In Focus: Children, Childhoods,and Childhood Studies

MYRA BLUEBOND-LANGNERJILL E. KORBIN

Guest Editors

Challenges and Opportunitiesin the Anthropology of Childhoods:An Introduction to “Children, Childhoods,and Childhood Studies”

ABSTRACT Anthropological attention to children and childhoods has had an uneven but lengthy history, both within the discipline

and in interdisciplinary endeavors. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of children, with work often carried out

under the rubrics of “Childhood Studies” or the “Anthropology of Childhoods.” In these frameworks, children are at once developing

beings, in possession of agency, and to varying degrees vulnerable. It has been a hallmark of anthropological work to recognize that these

attributes manifest themselves in different times and places, and under particular social, political, economic, and moral circumstances

and conditions. The five articles in this “In Focus” put forward some key challenges and opportunities for the anthropological study of

children and childhoods. [Keywords: children, childhood, childhood studies]

ANTHROPOLOGICAL attention to children andchildhoods has had a long but uneven history, both

within the discipline and in interdisciplinary endeavors.For example, during some periods, such as the height of“Culture and Personality” studies in psychological anthro-pology, child socialization patterns were a core explana-tion for adult personality and cultural patterns. At otherpoints in the history of the discipline, work on children andchildhoods has depended on individual research interestsrather than concentrated programs or schools of thought.Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the studyof children, with work often carried out under the rubrics of“Childhood Studies” or the “Anthropology of Childhoods.”This “In Focus” section includes accounts of the history ofthe study of children and childhoods in anthropology andthe products of such research. In addition, this “In Focus”highlights major theoretical and methodological issues inthe study of children and childhoods, as well as the oppor-tunities and challenges facing those who would like to seethe study of children be more central to anthropology andto policy development.1

The emerging anthropology of children and child-hoods must of necessity take into account the rights of chil-dren as set forth in the UN Convention on the Rights ofthe Child (UNCRC; see UNICEF n.d.). The UNCRC was a

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 109, Issue 2, pp. 241–246, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C© 2007 by the American Anthropological Association.All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rightsand Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/AA.2007.109.2.241.

pivotal event, not only in the development of policies forchildren but also in terms of scholarship. In its basic form,the convention includes three interlocking principles: pro-tection, provision, and participation. The first two, protectionof children from harm and provision of needed resources,have resonated with international agencies and children’srights groups, and are consistent with child protection ef-forts in the United States. The third principle, participation,has stimulated a research and policy agenda that includeschildren’s views and perspectives. This expanded researchinterest is interdisciplinary and falls under the rubric of“Childhood Studies.” Anthropology’s long-standing orien-tations toward an emic view and multivocality dovetailswith these emerging interests in studies of children andchildhoods.

The increase in global communication has broughtdaily reminders of children’s suffering around the world.With those reminders have come reinvigorated scholarship,new policies and approaches to children’s lives, major hu-manitarian relief, and increased philanthropy. There arenow major initiatives directed at eradicating problems af-flicting children, both biological (e.g., disease) and social(e.g., poverty). Attention to global problems of children—war, poverty, abuse, sexual exploitation, and so forth—haveraised the visibility of children and childhoods and created

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a sense of urgency about the study of children and child-hoods as a microcosm of concerns facing contemporary so-cieties and an increasingly global world. Studies of theseproblems have uncovered the reality that children are notonly aggressed against but also aggressors (e.g., child sol-diers). Children are not only acted on by adults but alsoagents of political change and cultural interpretation andchange.

The recognition of the multifaceted nature of childrenand childhoods has stimulated not only efforts to amelio-rate the difficulties that children and youth face but alsoa backlash against those children and youth who are bothvictims and perpetrators. With the uncovering of the real-ity of children’s lives has come a blurring of the distinctionbetween pure and applied work. Contemporary studies areoften politically charged with implications for policy andpractice.

Developments in the study of children and childhoods,and more recently the field of childhood studies, are strik-ingly parallel to the developments we have seen in the studyof women and women’s studies: As it is with the study ofwomen as social actors and the need to place women intheories of behavior, culture, and society, so it is with chil-dren. Studies of children and childhoods are the next logi-cal steps in a more inclusive view of culture and society. Inthis more inclusive view, rather than privileging children’svoices above all others, it is more productive to integratechildren into a more multivocal, multiperspective view ofculture and society.

