Philippine E-Journals

On Objects, Love, and Objectifications: Children in a Material World

Layla Abdelrahim

Discipline: Family and Relationships

 

Abstract:

This work is the first part of a trilogy that appeared as a 15-page paper for a doctoral seminar in education at McGill University, Montreal in October 2002. It challenges us to reflect on the phenomenology of children's space.

In the first chapter, relationships between people, family members, and their world are examined. These relationships are the direct consequence of an agricultural set of mind and values that shifted from the views of human beings as part of the world to that human as master of the world in an industrialised/civilised setting. Hence, permanent structures of control and its representation have become an integral part and the foundation of every sphere of our society: the symbolic, architectural, legal, medical, educational, and other aspects of civilisation.

One of the important elements discussed in this paper is about love. Love is inevitable in any relationship.

This paper also shows how consumerism and desires are excellent tools of control over some people and of profit for the other people.