Care and Agency

The Andean Community through the Eyes of Children

By Jeanine Anderson and Jessaca B. Leinaweaver

SERIES: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Rutgers University Press

Andean communities occupy a special place in the history of anthropology, having given shape to fundamental theories of kinship, peasant economics, indigenous medical systems, ritual life and others. Yet children have been shortchanged in research and theory-building. Care and Agency, based on detailed ethnographies of six towns in the province of Yauyos, restores children to a central research position. Contemporary children’s studies emphasize children’s agency and autonomy, and these take surprising forms under the conditions of the rural Andes. At the same time, the book incorporates and extends current discussions of caregiving and its organization in human societies. Children in the Andes are involved in the care of each other, of adults, of animals, of the environment. The activities, sociality, and subjective states of children of different ages, genders, and social strata are variable in ways that make it impossible to speak of a single Andean childhood. The future they face is also uncertain, as the Peruvian nation stumbles through cycles of incompetent government whose common thread is the neglect of small-scale family farming and the welfare of rural populations. A fascinating look at Andean childhood for anyone interested in the lives of children.

Reviews
Author

Care and Agency offers a comprehensive and vivid account of the lives of Andean children in rural areas and how they actively participate in caring for themselves and for others, questioning at the same time the uncertain futures they and their communities face. The book is a unique contribution and a fundamental reading for educators, health workers, policy makers, social workers, and researchers. Patricia Ames, full professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

Jeanine Anderson and Jessaca B. Leinaweaver engage contemporary debates in the anthropology of children to examine a set of biographies of young Yauyinos marked by high responsibilities, vulnerability, and uncertainty, in a context of constant transformation. This is a timely and lucid contribution to the understanding of how new generations conduct their lives within traditional, yet changing, rural communities. Patricia Oliart, senior lecturer in Latin American studies at Newcastle University

JEANINE ANDERSON is a professor emerita of anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She is the author of a wide number of Spanish-language books, including Las Infancias Diversas: Estudio Fenomenológico de la Niñez de Cero a Tres Años en Cuatro Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonía Peruana.

JESSACA B. LEINAWEAVER is a professor of anthropology at Brown University, Rhode Island. She is the author of The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru and Adoptive Migration: Raising Latinos in Spain.

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