Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time PDF
Preview Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time
(cid:11)(cid:14)(cid:25)(cid:26)(cid:24)(cid:14)(cid:23)(cid:10)(cid:9) (cid:8)(cid:24)(cid:10)(cid:29)(cid:20)(cid:27)(cid:18)(cid:23)(cid:7)(cid:24)(cid:28)(cid:25)(cid:17)(cid:29)(cid:30)(cid:23) (cid:6)(cid:27)(cid:20)(cid:9)(cid:23)(cid:5)(cid:29)(cid:23)(cid:6)(cid:27)(cid:9)(cid:30)(cid:24)(cid:17) (cid:4)(cid:20)(cid:27)(cid:30)(cid:19)(cid:24)(cid:17)(cid:23)(cid:3)(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:20)(cid:2)(cid:17) (cid:31)(cid:30)(cid:29)(cid:28)(cid:27)(cid:26)(cid:25)(cid:24)(cid:23)(cid:22)(cid:24)(cid:27) (cid:21)(cid:20)(cid:19)(cid:18)(cid:30)(cid:23)(cid:22)(cid:17)(cid:23)(cid:16)(cid:19)(cid:15)(cid:14)(cid:25)(cid:13)(cid:18)(cid:17)(cid:12) (cid:11)(cid:15)(cid:14)(cid:25)(cid:13)(cid:18)(cid:17)(cid:12)(cid:23)(cid:10)(cid:9)(cid:25)(cid:24)(cid:18)(cid:17) (cid:31)(cid:30)(cid:30)(cid:29)(cid:28)(cid:27)(cid:26)(cid:25)(cid:28)(cid:24)(cid:23)(cid:22)(cid:21)(cid:21)(cid:20)(cid:29)(cid:27)(cid:19)(cid:18)(cid:24)(cid:17)(cid:23)(cid:26)(cid:29) (cid:16)(cid:24)(cid:17)(cid:24)(cid:27)(cid:20)(cid:19)(cid:18)(cid:23)(cid:22)(cid:19)(cid:20)(cid:29)(cid:17)(cid:17)(cid:23)(cid:15)(cid:21)(cid:27)(cid:19)(cid:24)(cid:23)(cid:27)(cid:30)(cid:14)(cid:23)(cid:13)(cid:25)(cid:12)(cid:24) Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents Deborah Levison · Mary Jo Maynes · Frances Vavrus Editors Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time Editors Deborah Levison Mary Jo Maynes University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA Minneapolis, MN, USA Frances Vavrus University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA ISBN 978-3-030-63631-9 ISBN 978-3-030-63632-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63632-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Friedhelm Steinen-Broo at eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge support from the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) at the University of Minnesota, which has made this book possible. Funds from the Center have supported a learning community of faculty, doctoral students, and visitors organized around the theme of “Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, and Agents” (YaSOA). We would like to thank the many students and scholars who have participated in YaSOA workshops, lectures, and writing retreats during the past seven years, and especially those who have contributed chapters to this book. We also want to thank ICGC Director Karen Brown and Laura Bell, ICGC Administrator extraordinaire, for their ongoing support. During the final stages of preparation of the manuscript, Graduate Assistants Kathryn Burden and Consuelo Sanchez Bautista provided valuable editorial work. v Contents 1 Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: An Introduction ........................................... 1 Deborah Levison, Mary Jo Maynes, and Frances Vavrus Part I Construction of Children and Youth as SUBJECTS 2 “So How’s Your Childhood Going?” A Historian of Childhood Confronts Her Own Archive ................................. 13 Elena Jackson Albarrán 3 Encountering Emotions in the Archive of Childhood and Youth ...... 33 Emily Bruce 4 Visualizing the Spaces of Childhood in Graphic Memoirs ......... 47 Mary Jo Maynes 5 Turning off the Recorder: Caring Relationships in Research with Youth ................................................ 69 Judith Josephat Merinyo and Laura Wangsness Willemsen 6 Productive Tensions in Interdisciplinary and Mixed-Methods Research on Youths’ Livelihoods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Joan DeJaeghere Part II Critiquing OBJECTification of Children and Youth 7 The Daughters of Bengal: A History of “Western Eyes” on the Girl Victim .......................................... 103 Samia Khatun 8 Searching for the Child in Colonial Uganda’s Educational Archives ....................................... 121 Elisabeth E. Lefebvre 9 Black Sites of Speculation: A Case for Theorizing Black Childhood as a Subject in Black Adult Narratives ............... 141 Tammy C. Owens vii viii Contents 10 Archives, Adoption Records, and Owning Historical Memory ..... 155 Kelly Condit-Shrestha 11 Global Girl Policy and the Girl Effect: Gendered Origins and Silences ............................................... 175 Karen Brown Part III Recognizing Children and Youth as AGENTS 12 Is It Okay to Critique Youth Activists? Notes on the Power and Danger of Complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Jessica K. Taft 13 Re/Writing Gendered Scripts: A Longitudinal Research Partnership Reshaping Gender and Education Policy and Praxis in Zanzibar, Tanzania ...................................... 209 Emily Markovich Morris 14 Generational Power in Research with Children: Reflections on Risk and “Voice” ........................................ 227 Anna Bolgrien, Deborah Levison, and Frances Vavrus 15 Youth Circulations: Tracing the Real and Imagined Circulations of Global Youth ................................. 245 Lauren Heidbrink and Michele Statz Index ........................................................ 