politics and criticism

Date: 19/11/2020                                                   

 Both the term "politics" and the term "criticism," fundamental as they are to work in the discipline of literary criticism, have gone through significant changes in meaning. When they are combined, whether so as to describe criticism as political or so as to suggest that criticism should or should not be political or in order to define sub-sets like "political criticism" or "cultural politics," the possible meanings thereby generated are multiple and bewildering. For critics-in-training, however, there may be no other issue so sure to clarify, or indeed cut to the heart of, what it means to choose criticism as a vocation. This course undertakes to study some of the most important past stages of intersection between criticism and politics, including classical rhetoric and the art of governing and the overlap and tensions between Romantic imagination and the theory of democracy, as in Raymond Williams's classic Culture and Society (1958), before turning to contemporary instances and controversies.

If politics is defined in relation to the nation-state, for example, in what ways is politics thrown into question in the era of globalization, when politics (like the politics of climate change) arguably spills over the boundaries of the nation-state? Is there a "cos-politics," and if so what about the particular brand or brands of criticism thereof?  What was and is the politics assumed by the still relatively recent sub-field of "post-colonial studies," and to what extent is it compatible with its emergent competitor, "world literature"?  What roles has criticism played, and what role should it play, in relation to so-called "identity politics"? What was and is "critique," what relation does it have to politics, and what is the political meaning of so-called 

                  Child labour

 

    date: 15/10/2020

Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially or morally harmful.^[3] Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation worldwide,^[4][5] although these laws do not consider all work by children as child labour; exceptions include work by child artists, family duties, supervised training, and some forms of child practice practiced by amish  children, as well as by indigenous children in the Americas.^[6][7][8]

Child labour has existed to varying extents throughout history. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many children aged 5–14 from poorer families worked in Western nations and their colonies alike. These children mainly worked in agriculture, home-based assembly operations, factories, mining, and services such as news boys—some worked night shifts lasting 12 hours. With the rise of household income, availability of schools and passage of child labour laws, the incidence rates of child labour fell.^[9][10][11]

In the world's poorest countries, around one in four children are engaged in child labour, the highest number of whom (29 percent) live in sub-saharan Africa.^[12] In 2017, four African nations (Mali, Benin, Chad and Guinea-Bissau) witnessed over 50 percent of children aged 5–14 working.^[12] Worldwide agriculture is the largest employer of child labour.^[13] The vast majority of child labour is found in rural settings and informal urban economies; children are predominantly employed by their parents, rather than factories.^[14] Poverty and lack of schools are considered the primary cause of child labour.