Lenzer, Gertrud, The Silent Minority: Toward a Political Economy of Children (April 20, 2016). Available for downlaod at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2767728

“The essay claims that children – as close as they may appear to adult eyes – are largely unknown and invisible in their collective and individual realities. The social, psychological, economic and political dimensions of this silent minority and its emancipation will be the subject matter of the new and proposed field – the political economy of children. Children are the only social class without unified representation, The purpose of the essay is to make this class visible. Such analysis entails a discussion of the production and reproduction of the asymmetrical power relations between adults and children. In the manner of the long and established tradition of political economy. The essay will focus on such salient examples as violence against children, child maltreatment and foster care and the huge child markets of the corporate and public sectors. Moreover, it will address children as a class in the intergenerational web of allocations of resources and supports and intergenerational justice and explore measures of how to provide children with a voice in the policy negotiations of society and the polity.”