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Enriched with anecdotes from ethnography and the daily media, this revised edition examines family structure, reproduction, profiles of children's caretakers, their treatment at different ages, their play, work, schooling, and transition to adulthood. The result is a nuanced and credible picture of childhood in different cultures, past and present.
The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood offers a portrait of childhood across time, culture, species, and environment. Anthropological research on learning in childhood has been scarce, but this book will change that. It demonstrates that anthropologists studying childhood can offer a description and theoretically sophisticated account of children's learning and its role in their development, socialization, and enculturation. Further, it shows the particular contribution that children's learning makes to the construction of society and culture as well as the role that culture-acquiring children play in human evolution. Book jacket.
Author : Robert A. LeVine Publisher : John Wiley & Sons Page : 343 pages File Size : 20,3 MB Release : 2008-02-11 Category : Social Science ISBN : 0631229760
This unprecedented collection of articles is an introduction to the study of cultural variations in childhood across the world and to the theoretical frameworks for investigating and interpreting them. Presents a history of cross-cultural approaches to child-development Recent articles examine diverse contexts of childhood in ecological, semiotic, and sociolinguistic terms Includes ethnographic studies of childhood in the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, East Asia, Europe and North America Illuminates the process through which people become the bearers of culturally/historically specific identities Serves as an ideal text for anthropology courses focusing on childhood, as well as classes on development psychology
Writing a book about play leads to wondering. In writing this book, I wondered first if it would be taken seriously and then if it might be too serious. Eventually, I realized that these concerns were cast in terms of the major dichotomy that I wished to question, that is, the very perva sive and very inaccurate division that Western cultures make between play and seriousness (or play and work, fantasy and reality, and so forth). The study of play provides researchers with a special arena for re-thinking this opposition, and in this book an attempt is made to do this by reviewing and evaluating studies of children's transformations (their play) in relation to the history of anthropologists' transformations (their theories). While studying play, I have wondered in the company of many individuals. I would first like to thank my husband, John Schwartzman, for acting as both my strongest supporter and, as an anthropological colleague, my severest critic. His sense of nonsense is always novel as well as instructive. I am also very grateful to Linda Barbera-Stein for her Sherlock Holmes style help in locating obscure references, checking and cross-checking information, and patience and persistence in the face of what at times appeared to be bibliographic chaos. I also owe special thanks to my teachers of anthropology-Paul J. Bohannan, Johannes Fabian, Edward T. Hall, and Roy Wagner-whose various orientations have directly and indirectly influenced the approach presented in this book.
How ancient is father care of human infants and young children, and why did it emerge? Is it possible that father care arose among the ancestors of modern humans and became essential for survival? Or is it a recent, though variable, development? Is father care an evolved trait of Homo sapiens or is it a learned cultural behavior transmitted across generations in some societies but not others? In this important study, Frank L’Engle Williams examines the anthropological record for evidence of the social behaviors associated with paternity, suggesting that ample evidence exists for the importance of such behaviors for infant survival. Focusing on the first three postnatal years, he considers the implications of father care—both in the fossil record and in more recent cross-cultural research—for the development of such distinctively human traits as bipedalism, extensive brain growth, language, and socialization. He also reviews the rituals by which many human societies construct and reinforce the meanings of socially recognized fatherhood. Father care was adaptive within the context of the parental pair bond and shaped how infants developed socially and biologically. The initial imprinting of socially recognized fathers during the first few postnatal years may have sustained culturally sanctioned indirect care such as provisioning and protection of dependents for nearly two decades thereafter. In modern humans, this three-year window is critical to father-child bonding. By increasing the survival of children in the past, present, and quite possibly the future, father care may be a driving force in the biological and cultural evolution of Homo sapiens.
In the vast anthropological literature devoted to hunter-gatherer societies, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the place of hunter-gatherer children. Children often represent 40 percent of hunter-gatherer populations, thus nearly half the population is omitted from most hunter-gatherer ethnographies and research. This volume is designed to bridge the gap in our understanding of the daily lives, knowledge, and development of hunter-gatherer children. The twenty-six contributors to Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods use three general but complementary theoretical approaches--evolutionary, developmental, cultural--in their presentations of new and insightful ethnographic data. For instance, the authors employ these theoretical orientations to provide the first systematic studies of hunter-gatherer children's hunting, play, infant care by children, weaning and expressions of grief. The chapters focus on understanding the daily life experiences of children, and their views and feelings about their lives and cultural change. Chapters address some of the following questions: why does childhood exist, who cares for hunter-gatherer children, what are the characteristic features of hunter-gatherer children's development and what are the impacts of culture change on hunter-gatherer child care? The book is divided into five parts. The first section provides historical, theoretical and conceptual framework for the volume; the second section examines data to test competing hypotheses regarding why childhood is particularly long in humans; the third section expands on the second section by looking at who cares for hunter-gatherer children; the fourth section explores several developmental issues such as weaning, play and loss of loved ones; and, the final section examines the impact of sedentism and schools on hunter-gatherer children. This pioneering volume will help to stimulate further research and scholarship on hunter-gatherer childhoods, thereby advancing our understanding of the way of life that characterized most of human history and of the processes that may have shaped both human development and human evolution. Barry S. Hewlett is professor of anthropology at Washington State University, Vancouver. Michael E. Lamb is professor of psychology in the social sciences, Cambridge University.
A comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development which examines both the cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence.
Over several generations villagers of Dominica have been shifting from Patwa, an Afro-French creole, to English, the official language. Despite government efforts at Patwa revitalization and cultural heritage tourism, rural caregivers and teachers prohibit children from speaking Patwa in their presence. Drawing on detailed ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of video-recorded social interaction in naturalistic home, school, village and urban settings, the study explores this paradox and examines the role of children and their social worlds. It offers much-needed insights into the study of language socialization, language shift and Caribbean children’s agency and social lives, contributing to the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of children’s cultures. Further, it demonstrates the critical role played by children in the transmission and transformation of linguistic practices, which ultimately may determine the fate of a language.
In An Introduction to Childhood, Heather Montgomery examines the role children have played within anthropology, how they have been studied by anthropologists and how they have been portrayed and analyzed in ethnographic monographs over the last one hundred and fifty years. Offers a comprehensive overview of childhood from an anthropological perspective Draws upon a wide range of examples and evidence from different geographical areas and belief systems Synthesizes existing literature on the anthropology of childhood, while providing a fresh perspective Engages students with illustrative ethnographies to illuminate key topics and themes