1. Child Soldiers and Political Opportunities: How Social Movements Benefit from "Bad".
- Author
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Tynes, Robert
- Subjects
- *
CHILD soldiers , *SOCIAL movements , *POLITICAL science , *CHILDREN & war , *WAR & society - Abstract
Despite the international outrage over and legal prohibitions against the use of child soldiers, the practice persists. Governments and insurgents are recruiting, training, and utilizing children for war in over 30 different countries today. Even though many people consider it unethical, the tactic is powerful. Drawing from social movement theory, I argue that child soldiers are more than just an irrational creation amidst the fog of war. Rather, child soldiers are a mobilization tool that provides greater resources and bolsters a framing process that fosters increased political opportunities. When child soldiers enter the field of protest, some actors are immobilized while others are more readily mobilized. The effect has at least three significant dimensions: the creation of moral dilemmas, the amplification of recruitment, and the relocation of fear in the social system. Taken together, these three dimensions expand the possibilities of political opportunities. Beyond the tactical advantage that this strategy appears to have, there remains the question of why some social movements are willing to break a widespread cultural norm against using children in battle. I contend that SMOs use child soldiers to create disrupture, or a tear in the social system via the role of children. A brief testing of the political opportunities hypothesis is offered as well as discussion of the disrupture thesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008