ABSTRACT
The Center-Periphery model of social change has gone from a model demonstrating the power of centrally-located elites to dominate and oppressed peasants and workers, to a two-way flow model that emphasizes the power of knowledge and skill at the periphery, as well as, the power of command over resources at the center. The rights of children are sentimentally invoked when war is being denounced, but in practice they are the most ignored constituency, the periphery of peripheries, in every society. Sorensen’s proposal for a Treatment of Children Index as a measure of societal well being, involves the radical step of actually looking at and listening to children. Valenzuela also writes about the female periphery, but provides a rather amazing case study of how Chilean women organized at the periphery to solve pressing social and economic problems under very repressive political conditions.
