Showing 1-20 of 62 items.

Children as Social Butterflies

Navigating Belonging in a Diverse Swiss Kindergarten

Rutgers University Press

Children as Social Butterflies offers an analysis of how children negotiate social belonging. Ursina Jaeger followed the children of a kindergarten class in a stigmatized and diverse neighborhood for several years, both inside and outside of school. Along the vivid insights into the children's everyday lives, she examines how social differentiation is learned in diverse societies.

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Care and Agency

The Andean Community through the Eyes of Children

Rutgers University Press

This book describes the lives of children in rural communities of the Andes Mountains of Peru. It foregrounds the children’s own perceptions and feelings, so far as they can be known by researchers using ethnographic methods. It shows the great variety of Andean childhoods – some happy, others harsh and demanding – and suggests the options children face: follow the many to migrate to the city or risk their hopes on a better future in the rural setting. 
 

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China's Left-Behind Children

Caretaking, Parenting, and Struggles

Rutgers University Press

Paying special attention to the seventy million children left behind by internal migrants in rural China, this book investigates the role of parental migration and the left-behind status of their children in shaping family dynamics and the children’s general wellbeing, including school performance, delinquency, resilience, feelings of ambiguous loss, and other psychological problems.

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Ways of Belonging

Undocumented Youth in the Shadow of Illegality

Rutgers University Press

Ways of Belonging examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K–12 education in Canada. Through rich ethnographic descriptions, this book vividly shows how ambivalence and invisibility shape both the lives of young people and institutional attitudes toward them.

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Between Self and Community

Children’s Personhood in a Globalized South Korea

Rutgers University Press

Between Self and Community investigates the early childhood socialization process in a rapidly changing, globalizing South Korea. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a South Korean preschool, it examines how both children and teachers interactively navigate, construct, and reconstruct their own multifaceted and sometimes conflicting models of “a good child” amid Korea’s shifting educational and social contexts.

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Children of the Rainforest

Shaping the Future in Amazonia

Rutgers University Press

Children of the Rainforest explores the lives of Matses children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. Using visual and participatory methods, the book explores ethnographically how children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires are powerful catalysts of social change, which shape the future of their society and of Amazonia at large.

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Children of the Rainforest

Shaping the Future in Amazonia

Rutgers University Press

Children of the Rainforest explores the lives of Matses children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. Using visual and participatory methods, the book explores ethnographically how children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires are powerful catalysts of social change, which shape the future of their society and of Amazonia at large.

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A World of Many

Ontology and Child Development among the Maya of Southern Mexico

Rutgers University Press

A World of Many explores the world-making efforts of Tzotzil Maya children from two different localities within the municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas. It shows that as they create their worlds, children create themselves as distinct human beings, being differently in their world.
 

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Life in a Cambodian Orphanage

A Childhood Journey for New Opportunities

Rutgers University Press

Combining detailed observations of children's daily life in a Cambodian orphanage with follow-up interviews of the same children after they have grown and left, this book shows how orphanages can be configured to meet children's developmental needs, providing evidence that they are not always bleak sites of deprivation and despair.

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Disputing Discipline

Child Protection, Punishment, and Piety in Zanzibar Schools

Rutgers University Press

A visual and poetic exploration into the lives of Zanzibari children who negotiate the intersections of universalized and local children’s rights aspirations, Disputing Discipline shows how anti-corporal punishment programs in schools unintentionally compromise children’s well-being and asserts that children’s views and experiences can and should transform our understanding of child protection policy.

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The Children in Child Health

Negotiating Young Lives and Health in New Zealand

Rutgers University Press

A journey into the lives of children coping in a world compromised by poverty and inequality, The Children in Child Health challenges the invisibility of children’s perspectives in health policy and argues that paying attention to what children do is critical for understanding the practical and policy implications of these experiences.

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Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World

Refugee Youth and the Pursuit of Identity

Rutgers University Press

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Brisbane, Australia, Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World provides a critical analysis of the shortcomings and underpinning contradictions of modern multicultural inclusion. It demonstrates how creating a sense of identity among young Sudanese and Karen refugees is a continual process shaped by powerful social forces.

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The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood

Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development

Rutgers University Press

In The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood, Hannah Dyer offers a study of how children’s art and art about childhood can forecast new models of social life that redistribute care, belonging, and political value. She asserts that in the aesthetics of childhood, a more just future can be conjured.
 

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All Together Now

American Holiday Symbolism Among Children and Adults

Rutgers University Press

Holidays are times for creating memories and for celebrating cultural values, emotions, and social ties. All Together Now considers holidays that are celebrated by American families and shows how entire families bond at holidays in ways that allow both children and adults to be influential within their shared interaction.

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You've Always Been There for Me

Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents

Rutgers University Press

Today, approximately 1.6 million American children live in what social scientists call “grandfamilies”—households in which children are being raised by their grandparents. Drawing on data gathered from New York grandfamilies, Rachel Dunifon analyzes their unique strengths and distinct needs.    

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Youth in Postwar Guatemala

Education and Civic Identity in Transition

Rutgers University Press

Through rich ethnographic accounts, Youth in Postwar Guatemala, traces youth experiences in schools, homes, and communities, examining how knowledge and attitudes toward historical injustice develop through formal and informal educational interactions. Michelle J. Bellino shows how a new generation struggles to unlearn authoritarianism and develop new democratic civic identities. 

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Complicated Lives

Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice

Rutgers University Press

Complicated Lives focuses on the lives of sixty-five drug-using girls in the juvenile justice system who grew up in families characterized by parental drug use, violence, and child maltreatment. Vera Lopez’s work examines how these relationships with their parents contribute to the girls’ future drug use and involvement in the justice system.
 

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Life after Guns

Reciprocity and Respect among Young Men in Liberia

Rutgers University Press

Life After Guns explores how ex-combatants and other post-war youth negotiated a depleted and difficult social and cultural landscape in the years following Liberia’s fourteen-year bloody civil war. Abby Hardgrove focuses on the structural constraints and household and family organizations that either helped or limited opportunities as these young men grew into adulthood.  
 

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Children as Caregivers

The Global Fight against Tuberculosis and HIV in Zambia

Rutgers University Press

Medical anthropologist Jean Hunleth chronicles the experiences of children living with parents and guardians who are suffering from these infectious diseases and shows how their perspectives matter in the global debates about health care. Children as Caregivers examines how well intentioned practitioners fail to realize how children take on active caregiving roles when their guardians become seriously ill. 
 

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Why Afterschool Matters

Rutgers University Press

Offering an in-depth and long-term examination of how extracurricular activities impact the lives of disadvantaged youth, Why Afterschool Matters tracks ten Mexican American students who participated in the same afterschool program. Discovering that participation in the program was life-changing for some students, yet had only a minimal effect on others, sociologist Ingrid A. Nelson investigates the factors behind these very different outcomes. Though it focuses on a single program, this book’s findings have major implications for education policy nationwide.  

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