The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

Dedicated Followers of Fashion? Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Socio‐Economic Status,Inequality, and Health in Urban Children from the Industrial Revolution (18th–19th C), England

The 18th and 19th centuries in England were characterised by a period of increasing industrialisation of its urban centres. It was also one of widening social and health inequalities between the rich and the poor. Childhood is well‐documented as being a stage in the life course during which the body is particularly sensitive to adverse socio‐economic environments. This study therefore aims to examine the relationship between health and wealth through a comprehensive skeletal analysis of a sample of 403 children (0–17 years), of varying socio‐economic status, from four cemetery sites in London (c.1712–1854). Measurements of long bone diaphyseal length, cortical thickness, vertebral neural canal size, and the prevalence of a range of pathological indicators of health stress were recorded from the Chelsea Old Church (high status), St Benet Sherehog (middle status), Bow Baptist (middle status), and Cross Bones (low status) skeletal collections. Children from the low status Cross Bones site demonstrated deficient growth values, as expected. However, those from the high status site of Chelsea Old Church also demonstrated poor growth values during infancy. Fashionable child‐care practices (e.g. the use of artificial infant feeds and keeping children indoors) may have contributed to poor infant health amongst high status groups. However, differing health risks in the lower status group revealed the existence of substantial health inequality in London at this time. © 2016 The Authors International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Childhood in the rural areas of Chile,intergenerational and gendered perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article triangulates intergenerational (childhood, adulthood, and old age) visions on the social representation of childhood in rural areas of Chile. These visions were considered within the framework of identity constructs (perceptions, social behaviours, preferences, and ambitions) and were compared against emerging transformations in the spheres of family, and gender relations. A qualitative methodology was used to analyse 68 individual interviews (41 children; 21 women old age; and 6 adult women). It was concluded that, in a context of globalization, rural boys and girls use modern, urban symbols and conform to traditional gender stereotypes. In a familial environment, rural children have acquired discursive protagonism in alliance with older women, a reality that conflicts with the conservative vision of middle-aged adults who have poor awareness regarding the participation of children. Contrasting visions exist between adult women and seniors concerning the responsibilities assigned to children in general and, particularly, to girls.     

Values and assumptions underpinning policy for children and young people in England

This paper provides an account of current ideas about English childhood that seem to underpin policies ‘for’ children. New Labour values the future adulthood of children more than their childhoods, and stresses children's responsibilities over their rights. Generally, child protection and provision for children has higher status than children's participation. Children are excluded from participation in social life. Traditional psychological formulations remain powerful in their stress on childhood as a preparatory stage of life, where children are socialised into conformity with the norms of social life. However, the last 15 years have seen greater respect for children's own views and experiences, for their rights and for the idea that childhood is socially constructed. But the idea that children are contributors to society is still rarely recognised and they continue to suffer from low social status accordingly.     

Childhoods past and present: anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices

ABSTRACT

Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a ‘proper childhood’. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children’s safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children’s rights to a ‘good’ childhood.     

Facetiming common worlds: exchanging digital place stories and crafting pedagogical contact zones

ABSTRACT

Children, educators, and researchers at a child care center in Victoria, Canada and Melbourne, Australia have been collaborating on an early childhood education pedagogical inquiry project that grapples with children’s relations with place and technologies. Resisting narratives of environmental stewardship and instrumental digital education that dominate in the settler colonial contexts of contemporary Canadian and Australian early childhood education, this article shares stories, practices, questions, and tensions generated within the inquiry. After outlining how we think with Facetime on iPhone within a common worlds pedagogies framework, we detail two practices generated in the inquiry: (1) exchanging digital place stories and (2) crafting pedagogical contact zones with place and technologies. These practices, we argue, make visible how our collaboration reconfigures children’s relationships with place and technologies in consequential ways, and risks generating uneasy, unfamiliar, and tentative pedagogies that respond to messy entanglements within digital, more-than-human common worlds.     

