Showing 1-30 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.
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.
China's Left-Behind Children
Caretaking, Parenting, and Struggles
By Xiaojin Chen
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.
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.
Between Self and Community
Children’s Personhood in a Globalized South Korea
By Junehui Ahn
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.
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.
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.
A World of Many
Ontology and Child Development among the Maya of Southern Mexico
By Norbert Ross
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.
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.
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.
The Children in Child Health
Negotiating Young Lives and Health in New Zealand
By Julie Spray
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.
Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World
Refugee Youth and the Pursuit of Identity
By Laura Moran
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.
The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood
Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development
By Hannah Dyer
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.
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.
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.
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.
Complicated Lives
Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice
By Vera Lopez
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.
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.
Children as Caregivers
The Global Fight against Tuberculosis and HIV in Zambia
By Jean Hunleth
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.
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.
City Kids
Transforming Racial Baggage
Rutgers University Press
City Kids profiles fifth-graders in one of New York City’s most diverse public schools, detailing how they collectively developed a sophisticated understanding of race that challenged many of the stereotypes, myths, and commonplaces they had learned from mainstream American culture. Drawing from more than a year of close observations and interviews with students, anthropologist Maria Kromidas not only examines how we can best support children’s antiracist practices, but also considers what they might have to teach us.
Fantasies of Neglect
Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction
Rutgers University Press
From Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, American popular culture is filled with fictional children who journey through cities, unsupervised by adults. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient urban child originated and considers why it persists, even in the era of stranger danger and helicopter parenting. Drawing from a wide range of films, novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have been central to how Americans imagine the freedom and neglect of children.
Trafficked Children and Youth in the United States
Reimagining Survivors
Rutgers University Press
Drawing on interviews with 140 children from countries all over the globe, Elzbieta M. Gozdziak debunks the myths and uncovers the realities of trafficked children. Trafficked Children in the United States offers insight into how the children see themselves, contrasting their viewpoint with the institutional focus on vulnerability and pathology. Gozdziak concludes that the services provided by institutions are in effect a one-size-fits-all, trauma-based model, one that ignores the diversity of experience among trafficked children.
Race among Friends
Exploring Race at a Suburban School
Rutgers University Press
Race among Friends focuses on a “racially friendly” suburban charter school called Excellence Academy, highlighting the ways that students and teachers think about race and act out racial identity. Marianne Modica finds that even in an environment where students of all racial backgrounds work and play together harmoniously, race affects the daily experiences of students and teachers in profound but unexamined ways.
Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination
From Patriots to Victims
Rutgers University Press
In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates how our perceptions of the child soldier have changed radically over the past two centuries. Examining everything from Andrew Jackson’s time as an adolescent prisoner of war to the shared etymology of the words “infantry” and “infant,” Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination offers a cure for our widespread historical amnesia.
Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village
Shaping Hierarchy and Desire
Rutgers University Press
Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village starts with a mystery: why do Sri Lankan children, normally rambunctious and demanding as toddlers, become uncannily compliant as they grow older? To answer this question, anthropologist Bambi Chapin spent over a decade tracking the development of children in a rural Sri Lankan village. What she learned gives us a fresh perspective on the ways children think and on how cultural beliefs are passed down through the generations.
Kids in the Middle
How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families
Rutgers University Press
Kids in the Middle explores how children of immigrants use their language capabilities, knowledge of American culture, and facility with media content and devices to help their parents forge connections with local schools, healthcare facilities, and social services as they adjust to life in the United States. Through in-depth inquiry in one Southern California community, Vikki S. Katz explores the important contributions children make to the functioning of their immigrant families and considers what social workers and parents in diverse community can do to support them.
Defining Student Success
The Role of School and Culture
By Lisa M. Nunn
Rutgers University Press
A provocative work that will prompt a thorough reevaluation of the culture of secondary education, Defining Student Success shows how different schools, promoting modified versions of larger cultural ideas of success, foster distinct understandings of what it takes to succeed—understandings that do more to reproduce a socioeconomic status quo than to promote upward mobility.
Defining Student Success
The Role of School and Culture
By Lisa M. Nunn
Rutgers University Press
A provocative work that will prompt a thorough reevaluation of the culture of secondary education, Defining Student Success shows how different schools, promoting modified versions of larger cultural ideas of success, foster distinct understandings of what it takes to succeed—understandings that do more to reproduce a socioeconomic status quo than to promote upward mobility.
Life on the Malecón
Children and Youth on the Streets of Santo Domingo
Rutgers University Press
Life on the Malecón is a narrative ethnography of the lives of street children and youth living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and the non-governmental organizations that provide social services for them. Writing from the perspective of an anthropologist working as a street educator with a child welfare organization, Jon M. Wolseth follows the intersecting lives of children, the institutions they come into contact with, and the relationships they have with each other, their families, and organization workers.
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