Anthropology of Childhood

Socialisation theories have traditionally focused on how children are socialised in a rather unidirectional manner, according to a transmission model. However, more recent research and theories show that children are not just passive recipients, but active agents in their socialisation process. At the same time, children are subordinated to adult control. In school, they are regimented and involuntarily subjected to mass routines, discipline and control. The aim of this study was to explore and give a voice to pupils’ critical thinking about school rules and their teachers’ behaviour in relation to these rules. Ethnographic fieldwork and group interviews with students were conducted in two Swedish primary schools. The findings show that pupils criticise some school rules, distrust teachers’ explanations of particular school rules, perceive some school rules and teachers’ interventions as unfair and inconsistent, perceive no power over the construction of school rules, and express false acceptance and hidden criticism. The findings are discussed in terms of hidden curriculum, power, mentality resistance, democracy, participation and democratic citizenship education.

School rules are usually associated with classroom management and school discipline. However, rules also define ways of thinking about oneself and the world. Rules are guidelines for actions and for the evaluation of actions in terms of good and bad, or right and wrong, and therefore a part of moral or values education in school. This study is a part of a larger ethnographic study on values education in the everyday life of school. Here the focus is on school rules and students’ reasoning about these rules. Five categories of school rules have been constructed during the analysis: (a) relational rules; (b) structuring rules; (c) protecting rules; (d) personal rules; and (e) etiquette rules. The findings show that the students’ reasoning about rules varies across the rule categories. The perception of reasonable meaning behind a rule seems to be – not surprisingly – significant to students’ acceptance of the rule. According to the students, relational rules are the most important in school. Students also value protecting and structuring rules as important because of the meaning giving to them. Etiquette rules are valued as the least important or even unnecessary by the students.

Abstract The aim of this article is to establish whether there is anything intrinsically immoral about surrogacy arrangements from the perspective of the surrogate mother herself. Specific attention is paid to the claim that surrogacy is similar to prostitution in that it reduces women's reproductive labour to a form of alienated and/or dehumanized labour.

What does it mean to grow up as an evangelical Christian today? What meanings does ‘childhood’ have for evangelical adults? How does this shape their engagements with children and with schools? And what does this mean for the everyday realities of children’s lives? Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork carried out in three contrasting evangelical churches in the UK, Anna Strhan reveals how attending to the significance of children within evangelicalism deepens understanding of evangelicals’ hopes, fears and concerns, not only for children, but for wider British society. Developing a new, relational approach to the study of children and religion, the book invites us to consider both the complexities of children’s agency and how the figure of the child shapes the hopes, fears, and imaginations of adults, within and beyond evangelicalism.

The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism explores the lived realities of how evangelical Christians engage with children across the spaces of church, school, home, and other informal educational spaces in a dechristianizing cultural context, how children experience these forms of engagement, and the meanings and significance of childhood. Providing insight into different churches’ contemporary cultural and moral orientations, the book reveals how conservative evangelicals experience their understanding of childhood as increasingly countercultural, while charismatic and open evangelicals locate their work with children as a significant means of engaging with wider secular society. Setting out an approach that explores the relations between the figure of the child, children’s experiences, and how adult religious subjectivities are formed in both imagined and practical relationships with children, the book situates childhood as an important area of study within the sociology of religion and examines how we should approach childhood within this field, both theoretically and methodologically.

O processo de construção da identidade indígena Pataxó na aldeia Coroa Vermelha, extremo-sul baiano, está inserido em contexto de longo e intenso contato com a população regional, sendo, na atualidade, intersectado pela forte influência do mercado turístico. Este, entrelaçado à prática de “mercantilização de culturas”, exotiza e transforma as mais diversas dimensões da cultura indígena em atrativo central. A busca pelo “índio autêntico”, correspondente a uma série de estereótipos consolidados no imaginário coletivo, representa, assim, importante fator na relação entre índios e não-índios na “Costa do Descobrimento”. As crianças indígenas, por sua vez, desempenham papel fundamental na manutenção da identidade indígena Pataxó, notadamente em sua relação com os distintos segmentos da sociedade regional. Ultrapassando os limites da escola e da família, a sua inserção no mercado artesanal é, ademais de sua importância econômica, de significativa relevância para o seu processo de aprendizado, consolidado enquanto espaço social de reafirmação da identidade étnica. É necessário, pois, tomá-lo como dimensão privilegiada da sociabilidade infantil, complementarmente à escola e à família. Para além da construção de um imaginário “sobre” os povos indígenas, contudo, é fundamental procurarmos saber como, sob a ótica infantil (constantemente negligenciada pela literatura antropológica), esse imaginário é construído, compreendido e sentido. Mais especificamente, é necessário saber como as crianças Pataxó da Coroa Vermelha apreendem e conferem sentido ao imaginário dos não-índios sobre os índios, e, particularmente, sobre os Pataxó da Coroa Vermelha. De que maneira os diversos estereótipos são por elas apreendidos, e, eventualmente, contrapostos à sua realidade social? Como elas vêem, e concebem, o “'índio”? Enfim, como elas se vêem e se concebem como índios?

The aim of this study is to acquaint Czech readers with an often unmentioned sub-discipline of anthropology. This case study of "childhood" in the situation of social exclusion should open discussion on the epistemological barriers that the fieldworker faces when he wants an insight into the child's emic perspective. The main question that the study focuses on is how "childhood" is conceptualised in socially excluded localities. We will try to show a de-essentialised look at childhood as a phenomenon and its clash with the educational system. We will analyse socially excluded "childhood" using Berger's and Luckman's concept of social constructivism and Granovetter's concept of strong and weak ties. The result will be linked with pedagogical discourse, which, until now, entirely formed the way of thinking about children and childhood.