261 About the Editors Deborah Levison studies children’s work and implications of work for education in low-income countries; her publications include a co-authored book, Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work (2010). Her recent project, Animating Children’s Views, involves developing and piloting a survey methodology to learn perspectives of 12–17-year-olds in the Global South. A Professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, USA, Levison has a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan, where she also trained in population studies. She is a co-Principal Investigator on the IPUMS-International data project. She instigated and co-leads the formation of an interdisciplinary University of Minnesota research group on children and childhood that led to this book. Mary Jo Maynes is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She is a historian of Modern Europe with interests in comparative and world history. Her work explores the social and cultural history of the family, gender and generational relations, class dynamics, and personal narratives. Her books include The Family: A World History (Oxford, 2012), co-authored with Ann Waltner; Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History (Cornell, 2008), co- authored with Jennifer Pierce and Barbara Laslett; Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History (Indiana, 2004), co-edited with Birgitte Søland and Christina Benninghaus; and Taking the Hard Road: Life Course and Class Identity in French and German Workers’ Autobiographies of the Industrial Era (North Carolina, 1995). She co-leads an interdisciplinary University of Minnesota research group on children and childhood that led to this book. Frances Vavrus is Professor in the Program in Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota and Director of Special Initiatives at the University’s Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. Her research explores how schooling has served as a site for development interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on schooling for girls and teacher education. Her publications include Desire and Decline: Schooling amid Crisis in Tanzania (2003), Teaching in Tension: International Pedagogies, National Policies, and Teachers’ Practices in Tanzania (2013), and Schooling as Uncertainty: An Ethnographic Memoir in Comparative Education (forthcoming). She co-leads an interdisciplinary University of Minnesota research group on chil- dren and childhood that led to this book. ix List of Figures Fig. 2.1 Title page of the author’s childhood diary .................... . 15 Fig. 2.2 Diary entry: Mother as advocate ........................... . 16 Fig. 2.3 Diary entry: Writing conventions ........................... . 17 Fig. 2.4 Diary entry: Verse form .................................. . 18 Fig. 2.5 Diary entries: Printing and cursive .......................... . 21 Fig. 2.6 Diary entry: Self-censorship and editorial sensibilities .......... . 23 Fig. 2.7 Diary entry: Challenge Shuttle explosion .................... . 25 Fig. 2.8 Diary entry: Processing the trauma of Challenger Shuttle explosion ............................................. . 26 Fig. 4.1 Art Spiegelman, Maus ................................... . 49 Fig. 4.2 Art Spiegelman, Maus ................................... . 53 Fig. 4.3 David Small, Stitches .................................... . 54 Fig. 4.4 Alison Bechdel, Fun Home ............................... . 56 Fig. 4.5 Alison Bechdel, Fun Home ............................... . 56 Fig. 4.6 Lat, Kampung Boy ...................................... . 58 Fig. 4.7 Lat, Kampung Boy ...................................... . 59 Fig. 4.8 Kunwu Li, A Chinese Life ................................ . 61 Fig. 4.9 Kunwu Li, A Chinese Life ................................ . 62 Fig. 4.10 Mogorosi Motshumi, The Initiation ......................... . 63 Fig. 4.11 Mogorosi Motshumi, The Initiation ......................... . 65 Fig. 8.1 Miss Pilgrim with a small girl ............................. 125 Fig. 8.2 Three generations of Gayaza girls outside the secondary school chapel .......................................... 127 Fig. 10.1 Author’s birth certificate ................................. 156 xi Children and Youth as Subjects, 1 Objects, Agents: An Introduction Deborah Levison, Mary Jo Maynes, and Frances Vavrus What is childhood, and how can the concept incorporate widely varying circum- stances across space and time? How do we learn about what it means to be young when the perspectives of youth are generally absent from historical records and contemporary scholarship? How can students and scholars in childhood stud- ies reimagine children as active agents rather than representing them merely as objects of investigation? Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents illustrates a wide range of innovative approaches to the interdisciplinary study of childhood and youth. Childhood/youth studies as an interdisciplinary academic field has long rejected universal definitions of childhood and has instead explored different conceptu- alizations of childhood and youth and varying manifestations of the agency and subject status of young people. The chapters in this book illustrate how different approaches can illuminate the wide variety of ways in which childhood and youth have been conceptualized and experienced in different times and places. The authors in this volume contribute to the larger project of understand- ing children and youth as subjects, objects, and agents. Throughout, we examine the ways in which children and youth have been constructed as subjects of study in different historical periods and places, and also the varied forms of evidence scholars can employ to understand children’s subjectivity—that is, their affective and experiential worlds. We also consider how different regimes of power—the D. Levison (*) · M. J. Maynes · F. Vavrus University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. J. Maynes e-mail: [email protected] F. Vavrus e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1 D. Levison et al. (eds.), Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63632-6_1
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