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- Convenors:
-
Kae Amo
(EHESS)
Jean Paul Filiod (Centre Max Weber, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1)
Takao Shimizu (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature)
- Chair:
-
Elodie Razy
(University of Liege)
- Discussant:
-
Nobutaka KAMEI
(Aichi Prefectural University)
- Location:
- 104
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Anthropologists are increasingly interviewing children and youth, especially in educational field. This panel aims to examine the different methods and positioning of anthropologists engaging ethical conversation and sometimes "collaborative" work with children during research.
Long Abstract:
As the diversity of societies and cultures has become the research basis of anthropology, anthropologists have often given priority to relativism. At the same time, this diversity urges them to re-examine their position towards the people and sometimes change it radically: many anthropologists say that, to understand the society, they need to behave like disciples in front of masters who are, in fact, the "natives" of that society.
This stance is very important when we study about children or more broadly youth because in this case, the relationship between the dominant and the dominated is reversed in double sense - from cultural and generational point of view. Many studies about children and childhood have been developed in social sciences since more than two decades and raise thoughts on what anthropologists should do with children in their fieldwork.
- Why should we get involved nowadays in "collaborative" studies?
- How can anthropologist devote himself or herself, with his body, mind and spirit, to the collaborative work with children and/or with adults taking care of them in educational institutions?
- Which knowledge(s) should we receive and apply?
- Is every anthropologist working on / with children facing with the same kind of problems and questions independent of their fields? (here, there, elsewhere…)
These are some of the many questions that this panel will set out to answer.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
What can we learn, as ethnographers, about a particular way of life by observing babies and children's ordinary life? This paper aims to stress the heuristic value of observation techniques and video record in the ethnographic study of childhood development in the context of daily routines.
Paper long abstract:
"Why you are observing my child? What do you think you can learn about our Mbya reko (Mbya culture) by merely observing my child?" Asked me a young father during my first fieldwork in a Mbya Guarani community. Very surprised he reminded me the best way to learn about the "Ñande reko": by listening the "Ayvu Pora" (The Beautiful Words) by talking with the elders. Aparently, from adult´s perspective, babies and children have nothing to teach to the ethnographer. So, I ask myself: What can we learn, as ethnographers, about a particular way of life by observing babies and young children´s ordinary life? As Malinowski (1964) stated, as ethnographers we should observe the "primitive forms" of linguistic meaning and its growth through time, by focusing on children behavior and activities in context. By doing that, we learn the language, and through it, the culture. In that sense, an ethnographer is like a child. Some of these ideas inspired me at the beginning of my ethnographic research and, by following them, I decided to observe babies in the context of daily routines at domestic scope, focusing in their interactions with the inmediate environment. Based on my ethonographic fieldwork in indigenous communities of Argentina, this paper aims to stress the heuristic potential of observation techniques and video record in the ethnographic study of childhood development. We intent to reflect about the value of this knowledge in the understanding of crucial aspects of a particular way of life, the "Mbya reko".
Paper short abstract:
What do we know and what do we say about children working with artists in pre-schools? My paper discusses the ordinary knowledges on childhood, especially early childhood, on the basis of a collaborative research involving adults working in pre-schools in Lyon, France.
Paper long abstract:
What do different social actors working in the same place with the same children say about situations involving these children working with an artist ? This question is the major concern of a research based on fieldwork into an educational art programme in pre-schools, Lyon, France. Answers were expected through the method of using shootings of work sessions between an artist and children, combined with individual and group interviews.
In this paper I will try to show how this form of debate, involving a plurality of points of view on children aged between 2½ and 5½ working with an artist, leads or not to a consensual interpretation. I will focus :
- on the pregnancy of developmentalism and how some assessments on verbal and non verbal behaviors or performances have an effect on ordinary knowledge of childhood,
- on the way these observations generate questions about specific learning in artistic context and about school and pre-school as institutions.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to make use of the experience of participant observation, and visual records, performed by children in the border bridge between Argentina and Bolivia. The main goal is to think about the scope and potential of this kind of methodologies in a work field with children.
Paper long abstract:
In this work we describe an activity proposed as a part of a research on children's perceptions and national identification processes experienced in a school located in the Argentina-Bolivia border. The proposal was that children had to carry out participant observation, undertake interviews and elaborate visual records from the field notes collected in the border crossing.
One of the most significant conclusions is that children believe that the international bridge is an area of their own fragmented space. On the one hand, borders are in a certain way solid (flag, border patrol) and, on the other hand, they are artificial regarding geographic continuity (river, animals, tree roots). Space fragmentation is physical and symbolic; it is already constructed but it still has material existence; it is remarked but it still is a "continuous otherness", an otherness that is part.
