Where Have All The Babies Gone?: Toward an Anthropology of Infants (and Their Caretakers)

Abstract

In much anthropological literature infants are frequently neglected as outside the scope of both the concept of culture and disciplinary methods. This article proposes six reasons for this exclusion of infants from anthropological discussse include the fieldworker's own memories and parental status, the problematic question of agency in infants and their presumed dependence on others, their routine attachment to women, their seeming inability to communicate, their inconvenient propensity to leak from a variety of orifices, and their apparently low quotient of rationality. Yet investigation of how infants are conceived of beyond the industrialized West can lead us to envision them far differently from how they are conceived in the West (including by anthropologists). Confronting such comparative data suggests the desirability of considering infants as both relevant and beneficial to the anthropological endeavor.

The Bioarchaeological Investigation of Childhood and Social Age: Problems and Prospects

“…It has also been argued that the study of childhood was delayed because the academic circles, composed of adults, acted to marginalize children's lives and voices (Caputo 1995, p. 19;Prout 2005;Roveland 2001, p. 46). Similarly, the exclusion of infants and children was also evident in social anthropology (Benthall 1992;Gottlieb 2000). …”

“…There has been a recent flurry of activity in the study of children and childhood in archaeology and anthropology, especially in the past 10 years, with the publication of many papers, books and theses (for example , Baxter 2005a;Benthall 1992;Bluebond-Langner and Korbin 2007;Cohen and Rutter 2007;Finlay 2000;Gottlieb 2000;Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003;Kamp 2001b;Lewis 2007;Lorentz 1998;Moore and Scott 1997;Panter-Brick 1998;Park 1998;Rega 1997;Schwartzman 2001;Scott 1999;Sofaer Derevenski 2000;Stearns 2006;Wileman 2005), as well as an increase of conferences and conference sessions 1 on this topic. Recently, there has been a rising tension between social archaeologists and bioarchaeologists in their approach to the study of human remains (Sofaer 2006), although this is perhaps more evident in Britain than in the American school of anthropology (Hamilton 2007;Mays 1997).…”

Food, feeding and the material everyday geographies of infants: possibilities and potentials

“…There is an intense governmentality of early childhood (N. Rose, 1990). As a result of the limited engagement from geographers and other critical social scientists (although see Brownlie & Leith, 2011;Gottlieb, 2000;Lupton, 2013), very early childhood remains largely the domain of child development psychologists, psychoanalysts and attachment theorists, particularly, as Moss and Petrie (2002) argue, within the Anglophone countries of the Global North (for exception see Keller, 2013;Olsson, 2010).…”

Gender inequality in childhood: Toward a life course perspective

“…Given the constancy of gender inequality, it is surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to its variable manifestations across the life course, particularly at earlier ages (see also Gottlieb, 2000). Gender inequality affects females and males throughout their lives.…”