Dr Catherine Allerton OLD 6.13

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Undergraduates taking this course should normally have completed an introductory course in anthropology unless granted exemption by the course teacher.

For much of its history, and with some notable exceptions, anthropology has paid little serious attention to children. However, recent years have seen a growing interest in both 'childhood' as a historical and social construction, and in children's engagement with their own social worlds. This course aims to introduce students to emerging ethnographic work on children and youth, in order to explore both its theoretical and methodological challenges. Ethnographic studies will cover a wide range of societies and regions, including anthropological work on children and childhood in the US and UK. The course will begin with an investigation of children's place in anthropology, including early anthropological work on 'Culture and Personality' and 'child socialisation'. The course will then move to consider a variety of topics that have been the focus of recent ethnographic study. These may include: children's play, childhood identities and kinship, education and schooling, youth cultures and globalization, children's work, street children and children's competencies in contexts of crisis, including war. 

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT.

Weekly lectures and classes in the Lent Term. Film screenings in the Lent Term.

In addition to preparing discussion material for classes, students will normally write one tutorial essay for the course. Non-Anthropology students taking this course may submit an essay to the teacher responsible.

RA LeVine and RS New (eds) 2008. Anthropology and child development: a cross-cultural reader; N Scheper-Hughes and C Sargent (eds) 1998. Small wars: the cultural politics of childhood; KF Olwig and E Gullov (eds) 2003. Children's Places: Cross-cultural perspectives; D Durham and J Cole (eds) 2006. Generations and globalization: youth, age and family in the new world economy; M Liebel. 2004. A will of their own: cross cultural perspectives on working children; V Amit-Talai and H Wulff (eds) 1995. Youth cultures: a cross-cultural perspective; A James. 1993. Childhood identities: self and social relationships in the experience of the child; J Boyden and J de Berry (eds) 2004. Children and youth on the frontline: ethnography, armed conflict and displacement; BA Levinson, DE Foley and DC Holland (eds) 1996. The cultural production of the educated person: critical ethnographies of schooling and local practice; H Montgomery. 2009. An introduction to childhood: anthropological perspectives on children's lives.

Exam (70%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.
Essay (30%, 2500 words) in the LT.