Children are at once developing beings, in possessionof agency, and to varying degrees vulnerable. It has beena hallmark of anthropological work to recognize that theseattributes manifest themselves in different times and places,and under particular social, political, economic, and moralcircumstances and conditions. The coexistence of agencyand vulnerability influences how we conduct research withchildren and affects our ethical responsibilities both to chil-dren in our studies and to future children occupying thespace of childhood. These obligations are particularly im-portant because while we increasingly look at children ashaving agency, they nevertheless are among the most vul-nerable members of society and have particular needs fornurturance. The articles in this “In Focus” section speakto these major issues in evolving conceptualizations aboutchildren and childhoods. They address the challenges ofconcerted attention to the complexity of contemporary is-sues in a way that is inclusive of children.

DEVELOPMENT AND CONTEXT: AGENCY ANDVULNERABILITY

Anthropology’s core concern with the contextual natureof child development and emic perspectives perhaps in-evitably led to greater inclusiveness of children’s own viewsand thus to confronting the dilemmas involved in recogniz-ing both agency and vulnerability. Robert LeVine’s article,in taking us back through the work of Franz Boas, Margaret

Mead, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Raymond Firth, to namebut a few, shows us how the physical, emotional, and so-cial growth of children as members of a society was an earlyconcern of anthropologists, and how the temporal, socialand cultural contexts in which children live continue to bea hallmark of anthropological studies:

The ethnography of childhood, then, is based on thepremise—constantly reexamined in empirical research—that the conditions and shape of childhood tend to varyin central tendency from one population to another,are sensitive to population-specific contexts, and are notcomprehensible without detailed knowledge of the so-cially and culturally organized contexts that give themmeaning. [LeVine this issue]

This concern with the particular and with context inthe study of children and childhoods at different times andin different places leads anthropology to resist universal def-initions of children and childhood. However, whether or notanthropology is inclined toward such universal definitions,one is used in the international human rights communityand in laws regarding such matters as child soldiers, childlabor, and age of consent to marriage. It is found in interna-tional documents like the UNCRC as well as other treatiesand statutes. These definitions feature a “bright line” of age:years lived. In the case of the UNCRC, a child is a personunder 18.

For the anthropologist, “bright lines” are immediatelyproblematic considering the variation by culture, ethnic-ity, gender, history, and location found in the cross-culturalrecord. Studies by anthropologists raise questions aboutmodels or approaches that assume a universal progressionfrom childhood through adulthood, from incompetency tocompetency and from immaturity to maturity. In this is-sue, David Rosen discusses how these assumptions operatein humanitarian discourse particularly with regard to childsoldiers. In so doing, he throws into bold relief not only theproblems with universal definitions of children and child-hood but also some of the problems in matters of theorizingabout children, methods for study, and policy that comewith the ascription or recognition of agency in children.

In the past few decades, anthropologists have both as-serted and clearly documented children’s agency, singly andin groups, in a number of situations. What is less clear isthe degree of agency, the impact of that agency, let alonethe nature of that agency—points that could also be madeabout the agency of adults—singly or in groups. Children,like adults, do not escape structural constraints. Adults’ de-cisions and actions, be it about taking up arms or makingdecisions about care and treatment or the like, also are af-fected by emotional, social, and political pressure. Similarly,the effect that any one individual or groups of individualscan evince in a situation or society is variable and requiresinterrogation; so too with regard to children.

As LeVine’s article would suggest, agency is a conceptthat we have embraced in part as a reaction to studiesthat proceeded from models of children and childhoodwith more structural and chronological substrates. In these

Bluebond-Langner and Korbin • Introduction 243

models, Piagetian for example, emphasis is on becoming,maturing, reaching a particular end state. When such mod-els are in play, the child is measured against “an excessivelyidealized version of adult autonomy, independence, andmaturity” (Rosen this issue), which in itself is flawed.

Ascription of agency to children also fits well with along-held tenet in anthropology about individuals as mean-ing makers. In this issue, Christina Toren reminds us, thisis no less so when the subjects are children. Children aremeaning makers. In referring to her studies of Fijian chil-dren’s ideas of kin, Toren writes,

Like the rest of us, each one of these children was borninto a world in the making that was already renderedmeaningful in all its material aspects, and with time theyare making these meanings anew. [Toren this issue]

Toren, like others in this issue, locates this meaning in thechildren’s interactions, “in particular intersubjective rela-tions with particular others” (Toren this issue).

