Small wars : the cultural politics of childhood / edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy.

Sargent, Carolyn F., 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children--Social conditions.

Children.

Children--Cross-cultural studies.

Local Subjects:

Children--Social conditions.

Children--Cross-cultural studies.

Genre:

Cross-cultural studies.

Physical Description:

429 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1998]

Summary:

Small Wars gathers together a hard-hitting series of essays that demonstrate how, at the close of the twentieth century, the world's children are affected by global political-economic structures and by everyday practices embedded in the micro-level interactions of local cultures. Perceived as avenging spirits of aborted fetuses in Japan; as obstacles to, or desired commodities of, narcissistic adult fulfillment in North America; as foot soldiers cast onto the paths of drug wars in Spanish Harlem and ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia; and as "street kids" and public enemies of the middle classes in Brazil, children -- these authors suggest -- are losing ground. The modern conception of the child as vulnerable and needing protection is giving way to that of the child as miniature adult, a full-circle return to Philippe Aries's notion of premodern childhood.

The authors raise vital questions about social and structural violence and its impact on children and families; about policies that portray children as innocent victims on the one hand and as irredeemable criminals on the other; and about the global economic and political conditions that place many of the world's children at risk. Providing groundbreaking contributions to the contemporary social history and ethnography of childhood, this volume will be important to readers across the social sciences.

Contents:

pt. I. Negotiating parenthood and childhood. Infanticide, the spirits of aborted fetuses, and the making of motherhood in Japan / Mary Picone ; Ambiguities lost : fashioning the fetus into a child in Ecuador and the United States / Lynn M. Morgan ; Reproductive partners : doctor-woman relations in Israeli and Canadian IVF contexts / Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli ; Examining surrogacy discourses : between feminine power and exploitation / Elizabeth F.S. Roberts ; Neonatal jaundice : the cultural history of the creation and maintenance of a "disease" of newborns / John A. Brett and Susan Niermeyer ; Mamitis and the traumas of development in a Colonia Popular of Mexico City / Matthew C. Gutmann ; Ethical reflections : taking a walk on the wild side / Meira Weiss

pt. II. The cultural politics of child survival. Historical perspectives on infant and child mortality in Northwestern Portugal / Caroline B. Brettell ; Children's health as accumulated capital : structural adjustment in the Dominican Republic and Cuba / Linda M. Whiteford ; Bad boys and good girls : the implications of gender ideology for child health in Jamaica / Carolyn Sargent and Michael Harris ; Who is the rogue? Hunger, death, and circumstance in John Mampe Square / Loenard B. Lerer

pt. III. Small wars : children and violence. "Good mothers", "Babykillers", and fatal child maltreatment / Jill E. Korbin ; Ritual and satanic abuse in England / J.S. La Fontaine ; Institutionalized sex abuse and the Catholic Church / Nancy Scheper-Hughes ; Children in extremely difficult circumstances : war and its aftermath in Croatia / Maria B. Olujic ; Families and children in pain in the U.S. inner city / Philippe Bourgois ; Brazilian apartheid : street kids and the struggle for urban space / Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Daniel Hoffman ; Nothing bad intended : child discipline, punishment, and survival in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil / Donna M. Goldstein.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0520209176

0520209184

OCLC:

37211372