Anthropological Perspectives On Children As Helpers Workers Artisans And Laborers

The study of childhood in academia has been dominated by a mono-cultural or WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) perspective. Within the field of anthropology, however, a contrasting and more varied view is emerging. While the phenomenon of children as workers is ephemeral in WEIRD society and in the literature on child development, there is ample cross-cultural and historical evidence of children making vital contributions to the family economy. Children’s “labor” is of great interest to researchers, but widely treated as extra-cultural—an aberration that must be controlled. Work as a central component in children’s lives, development, and identity goes unappreciated. Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers aims to rectify that omission by surveying and synthesizing a robust corpus of material, with particular emphasis on two prominent themes: the processes involved in learning to work and the interaction between ontogeny and children’s roles as workers.

Enriched with findings from anthropological scholarship, this book provides a guide to childhood in different cultures, past and present.

This popular book provides a compelling introduction to thinking about childhood in rigorous and critical ways. Karen Wells offers a unique global perspective on children’s lives, showing how the notion of childhood varies widely and is continuously being radically re-shaped. Taking children seriously as active participants in society, the book explores key social issues such as how children are constituted as raced, classed and gendered subjects; how school and work operate as sites for the governing of childhood; and how children both shape and are shaped by politics, culture and the economy. Taking an engaging historical and comparative approach, the book discusses wide-ranging topics including children’s rights, the family, play, labour, migration and trafficking. In addition to updated literature throughout, this revised third edition includes extensive new material on children’s activism, politics and war, and a whole new chapter on juvenile justice. The book will continue to be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, geography, social policy and development studies. It will also be a valuable companion to practitioners whose work involves or impacts children, as well as to anyone interested in childhood in the contemporary world.

This book addresses issues concerning five major categories of disadvantaged children, namely street children, children involved in trafficking, child labor, slum children, and children in institutional care, which apply to a large number of children around the world, including India. Compiling primary and secondary research-based evidences in addition to the first-hand experiences of the authors, it describes the link between social dynamics and the plight of disadvantaged children from both social and cultural perspectives. Each chapter includes examples and case studies to offer readers essential insights into the real-life situations of these children. At the end of each chapter, a number of evidence-based measures and models are proposed for agencies working to support disadvantaged children. Given its comprehensive coverage, the book is of interest to scholars, and government and non-government agencies involved in the welfare of disadvantaged children, funding agencies, and social science, medical and public health professionals.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies navigates our understanding of the historical, political, social and cultural dimensions of childhood. Transdisciplinary and transnational in content and scope, the Encyclopedia both reflects and enables the wide range of approaches, fields and understandings that have been brought to bear on the ever-transforming problem of the "child" over the last four decades This four-volume encyclopedia covers a wide range of themes and topics, including: Social Constructions of Childhood Children’s Rights Politics/Representations/Geographies Child-specific Research Methods Histories of Childhood/Transnational Childhoods Sociology/Anthropology of Childhood Theories and Theorists Key Concepts This interdisciplinary encyclopedia will be of interest to students and researchers in: Childhood Studies Sociology/Anthropology Psychology/Education Social Welfare Cultural Studies/Gender Studies/Disabilty Studies

"This work is designed to fill a rather large lacuna in the field of child development and education. A growing scholarly consensus challenges the universality of western-dominated research in psychology. All or most markers of the child's growth and development are now subject to re-examination through a cross-cultural lens. By the same token, the study of education has been similarly restricted as norms and theory are constructed almost exclusively from research in Euroamerican schools. This work aims to fill a substantial portion of this gap, in particular to document and analyze the myriad processes that come to play as indigenous children learn their culture-without schools or lessons. I will characterize the conglomeration of learning-rich events as instances of "pedagogy in culture." The construct has several connotations, but paramount is the idea that opportunities for learning occur naturally in the course of activities such as work, play, night-time campfire stories, etc., that are not primarily intended to educate"--

This book interrogates the international child protection regime, with a particular focus on its weaknesses and failures. It looks at the lack of accountability, the normativity, and the tendency to recreate patterns of power and exclusion that blight otherwise good intentions. The book assesses why the regime falls short of its ideals and offers ideas for what can be done to improve it. Bringing together influential, established voices, and emerging scholars who work on issues related to childhood, youth, policy, and practice, the book offers a timely intervention that aims to push the world of international child protection in more progressive directions.

Real understanding of past societies is not possible without including children, and yet they have been strangely invisible in the archaeological record. Compelling explanation about past societies cannot be achieved without including and investigating children and childhood. However marginal the traces of children's bodies and bricolage may seem compared to adults, archaeological evidence of children and childhood can be found in the most astonishing places and spaces. The archaeology of childhood is one of the most exciting and challenging areas for new discovery about past societies. Children are part of every human society, but childhood is a cultural construct. Each society develops its own idea about what a childhood should be, what children can or should do, and how they are trained to take their place in the world. Children also play a part in creating the archaeological record itself. In this volume, experts from around the world ask questions about childhood - thresholds of age and growth, childhood in the material culture, the death of children, and the intersection of the childhood and the social, economic, religious, and political worlds of societies in the past.