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John Wall
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, US
Director of the Childism Institute
Co-Director of the Children's Voting Colloquium
Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy (2022)
Throughout history, the right to vote has been extended to landowning men, the poor, minorities, women, and young adults. In each case, the meaning of democracy itself has been transformed. The one major group still denied suffrage is the third of humanity who are under 18 years of age. However, children are becoming increasingly active in political movements for climate regulation, labor rights, gun control, transexual identity, and racial justice. And these have led to a growing global movement to eliminate minimum ages of enfranchisement.
This book argues that it is time to give children the vote. Using political theory and drawing on childhood studies, it shows why suffrage cannot legitimately be limited according to age, as well as why truly universal voting is beneficial to all and can help save today’s crumbling democratic norms. It carefully responds to a wide range of objections concerning competence, knowledge, adult rights, power relations, harms to children, and much more. And it develops a detailed childist theory of voting based on holding elected representatives maximally responsive to the people’s different lived experiences. The book also introduces the concept of proxy-claim voting, wherein parents or guardians exercise proxy votes for non-competent persons, both child and adult, until whatever time those persons wish to claim or reclaim the exercise of their vote for themselves. Ultimately, the book maps out a new vision of democratic voting that, by equally empowering children, is at last genuinely democratic.
Contents
Introduction
1. Voting over History
2. Competence
3. Knowledge
4. Power
5. Outcomes for Children
6. Outcomes for Societies
7. The Proxy-Claim Vote
Manifesto
Link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/give-children-the-vote-9781350196261/
Reviews
“Future generations will ponder why children were for so long denied the right to have their views represented at the ballot box, just as we wonder why societies argued against the right of women and people of colour to vote. Professor John Wall has written a scholarly work that is also a gripping read.” ― Neena Modi, Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
“Is it time to give children the vote? In a nuanced, deeply thought and challenging way, this book combines political theory and childhood studies and demonstrates why the constraining of suffrage rights according to age can be profoundly problematic. It undercuts simplistic comprehensions about adult voting rights, competence, knowledge and how age structure power relations. John Wall extends the argument to a claim for proxy voting for all children. It contains both a vision of how proxy voting can help to redeem deteriorating democratic values and an insightful and novel social critique. This book will stimulate new thinking in a wide range of areas and deserves a broad audience among academic scholars, politicians, activists for extension of voting rights – simply anyone interested in the future of our democracies.” ― Bengt Sandin, Professor Emeritus of Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
“John Wall’s book makes strong arguments for why children should be granted universal suffrage without setting a minimum age. … [T]he book is written in a way that makes it easy for the reader to weigh the different proposals for children’s suffrage and make their own judgement. It is also a creative contribution to counteract the adultism that is still prevalent in today’s societies.” ― Manfred Liebel, Independent Researcher, Germany, and Philip Meade, Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Germany
This book argues that it is time to give children the vote. Using political theory and drawing on childhood studies, it shows why suffrage cannot legitimately be limited according to age, as well as why truly universal voting is beneficial to all and can help save today’s crumbling democratic norms. It carefully responds to a wide range of objections concerning competence, knowledge, adult rights, power relations, harms to children, and much more. And it develops a detailed childist theory of voting based on holding elected representatives maximally responsive to the people’s different lived experiences. The book also introduces the concept of proxy-claim voting, wherein parents or guardians exercise proxy votes for non-competent persons, both child and adult, until whatever time those persons wish to claim or reclaim the exercise of their vote for themselves. Ultimately, the book maps out a new vision of democratic voting that, by equally empowering children, is at last genuinely democratic.