Rural children’s role in buffering household poverty through ganyu (piecework) in Zambia

In Zambia, the ways in which social change intersects with rural livelihoods to increase children’s workload and commodify their labour are poorly understood. In this article, changing patterns of rural children’s work are seen as necessitated by their evolving household roles and contributions in an increasingly rural cash-based economy. Drawing on child-focused qualitative research in rural Lundazi district in Zambia, it is explored how children use a traditional labour practice called ‘ganyu’ (piecework) to ameliorate poverty. The infiltration of the cash-based economy, amplified by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes, a predominantly adult-centred traditional informal socio-economic levelling mechanism of ganyu, and its evolution into more cash-oriented transactions increasingly involving children are discussed. Although ganyu has largely been seen as characterized by exploitative labour relations, the empirical findings from this research indicate the complex ways in which the practice is empowering children and their families. The resources accrued through ganyu are vital for both personal and household well-being. The findings of this study have important implications to rethink not only contentious issues of child labour but also dominant narratives of childhood that fail to take into account children’s lived experiences as situated in local, social, economic, and cultural contexts.     

Parental Grief and Mourning in the Ancient Andes

Parental grief is an intense emotion shaped and mediated by cultural attitudes toward death, the strength of parent-child attachment, the age of the deceased child, and the role of children in society. Despite some assertions that high infant mortality or economic hardship may lessen parental grief, cross-cultural studies show that child death often causes emotional distress to parents, in particular mothers. Funerary treatments of children, especially infants, are often simplified, contradicting more immediate and immaterial expressions of parental grief that cannot be studied archaeologically. In this study, I examine the funerary treatment of children in ancient Andean Tiwanaku society (A.D. 500–1100). I assess the use of ritual practices and objects associated with children’s burials as indicative of children’s social identities and parental mourning. The nature of grave assemblages in regard to different ages of the children suggests that parental attitudes toward their children changed over the course of childhood. The choice of offerings seems to reflect parental attachment to and recognition of the child’s life. Modifications of ceramic vessels point to the intimate mourning gestures of grieving mothers who sought to provide their deceased children with the necessary offerings to assume their place among the community of venerated ancestors. This study draws on ethnographic, psychological, and ethnohistoric sources of parent-child bonds in the Andes and beyond to investigate children’s burials not merely as reflective of childhood and children’s role in society but as the material record of parental attachment and emotion in the past.     

HISTORY,MIGRATION AND CHILDHOOD: BASQUE REFUGEE CHILDREN IN 1930s BRITAIN

Abstract

The arrival, in May I937, of 4000 Basque refugee children in Britain serves as an important reminder that the history of childhood consists of diverse identities and experiences.At least where refugees are concerned, the extent and nature of this diversity has been crucially shaped by state policies on the principle of asylum. The specific policy of favouring the arrival of unaccompanied children in inter-war Britain illuminates contemporary constructions of the nature of the child. In addition, the policies put in place to receive and settle the children crucially shaped their experiences in exile. Yet these policies were implemented in regional settings and more detailed local studies are required if this marginalized but important aspect of childhood history is to be understood.     

THE BODY AS A BATTLEFIELD: APPROACHING CHILDREN'S POLITICS

This article discusses the active role of children in everyday politics. Distinct from empowerment, it is suggested that children can be political on their own terms. The article focuses on revealing the social production of childhood, which takes place in the confrontation between child policy and children's own politics. Children's bodies are found to be both the main focus of policy practices and a central avenue of children's own agency. Hence, children are understood to be not only objects of policy, but also embodied political subjects. Using the example of Finnish child evacuees' experiences during the Second World War, it is shown that, despite their positions in policy fields, children do act as political selves. Using the ideas of Michel de Certeau and Carl Schmitt, it is argued that there is an autonomous politics to children which can be recognized as a significant means of coping in their everyday lives. On these grounds, the article sets out to use Pierre Bourdieu's concept of political struggle in considering childhood spatialities in more detail. Overall, children's politics are understood as a wider geographical concept which requires further examination.     

