Enriched with findings from anthropological scholarship, this book provides a guide to childhood in different cultures, past and present.

The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood offers a portrait of childhood across time, culture, species, and environment. Anthropological research on learning in childhood has been scarce, but this book will change that. It demonstrates that anthropologists studying childhood can offer a description and theoretically sophisticated account of children's learning and its role in their development, socialization, and enculturation. Further, it shows the particular contribution that children's learning makes to the construction of society and culture as well as the role that culture-acquiring children play in human evolution. Book jacket.

This unprecedented collection of articles is an introduction to the study of cultural variations in childhood across the world and to the theoretical frameworks for investigating and interpreting them. Presents a history of cross-cultural approaches to child-development Recent articles examine diverse contexts of childhood in ecological, semiotic, and sociolinguistic terms Includes ethnographic studies of childhood in the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, East Asia, Europe and North America Illuminates the process through which people become the bearers of culturally/historically specific identities Serves as an ideal text for anthropology courses focusing on childhood, as well as classes on development psychology

How are children raised in different cultures? What is the role of children in society? How are families and communities structured around them? Now in its third edition, this deeply engaging book delves into these questions by reviewing and cataloging the findings of over 100 years of anthropological scholarship dealing with childhood and adolescence. It is organized developmentally, moving from infancy through to adolescence and early adulthood, and enriched with anecdotes from ethnography and the daily media, to paint a nuanced and credible picture of childhood in different cultures, past and present. This new edition has been expanded and updated with over 350 new sources, and introduces a number of new topics, including how children learn from the environment, middle childhood, and how culture is 'transmitted' between generations. It remains the essential book to read to understand what it means to be a child in our complex, ever-changing world.

Writing a book about play leads to wondering. In writing this book, I wondered first if it would be taken seriously and then if it might be too serious. Eventually, I realized that these concerns were cast in terms of the major dichotomy that I wished to question, that is, the very perva sive and very inaccurate division that Western cultures make between play and seriousness (or play and work, fantasy and reality, and so forth). The study of play provides researchers with a special arena for re-thinking this opposition, and in this book an attempt is made to do this by reviewing and evaluating studies of children's transformations (their play) in relation to the history of anthropologists' transformations (their theories). While studying play, I have wondered in the company of many individuals. I would first like to thank my husband, John Schwartzman, for acting as both my strongest supporter and, as an anthropological colleague, my severest critic. His sense of nonsense is always novel as well as instructive. I am also very grateful to Linda Barbera-Stein for her Sherlock Holmes style help in locating obscure references, checking and cross-checking information, and patience and persistence in the face of what at times appeared to be bibliographic chaos. I also owe special thanks to my teachers of anthropology-Paul J. Bohannan, Johannes Fabian, Edward T. Hall, and Roy Wagner-whose various orientations have directly and indirectly influenced the approach presented in this book.

Publisher Description

An intriguing, sometimes shocking, journey across the world to show how children are raised in different cultures.