s

INVITED PANEL SESSION, SOCIETY FOR HUMANISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, CHICAGO '03

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20^th, 8:00-9:45 a.m.

ROOM: TBA

Panel Organizers: Noel Dyck (Simon Fraser), Allison James (Sheffield)

DISCOVERING CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD THROUGH ETHNOGRAPHY: POSSIBILITIES AND PERILS Children have appeared intermittently but for the most part figuratively in anthropological accounts since the founding of the discipline in the nineteenth century. Whether as the pacified occupants of distinctive forms of swaddling boards, as the anticipated progeny or “yield” of brideprice payments, or as the objects of diverging modes of enculturation, children have served to articulate all manner of models of social structure and to illustrate divers interpretations of cultural logic. As convenient and biddable apprentices of the ethnographer’s craft, children have tended to enter into anthropological accounts on command and to fade obediently into the background when their presence is no longer required.

Beyond anthropology, children and childhood were subjugated to more ambitious and demanding projects within a range of social science disciplines and professional discourses. The conceptual tethering of children within the boundaries and purview of “childhood development” and “socialization” anchored analytic explanations of social reproduction and grounded pedagogical and political programs for the management of children and youth, not to mention the families within which they were ensconced. Nevertheless, in the latter part of the twentieth century a vigorous critique charged that these approaches have denied children any power of agency and, thus, have distorted our understandings of childhood and the experiences of children. In consequence, contemporary students of childhood have been obliged to reconsider longstanding analytic and professional premises and to contemplate previously unimagined social aptitudes on the part of children.

This panel seeks to contribute to the discovery and conceptual redefinition of understandings of “children” and “childhood” through ethnographic analyses that take into account both the possibilities and potential perils of anthropological practice in this field. Specifically, we seek to explore children’s contributions and responses to the situationally differing shapes of childhood as well as the ways in which concepts of childhood serve to shape children’s experiences in geographically, socially and culturally specific ways. What needs to be demonstrated empirically and ethnographically is not only the assumption that children’s agency exists and serves ironically to demonstrate both the power and the culturally constructed nature of regimes of childhood but also the particular ways in which this proficiency is manifested.

How can ethnographic analyses capture the ways in which children not only respond and accommodate themselves to perduring institutional arrangements but also propose and enact novel definitions of childhood that work strategically to reshape the spaces within which they exist? How can anthropological accounts of the social and institutional settings within which children operate specify the nature and operation of interests and arrangements that comprise regimes of childhood? How can the agency of children and the parameters of childhood be elucidated through the ethnographic and comparative capacities of anthropological inquiry?

PRESENTATIONS

anderson, Sally (Copenhagen) Civilizing missions: a discussion of fieldwork done and not done among children Ethnographic studies of children are almost inevitably policy-oriented. Fieldwork is often funded by public organizations and government agencies interested in questions of children's nature, how children interact in peer-groups, what they know and how they feel, what they are learning and how they are treated by adults and by societies at large. My work on children's participation in association sports in Denmark was no exception. During a national turn-of -the -century campaign to inscribe marginalized, "association-less" children in the community building venues of local association sports, sport organizers and municipal authorities hoped I would discover why certain kinds of children did not join organized sports venues. By "finding" these children, and "discovering" what they wanted, authorities hoped to rig a program of association sports that fit their needs and wishes and, thus, incorporate them into "local society". The paper discusses the ethnographic complexities of studying "children" as a structural category, as a group of interacting peers and as autonomous, optative individuals and reveals some of the ethical and conceptual problems of bringing ethnographic analyses of children to policy-makers.

CAPUTO, Virginia (Carleton) “SHE’S FROM A GOOD FAMILY”: CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD IN PRIVATE SCHOOL SETTINGS Childhood researchers have argued that large scale economic, social and cultural changes are altering the dynamics of contemporary childhoods (Stephens 1997: James 1998). These changes, such as rising unemployment rates, higher poverty rates, workplace/family stresses (Hochschild 1989), and the rise of diverse family forms, necessarily impact on the everyday lives and experiences of children.

