choice or informed consent in the absence of any social pressure" (p.134) while asserting that children should be free to make such choices. Military recruiters focus their efforts on the young explicitly because they are more susceptible to the very pressures Rosen believes that adults fail to resist. Rosen’s suggestion that some children, especially girls, find combat "empowering and liberating" (p.17) is undoubtedly true, but perhaps there is a better way.
The chapter on youthful resistance to the Holocaust is bizarre. Since no one has charged the Resistance with exploitation, that it was better for Jewish children to die fighting the Germans than in the gas chambers is an unnecessary argument for legalizing child soldiers. It is better to see the children’s courage as another indictment of the Germans, who stole from them, in addition to everything else, their childhood. In this chapter, moreover, Rosen might usefully compare the youthful Jewish resisters with their German counterparts drafted into the Wehrmacht. Would they also have represented for him the virtues attributed to the Jewish children: "energy, flexibilty, and brazenness" (p.55)?
The Sierra Leone case study purports to demonstrate that youth violence may be so embedded in a culture that it cannot be disentangled. Peacetime history may explain wartime exploitation, but it does not justify it. Even stranger is the argument that, while the conflict forced children into a "slave system," many of them profited from the system’s internal hierarchy. Thus, "rebel child soldiers were more privileged and more powerful than sex slaves," and "the most powerful and violent girls were not sex slaves but major participants in fighting and terrorism" (p.86-87).
Throughout his narrative of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism and, later, Israel, Rosen again praises youthful soldiers for escalating war’s violence. Youthful militancy not only energized the resistance but "enthralled" the Palestinians (p.117) with "the seductive power of the child hero bearing arms" (p.126). His conclusion about the Intifada, that the "sacrifice of the young" is part of the Palestinian cultural idiom (p.131), may explain why so many Palestinian children have died fighting the Israeli Army but not why outsiders are wrong to find their deaths dismaying.
Rosen presumably does not intend his book to promote the use of child soldiers but as a crusade against muddle-headed humanitarians and, especially, against the pro-Palestinian bias of the anti-child-soldier lobby. His logic, however, is certainly no better than theirs. Even cold-hearted child haters can come up with good reasons to keep children out of war.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=11321
Citation: Eugenia Kiesling. Review of Rosen, David M., Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. H-War, H-Net Reviews. January, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11321
Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
QUOTE:
Rosen’s main argument is that children reach adulthood socially at different times in their lives depending on their culture and therefore have agency and can make rational choices, and that humanitarians believe that children are “immature, incompetent and irrational”. However he does not go into detail about the actual physical development of the human brain during adolescence, where young people experience significant growth and cognitive development. Rosen makes use solely of the social sciences as evidence for his argument. However it is scientific knowledge that the brains of children and adolescents are constantly changing and developing and that during this time young people are susceptible to impression.s main argument is that children reach adulthood socially at different times in their lives depending on their culture and therefore have agency and can make rational choices, and that humanitarians believe that children are “immature, incompetent and irrational”. However he does not go into detail about the actual physical development of the human brain during adolescence, where young people experience significant growth and cognitive development.
Peace and Justice
Review of Armies of the Young
Sarah MacDonald
OIn his book Armies of the Young, Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism (Rutgers University Press), 2005David M. Rosen argues that child soldiers have been used in war throughout history and should be held accountable for their actions in violent conflict. Rosen disagrees with the common discourse surrounding child soldiers used by humanitarians and human rights activists which includes: war is cruel, arms are smaller and lightweight making them easier to use by children, and that children are vulnerable and manipulated by adults. The issue of child soldiers is much contested in international politics and civil society. Rosen believes humanitarians use this discourse as a “proxy” for other political agendas, for example criminalising war.
soldierboyThe book begins with an introduction of children being used in war throughout history. Children have always been part of war and Rosen questions why there was never any issue in the past with the use of child soldiers. He argues that, despite many who believe the rules of war have changed from organized battle, to guerrilla warfare, war has remained the same and it is humanitarians and human rights activists who are changing the definition. The book focuses on three case studies: young Jewish partisan resistance during the Second World War, the civil war in Sierra Leone and the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Within each case study he details the history of violence in that area and how children were involved in each.