Playing,parenting and family leisure in parks: exploring emotional geographies of families in Guangzhou Children’s Park,China

ABSTRACT

Children’s leisure activities in parks have attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent decades. However, relatively little attention has been given to the emotional needs and responses of children to their activities within a park’s play spaces. Moreover, what parents perceive, and how they themselves engage within children’s playing spaces, is under-studied. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the Guangzhou Children’s Park, China, this paper aims to explore the experiences of both children and parents within this particular playing space. Supplementing participant observations with interviews and analysis of reviews on the Internet, the paper finds that children obtain a sense of family and company from their parents’ presence, and parents recall memories of their own childhood and obtain emotional recovery by visiting parks with their children. The findings suggest that play spaces are not only places where children play, but also where family life and childhood are ‘built’. The paper contributes to the existing literature by highlighting and examining the ‘child–parent’ relationship within playing spaces. By conducting a case study of a non-Western society, the paper encourages researchers to examine ‘child–parent’ relationships in a family leisure context, and to explore the everyday and emotional geographies of family life in contemporary China.     

Paleopathological and Molecular Study on Two Cases of Ancient Childhood Leprosy from the Roman and Byzantine Empires

This study is based on the paleaopathology of leprosy on human skeletal remains and the detection of ancient Mycobacterium leprae DNA. Two cases of childhood leprosy were recognized. The first case was in a Roman necropolis at Martellona (Rome, Central Italy), dated to the 2nd to 3rd centuries ce . The skeleton of a child aged 4–5 years, from tomb 162, is the youngest individual in Italy from this time period, with the clear rhino‐maxillary syndrome and other bony changes indicative of leprosy. The second case from a burial at Kovuklukaya, in the Sinop region of Northern Turkey, was from the 8th to the 10th centuries, during the Byzantine era. The endocranium of a 4–5‐month‐old infant with new bone formation—an indication of chronic inflammation—was positive for M. leprae DNA. Infant and childhood leprosy is uncommon today, and there is a scarcity of information in the osteoarchaeological literature of leprosy in the past, especially in children. The significance of these cases is that it adds to an understanding of the history of the disease in the former Roman Empire. It is hoped that over time sufficient data can be obtained to understand the epidemiological dynamics and clinical evolution of leprosy from the ancient period until today. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Partner in his Calamities’: Pastors' Wives,Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German Reformation

This essay examines what factors led the first clerical wives to marry former Catholic clergy and nuns to marry in the first decade of the Reformation in Germany and seeks to explain the difference that social class, geography and gender made in those decisions. In contrast to the later Reformation, when pastors married same or higher social status women, the majority of women who married former priests and monks during the 1520s were often lower or, in the case of nuns, significantly higher social status than their husbands. Women married clergy for a variety of reasons that were counterintuitive to typical marital strategies for economic security and social networking, since clergy had neither in the 1520s. While sharing a common experience, clerical wives' reasons for marriage to a pastor varied greatly depending on class, local decision about the Reformation and numerous personal factors. Using a variety of sources including letters, civic records, court testimony and published pamphlets, this article demonstrates that these women did exhibit a limited agency that ultimately helped shape larger social and political acceptance of clerical marriage.     

Italian religious historiography in the 1990s

Abstract

This article examines Italian religious historiography of the past decade, taking into account the difficulty of this national limitation, given the increasingly frequent arid profitable exchanges among the diverse European traditions. The review first examines some general works and then focuses on certain themes that mark the historiographical trends: ecclesiastical institutions, with particular reference to the period of the Reformation and the Counter‐Reformation; religious complexity, with special reference to heterodox movements, to Jewish culture and to the Islamic presence; and people's religious experiences, with particular emphasis on those of women, in their interaction with both cultural production and social history.     

