Disputing Discipline

Disputing Discipline explores how global and local children’s rights activists’ efforts within the school systems of Zanzibar to eradicate corporal punishment are changing the archipelago’s moral and political landscape. Through an equal consideration of child and adult perspectives, Fay explores what child protection means for Zanzibari children who have to negotiate their lives at the intersections of universalized and local “child protection” aspirations while growing up to be pious and responsible adults. Through a visual and participatory ethnographic approach that foregrounds young people’s voices through their poetry, photographs, and drawings, paired with in-depth Swahili language analysis, Fay shows how children’s views and experiences can transform our understanding of child protection. This book demonstrates that to improve interventions, policy makers and practitioners need to understand child protection beyond a policy sense of the term and respond to the reality of children’s lives to avoid unintentionally compromising, rather than improving, young people’s well-being.