With an emphasis on agency and a move away fromchildren as passive recipients of action has come a paralleland consistent move away from relying on statements byadults about children’s worlds and experiences and, instead,toward considering statements by children themselves. Thisshift in positioning of children’s voices has led research, pol-icy, and practice to what might be labeled a commandmentto listen to the voices of children. Allison James (this issue)claims this was heeded in England and Europe, while goinglargely unheeded in the United States, with the exceptionof the work of some U.S. anthropologists (e.g., Bluebond-Langner 1978) and sociologists (e.g., Corsaro 1979), whosework demonstrated the need for children’s voices in un-derstanding children’s experiences as well as processes ofsocialization and sociocultural reproduction and change.

James describes “practices and problems, pitfalls andpotentials” involved in trying to give voice to children, in-cluding issues of authenticity, children’s perspectives, andthe nature of their participation in the research process. AsJames notes, while these problems are not unique to thestudy of children, there are unique aspects when the sub-jects are children. Moreover, in failing to address these is-sues, “childhood research risks becoming marginalized oncemore and will fail to provide an arena within which chil-dren are seen as social actors who can provide a uniqueperspective on the social world about matters that concernthem as children” (James this issue). She finds the work ofJames Clifford and George Marcus (1986), Clifford (1988),and Clifford Geertz (1988) especially useful in dealing withissues of children’s voices and representations, and seesGeertz’s work in particular as “a new critical stance [that]might re-energize childhood research” (James this issue).

The articles in this volume remind us by example andexhortation that in using quotations from children we haveto be cognizant of all of the following: selectivity of repre-sentation, uncritical quoting, polyphony of voices, whosepoint is being made (e.g., the anthropologist’s or the chil-dren being quoted), and whose agenda is being served

(e.g., the human rights community or the people of thecommunity in which the child lives). James comments:

For anthropologists the dilemmas raised by the politics ofrepresentation are by now well rehearsed; for anthropol-ogists of childhood, however, these have yet to be fullyarticulated, and they remain a very present and pressingconcern given the rhetorical power that “the voice of thechild” wields. [James this issue]

We need not only to document what children say but alsoto accompany those statements with accounts of how whatthey say is played out with attention to the social and cul-tural constraints in operation at that time.

In this “In Focus,” we are continually reminded of thediversity of individual children’s lives and experiences, aswell as the problem of generalization within any society, letalone across societies and cultures. A key question, as Jamespoints out, is

how might childhood researchers hear, at one and thesame time, children speaking both as individuals, withtheir unique and different experiences, and as the collec-tive inhabitants of that social, cultural, economic, andpolitical space that in any society is labeled as “child-hood”? [James this issue]

Although the category of “childhood”—and of “children,”for that matter—may be necessary for research and practice,how do we render it meaningful?

When we move away from a view of children as passiverecipients of action and ascribe them agency and compe-tency, or even when we shift weight to agency and awayfrom children as developing beings in need of protection,what happens to vulnerability? How do we deal with ourethical and moral responsibilities to children and to oth-ers in the communities in which they live? The discoursesurrounding the prosecution of child soldiers—as mani-fest in international treaties; testimonies by NGOs, adults,and children at truth and reconciliation committees; andstatements by those who were victims of attacks by childsoldiers—underscores the tension between conceptions ofchildren as developing beings who are vulnerable and inneed of protection and of children as in possession ofagency, capable and able to make interpretations of theirworlds and act on them. As Rosen points out, there are

thousands of children and youth caught up in armed war-fare who are committing horrible crimes. How should wesee them: as innocent victims of political circumstancewho should be protected and forgiven, or as moral agentswho should be held responsible for their actions? [Rosenthis issue]

Rosen cites numerous examples of children’s partici-pation in war, revolution, and terror regimes throughouthistory and across the globe. He suggests that not acknowl-edging children’s conscious decision to participate in suchviolence, with all the attendant positive and negative pres-sures, fails to respect children and to recognize their agency.Although we may want to attribute agency to acts we labelas morally good or right, we do not want to do so in acts

244 American Anthropologist • Vol. 109, No. 2 • June 2007

we regard as morally wrong, particularly when committedby children. Rosen shows how greater agency is ascribedto children’s participation in war when war is seen as goodthan in times when it is seen as evil. In the former, the childis seen as a hero, in the latter as an exploited victim in needof protection. James (this volume) also remarks on the longand persistent history in the social sciences and humanitiesof seeing children as innocent.

