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- Convenor:
-
Colleen Walsh Lang
(Washington University in St. Louis)
- Discussant:
-
Charles Watters
(University of Sussex)
- Location:
- JUB-116
- Start time:
- 9 September, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
As targets of global health interventions, children's lives are often reduced to easily quantifiable measures. This panel explores how anthropology can inform global health by offering a holistic approach to children's wellbeing, and what lessons from global health can be useful to anthropologists.
Long Abstract:
Children make up the majority of the population throughout much of the world where global health interventions are targeted. Interventions often focus on technological innovation as the solution to complex health issues. Furthermore, children are often the direct target of global health interventions, and as targets are often reduced to quantifiable measures such as the number of vaccines administered, bed-nets provided, packets of RTUF handed out, hospital births delivered, or number of ARVs given. While global health often reduces beneficiaries to quantifiable variables, anthropological perspectives offer a more holistic approach. Situating children and childhood within a larger cultural context and recognizing the lived experience of children themselves.
This panel seeks to explore children's experiences with global health. It asks questions such as how children themselves interact with global health initiatives, how global health initiatives are motivated by and framed within a western idealized concept of childhood, and how understanding the diversity of childhoods can foster more effective global health interventions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Araceli Muñoz (Institut Català d'Antropologia)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how a group of primary school children in Barcelona manage the meanings about health in their everyday experiences, taking into account the children’s own perspective and their role in shaping these meanings.
Paper long abstract:
The way in which children manage the meanings concerning health in their everyday experiences and understand their and the other people's body reality in the elaboration of what is a healthy or unhealthy body is linked to a series of representations of cultural and moral categories of knowledge of the society in which they live.
However, the different existing discourses about health are also subjectified by children, whom not only reproduce but also reconstruct and reinvent those discourses, and therefore, do not always assign to health the same meaning, significance or links as institutions and experts. This is why it is important to start from an approach to health experiences derived from the children's own perspective and consider them not only as discoverers of the meanings that come from their reality but also as creators of these meanings through their own understandings and interpretations.
Based on these considerations, this paper goes into more depth on the study of narratives and drawings of a group of children between 6 and 12 years of primary school in Barcelona. It analyses how they manage the meanings around health, pain and illness in their everyday experiences. It also explores the existing links between these lived experiences, the activities and the actions that shape and guide them and social representations as construction of reality.
Rachael Stryker (California State University, East Bay)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines trends in emotion socialization in Russian children’s homes (detdoma) between 1996 and 2002, with a focus on attachment socialization.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines trends in emotion socialization in Russian children's homes
(detdoma) between 1996 and 2002, with a focus on attachment socialization. It
examines the shift between different emotion socialization practices such as
"toughening attachment" (purposefully non-responsive childcare in institutions) and "trading children for childhood" (the framing of inter-country adoption as the exchange of Russian children to Western adoptive parents for the children's chance at economic success and emotional development). It argues that two central features shaped detdoma workers' attachment socialization of children in the 1990s: the perceived need to 1) socialize children's attachment in an attempt to establish economic and emotional security for children in uncertain times after the fall of the Soviet Union; and 2) shape children's understandings of attachment within transnational contexts as child migration to the West increased over the course over the decade. Investigating attachment socialization within Russian children's homes immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrates on example of the roles of examining children's cultural geographies (shifting demographics, cultural norms, economic transition, and intersections of political ideologies) in shaping emotional socialization within institutions over time. It also highlights how economic and political transition impact taken-for-granted assumptions within child development literature about what constitutes attachment and child love, family or kinship, and domesticity - particularly parent-child dyad interaction models of emotion socialization.
Kathleen Skoczen (Southern Ct. State University)
Paper short abstract:
Research exploring breastfeeding practices and perceptions among young mothers in the Dominican Republic revealed generational shifts toward shorter duration of breastfeeding and, despite advocacy, confusion over general recommendations from professionals.
Paper long abstract:
Research exploring breastfeeding practices and perceptions among young mothers in the Dominican Republic revealed generational shifts toward shorter duration of breastfeeding and, despite advocacy, confusion over general recommendations from professionals. Despite widespread concern over the well being of children and families, the Dominican Republic, as one of the poorest countries in Latin America, also has the second highest maternal mortality rate and adolescent birth rate in the region, and ranks third in terms of infant mortality. Several initiatives have been in place to improve these conditions including UNICEF's push for Baby Friendly Hospitals. These hospitals target the health of mothers and newborns, and strongly promote and support breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is known to significantly improve outcomes for both babies and mothers; exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life is ideal, and continued breastfeeding up to two years is recommended. Qualitative research in a rural region of the Dominican Republic among young mothers reveals that messages from health care professionals are poorly understood and sometimes interpreted incorrectly. For example, several mothers stated that they were to breastfeed their babies for only six months, while professionals said the recommendation is to exclusively breastfeed - give only breastfeed milk - for six months. This research paper explores the narratives of young mothers and grandmothers surrounding their understandings of breastfeeding. This on-going research project suggests that broader cultural understandings of breastfeeding practices and advocacy need to be considered if the low breastfeeding trends in the Dominican Republic are to improve.
Colleen Walsh Lang (Washington University in St. Louis)
Paper short abstract:
This research explores Children’s experiences living with HIV as a chronic illness. Through anthropological fieldwork this research explores children’s understanding of HIV, their social roles, and their interactions with international global health programs.
Paper long abstract:
Relatively little is known about children's experiences living with HIV. As access to ARVs increases, more children will be living longer with HIV as a chronic illness, and therefore a better understanding of their experiences is necessary. Through long term anthropological fieldwork, this research explores how children understand their illness and incorporate the practice of taking medicine into their daily lives. It explores to social role of children by investigating the interactions among children, caregivers, and sponsoring organizations. Finally, it explores the ways in which western ideals of independence and individual responsibility influence the way in which global health funds reach the children and affect their daily lives.