In this paper, I examine one aspect of what Barrie Thorne (1999) refers to as “a privatized infrastructure for raising children [that] has consolidated, with access and quality depending on one’s ability to pay.” The rise of private school education in Canada is one example. Thorne argues that we live in an era where there is a commodification of everything: “markets in child centred products and services are now flourishing…. Private schools, preschools, daycare centers, camps, housekeepers, nannies, au pairs, paid domestic workers, household ‘organizers’ (who will tidy up closets and drawers), birthday party planners, taxi and van companies willing to transport kids...”. Using recent ethnographic fieldwork with children attending, or who have attended, private schools in Ottawa, Canada as well as with their parents and school officials, I examine the ways in which concepts of “children” and “childhood” are understood and deployed in these contexts. In complex ways, these conceptualizations both shape children’s lives and experiences of childhood while children simultaneously resist, accommodate and redefine them. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of anthropological accounts to situate the study of childhood and children’s lives broadly in global political, cultural and economic contexts.

DYCK, Noel (Simon Fraser) “HOW WE PLAY THE GAME”: THE POLITICS OF ETHNOGRAPHY AND CHILDHOOD IN CANADIAN SPORT Athletic clubs and sport leagues for children and youth constitute near ubiquitous institutional features of Canadian communities and, therefore, significant locales for the study of children and childhood in contemporary Canada. Situated outside the bounds of public and private schooling, community sport activities nonetheless feature high levels of parental direction and adult management of children’s social, cultural and physical development. Characteristically identified by parents, coaches and sport administrators as being “for the kids”, these highly institutionalized activities deliver not only athletic opportunities but also tutelary programs that are designed to shape both the bodies and characters of children in culturally preferred ways.

This paper examines the subtle but obdurate political and conceptual barriers that confront ethnographers who seek to investigate organized community sports for children and youth. The commonly encountered proposition that “sport is good for kids” carries with it a set of deeply entrenched political propositions about the appropriate nature of “children”, “childhood” and “sports”. The ethnographic findings reported in this paper serve to illustrate the manner in which children’s attempts to exercise agency within community sport activities encounter constraints that parallel those of ethnographers working within this field of relations.

JAMES, Allison (Sheffield) and JAMES, Adrian (Bradford) The perils and (im)possibilities of listening to children: perspectives from practitioners ‘Listening to children’ is now a common mantra for practitioner work with children in the UK. Embracing ideas of both social action and political commitment, it suggests that children’s own views will be heard and respected by those who, as adults, are acting on their behalf, an ideological stance supported by the provisions of the Children Act, 1989. This Act purports to embrace the principles and rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by arguing that practitioners should both consult children and take account of their wishes and feelings in decisions that affect them.

Drawing on research amongst two groups of practitioners involved in the UK family justice system, this paper argues that, while ideologically committed to such a view, practitioners often fail to follow it through in the work that they do with children. In part this is due to the perceived perils of listening, both for them as practitioners and for children themselves, but also, as the paper argues, listening – or hearing – becomes, in some instances, impossible. The logic of the family justice system which constrains the ways in which practitioners work, at best prohibits children’s voices and, at worst, silences them. Framed by two opposing models of ‘the child’ – the child as kin relation and the child as social status – the justice system is, in the end, unable to deliver the justice to children, in terms of their rights to be heard, which it claims to offer.

MITCHELL, Lisa (Victoria) MAKING SPACE: ETHNOGRAPHY, AGENCY AND KIDS IN THE CENTRAL PHILIPPINES [full abstract to follow]

MONTGOMERY, Heather (Open University) NEGOTIATING KINSHIP AMONG CHILD PROSTITUTES IN THAILAND

Child-centred anthropology places children at the heart of ethnographic research, taking their agency and importance as a given. However one of the perils inherent in this form of research is that focussing exclusively on children overlooks the importance of the relationships between adults and children and the ways that these relationships are understood and negotiated by both sides. There is a danger of essentialising the difference between adults and children and overlooking the processual and relational aspects of children's experiences. This paper will discuss these issues in relation to child prostitutes in Thailand. Usually seen as objects of concern by outside agencies, this paper will look at how child prostitutes in a particular community in Thailand conceptualise themselves as children and how they understand the role and responsibilities of being children within the context of commercial sex work. This entails examining childhood in multiple ways, as an issue of chronology, status, but most importantly as a relationship between a child and his or her parents, which involves expectations on both sides of filial duty and responsibility to parents. These life-long obligations are embedded in beliefs about kinship roles and are at the core of understanding children's relationships to their parents and other family members. However, these obligations are not fixed and this paper will focus on attempts by children to contest, subvert or meet their expected responsibilities, and in doing so, will discuss how they define themselves as children.

AMIT, Vered (Concordia) Discussant