The desire to protect children is strong in various pro-fessional organizations, including in anthropology. In 2006,the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropol-ogy (SMA) approved a policy statement urging “immedi-ate ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights ofthe Child” (SMA 2006). This resolution proceeded despiterecognition that the UNCRC has at its core a universalizedand essentialized view of “the child” based on Western as-sumptions about children’s best interests and a single stan-dard of age (18 and under). Although such a universalizedview is antithetical to most anthropological thinking, in-terests in protecting children around the world prevailed.The SMA resolution also occurs at a time when the UnitedStates remains one of only two nations (the other is Somalia)that has not yet ratified the convention. The SMA resolu-tion makes a compelling case that nonratifaction precludesparticipation, noting that:

American exceptionalism undercuts recognition of chil-dren’s rights broadly endorsed by diverse nations, andeliminates the opportunity to participate in monitoringand improving standards. [SMA 2006]

REAL CHILDREN, REAL ISSUES: THE BLURRINGOF BOUNDARIES BETWEEN RESEARCH AND POLICY

LeVine points out that anthropological research on chil-dren and childhoods was motivated by questions that wentbeyond descriptions of the everyday lives of children andin so doing gave “[anthropological] accounts a distinctivestamp” (this issue). For early anthropologists, the researchon children was “to enhance knowledge of human varia-tion for scientific and policy purposes” (LeVine this issue).In addition, as LeVine notes, anthropologists such as Meadand Malinowski were also addressing the general public.A modern manifestation might be, as James suggests, that“the divide between pure and applied work may be begin-ning to dissolve” (this issue), and, as a consequence, theaudiences to whom we speak are changing.

In this “In Focus,” we see a similar pattern of contri-butions both within and outside of the academy. Toren, forexample, takes us into questions of our historical nature,and illustrates how the study of children enhances our un-derstandings of such bread-and-butter issues in anthropol-ogy as social and cultural continuity and change, as wellas kin and non-kin relations. She takes the position thatfailure to look at children’s perspectives in such realms askinship leads to incomplete understanding not only of thekin and non-kin relations in any one culture but also of theprocess of cultural continuity and change within and across

cultures. Hence, the study of children’s views becomes a callfor a reexamination of our approach to major issues withinour own discipline.

Work in anthropology also has stimulated reexamina-tion in other disciplines. The “anthropological veto” of too-facile positing of universals in child development is as pow-erful a tool in scholarship as it was in the days of Malinowskiand Mead. David Lancy’s article is an example of employ-ing anthropological research to call for an end to “wholesaleexportation of a culture-specific childrearing practice” andfor arguing against the prevailing view in developmentalpsychology that mother–child play is universal and essen-tial for children’s development. Lancy takes the positionthat the lack of mother–child play does not represent a defi-ciency, as many in the West would claim, but, rather, reflectsother concerns and responsibilities of parents, as well as insome cases a value system that is counter to mother–childplay. He cautions that

there are plentiful examples throughout the ethno-graphic record in which mother–child play is not valued,and these should not be viewed as signs of deficiency orneglect. Parents in these societies can, when pressed, citenumerous reasons why playing with children might notbe a good idea. [Lancy this issue]

One might characterize Lancy’s article as an exampleof what LeVine describes as the “confrontations betweenethnographic evidence and the concepts of ‘normal’ childdevelopment emerging from theory and research in West-ern countries” (this issue).

Although anthropological studies of children andchildhoods have led others to reexamine work in otherdisciplines, so too have anthropological studies borrowedfrom these disciplines, often with dire consequences. AsLeVine points out, in referring to anthropologists’ use of thework of Sigmund Freud and other psychologically relatedtheories, “When these theories lost credibility, so did theethnographic accounts based on them as adequate recordsof childhood experience” (LeVine this issue). As various the-ories were shed, so too was the work that had been done inthat context. The newer work, however, served as both re-examinations of reigning theories and important contribu-tions to the ethnographic record on children. These prob-lems aside,

by the 1930s, childhood was an established topic ofethnographic description, often in the context of kinshipor ritual, sometimes in relation to education or social-ization, only occasionally with psychological interpreta-tions. Childhood was part of their anthropology, not atopic borrowed from developmental psychology or otherdisciplines. [LeVine this issue]

The Six Culture Study and the studies in language acquisi-tion noted by LeVine are indicative of a long and continuingtradition within anthropology of trying to understand theeveryday lives of children and the processes of encultura-tion and socialization.

