Supplemental Notes
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Supplemental Notes The Anthropology of Childhood was published in November, 2008, however, I delivered the current manuscript to the publisher over a year earlier. My search for cases relevant to this effort did not cease, hence the need for this supplement. It offers a foretaste of additions and revisions in the next edition. The Supplement begins with an Errata section—mercifully short. Then I provide Notes, in largely undigested form, mapped into their appropriate chapter/section from the book. Certain topics have been blessed with lots of new material, in particular, on fertility and reproduction, child labor and fosterage, apprenticeship, and child soldiers, street kids and children’s agency. Additionally, the reader will find color versions of the plates from the book. I hope the user finds these notes helpful and will add to this archive by calling my attention to omissions. Errata Ch 1 p. 1 demonstrated profound and unpredicted influences of culture and formal schooling (Lancy and Strathern 1981; Lancy 1983; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984). p. 6 Note 7 It is interesting that childhood was shorter for Neanderthals, but then their tool technology was also simpler than that of humans and, presumably, took less time to master (Hawcroft and Dennell 2000). p. 18 calorific=caloric Ch 2 p. 73 Note 93 Neonatal medicine, while evolving into a multi-billion dollar industry, has also fashioned an entire culture of terms and practices to humanize or “normalize” a biologically defective organism (Isaacson 2002). Ch 3 p. 81, high-altitude living imposes Ch 4 Ch 5 p. 183 In Tamang (Nepal) custom, the first rite of passage – for boys only – is the chewar, a ceremony marking the first haircut. It is performed by the mother’s brother (Fricke 1994: 133). Ch 6 Ch 7 p. 198 “. youngsters seem to deliberately exploit R&T. as a way in which to publicly exhibit their dominance over a peer. (Pellegrini 2002: 446) p. 248 “Zapotec (Mexico) children¹s excellent command of ethnobotany is described as ‘everyday knowledge acquired without apparent effort at an early age by virtually everyone in town’” (Hunn 2002: 610). Ch 8 p. 272 Among the traditionally hunting and fishing North American Copper Inuit p. 279 we frequently see the creation of distinct warrior sub-cultures into which young men are inducted (Gilmore 2001: 209). p. 280 The Creek of North America inflicted bloody wounds p. 301 During this profound and protracted transition, a girl’s chances of continuing her education or economic advancement may depend on her access to contraception to avoid the pregnancy that—custom demands—should end her single status Ch 9 Ch 10 p. 357 . we need to balance out concerns for the rights of children with a recognition that “universal” rights are often based on ethnocentric definitions of childhood. (Holloway and Valentine 2000: 10) Page 203 response from Marjorie Goodwin to my discussion of her work: With respect to your footnote about my 1998 article on p. 203... I took out the example from the white Southern, middle class, (more adjectives could apply such as Unitarian, children in a school where the principal read Deborah Tannen, etc.) in my book The Hidden Life of Girls when discussing hop scotch, because I found that white middle class girls in California are also able to be quite confrontational. In fact the book deals a lot with the ways in which girls practice exclusion, play status games, and how their ways of negotiating in games are similar across ethnic groups. I compare about six different groups in the book, as compared with the 1998 article which I admit portrayed middle class in a skewed way. When I found out that Deborah Tannen was using the 1998 article in her classes I got really concerned about what implications that article had and eliminated the example of “Southern white girls.” Email received 1/5/09. p. 205, line 18: Garry Chick Notes Preface Cecylia Maslowska assisted with translations of Gerd Spittler’s Hirtenarbeit and the late Renate Posthofen with Barbara Polak’s work in German. Sarah Gordon assisted with material in French. Chapter One: Where Do Children Come From? Is There Such a Thing as Childhood? Shon, Mee-Ryong (2002) Korean early childhood education: Colonization and resistance. In Gaile S. Cannella and Joe L. Kincheloe (Eds.), Kidworld: Childhood Studies, Global Perspectives, and Education. Pp. 137-160. New York: Peter Lang. “Generally, the concept of “childhood” as a separate group from adults did not historically exist in Korean. By the time children (infant and toddler years according to the western concept) were trained in physical self-control, children leaped into the adult world by staying with elders, by practicing anticipated roles as males and females, and by engaging in early marriage.” (Shon 2002: 141) Crawford, Sally (1999) Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton. “’In the Middle Ages, children were generally ignored until they were no longer children.’” (Crawford 1999: 168) Heywood, Colin (2001) A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. “Childhood is thus to a considerable degree a function of adult expectations.” (Heywood 2001: 9) But Why Bother with Childhood? Gurven, Michael and Walker, Robert (2006) Energetic demand of multiple dependents and the evolution of slow human growth. Proceedings of the Royal Society 273: 835-841. Simulation study supports the thesis that slow human growth followed by a rapid adolescent growth spurt may have facilitated rising human fertility rates and greater investments in neural capital. In effect, because dependent offspring are growing slowly, their energetic needs are relatively easy to meet. By adolescence, children should be better able to acquire their own caloric needs, so a growth spurt makes sense. It provides the somatic basis for child-bearing. My weaving together biological and cultural anthropology is currently out-of-fashion. But I would cite the late Don Tuzin’s chastisement of Marshall Sahlins—the great nay-sayer of the biological or evolutionary perspective. “Sahlins, it seems, would have us ignore these contributions and indulge in that sterile narcissism toward which anthropology is fatally tempted, viz., the reifying error entailed in the autonomy of culture…” (Gurven 2006: 67). Tuzin, Donald (1980) The Voice of the Tambaran: Truth and Illusion in Ilahita Arapesh Religion. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Outline of the Volume van der Geest, Sjaak (2004) Grandparents and grandchildren in Kwahu, Ghana: The performance of respect. Africa 74(1): 47-61. “…during a few discussion with young men aged around eighteen. I asked them what they meant when they said—as they had been doing—that they respected older people. One of them answered: ‘The meaning of respect we have for the old is that the old are far more advanced in years than we. So, when you get nearer to them and respect them, they will reveal to you how they got to that age and they will tell you traditions and customs that will enable you also to reach that age.’” (van der Geest 2004: 53) “I asked them how they showed respect and invited them to give concrete examples of respectful behavior in their own house. One of them said: ‘it is something that we the Akan have done over the years and which has come to stay. White men have a different lifestyle. I have some relatives who were born and bred in Canada and came back home recently. When they are engaged in work and you call them, they will not mind you because they want to use their time according to their personal plans without interruption. But Akan are not like this. Even when you are asleep and an old person calls you, you cannot ignore him. Whether you like it or not, you have to wake up and attend to his call. Respect is our tradition.” (van der Geest 2004: 54) On the subject of neontocracy vs gerontocracy, I found this quote revealing: “Childhood, according to the seventeenth-century French cleric Pierre de Bérulle, ‘is the most vile and abject state of human nature, after that of death.’” (Guillaumin/Crosland 1983: 3) Emile Guillaumin (trans. Margaret Crosland) (1983). The Life of a Simple Man. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Chapter Two: To Make a Child Life in a Neontocracy One Big Unhappy Family Hrdy, Sarah B. 2006. Evolutionary context of human development: The cooperative breeding model. In C. Sue Carter, Lieselotte Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann, Sarah B. Hrdy, Michael E. Lamb, Stephen W. Porges and Norbert Sachser (Eds.) Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis. (Pp 9-32) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Examples of male involvement in child-rearing among Primates, generally and humans, in particular. Men around pregnant and lactating women show slightly elevated levels of prolactin and a drop in testosterone. “No one is suggesting that fathers are equivalent to mothers, male caretakers the same as female ones…. The point is: even in animals with joint caretaking, both sexes can be primed to care. Virgin females or males can be primed to nurture merely by prolonged exposure to pregnant or lactating females. “ (p. 15) “Infants born into cooperative breeding systems, depend on a range of caretakers, and maternal commitment itself is dependent on the mother’s perception of how much support she is likely to have from allomothers. To prosper in such a system, infants have to be adept at monitoring caretakers, reading their moods and intentions and eliciting their solicitude…”theory of mind” reduces the uncertainties youngsters face, helping them predict how others…are likely to respond. Through practice and conditional rewards, infants get incrementally better at reading intentions and learning to engage caretakers.