External Events
The below listed events are highly recommended by the Anthropology of Children Working Group. Would you like your event to be added to the list, please contact us.
International Conference 'Towards an Anthropology of Childhood and Children'
Date: 9 -11 March 2011
Institute of Human and Social Sciences, University of Liege, Belgium
Download the Call for Papers of this conference
Abstract
For decades, childhood and children were considered as a ‘small subject’ (Lallemand & Le Moal 1981). It is thus justified to wonder: ‘where have all the babies gone?’ (Gottlieb 2000) or: ‘why don’t anthropologists like children?’ (Hirschfeld 2003). Whereas interdisciplinary research centres and networks, Cultural Studies, courses, projects, and meetings on the theme multiply, we propose a critical overview of anthropological accounts on childhood and children. The conference will present how this field developed in social and human sciences according to different academic traditions. The interest in an anthropology of childhood (which includes gestation and infancy) grew throughout the world from the early works of a few founding mothers and fathers (Van Gennep, Boas, Mead, Benedict, Malinowski, Firth, Fortes, Griaule…). These works emphasized social and symbolic construction of childhood and associated rites of passage, through adults’ discourses on children.
Recent and numerous studies on ‘children’s cultures’ and on the social role of children are rooted in the concepts of ‘the child as an actor’ and of ‘agency’. They break up with the perception of the child as an ‘adult to be’ and a passive recipient; they are also embedded in its recognition, as an active and creative subject, initiated by the promulgation of its rights and the evolution of its status. Papers should question the connection between social and symbolic construction of childhood and the construction of the ‘child-actor’: how is the child shaped and how does it construct itself, what is its position in society and how can its voice be taken into account?
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