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"Lancy, David F"
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The anthropology of childhood : cherubs, chattel, changelings
\"How are children raised in different cultures? What is the role of children in society? How are families and communities structured around them? Now available in a revised edition, this book sets out to answer these questions, and argues that our common understandings about children are narrowly culture-bound. Enriched with anecdotes from ethnography and the daily media, the book examines family structure, reproduction, profiles of children's caretakers within family or community, 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. Organised developmentally, moving from infancy through to adolescence and early adulthood, this new edition reviews and catalogues the findings of over 100 years of anthropological scholarship dealing with childhood and adolescence, drawing on over 750 newly added sources, and engaging with newly emerging issues relevant to the world of childhood today\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Playing With Knives: The Socialization of Self-Initiated Learners
Since Margaret Mead's field studies in the South Pacific a century ago, there has been the tacit understanding that as culture varies, so too must the socialization of children to become competent culture users and bearers. More recently, the work of anthropologists has been mined to find broader patterns that may be common to childhood across a range of societies. One improbable commonality has been the tolerance, even encouragement, of toddler behavior that is patently risky, such as playing with or attempting to use a sharp-edged tool. This laissez faire approach to socialization follows from a reliance on children as \"self-initiated learners.\" In this article, the ethnographic literature that shows why children are encouraged to learn without prompting or guidance and how that happens is reviewed.
Journal Article
New Studies of Children's Work, Acquisition of Critical Skills, and Contribution to the Domestic Economy
In spite of the fact that the very earliest ethnographers who paid any attention to children took note of the “precocity” displayed by children in both learning the household (e.g., caring for a younger sibling) and subsistence (harvesting and processing grain), tasks characteristic of the societies under investigation, the first synthesis and cross‐cultural compilation of this large body of descriptive material is quite recent. This first, introductory, article in this collection reviews those efforts to systematize the study of children's work and leads the reader through a catalog of the major conclusions or generalizations that have emerged from this analysis. To take a single example, the ethnographic record shows clearly that the work children do, whether differentiated by age, gender, or competence, serves, in large part, to shape their emerging identity. The Introduction then proceeds to forecast the following three articles, all of which advance significantly beyond our current understandings. A finer‐grained analysis reveals significant cross‐cultural variation around many of the generalizations made earlier regarding how children become helpers and workers.
Journal Article
Raising children : surprising insights from other cultures
An intriguing, sometimes shocking, journey across the world to show how children are raised in different cultures. -- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Accounting for Variability in Mother-Child Play
In this article, I highlight contrasting perspectives in the study of mother-child play. One contrast emerges as we use the lens offered by anthropology as opposed to the more commonly used lens of psychology. A second contrast is apparent from descriptions of childhood in the ethnographic record compared to observations of children in the upper strata of modern society. Psychologists and advocates who adopt their perspective view mother-child play-from infancy-as both necessary for normal development and an unlimited good. Its self-evident value should be impressed on those who are unenlightened. Anthropologists frequently note the absence of mother-child play and, equally important, provide culturally nuanced explanations for why this is so. Psychologists see mother-child play as natural; anthropologists see it as cultural. I conclude by questioning the wholesale exportation of a culture-specific child-rearing strategy that may be quite incongruent with native belief and practice.
Journal Article
The anthropology of learning in childhood
The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood offers a large, mural-like portrait of childhood across time, culture, species, and environment. Even a casual reading of the literature on childhood will persuade one that learning is a very important topic that commands the attention of tens of thousands of scholars and practitioners. Yet, anthropological research on children has exerted relatively little influence on this community. This book will change that. The book 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 demonstrates 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. Chapters have been contributed in archaeology, primatology, biological and cultural anthropology, and cross-cultural psychology.
eBook
Children as a Reserve Labor Force
Human life history is unique in the great length of its juvenile, or immature, period. This lengthened period
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is often attributed to the time required for youth to master the culture, particularly subsistence and survival skills. But studies in increasing number show that children become skilled well before they gain complete independence and adult status. As children learn through play and participation in the domestic economy, they seem to be acquiring a “reserve capacity” of skills and knowledge that may not be fully employed for many years. To resolve this paradox, the theory offered here poses that this reserve capacity of children, both individually and collectively, can be rapidly activated to offset a shortfall in familial resources brought on by crises such as the loss of older family members. Additionally, social forces engendered by war, disease, famine, and economic change may lead to the wholesale recruitment of children into the labor force—with consequent attenuation of the developmental opportunities of an extended juvenility. In effect, humans display a primary life history strategy and an accelerated strategy with a shortened period of dependency. A wide array of cases from anthropology and history will be offered in support of this proposal.
Journal Article