Suspended in 2025/26
AN358      Half Unit
Children and Youth in Contemporary Ethnography

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Prof Catherine Allerton

Availability

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study, Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course is freely available to General Course students. It does not require permission.

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with AN243 at any time on the same degree programme.

Additional requisites:

Undergraduates taking this course should normally have completed an introductory course in anthropology unless granted exemption by the course teacher.

Course content

This course explores the paradoxes and contexts of social science work on children and youth through an intensive focus on contemporary ethnographies exploring children’s social worlds. This ethnographic work is multi-disciplinary (emerging from anthropology, geography, sociology, media studies), and builds both on earlier ethnographies of childhood from the mid-twentieth-century onwards, and on growing theoretical interest in cross-cultural understandings of ‘the child’ and their competencies.

In the first half of the course, we investigate 5 central paradoxes that emerge through a consideration of children and childhood. These are: 1) Universal/ Constructed; 2) Being/ Becoming; 3) Structure/ Agency; 4) Protection/ Participation; and 5) Representation/ Reality. These paradoxes allow us to consider important questions such as: What does it mean to see childhood as a 'construction'? How has ethnographic work questioned universal frameworks for child development? How should we understand children’s agency? How successfully can 'child rights' be achieved in different cultural contexts? Why should children's perspectives be taken more seriously in the social sciences?

In the second half of the course, we turn to 5 key contexts for ethnographic analyses of children's lives. These are: the street, school, work, play and war. How have the lives of 'street children' been approached and understood? What do critical ethnographies of schooling tell us about its role in reproducing inequalities? What, if anything, is the difference between beneficial child work and harmful 'child labour'? How can we recognise and theorise children's play? And how have ethnographic accounts documented both trauma and resilience in the context of 'child soldiering'?

Teaching

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Film screenings will also take place throughout the term. There is a reading week for this course in Week 6 WT.

Formative assessment

Essay (1500 words)

Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.

Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 3 of term.

 

Indicative reading

RA LeVine and RS New (eds) 2008. Anthropology and child development: a cross-cultural reader; N Scheper-Hughes and C Sargent (eds) 1998. Small wars: the cultural politics of childhood; KF Olwig and E Gullov (eds) 2003. Children's Places: Cross-cultural perspectives; D Durham and J Cole (eds) 2006. Generations and globalization: youth, age and family in the new world economy; M Liebel. 2004. A will of their own: cross cultural perspectives on working children; V Amit-Talai and H Wulff (eds) 1995. Youth cultures: a cross-cultural perspective; A James. 1993. Childhood identities: self and social relationships in the experience of the child; J Boyden and J de Berry (eds) 2004. Children and youth on the frontline: ethnography, armed conflict and displacement; BA Levinson, DE Foley and DC Holland (eds) 1996. The cultural production of the educated person: critical ethnographies of schooling and local practice; H Montgomery. 2009. An introduction to childhood: anthropological perspectives on children's lives.

Assessment

Essay (100%, 3000 words)


Key facts

Department: Anthropology

Course Study Period: Winter Term

Unit value: Half unit

FHEQ Level: Level 6

CEFR Level: Null

Total students 2024/25: Unavailable

Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable

Capped 2024/25: No
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