Contents
Introduction
1. Voting over History
2. Competence
3. Knowledge
4. Power
5. Outcomes for Children
6. Outcomes for Societies
7. The Proxy-Claim Vote
Manifesto
Link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/give-children-the-vote-9781350196261/
Reviews
“Future generations will ponder why children were for so long denied the right to have their views represented at the ballot box, just as we wonder why societies argued against the right of women and people of colour to vote. Professor John Wall has written a scholarly work that is also a gripping read.” ― Neena Modi, Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
“Is it time to give children the vote? In a nuanced, deeply thought and challenging way, this book combines political theory and childhood studies and demonstrates why the constraining of suffrage rights according to age can be profoundly problematic. It undercuts simplistic comprehensions about adult voting rights, competence, knowledge and how age structure power relations. John Wall extends the argument to a claim for proxy voting for all children. It contains both a vision of how proxy voting can help to redeem deteriorating democratic values and an insightful and novel social critique. This book will stimulate new thinking in a wide range of areas and deserves a broad audience among academic scholars, politicians, activists for extension of voting rights – simply anyone interested in the future of our democracies.” ― Bengt Sandin, Professor Emeritus of Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
“John Wall’s book makes strong arguments for why children should be granted universal suffrage without setting a minimum age. … [T]he book is written in a way that makes it easy for the reader to weigh the different proposals for children’s suffrage and make their own judgement. It is also a creative contribution to counteract the adultism that is still prevalent in today’s societies.” ― Manfred Liebel, Independent Researcher, Germany, and Philip Meade, Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Children's Rights: Today's Global Challenge (2016)
This accessible and authoritative book provides the first systematic overview of the global children’s rights movement. It introduces both beginners and experts to child and youth rights in all their theoretical, historical, cultural, political, and practical complexity. In the process, the book examines key controversies about globalization, cultural relativism, social justice, power, economics, politics, freedom, ageism, and more. Combining vivid examples with cutting-edge scholarship, Children’s Rights: Today’s Global Challenge lifts up the rights of the youngest third of humanity as the major human rights challenge of the twenty-first century.
Contents
1. Why Children’s Rights
2. Theoretical Controversies
3. Historical Ambiguities
4. Education in an Age of Globalization
5. The New Child Slavery
6. The Right to Vote
7. Today’s Global Challenge
Reviews
“John Wall is right when stating that this is the century of children’s rights. His book guides us through the many challenges we need to take up to ensure that human rights can be understood and practiced in creative new ways that are fully inclusive of children. This is a must read for academics, students, and professionals as it inspires and motivates by bringing together theoretical, historical, and practical debates. — Bruno Vanobbergen, University of Ghent, Children’s Rights Commissioner for the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC)
"Ethicist and philosopher John Wall tackles some of the most intriguing and important questions posed by the concept of rights for children. In addition to articulating a persuasive and coherent theory of children’s rights that builds on the experiences of prior emerging rights movements, Professor Wall explores how children’s rights play out in specific contexts from the right to vote to the right to be free from exploitative labor. Free of jargon and a pleasure to read, this is a book for every reader who cares about the future of human rights." — Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, LQC Lamar Professor of Law, Emory University
John Wall builds on his work on morality and ethics to refresh our views on children’s rights. He moves the reader away from a minority world perspective to explore the ways children’s rights are interpreted and reinterpreted in specific contexts across the world. His blend of history, philosophy, and sociology presents an up-to-date analysis of ongoing debates around cultural relativism, education, child labor, and exploitation. He presents a new argument on aspirations to children’s voting rights. This is a useful book for anyone who is interested in the plight of children globally. — Tom Cockburn, Edge Hill University
Wall skillfully takes the contested subject area of children’s rights and makes it accessible to a wide range of readers without reducing the quality or complexity of the debates presented. … This text is essential to have on the library shelves of any institution which explores childhood rights discourses and legislation and is already identified as essential reading for my own students. It eloquently outlines the emergence of rights as well as its ambiguities and current challenges. Without sentimentality, Wall articulates the plight of children globally and calls for the transformation of children’s rights to be the catalyst to reshape human rights for both adult and child. — Sarah Richards, University of Suffolk
Contents
1. Why Children’s Rights
2. Theoretical Controversies
3. Historical Ambiguities
4. Education in an Age of Globalization
5. The New Child Slavery
6. The Right to Vote
7. Today’s Global Challenge
Reviews
“John Wall is right when stating that this is the century of children’s rights. His book guides us through the many challenges we need to take up to ensure that human rights can be understood and practiced in creative new ways that are fully inclusive of children. This is a must read for academics, students, and professionals as it inspires and motivates by bringing together theoretical, historical, and practical debates. — Bruno Vanobbergen, University of Ghent, Children’s Rights Commissioner for the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC)
"Ethicist and philosopher John Wall tackles some of the most intriguing and important questions posed by the concept of rights for children. In addition to articulating a persuasive and coherent theory of children’s rights that builds on the experiences of prior emerging rights movements, Professor Wall explores how children’s rights play out in specific contexts from the right to vote to the right to be free from exploitative labor. Free of jargon and a pleasure to read, this is a book for every reader who cares about the future of human rights." — Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, LQC Lamar Professor of Law, Emory University
John Wall builds on his work on morality and ethics to refresh our views on children’s rights. He moves the reader away from a minority world perspective to explore the ways children’s rights are interpreted and reinterpreted in specific contexts across the world. His blend of history, philosophy, and sociology presents an up-to-date analysis of ongoing debates around cultural relativism, education, child labor, and exploitation. He presents a new argument on aspirations to children’s voting rights. This is a useful book for anyone who is interested in the plight of children globally. — Tom Cockburn, Edge Hill University
Wall skillfully takes the contested subject area of children’s rights and makes it accessible to a wide range of readers without reducing the quality or complexity of the debates presented. … This text is essential to have on the library shelves of any institution which explores childhood rights discourses and legislation and is already identified as essential reading for my own students. It eloquently outlines the emergence of rights as well as its ambiguities and current challenges. Without sentimentality, Wall articulates the plight of children globally and calls for the transformation of children’s rights to be the catalyst to reshape human rights for both adult and child. — Sarah Richards, University of Suffolk
Ethics in Light of Childhood (2010)
Childhood faces humanity with its own deepest and most perplexing questions. An ethics that truly includes the world’s childhoods would transcend pre-modern traditional communities and modern rational autonomy with a postmodern aim of growing responsibility. It would understand human relations in a poetic rather than universalistic sense as openly and interdependently creative. As a consequence, it would produce new understandings of moral being, time, and otherness, as well as of religion, rights, narrative, families, obligation, and power.
