"Disputing Discipline insightfully examines the tensions produced between global, decontextualized child protection policies and vernacular practices of care including Muslim children’s relational achievement of social and moral personhood in Zanzibar. By arguing for the need to decolonize the child protection apparatus in Zanzibar, it makes an important addition to existing studies that interrogate the hegemony of universal certitudes, like children’s rights, not to debunk these, but to better fulfill their assurances."
— Sarada Balagopalan, author of Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India
"Disputing Discipline is an important intervention in universalist children’s rights discourse. Fay’s nuanced and sensitive treatment of a highly polemic topic demonstrates what happens when development initiatives fail to reckon with religious and cultural specificities. This book clearly and compellingly articulates the need to decolonize international child protection efforts, if they hope to succeed. Scholars and practitioners alike take heed."
— Kristen Cheney, author of Crying for Our Elders: African Orphanhood in the Age of HIV and AIDS