Showing 1-30 of 49 items.
Producing Children
Critical Studies in Childhood Creativity
Edited by Peter C. Kunze and Victoria Ford Smith
Rutgers University Press
Children’s culture is not only culture for children; it’s culture by children — yet scholars of children’s culture overwhelmingly center work by adults for children. Producing Children acknowledges and theorizes children as cultural producers, underscoring how such creativity empowers children as active participants in their own culture, and helps us to reconceive our understandings of children themselves.
Producing Children
Critical Studies in Childhood Creativity
Edited by Peter C. Kunze and Victoria Ford Smith
Rutgers University Press
Children’s culture is not only culture for children; it’s culture by children — yet scholars of children’s culture overwhelmingly center work by adults for children. Producing Children acknowledges and theorizes children as cultural producers, underscoring how such creativity empowers children as active participants in their own culture, and helps us to reconceive our understandings of children themselves.
Children as Social Butterflies
Navigating Belonging in a Diverse Swiss Kindergarten
Rutgers University Press
Children as Social Butterflies offers an analysis of how children negotiate social belonging. Ursina Jaeger followed the children of a kindergarten class in a stigmatized and diverse neighborhood for several years, both inside and outside of school. Along with giving vivid insights into the children's everyday lives, she examines how social differentiation is learned in diverse societies.
Care and Agency
The Andean Community through the Eyes of Children
Rutgers University Press
This book describes the lives of children in rural communities of the Andes Mountains of Peru. It foregrounds the children’s own perceptions and feelings, so far as they can be known by researchers using ethnographic methods. It shows the great variety of Andean childhoods – some happy, others harsh and demanding – and suggests the options children face: follow the many to migrate to the city or risk their hopes on a better future in the rural setting.
China's Left-Behind Children
Caretaking, Parenting, and Struggles
By Xiaojin Chen
Rutgers University Press
Paying special attention to the seventy million children left behind by internal migrants in rural China, this book investigates the role of parental migration and the left-behind status of their children in shaping family dynamics and the children’s general wellbeing, including school performance, delinquency, resilience, feelings of ambiguous loss, and other psychological problems.
The Farm & Wilderness Summer Camps
Progressive Ideals in the Twentieth Century
By Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson
Rutgers University Press
The Farm & Wilderness Summer Camps explores how ideals considered progressive in the 1940s and 1950s had to be reconfigured to respond to shifts in culture and society as well as to new understanding of race and ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual identity through a study of the popular Farm & Wilderness camps. To illustrate this change, Emily Abel and Margaret K. Nelson draw on over forty interviews with former campers, archival materials, and their own memories. This book tells a story of progressive ideals, crisis of leadership, childhood challenges, and social adaptation in the quintessential American summer camp.
Between Self and Community
Children’s Personhood in a Globalized South Korea
By Junehui Ahn
Rutgers University Press
Between Self and Community investigates the early childhood socialization process in a rapidly changing, globalizing South Korea. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a South Korean preschool, it examines how both children and teachers interactively navigate, construct, and reconstruct their own multifaceted and sometimes conflicting models of “a good child” amid Korea’s shifting educational and social contexts.
Children of the Rainforest
Shaping the Future in Amazonia
Rutgers University Press
Children of the Rainforest explores the lives of Matses children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. Using visual and participatory methods, the book explores ethnographically how children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires are powerful catalysts of social change, which shape the future of their society and of Amazonia at large.
Children of the Rainforest
Shaping the Future in Amazonia
Rutgers University Press
Children of the Rainforest explores the lives of Matses children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. Using visual and participatory methods, the book explores ethnographically how children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires are powerful catalysts of social change, which shape the future of their society and of Amazonia at large.
When Are You Coming Home?
How Young Children Cope When Parents Go to Jail
Rutgers University Press
When Are You Coming Home? answers questions about how young children cope when parents go to jail. Told through the real stories of children, caregivers, and parents navigating parental incarceration, this book delves into the nuances that comprise children’s well-being and family relationships. In doing so, it calls out contextual vulnerabilities while emphasizing resilience processes that shape how children make sense of being separated from parents and await their likely reunification.
Global Child
Children and Families Affected by War, Displacement, and Migration
Rutgers University Press
Global Child highlights the unique features of participatory, arts-based, and socio-ecological approaches to studying war-affected children and families, demonstrating the collective strength as well as the limitations and the ethical implications of such research. Building on work across the Global South and the Global North, this book aims to deepen an understanding of this tri-pillared approach, and the potential for this methodology to contribute to improved practices in working with war-affected children and their families.
A World of Many
Ontology and Child Development among the Maya of Southern Mexico
By Norbert Ross
Rutgers University Press
A World of Many explores the world-making efforts of Tzotzil Maya children from two different localities within the municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas. It shows that as they create their worlds, children create themselves as distinct human beings, being differently in their world.
Playing with History
American Identities and Children’s Consumer Culture
By Molly Rosner
Rutgers University Press
Examining cultural products geared towards teaching children American cultural identity, Playing With History highlights the changes and constancies in depictions of American identity since the advent of modern consumer society. The book examines political and ideological messages sold to children throughout the twentieth century through toys, dolls, books, and amusement parks.
Life in a Cambodian Orphanage
A Childhood Journey for New Opportunities
Rutgers University Press
Combining detailed observations of children's daily life in a Cambodian orphanage with follow-up interviews of the same children after they have grown and left, this book shows how orphanages can be configured to meet children's developmental needs, providing evidence that they are not always bleak sites of deprivation and despair.
