ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impacts of commodification on children's daily experiences in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings and presents examples of resistance in various contexts and at various levels. It begins by observing how children are represented in ways that furthers ECEC as a commodity: as passive vessels, learning subjects, in need of salvation, as risks to society, and as future tools to improve the economy of their nation. An Australian case study illuminates how children both perform and resist their own positioning in long daycare. Following this, broader socio-historical rationales for ECEC, and their intersections with current processes of commodification, are discussed: ECEC as custodial care for vulnerable children and “troubled” mothers/families; ECEC as a tool for cultural assimilation; ECEC as children's garden; ECEC as a human capital and/or economic investment for nation-states; and ECEC as a site of experimentation and political resistance. These conceptualisations are interspersed with examples of alternative conceptualisations, projects, and concrete examples of resistance movements from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Indonesia, multiple African countries (Ethiopia Lesotho, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, and Uganda), and Norway.
