Faith in the Body? Childhood, Subjecthood and Sociological Enquiry

Abstract

This chapter concerns a recent change in the status of child witnesses in criminal trials in England and Wales. Adult witnesses have long enjoyed the dignity of being treated as ‘speaking subjects’ capable of more or less accurately reporting past events. Children’s ability to perform as speaking subjects in court and thus their ability to report past events accurately, has been in question. Since in cases of sexual abuse the child may be the only witness to the alleged crime, this has presented difficulties in procuring convictions. Because of the question mark over children’s subjecthood, evidence abstracted from the bodies of children has been understood as more reliable than their spoken testimony. This has been complicit with the view that since children are closer to ‘nature’ than adults, the most reliable forms of knowledge of them are to be found by investigating them as ‘objects’. As Morss (1996) argues, this view has, in the past, led developmental psychology to view processes of development as natural, quasi-biological processes. The truth of the child is to be found in her physical body. In the case of legal rather than scientific debate and evidence, this ‘faith’ in the body has been just as pronounced.