Disputing Discipline
Child Protection, Punishment, and Piety in Zanzibar Schools
Rutgers University Press
A visual and poetic exploration into the lives of Zanzibari children who negotiate the intersections of universalized and local children’s rights aspirations, Disputing Discipline shows how anti-corporal punishment programs in schools unintentionally compromise children’s well-being and asserts that children’s views and experiences can and should transform our understanding of child protection policy.
Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World
Refugee Youth and the Pursuit of Identity
By Laura Moran
Rutgers University Press
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Brisbane, Australia, Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World provides a critical analysis of the shortcomings and underpinning contradictions of modern multicultural inclusion. It demonstrates how creating a sense of identity among young Sudanese and Karen refugees is a continual process shaped by powerful social forces.
The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood
Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development
By Hannah Dyer
Rutgers University Press
In The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood, Hannah Dyer offers a study of how children’s art and art about childhood can forecast new models of social life that redistribute care, belonging, and political value. She asserts that in the aesthetics of childhood, a more just future can be conjured.
All Together Now
American Holiday Symbolism Among Children and Adults
Rutgers University Press
Holidays are times for creating memories and for celebrating cultural values, emotions, and social ties. All Together Now considers holidays that are celebrated by American families and shows how entire families bond at holidays in ways that allow both children and adults to be influential within their shared interaction.
Weighty Problems
Embodied Inequality at a Children’s Weight Loss Camp
Rutgers University Press
By investigating how contemporary cultural discourses of childhood obesity are experienced by children, Laura Backstrom illustrates how deeply fat stigma is internalized during the early socialization experiences of children. Weighty Problems finds that embodied inequality is constructed and negotiated through a number of interactional processes including resocialization, stigma management, social comparisons, and attribution.
Weighty Problems
Embodied Inequality at a Children's Weight Loss Camp
Rutgers University Press
By investigating how contemporary cultural discourses of childhood obesity are experienced by children, Laura Backstrom illustrates how deeply fat stigma is internalized during the early socialization experiences of children. Weighty Problems finds that embodied inequality is constructed and negotiated through a number of interactional processes including resocialization, stigma management, social comparisons, and attribution.
Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods
Rutgers University Press
Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods and rural life.
Complicated Lives
Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice
By Vera Lopez
Rutgers University Press
Complicated Lives focuses on the lives of sixty-five drug-using girls in the juvenile justice system who grew up in families characterized by parental drug use, violence, and child maltreatment. Vera Lopez’s work examines how these relationships with their parents contribute to the girls’ future drug use and involvement in the justice system.
Race among Friends
Exploring Race at a Suburban School
Rutgers University Press
Race among Friends focuses on a “racially friendly” suburban charter school called Excellence Academy, highlighting the ways that students and teachers think about race and act out racial identity. Marianne Modica finds that even in an environment where students of all racial backgrounds work and play together harmoniously, race affects the daily experiences of students and teachers in profound but unexamined ways.
Producing Excellence
The Making of Virtuosos
Rutgers University Press
An in-depth study of nearly one hundred young children studying violin in Western Europe, Producing Excellence illuminates the process these musicians undergo to become elite international soloists. The remarkable research Izabela Wagner conducted—at rehearsals, lessons, and in other educational settings—enabled her to gain deep insight into what distinguishes these talented prodigies, shedding new light on the development of exceptional musical talent.
The War of My Generation
Youth Culture and the War on Terror
Edited by David Kieran
Rutgers University Press
The War of My Generation is the first essay collection to focus specifically on how the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath have shaped the newest generation of Americans. Drawing on a variety of disciplines including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and literary studies, the volume considers what cultural factors and products have shaped young people’s experience of the 9/11 attacks, the wars that have followed, and their experiences as emerging citizen-subjects.
Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village
Shaping Hierarchy and Desire
Rutgers University Press
Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village starts with a mystery: why do Sri Lankan children, normally rambunctious and demanding as toddlers, become uncannily compliant as they grow older? To answer this question, anthropologist Bambi Chapin spent over a decade tracking the development of children in a rural Sri Lankan village. What she learned gives us a fresh perspective on the ways children think and on how cultural beliefs are passed down through the generations.
Kids in the Middle
How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families
Rutgers University Press
Kids in the Middle explores how children of immigrants use their language capabilities, knowledge of American culture, and facility with media content and devices to help their parents forge connections with local schools, healthcare facilities, and social services as they adjust to life in the United States. Through in-depth inquiry in one Southern California community, Vikki S. Katz explores the important contributions children make to the functioning of their immigrant families and considers what social workers and parents in diverse community can do to support them.
Defining Student Success
The Role of School and Culture
By Lisa M. Nunn
Rutgers University Press
A provocative work that will prompt a thorough reevaluation of the culture of secondary education, Defining Student Success shows how different schools, promoting modified versions of larger cultural ideas of success, foster distinct understandings of what it takes to succeed—understandings that do more to reproduce a socioeconomic status quo than to promote upward mobility.
Defining Student Success
The Role of School and Culture
By Lisa M. Nunn
Rutgers University Press
A provocative work that will prompt a thorough reevaluation of the culture of secondary education, Defining Student Success shows how different schools, promoting modified versions of larger cultural ideas of success, foster distinct understandings of what it takes to succeed—understandings that do more to reproduce a socioeconomic status quo than to promote upward mobility.
Life on the Malecón
Children and Youth on the Streets of Santo Domingo
Rutgers University Press
Life on the Malecón is a narrative ethnography of the lives of street children and youth living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and the non-governmental organizations that provide social services for them. Writing from the perspective of an anthropologist working as a street educator with a child welfare organization, Jon M. Wolseth follows the intersecting lives of children, the institutions they come into contact with, and the relationships they have with each other, their families, and organization workers.
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