"In this ethnographic analysis of the cultural lives of children who are "sleeping rough" in Port-au-Prince, Kovats-Bernat expands the traditional bounds of anthropological thought, which have only recently permitted a scholarly treatment of "the child" as a valuable informant, relevant witness, and active agent of social change. Refuting the commonplace notion that street children are unsocialized, Hobbesian mongrels, the author finds these children adopt strategies to carve a social and cultural space for themselves on the contested streets of Port-au-Prince, individually and collectively playing a vital role in Haiti's civic life as they shape their own complex political, economic, and cultural identities"--Back cover.
Haitian seasonal migration to Cuba is central to narratives about race, national development, and US imperialism in the early twentieth-century Caribbean. Filling a major gap in the literature, this innovative study reconstructs Haitian guestworkers' lived experiences as they moved among the rural and urban areas of Haiti, and the sugar plantations, coffee farms, and cities of eastern Cuba. It offers an unprecedented glimpse into the daily workings of empire, labor, and political economy in Haiti and Cuba. Migrants' efforts to improve their living and working conditions and practice their religions shaped migration policies, economic realities, ideas of race, and Caribbean spirituality in Haiti and Cuba as each experienced US imperialism.
This is not just another book about crisis in Haiti. This book is about what it feels like to live and die with a crisis that never seems to end. It is about the experience of living amid the ruins of ecological devastation, economic collapse, political upheaval, violence, and humanitarian disaster. It is about how catastrophic events and political and economic forces shape the most intimate aspects of everyday life. In this gripping account, anthropologist Greg Beckett offers a stunning ethnographic portrait of ordinary people struggling to survive in Port-au-Prince in the twenty-first century. Drawing on over a decade of research, There Is No More Haiti builds on stories of death and rebirth to powerfully reframe the narrative of a country in crisis. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Haiti today.
What kinds of experiences do we have with the poor and the oppressed around the world? What do we really know about the ins and outs of the lives of those who exist in a world of extreme poverty or oppression? Global Scenes of Biblical Injustice simplifies and synthesizes the bewildering array of research and technical data which exists regarding these issues. Through the use of colorful, informative, and thoughtful vignettes, this book paints an easily understandable picture of the true nature of what may be called biblical injustice. This thought-provoking book incorporates challenges for a Christian response regarding those whose daily plights fly in the face of what Scripture teaches about justice.
Conducting ethnographic fieldwork with children presents anthropologists with particular challenges and limitations, as well as rewards and insights. Children: Ethnographic Encounters presents ten vivid accounts of researchers' experiences of working with children across a variety of cultural contexts. Part of the Ethnographic Encounters series, the book offers honest reflections on successes as well as failures and shows that in all cases – even those that 'failed' – anthropologists can learn something about children's position in their social world. Going beyond the usual focus on North America and Europe, the text offers comparative insights into the nature of childhood in different societies. The chapters provide first-hand accounts of fieldwork with children in diverse geographical places such as Mexico, the Ecuadorian Amazon, Rwanda, central India, Thailand, Malaysia, and China. The book provides hope, encouragement and inspiration to anyone planning to undertake ethnographic fieldwork with children and provides important insights to students and researchers working in the growing field of anthropology of children and childhood, in childhood studies, and related fields.
Taking a bio-social approach, this volume bridges critical gaps in the understanding of the daily lives and experiences of adolescents in diverse cultures around the world and provides insights into how interactions between biology, ecology, culture, and social structures influence the patterns of adolescent identity development.
The book sheds light on the experiences of immigrants in different parts of the world and other insightful reflections on the art of carrying out fieldwork in the present day, when the task of locating the ‘field’ seems to present a particular challenge for researchers. This book is of interest to experienced ethnographers working in the discipline of migration studies and also to scholars conducting ethnographic research in other fields.
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. Often socioeconomic conditions push these children to move from their homes to the streets, but sometimes they themselves may choose the allure of the perceived freedoms and opportunities that street life has to offer. What they find, instead, is violence, disease, and exploitation—the daily reality through which they learn to maneuver and survive. Wolseth describes the stresses, rewards, and failures of the organizations and educators who devote their resources to working with this population. The portrait of Santo Domingo’s street children and youth population that emerges is of a diverse community with variations that may be partly related to skin color, gender, and class. The conditions for these youth are changing as the economy of the Dominican Republic changes. Although the children at the core of this book live and sleep on avenues and plazas and in abandoned city buildings, they are not necessarily glue- and solvent-sniffing beggars or petty thieves on the margins of society. Instead, they hold a key position in the service sector of an economy centered on tourism. Life on the Malecón offers a window into the complex relationships children and youth construct in the course of mapping out their social environment. Using a child-centered approach, Wolseth focuses on the social lives of the children by relating the stories that they themselves tell as well as the activities he observes.
This volume brings together ethnographers conducting research on children living in crisis situations in both developing and developed regions, taking a cross-cultural approach that spans different cities in the global North and South to provide insight and analyses into the lifeworlds of their young, at-risk inhabitants. Looking at the lived experiences of poverty, drastic inequality, displacement, ecological degradation and war in countries including Haiti, Argentina and Palestine, the book shows how children both respond to and are shaped by their circumstances. Going beyond conventional images of children subjected to starvation, hunger, and disease to build an integrated analysis of what it means to be a child in crisis in the 21st century, the book makes a significant contribution to the nascent field of study concerned with development and childhood. With children now at the forefront of debates on human rights and poverty reduction, there is no better time for scholars, policymakers and the general public to understand the complex social, economic and political dynamics that characterize their present predicaments and future life chances.
This volume provides a systematic overview of the contemporary Latin American youth violence phenomenon. The authors focus specifically on youth gangs, juvenile justice issues, and applied research concerns, providing a rounded and balanced exploration of this increasingly important topic.