Bluebond-Langner and Korbin • Introduction 245

The ethnographic record on children and childhoodscontinues to grow, as LeVine and James both note. The workalso is taking the field in new directions. For example, Jamessuggests that

listening to what children say about their everyday livesand experiences can allow us to both theorize and act ontheir understandings in relation to larger issues of socialand political change. [James this issue]

James also points out how the growing studies of chil-dren and childhoods “[present] adults with provocative ac-counts that challenge many of the taken-for-granted as-sumptions about what children do or think,” not leastamong them “the ‘difficulties some children encounter inbeing children’” (this issue). Past work that has documentedchildren’s harsh experiences in their own words and fromtheir own perspectives reveals what James describes as “thehidden hurts and humiliations that many children experi-ence and which adults often dismiss as unimportant or re-gard simply as playground rough-and-tumble” (this issue).Thus, ethnographic work on children serves not only tochallenge dominant theories and orientations but also tomodify and correct current assumptions about children’sdaily lives and lived experiences.

In evaluating the contributions of the study of childrenand childhoods within and outside the academy, no area ofstudy can be separated from the larger intellectual, politi-cal, and social climate. For example, LeVine notes how thepediatric and pedagogical conceptualizations of children in1880–1920 reflected the emergence of pediatrics as a med-ical subspecialty and the mass schooling of children as asocial solution. Fast-forwarding to current work, James sug-gests that having “children’s voices [speaking] loudly andboldly within the text” is in some measure the result of “thedesire to portray children as social actors and the attributionof competence rather than incompetence to children” (thisissue). Portraying children as social actors not only rendersthem worthy of study in their own right but also increasesinterest in studies of children among those who wouldnot necessarily see their value for development of socialtheory.

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This “In Focus” section speaks to some of the challenges andopportunities in a resurgence of anthropological interest inchildren and childhoods. It speaks to the tensions in thestudy of children and childhoods across cultures and time.It speaks to the need for finding conceptual frameworks andresearch strategies that enhance our understandings of themultifaceted nature of children and childhoods and whichrecognize both children’s vulnerability and agency. It speaksto the need to find a balance for children’s voices suchthat their voices are not privileged above all others but, in-stead, are included in the complexity of social and culturalrelations. It speaks to the basic strength of anthropologyto strive for understanding, in Malinowski’s words, “thenative’s point of view” (1961:25). In addition, the notion

that children live in and negotiate worlds that they cre-ate for themselves (e.g., play, peer groups, games), worldsothers create for them (e.g., schools, hospitals), and worldsin concert with others (e.g., families, marketplaces, neigh-borhoods) must be simultaneously visible in the study ofchildren and childhoods.

As we study children and childhoods, we need to con-front the messiness and untidiness of social reality, not re-duce it. Similarly, we need to continue to problematize thenature and development of the individual. As these arti-cles demonstrate, studies of children and childhoods areimportant resources for such work. Embedded in these ar-ticles is a reminder that we are still struggling with defini-tions of the terms child, youth, and childhood. In definingthese concepts, issues of age, agency, development, roles,and responsibilities—not to mention those of essentializ-ing and generalizing—raise their hoary heads. How do wemaintain a healthy tension between the individual and thegroup, the universal and the particular? How do we gener-alize and particularize in a meaningful way? These articlesalso serve to remind us that as a discipline we are still grap-pling with the questions of cultural relativism, pluralism,multiculturalism, and globalization.

Methods of study also need to be reexamined. LeVinesuggests that we need to revisit the use of technology, andJames comments that we need to consider the use of chil-dren as researchers from a less polemical base. More specif-ically, how do we move from interviews, naturalistic ob-servations, and recordings of children’s voices at home,at school, on the street, and in the hospital to theorizingabout children and childhoods or to developing policiesand programs in areas like education and health? At thesame time, we need to insure that the studies we conductdo not become the illustrative cases for the latest fashion-able, rediscovered, or borrowed social theory or politicalagenda.

MYRA BLUEBOND-LANGNER Department of Sociology, An-thropology, and Criminal Justice, Rutgers University,Camden, NJ 08102

JILL E. KORBIN Department of Anthropology, Case WesternReserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106-7125

NOTEAcknowledgments. Work for this “In Focus” was facilitated by aBaker-Nord Center for the Humanities Fellowship, Case WesternReserve University, granted to Myra Bluebond-Langner.

1. These articles represent only a portion of anthropological workrelated to children and childhoods. Some subfields of the disciplineare notably absent: among them, archaeology, linguistics, and bi-ological anthropology, as well as areas within social and culturalanthropology such as medical anthropology or educational anthro-pology, in which a robust body of literature exists on children andchildhoods. This literature includes accounts indicating how chil-dren apply their intelligence, strategize, enter into relationships,engage in conversations, and view themselves and the worlds theyinhabit.

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