Autonomy and Child Vulnerability: Bioethical Challenges for Children's Psychosocial Health
[Autonomía y vulnerabilidad infantil: desafíos bioéticos para la salud psicosocial de la infancia]
WORKSHOP INFORMATION
DESCRIPTION |
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Childhood is an ethically relevant and especially vulnerable stage of life: children need care to survive; their cognitive, physical, and emotional skills are developing. Likewise, cultural and social reasons, such as the age bias, aggravate the relational asymmetry. Thus, specific vulnerabilities of childhood, both biological and symbolic, make childhood a vital period of life where the chances of suffering an instance of injustice increase.
Although children have been recognized as subjects of rights since the 1989 UN Convention, children form a particularly invisible segment of population without a voice in the public sphere. Also, regarding their moral status, their developing nature makes them not completely fit into any of our classic categories: they are neither fully developed moral agents yet, nor simply moral patients. Likewise, from the applied ethics perspective, Bioethics has experienced a constant expansion in its agenda, successfully incorporating topics such as ecoethics, the ethics of care or animal ethics. However, specific ethical problems concerning childhood have not found the same kind of attention until the recent years. |
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At the same time, and although the WHO (1947) has recognized non-physical aspects of health, there is still a lack of awareness on the importance of the psychosocial aspects. As a result, common positions on mental health oscillate between the tendency to pathologize normal psychological processes and the normalization of subtle damage and negligent behaviors, minimizing so their impact on life adult.
Having all this into account, this workshop is dedicated to address the bioethical issues concerning childhood and aims to delve into the ethical debates and challenges on less addressed aspects of public health, namely, the psychosocial ones.
By doing so, this workshop aims to surpass a compartmentalized vision of health, extremely focused on the physical aspects, and delve into the most forgotten areas, emphasizing the impact and interaction of social and psychological aspects on children’s well-being.
Having all this into account, this workshop is dedicated to address the bioethical issues concerning childhood and aims to delve into the ethical debates and challenges on less addressed aspects of public health, namely, the psychosocial ones.
By doing so, this workshop aims to surpass a compartmentalized vision of health, extremely focused on the physical aspects, and delve into the most forgotten areas, emphasizing the impact and interaction of social and psychological aspects on children’s well-being.
DATE
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FUNDING |
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This workshop is part of the research project Autonomy and Child Vulnerability: Bioethical Challenges for Children's Psychosocial Health from the Capability Approach perspective developed at the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Salamanca) and funded by the Víctor Grifols i Lucas Bioethics Foundation [BEC-2021-002].
ORGANIZER |
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MAR CABEZAS Universidad de salamanca
(marcabezas@usal.es)
INVITED SPEAKERS |
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ALEXANDER BAGATTINI KARLSRUHER INSTITÜT FÜR TECHNOLOGIE (KIT)
MARIO BIGGERI UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE
ANCA GHEAUS CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY-VIENNA
CARLOS PITILLAS UNIVERSIDAD PONTIFICIA DE COMILLAS-MADRID
CALL FOR PAPERS |
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This workshop aims to focus on:
A) The identification of specific ethical issues concerning childhood, especially the tensions between bioethical principles when applied to children; and
B) The normative bioethical challenges related to hard cases and children’s psychosocial health, such as childhood eating disorders, depression, anxiety, the impact of the age bias on children’s well-being, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, social exclusion during childhood, parasocial relationships and social networks.
Contributions from ethical, sociological and psychological perspectives on the following topics are welcome:
1. Paradoxes between vulnerability and autonomy.
2. The relation between parental autonomy and child’s well-being. How should the principle of autonomy and the principle of non-maleficence/beneficence be pondered when it comes to children’s well-being? How to avoid the intergenerational transmission of dysfunctional patterns without breaking the caregiver-child bond?
3. The tension between resilience-centered policies and the recognition of instances of (epistemic) injustice. How to restore epistemic trust when the child has been the victim of an instance of injustice? What strategies would best guarantee social justice for the child?
4. The protection of specific goods of childhood and the risk of adultization. How to integrate children’s voices in the public sphere without sacrificing some specific goods of childhood? How to provide children with a voice in the public sphere and support their autonomy without falling into the risk of adultization? How to protect specific goods of childhood without falling into paternalism or negligence? How to promote the development of children's agency without accelerating the process of maturation?
Deadline for abstract submission: 16th of February, 2022.
The workshop will be held in English. Abstracts (400 words) should be sent to: marcabezas@usal.es indicating “Childhood Workshop” as the subject of the message. Talks should not be longer than 40 minutes followed by a 15 minutes debate. A monographic publication with the selected contributions is intended.
Selection committee: Mar Cabezas, Rosa Benéitez and David Jiménez (USAL)
A) The identification of specific ethical issues concerning childhood, especially the tensions between bioethical principles when applied to children; and
B) The normative bioethical challenges related to hard cases and children’s psychosocial health, such as childhood eating disorders, depression, anxiety, the impact of the age bias on children’s well-being, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, social exclusion during childhood, parasocial relationships and social networks.
Contributions from ethical, sociological and psychological perspectives on the following topics are welcome:
1. Paradoxes between vulnerability and autonomy.
2. The relation between parental autonomy and child’s well-being. How should the principle of autonomy and the principle of non-maleficence/beneficence be pondered when it comes to children’s well-being? How to avoid the intergenerational transmission of dysfunctional patterns without breaking the caregiver-child bond?
3. The tension between resilience-centered policies and the recognition of instances of (epistemic) injustice. How to restore epistemic trust when the child has been the victim of an instance of injustice? What strategies would best guarantee social justice for the child?
4. The protection of specific goods of childhood and the risk of adultization. How to integrate children’s voices in the public sphere without sacrificing some specific goods of childhood? How to provide children with a voice in the public sphere and support their autonomy without falling into the risk of adultization? How to protect specific goods of childhood without falling into paternalism or negligence? How to promote the development of children's agency without accelerating the process of maturation?
Deadline for abstract submission: 16th of February, 2022.
The workshop will be held in English. Abstracts (400 words) should be sent to: marcabezas@usal.es indicating “Childhood Workshop” as the subject of the message. Talks should not be longer than 40 minutes followed by a 15 minutes debate. A monographic publication with the selected contributions is intended.
Selection committee: Mar Cabezas, Rosa Benéitez and David Jiménez (USAL)
Event venue
The workshop will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Salamanca), Spain.
Venue address: Faculty of Philosophy, F.E.S. Building. Campus Unamuno. Salamanca.
Venue address: Faculty of Philosophy, F.E.S. Building. Campus Unamuno. Salamanca.