This book consists of eight chapters with an introduction and a conclusion. The author examines the role of children within anthropological research. It deals with how children have been studied by anthropologists and how they have been portrayed and analyzed in ethnographic monographs over the past 150 years.
The first chapter of the book deals with a history of childhood studies within anthropology by taking the late nineteenth century as its starting point. It analyses various modes of thought within anthropology, all of which explicitly use ideas about childhood to discuss other topics, such as the relationship between primitive and childish thought, the evolution of humankind, the connections between culture and personality, the importance of examining childrearing practices, the role of women and other “lost tribes” of anthropology, and finally the move toward child-centered anthropology, and the recognition of children as active informants and meaning-makers.
The second chapter, “What is a Child?”, examines the multiple and various ways that children have been conceptualized, including the claim that childhood is a recent invention in the West. It starts with the premise that while children are usually acknowledged as being different from adults, there is no such thing as a common childhood, characterized by universally recognized developmental markers or similar attitudes. The third chapter of the book looks at the very beginning of childhood. It draws on literature that is not usually considered when discussing childhood and looks at how and when children at the very beginning of their lives are socially recognized as humans.
Chapter 4 deals with children’s lives, their immediate careers, and the kinship connections between children and their families. It claims that who children acknowledge as their kin, and by whom they are acknowledged, and the subsequent responsibilities that children and adults have to each other as a result of this recognition, have been central to the development of theories about marriage, lineage, and gender.
The fifth chapter of the book concentrates on the study of how children learn language—the ways they are socialized though language has formed a distinct sub-field in anthropology—and the importance of this in understanding children. The aspect of child-rearing alongside recent understandings and concerns about child welfare is the topic of discussion in chapter 6. It deals with the spectrum of punishments in relation to ideas about the nature of childhood and how much children are perceived as knowing or understanding.
The next chapter examines issues of children and sexuality. It uses ethnographic accounts of children’s sexual experiences and their knowledge about sex to argue that these elements are products of specific matrices of social, economic, and cultural ideas about childhood, the body, and sexuality, all relatively recent topics for anthropologists.
The final chapter, chapter 8, focuses on the end of childhood and on initiation. It concentrates on what initiation rituals can tell us about the end of childhood, whether they really do mark its conclusion or whether they are simply a part of one process among many that continually change people and occur throughout the life-cycle.
Heather Montgomery illustrates the many ways that anthropologists have written about children over the past 150 years with enviable clarity and economy. Her book will be required reading for students, academics, and professionals in understanding childhood in context.
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[Review length: 541 words • Review posted on January 19, 2011]