Urban Children in Distress: Global Predicaments and Innovative Strategies
Blanc, Cristina Szanton (ed.) (1994).
Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers; $50.00 (hard); $25.00 (paper). ISBN 2881246228.
This book represents the work of a UNICEF project on urban children. Blanc and her colleagues set for themselves the task of reviewing the evolution of UNICEF's global strategies for responding to the growing number and worsening plight of urban children. The format for this exploration is an in-depth look at the situation of children in urban settings in five countries: Brazil, the Philippines, India, Kenya, and Italy. These five national analyses are bracketed by one introductory and two concluding chapters by the editor herself (“Some Comparative Urban Trends: Street, Work, Homelessness, Schooling and Family Survival Strategies” and “Innovative Policies and Programmes: Lessons Learned”).
The book is rich with details in each of the country reports; it is dense reading in many ways, with a few vivid human touches (such as the case studies presented in the Philippines chapter). Its strengths are the fervor and detailed country-specific knowledge of its contributors, the unified approach to policy issues across countries, and an extensive bibliography. It will prove to be a rich resource for the professional or student looking for access to quantitative material on the conditions of children in urban centers on several continents and on existing policies and programs designed to respond to the special needs of these children and their families. It will also be of interest to students of public policy and international development.
Of special interest are the many examples of the contextual meaning of poverty. For example, the chapter dealing with India reports on the use of 2,100 calories per day as the operational definition of urban poverty, a standard that provides a perspective on the on-going American debate about child poverty. Interestingly, using the caloric standard in India produces a 20 percent child poverty rate (approximately the same as the prevalence rate in the United States using its much higher standard). One important use of the book is signaled by the chapter on Italy, namely the growing relevance of Third World models of analysis and intervention in dealing with core urban poverty problems in the cities of the United States, where middle class models may be of marginal relevance.
Urban Children in Distress offers some useful material on the role of environmental degradation as a force in the lives of urban children. In other parts of the world, as in the United States, poor children are most at risk from exposure to toxic wastes and other environmental threats. This is part of a general pattern of increasing inequality around the world. The rich do get richer, and the poor do get poorer as the process of urbanization accelerates. The pattern of declining real income observed during the 1980s applies to the countries studied here as much as it does to the United States, where the lowest fifth of the population experienced a significant decline in real income, while the rest of the population held its own or experienced increased wealth.
Blanc claims that her book “is not a treatise on research” (p. xv), but then goes on to say that it is “an attempt to describe and understand- and to some extent analyze -how deprived urban children and their families and communities are trying to cope with scarcity, neglect and discrimination” (p. xv). This seems a bit weak. What is good research if not an attempt to describe, understand, and analyze? The apparent ambivalence of the editor and authors on this point is unsettling. It may be related to the UNICEF's connection to the project; UNICEF's conceptual models sometimes seem dominated by “the numbers game” rather than an in-depth understanding of child development. Blanc herself acknowledges this when she reports that “the UNICEF urban officers in each country are constantly faced with the problem of providing figures, either for their own presentation or when they interact with NGOs, who tend to rely on large numbers to stress the importance of advocacy” (p. 322). This preoccupation is a recurring issue (and in many ways a weak point) of UNICEF's efforts, and hence of Urban Children in Distress.
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