Telling Stories from the Field: Children and the Politics of Ethnographic Representation

Abstract

IntroductionOver the past 20 years, the politics of ethnographic writing and representation have been of central concern for feminist anthropologists. A number of issues have been addressed including the processes of producing truths about women's lives, questions of difference and inclusivity, and the impact of research on research participants (Abu-Lughod, 1993; Cole and Phillips, 1995; di Leonardo, 1991; Stacey, 1988; Visweswaran, 1988, 1994). Serious scholarly attention has been directed to the gendered spaces in which women live by examining the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of women's lives. This essay extends feminist anthropological analyses of (largely) women's lives to consider the problematic relationship between producing knowledge and ethnographic representation in anthropological child research.In the past, anthropologists have engaged in limited ways with the subjects of and childhood. For the most part, they have focused on in the contexts of family life and motherhood. This is due in part to the tenacity of models of socialization and development. According to these models, are conceptualized as moving toward full adult personhood. That is, they are valued for the future of their lives in the adult world rather than for their presence in the existing world. These models have been extraordinarily resistant to criticism and have persisted in dominating the creation of knowledge about and childhood (cf. James and Prout, 1990: 22-23).An emergent childhood studies, however, has been pointing to ways to conceptualize as creative and competent social actors in a variety of social and cultural contexts (Amit-Talai, 1995; Corsaro, 1985; Qvortrup, 1987; Scheper-Hughes and Sargent, 1998; Stephens, 1995). As well, some childhood scholars have sought to identify and analyze the diversity of social scientific models presently available for thinking about childhood in their attempts to theorize this vast field (Alanen, 2000; Honig, 1999; James and Prout, 1990; James, Jenks and Prout, 1998; Jenks, 1998). For example, in outlining a paradigm for the new social study of childhood, Allison James and Alan Prout (1990: 231) argue for . . a theoretical perspective which can grasp childhood as a continually experienced and created social phenomenon which has significance for its present, as well as the past and future. Taken together, this work has redefined and childhood as legitimate subjects in their own right, worthy of scholarly attention. In powerfully reconceptualizing childhood, this scholarship attests to the theoretically challenging stage that the field of childhood studies has reached.Bringing a feminist lens to bear on the study of and childhood, however, has progressed at a slower pace. Beginning in 1987, Barrie Thorne, and later Leena Alanen (1994) and Ann Oakley (1994), called for a revisioning of the study of using a feminist lens in attending to agency and diversity. Similarly, anthropologists Sharon Stephens (1995), and Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent (1998) edited important collections that advanced the idea of a broader engagement between feminism and childhood studies. However, ethnographic scholarship directed at taking account of gender and the different experiences of childhood for girls and boys has not been a priority since Thorne's (1993) pioneering work.(f.#1] Oakley (1994) offers a partial explanation for this inattention arguing that the focus of the new sociology of childhood has been directed to the broader category children rather than on the differentiated categories of girls and boys. She has suggested that this emphasis is a necessary first step in making visible (1994: 22), thereby echoing an earlier feminist practice to focus on the category woman. James, Jenks and Prout (1998), however, argue that playing down issues of diversity and the ways power works through gender, race, class and age results in theoretical analyses of children's lives that are incomplete. …