The circulation of children : kinship, adoption, and morality in Andean Peru / Jessaca B. Leinaweaver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B.

Series:

Latin America otherwise

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indian children--Peru--Ayacucho--Social conditions.

Indian children.

Children--Family relationships--Peru--Ayacucho.

Children.

Children--Family relationships.

Interpersonal relations.

Social structure.

Adoption.

Kinship.

Indians of South America--Kinship.

Social conditions.

Peru--Ayacucho.

Indians of South America--Kinship--Peru--Ayacucho.

Indians of South America.

Kinship--Peru--Ayacucho.

Adoption--Peru--Ayacucho.

Social structure--Peru--Ayacucho.

Interpersonal relations--Peru--Ayacucho.

Ayacucho (Peru)--Social conditions.

Ayacucho (Peru).

Ayacucho (Peru)--Moral conditions.

Physical Description:

xiv, 225 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In this vivid ethnography, Jessaca B. Leinaweaver explores "child circulation," informal arrangements in which indigenous Andean children are sent by their parents to live in other households. At first glance, child circulation appears tantamount to child abandonment. When seen in that light, the practice is a violation of international norms regarding children's rights, guidelines that the Peruvian state relies on in regulating legal adoptions. Leinaweaver demonstrates that such an understanding of the practice is simplistic and misleading. Her in-depth ethnographic analysis reveals child circulation to be a meaningful, pragmatic social practice for poor and indigenous Peruvians, a flexible system of kinship that has likely been part of Andean lives for centuries. Child circulation may be initiated because parents cannot care for their children, because a childless elder wants company, or because it gives a young person the opportunity to gain needed skills.

Leinaweaver illuminates the emotional and material factors that bring together and separate indigenous Andean families in the highland city of Ayacucho. She describes how child circulation is intimately linked to survival in the city, which has had to withstand colonialism, economic isolation, and the devastating civil war unleashed by the Shining Path. Leinaweaver examines the practice from the perspective of parents who send their children to live in other households, the adults who receive them, and the children themselves. She relates child circulation to international laws and norms regarding children's rights, adoptions, and orphans, and to Peru's history of racial conflict and violence. Given that history, Leinaweaver maintains that it is not surprising that child circulation, a practice associated with Peru's impoverished indigenous community, is alternately ignored, tolerated, or condemned by the state.

Contents:

Introduction: Moving Children in Ayacucho 1

1 Ayacucho: Histories of Violence and Ethnography 21

2 International Adoption: The Globalization of Kinship 37

3 Puericulture and Andean Orphanhood 61

4 Companionship and Custom: The Mechanics of Child Circulation 81

5 Superacion: The Strategic Uses of Child Circulation 105

6 Pertenecer: Knowledge and Kinship 134

7 Circulating Children, at Home and Abroad 154.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-212) and index.

ISBN:

9780822341819

0822341816

9780822341970

0822341972

OCLC:

209334798