Ethics in Light of Childhood fundamentally reimagines ethical thought and practice in light of the experiences of the third of humanity who are children. Much like humanism, feminism, womanism, and environmentalism, Wall argues, a new childism is required that transforms moral thinking, relations, and societies in fundamental ways. Wall explores childhood’s varied impacts on ethical thinking throughout history, advances the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, and reexamines basic assumptions in contemporary moral theory and practice. In the process, he does not just apply ethics to childhood but applies childhood to ethics—in order to imagine a more expansive humanity.
Contents
Introduction
PART I. HISTORY
1. Three Enduring Models
PART II. THEORY
2. What Is Human Being?
3. What Is the Human Aim?
4. What Is Owed Each Other?
PART III. PRACTICE
5. Human Rights in Light of Childhood
6. The Generative Family
7. The Art of Ethical Thinking
Conclusion
Reviews
“Could viewing moral issues from the perspective of children create a revolution in philosophical and religious ethics? This beautifully written book brilliantly argues that it will. Get ready for a new paradigm in ethics that author John Wall calls ‘childism.’ It may be as exciting for ethics as feminism was thirty years ago and be central to moral debates for decades to come.” — Don Browning, professor emeritus, The University of Chicago
“This is not just a book about children and ethics. This book revolutionizes the very way ethics is done. With probing insight and close attention to social practice, John Wall rescues children from their usual place as the ‘most systematically excluded group on the planet’ and moves them to the center of moral deliberation. This book should be required reading for ethicists and all those who care about sustaining the good life and a just society.” — Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Pastoral Theology, Vanderbilt University
“This wonderful book takes the study of childhood and of ethics to a new and transformative level. Animating ethical theory with stories drawn from real children’s lives, Wall calls for a fundamental restructuring of ethical thinking. It is essential reading for anyone who thinks deeply about children.” — Barbara Woodhouse, L. Q. C. Lamar Chair in Law and co-director, Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic, Emory University
“Creative, thought-provoking book.” — Choice
“The author takes us on a stimulating journey through considerations of history, theory and practice, and frequently relies on the perceptions of children themselves to illustrate the points he wants to make.” — Fraser Brown, Children & Society
Ethics in Light of Childhood fundamentally reimagines ethical thought and practice in light of the experiences of the third of humanity who are children. Much like humanism, feminism, womanism, and environmentalism, Wall argues, a new childism is required that transforms moral thinking, relations, and societies in fundamental ways. Wall explores childhood’s varied impacts on ethical thinking throughout history, advances the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, and reexamines basic assumptions in contemporary moral theory and practice. In the process, he does not just apply ethics to childhood but applies childhood to ethics—in order to imagine a more expansive humanity.