REVIEWING CHILD ABUSE POLICY IN AMERICA: A SOCIAL SERVICE APPROACH

For all the recent attention to the problems of child abuse and neglect, this specific policy area has rarely been examined as belonging to the more general area of social service policy. This article begins to remedy this omission. First, the article examines child abuse policy in terms of the conflicts of value faced in the formation of social service policy. Next, the relationship between child abuse and other recent social service issues responding to familial violence or childhood dependency is discussed. Here the article shows that governmental response to child abuse has been used to encourage governmental interest in adoption reform, sexual exploitation of children, domestic violence, and day care.     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

The Cradle of Thought: Growth,Learning, Play and Attachment in Neanderthal Children

Childhood is a core stage in development, essential in the acquisition of social, practical and cultural skills. However, this area receives limited attention in archaeological debate, especially in early prehistory. We here consider Neanderthal childhood, exploring the experience of Neanderthal children using biological, cultural and social evidence. We conclude that Neanderthal childhood experience was subtly different from that of their modern human counterparts, orientated around a greater focus on social relationships within their group. Neanderthal children, as reflected in the burial record, may have played a particularly significant role in their society, especially in the domain of symbolic expression. A consideration of childhood informs broader debates surrounding the subtle differences between Neanderthals and modern humans.     

Troublesome trends: population growth,distribution, migration

The upcoming International Conference on Population and Development and its draft plan of action call for international cooperation in protecting and assisting refugees and displaced persons and in assuring positive consequences in host and origin countries. The draft plan also aims to protect the elderly through enhancing self-reliance and continued work and independent living in their own communities. Social support systems for the elderly must also be strengthened. The document is also concerned with the movement of population to cities and across borders. Recommendations on migration encourage governments to evaluate the impact of economic and environmental policies on population distribution and migration, to promote development of medium-sized urban centers, to encourage rural economic development and placement of industries in rural areas, and to support access to land ownership or use and access to water resources in rural areas. Rural infrastructure and social services need to be improved. Grassroots organizations and cooperatives for establishing credit and marketing products are emphasized. Weak local area management is an obstacle to socioeconomic development, environmental protection, and population distribution. Waste, water, and land management strategies should be adopted. Prevention of the root causes of displacement is particularly important when environmental damage is the consequence or the cause. Women, children, and the elderly who are displaced need protection. Refugee numbers have swelled from 8.5 million in 1985 to 19 million in 1993. Sudden and mass refugee arrivals should be afforded temporary protection until a solution can be found. Conditions must be created for safe and dignified, voluntary repatriation. The social and economic integration of documented, longterm migrants must be assured.     

Childhood collecting in nature: quality experience in important places*

ABSTRACT

A need for a more specific understanding of childhood geographies has motivated an investigation of one activity, childhood collecting in nature. This study examined collecting behavior, places of collecting, and the relationship of these places to environmental connectedness in adulthood. Topophilia is presented as a guide to help consider why children collect in nature and to expand upon a limited understanding of collecting behavior. These ideas are explored with a mixed-method design strategy involving surveys and semi-structured interviews with a sample of Swedish university students. Results show collecting in nature to be a widespread, meaningful, and memorable experience in the formative years of participants. Results also demonstrate potential support for topophilia as a way to understand the childhood collecting nature phenomenon. Implications include recognition of the importance of family to support children’s engagement in the natural world and proximate access to nature as a critical aspect of childhood experience.     

The Relationship Between Linear Enamel Hypoplasia and Social Status in 18th to 19th Century Edo,Japan

Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) has been utilised in human bioarchaeology as an indicator of growth disturbance during childhood. However, only a few studies have compared populations of different socio‐economic status in the same time period. This study examines the association between the LEH occurrence pattern and social status in the 18th to 19th century populations in Japan. Detailed archaeological studies on burials from the Edo period (1603–1867) excavated in Tokyo have facilitated estimating an individual's social status by its burial type. In this study, 112 individuals from the Sugenji‐Shokenji site were divided into three burial structure groups (ceramic jar coffins for middle‐class warriors, wooden square coffins for low‐class warriors and townspeople and wooden circular coffins for townspeople) and examined for the general prevalence of LEH, number of LEH and the chronological distribution of LEH. A high general prevalence of LEH was observed in every group, especially in lower canine (79.3–100.0%). However, individuals in the jar coffin group showed a lower prevalence and smaller number of LEH per tooth, suggesting that individuals of higher social status experienced better living environments in their childhood. There was no significant difference in the chronological distribution of LEH formation between coffin groups. Such data are essential for understanding the association between socio‐economic status and living conditions in specific societies in the past. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.