This experience has also suggested an approximation of children towards the work of an anthropologist as it significantly framed the ethnographic work and approached this topic which is sometimes difficult and insufficient to deal with from discourse. This investigation resulted in an educational experience which may, curiously, leave marks in children's identification processes.
Paper short abstract:
A project on consciousness-raising on heritage is at work in Tenochtitlan (Mexico). To what extent what is making sense for children can be thought of as an heritage? How to pass heritage to children if they do not recognized it? What can be learned from collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with children?
Paper long abstract:
Located in the neighborhood of the world-famous archeological site Tenochtitlan (Mexico), the small town of the same name is not visited for its heritage at all. However, this is were a project were initiated by INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) on consciousness-raising of a schooled group of children on the diverse forms of heritages.
On the one hand, when archeologists and anthropologists come with children on the field, they have to question their own vision of heritage and to take into account the one of the children. On the other hand, while they show their own heritages to professionals, children drive them to open the scientific debate: to what extend what is making sense for children can be thought as an heritage? How to pass heritage to children if they do not recognized it? Which theoretical and methodological knowledge can be learned from collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with children?
Paper short abstract:
My presentation focuses on the collaborative ethnographic practice of a project which led to what children and young people define as memory of migration. I shall finally outline how difficult it is to enhance a dialog between the different kinds of memory within the migration arena in France.
Paper long abstract:
In 2006, I worked out a participatory action research on the topic "memory of migration" with a collective of volunteers (boys, girls, young girls). The framework of the project was an association which sat up in the area where the volunteers live in Paris. The starting question was: What is called "memory of migration" and in which local, spatial and symbolic spaces is it mobilized? The main project's results were the collaborative organization of an exhibition presenting material collected during the project and debates initiated by the volunteers) were proposed to the visitors.
In this presentation, my concern is to recount the course's project by focusing on the collaborative ethnographic practice which led to what children and young people define as memory of migration. I shall finally outline how difficult it is to enhance a dialog between the different kinds of memory within the "migration arena" in France i.e the children and young people's memory of migration, the museographic memory of migration and the political memory of migration.
Paper short abstract:
Learning the way of living in a society is the goal of anthropology and that requires integration into the field of study. Based on collaborative works with students and educators in Quranic schools, this paper investigates the roles of Tarbiya (spiritual training) in children’s socialization.
Paper long abstract:
"Tarbiya" is a process in which the student or "taalibe" in Quranic schools (Daara) learns to be a devoted Muslim and scholar of the Holy Quran and the mystical knowledge of Islam. In many Daaras in West Africa promoted by Sufi brotherhoods, the "Tarbiya", is based on memorization of Quran, begging or "Yarwan" and spiritual training. It is an important phase of the child's education. Often interpreted as child abuse by Western educators and humanitarian workers, this severe education contains very interesting aspects that most scholars have been missing. In fact the process of Quranic learning and the living conditions in the Daaras forge children as convinced taalibes and develop specific characters and personalities admired and respected by the population. Based on case studies and participant observations in Senegal, this paper investigates the role and impact of Tarbiya in children's education. Participating in the educational process in Daaras permits anthropologists to integrate certain religious and cultural values and to understand the tensions between the French education and religious or traditional education today in light of the demand of rapid modernization.
Paper short abstract:
From the case study of my research of “street-children” in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I will show the gaps of perspectives between the anthropological one and the aid agencies one to understand child and suggest the necessity of multiple perspectives on learning from/of children on “social problems”.
Paper long abstract:
In the globalizing world, the urban space has been extending and creating many social problems even for children. As well as in African continent, the "street children" was discovered in 1990th. Approximately 100 NGOs have been intervening this problem in this affair save the children from street in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. According to them, 44% of children on the street are students of Quranic School and, 20% of them are non-schoolin. Most of them are alienated from "modern school/system".
To implement an ethnographic research of children on the street, I have taken two perspectives of the observation. First, to clarify their life and their origin, I've done fieldworks on the street independently. To survey if "street-children" would be only "social problem", I will show one episode about one street child from anthropological research, which one boy who had helped my research got away from NGO shelter. Secondly, on the other hand, I've been implementing a research as a member of KEOOGO (Local NGO). This NGO and other active organizations promoted activities for "socialization" and "normalization" of children. Although these activities wouldn't be succeeded, I, as a member of NGO, do believe that these activities are necessary to save the children.
We anthropologists observe some informants standing on some points of view through our research activities. If we assume the children would be "others" who have not been studied in anthropology for a long time, we have to study from multiple perspective to learn from/of children and youth.