Contents
Introduction
PART I. HISTORY
1. Three Enduring Models
PART II. THEORY
2. What Is Human Being?
3. What Is the Human Aim?
4. What Is Owed Each Other?
PART III. PRACTICE
5. Human Rights in Light of Childhood
6. The Generative Family
7. The Art of Ethical Thinking
Conclusion
Reviews
“Could viewing moral issues from the perspective of children create a revolution in philosophical and religious ethics? This beautifully written book brilliantly argues that it will. Get ready for a new paradigm in ethics that author John Wall calls ‘childism.’ It may be as exciting for ethics as feminism was thirty years ago and be central to moral debates for decades to come.” — Don Browning, professor emeritus, The University of Chicago
“This is not just a book about children and ethics. This book revolutionizes the very way ethics is done. With probing insight and close attention to social practice, John Wall rescues children from their usual place as the ‘most systematically excluded group on the planet’ and moves them to the center of moral deliberation. This book should be required reading for ethicists and all those who care about sustaining the good life and a just society.” — Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Pastoral Theology, Vanderbilt University
“This wonderful book takes the study of childhood and of ethics to a new and transformative level. Animating ethical theory with stories drawn from real children’s lives, Wall calls for a fundamental restructuring of ethical thinking. It is essential reading for anyone who thinks deeply about children.” — Barbara Woodhouse, L. Q. C. Lamar Chair in Law and co-director, Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic, Emory University
“Creative, thought-provoking book.” — Choice
“The author takes us on a stimulating journey through considerations of history, theory and practice, and frequently relies on the perceptions of children themselves to illustrate the points he wants to make.” — Fraser Brown, Children & Society
Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (2005)
In Moral Creativity, John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure the poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal.
Contents
Introduction. The Possibility for Moral Creativity
1. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Moral Self
2. Radical Evil and the Narration of Goods
3. Otherness and the Poetics of Love
4. Ideology and the Art of Reconciliation
Conclusion. The Poetics of Moral Life
Reviews
“John Wall is dealing here with one of the most urgent philosophical questions of our time. He manages to combine a lively, anecdotal, engaging syle with a lucid sense of argument and a wide range of scholarly reference. Ricoeur is his guiding spirit but by no means an exclusive one. This is much more then a critical monograph or missionary declaration of intent. It is a deeply reflective, personally engaged, intellectually robust journey into the very meaning of ‘creativity’ in its cultural, ontological, aesthetic and ethical dimensions.” — Richard Kearney, The Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
“John Wall’s Moral Creativity is a thoughtfully written, carefully researched, and insightful book that makes an original contribution to religious ethics through a critical reading of the work of Paul Ricoeur. Wall successfully crafts a poetic moral philosophy in relation to the narratological and tragic dimensions of human existence. Through careful and sensitive readings of important Continental and postmodern thinkers, Wall calls the reader to create a narrative unity of life amidst the complexities and incommensurabilities of daily, lived existence. A stunning achievement and must read for students and scholars interested in the moral life in the face of radical evil and the loss of hope in our time.” — Mark I. Wallace, Professor, Swarthmore College
“Wall has skillfully woven the exegetical, dialogical, and constructive parts of his project into a thought-provoking and readable work. Moral Creativity could be profitably read by anyone familiar with contemporary debates in religious and philosophical ethics. It will both broaden the appeal of Ricoeur’s writings and advance the conversation about the relation of ethics to poetics.” — Glenn Whitehouse, Florida Gulf Coast University
“A provocative primer rich and thoughtful in current phenomenological conversations related to major questions debated today.” — Horizons
Contents
Introduction. The Possibility for Moral Creativity
1. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Moral Self
2. Radical Evil and the Narration of Goods
3. Otherness and the Poetics of Love
4. Ideology and the Art of Reconciliation
Conclusion. The Poetics of Moral Life
Reviews
“John Wall is dealing here with one of the most urgent philosophical questions of our time. He manages to combine a lively, anecdotal, engaging syle with a lucid sense of argument and a wide range of scholarly reference. Ricoeur is his guiding spirit but by no means an exclusive one. This is much more then a critical monograph or missionary declaration of intent. It is a deeply reflective, personally engaged, intellectually robust journey into the very meaning of ‘creativity’ in its cultural, ontological, aesthetic and ethical dimensions.” — Richard Kearney, The Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
“John Wall’s Moral Creativity is a thoughtfully written, carefully researched, and insightful book that makes an original contribution to religious ethics through a critical reading of the work of Paul Ricoeur. Wall successfully crafts a poetic moral philosophy in relation to the narratological and tragic dimensions of human existence. Through careful and sensitive readings of important Continental and postmodern thinkers, Wall calls the reader to create a narrative unity of life amidst the complexities and incommensurabilities of daily, lived existence. A stunning achievement and must read for students and scholars interested in the moral life in the face of radical evil and the loss of hope in our time.” — Mark I. Wallace, Professor, Swarthmore College
“Wall has skillfully woven the exegetical, dialogical, and constructive parts of his project into a thought-provoking and readable work. Moral Creativity could be profitably read by anyone familiar with contemporary debates in religious and philosophical ethics. It will both broaden the appeal of Ricoeur’s writings and advance the conversation about the relation of ethics to poetics.” — Glenn Whitehouse, Florida Gulf Coast University
“A provocative primer rich and thoughtful in current phenomenological conversations related to major questions debated today.” — Horizons
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Camden, NJ 08012
United States
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