Jewish children during the Second World War participated in the fight against Nazi Germany in Europe. In this section the author seems to valorize the child in war and says that taking up armed resistance against the Nazis was the only means of survival and this is why they should not be considered victims. Many of these resistance groups started as youth organisations, they felt it was their moral duty to fight the Nazis even though it had been made criminal to do so by adults. He says they made an “honorable choice” and that it was the “result of sheer bravado”. Children took their safety into their own hands and this gives them agency. Child soldiers were more violent, and had less resistance to violence. He gives the example of stabbing soldiers and letting them bleed to death.
bookcoverA history of the post colonial conflict in Sierra Leone is detailed in the next section, all the way up to the most recent civil war, where children were responsible for the mutilation and murder of thousands of people. Children who fought with the RUF during the civil war are now ostracized from their family and community because of the atrocious acts of violence they carried out. Many children were kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers and there was also a strong youth movement present in Sierra Leone after the end of colonial rule that drew many children to the fighting.
Thirdly the case of Palestine begins with a history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine before the Second World War. The rhetoric in Palestine is that it is the duty of young people to fight rather than adults and to sacrifice themselves for their religion and country. Even Yasser Arafat began his younger years as a child soldier at the age of 10. Children are recruited as suicide bombers, using terrorism to fight against Israeli settlements.
The final chapters give a history and summary of the international laws protecting children, like the Convention of the Rights of the Child, The Rome Treaty and Protocol Additional I & II. Rosen is right to claim that International Law is varied and not easily enforced; however it is illegal to recruit children for war in the eyes of the International Criminal Court. Age varies between laws, some international laws classify children as under 15, others under 18 or Straight 18 is the most common definition. He says that humanitarians just want to end aggression and concludes that civil society does not “achieve justice for the victims of war”.
I found this book very challenging to my moral and ethical beliefs. Rosen does not necessarily condone war. However he does not seem to be against it and views it as part of human nature, rather than imagine another way to solve conflict and reduce human suffering. The author has seemingly different views on the use of violence in different areas; condoning the Jewish children’s participation but is seemingly against those in Sierra Leone and Palestine. He does not have an objection to war and portrays it in a binary way. His views of war are black and white, a good side and a bad side, rather than portraying war as the very complex issue it is. Violence perpetuates violence, regardless of which side you are on.
Rosen’s main argument is that children reach adulthood socially at different times in their lives depending on their culture and therefore have agency and can make rational choices, and that humanitarians believe that children are “immature, incompetent and irrational”. However he does not go into detail about the actual physical development of the human brain during adolescence, where young people experience significant growth and cognitive development. Rosen makes use solely of the social sciences as evidence for his argument. However it is scientific knowledge that the brains of children and adolescents are constantly changing and developing and that during this time young people are susceptible to impression. When the international community chose age 18 it was not a number chosen from thin air by humanitarians and human rights advocates in their quest for peace. It is because regardless of culture, the physical human body grows in a timeline, which is relevant to everyone, worldwide, not just in the West.
This does not mean they do not have agency or that they are irrational – it is that they have not mentally developed to their full capacity. According to neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blackmore teens are by nature more impulsive and less self-aware because the brain goes through extensive changes during this time and is incredibly adaptable. In all of these cases the children have experienced violence most of their lives, and violence is the only way they know to solve conflict. The limbic system, which acts as a reward centre, is hypersensitive, which is the reason adolescents take more risks. These changes begin from puberty and can continue into the late-twenties and early thirties. So physiologically children under 18 protected by international law are really not adults and not capable of the same thinking as adults. I believe children should and will continue to be protected by international laws and that despite the objections from some, have the human right to be so.
Sarah MacDonald