Category Archives: ACYIG Updates

Latest Spotlight on Scholarship: Meghanne Barker’s “Throw your Voice”

The ACYIG is delighted to present our latest Spotlight on Scholarship:

Cuties: Exploring Blurred Boundaries Between Puppets and Children in Kazakhstani Culture

Left image:Two girls sit at the bottom of a slide. Each has a floppy hat on her lap. The girl on the left has a plastic pony inside the hat, its legs visible. The girl on the right has a tall, thin doll lying on top of the hat. Right image: Children dressed in tutus and curly wigs stand with hands posed in air
Image credit: Justin Barker

Barker, Meghanne. 2024. Throw Your Voice: Suspended Animations in Kazakhstani Childhoods. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

A dog named Kashtanka finds herself lost and alone. Her master, a carpenter, has taken her out but wandered off. A new master takes her in, feeds her, and teaches her to perform. She is well-fed but becomes bored in this new life, restricted to a single room and an endless routine. Then, one night, the gander who lives with her dies suddenly. She replaces him in the master’s act in the circus. At her debut, her first master is in the audience. He calls out to her, and she jumps back into his arms. She returns to her first home. [read more]

Latest Spotlight on Scholarship: Junehui Ahn’s “Between Self and Community: Children’s Personhood in a Globalized South Korea”

The ACYIG is delighted to present our latest Spotlight on Scholarship:

Dilemmas of raising a global child in rapidly transforming South Korea

Ahn, Junehui. 2024. Between Self and Community: Children’s Personhood in a Globalized South Korea. Rutgers NJ: Rutgers University Press.

The Rainbow Room in Somang Preschool (Seoul) looked like the classroom I previously studied at a midwestern U.S. preschool. Walls were decorated with children’s artwork and [see more]

https://acyig.americananthro.org/spotlight-on-scholarship/

Announcing ACYIG’s Inaugural book prize winner…

The Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) is delighted to announce our inaugural prize for best new book representing the anthropology of childhood or youth goes to… Camilla Morelli, for her book Children of the Rainforest: Shaping the Future in Amazonia (Rutgers 2023).

Morelli’s remarkable ethnography traces how Indigenous Matses children are actively driving cultural change in their communities in a globalising world, addressing old questions about children’s agentive roles in generational cultural shifts and suggesting provocative new questions about what anthropology may have been overlooking about the cultural and global significance of children’s imaginings, affective attachments, and aspirations. The prize committee agreed that Morelli’s monograph exemplified the criteria of originality, relevance to the anthropology of childhood and/or youth, potential for significant impact on the field, and readability. In addition, Morelli’s book is rich with ethnographic detail, children’s drawings and photographs, making this an engaging and accessible text for a wide readership. Morelli’s clear and compelling storytelling makes it appear as though ethnographic research with children in a remote forest setting is easy. To so effectively trace the processes of cultural change from local to global levels from children’s perspectives takes an ethnographer of impressive skill and demands tremendous emotional and physical labour. Congratulations, Camilla on your achievement.

Link to Morelli’s book

2023 ACYIG Book Prize Call for Nominations

The Anthropology of Childhood and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) is pleased to announce our inaugural Book Prize competition. The ACYIG Book Prize Committee will award $300.00 to an anthropologically-focused book published in 2022-2023 that is cutting-edge, well-written, and contributes significantly to our understanding of children and youth.

Those nominated (self-nominations accepted) must be members of ACYIG. Nominations should be accompanied by four copies of the book, and a letter from the nominator (no longer than 500 words) addressing the book in terms of: (1) originality; (2) relevance to the anthropology of childhood and/or youth; (3) potential for significant impact on the field. No edited volumes or textbooks will be considered.

The awardee will be chosen in Fall 2023, and the Book Prize Committee review of the winning volume will be included in the Spring 2024 edition of NEOS, the flagship publication of ACYIG.

Nomination Letter Deadline: Monday, September 25, 2023

Committee confirmation email will be sent by: Monday October 9, 2023

Books must be sent to Prize Committee by: Monday, October 16, 2023

  • Please send nomination letter by email to

Ida Fadzillah Leggett, AYCIG Book Committee Chair

Ida.Leggett@mtsu.edu         

  • Within the nomination confirmation email, nominators will receive instructions on where to send four copies of the book.
  • The ACYIG Book Prize winner will be announced in Fall 2023.

Questions? Please email Ida Fadzillah Leggett at Ida.Leggett@mtsu.edu

Latest Spotlight on Scholarship: Maija-Eliina Sequeira asks, “What happens when children disagree?”

April 2023

What happens when children disagree?

Sequeira, Maija-Eliina. 2023 “Fairness, Partner Choice, and Punishment: An Ethnographic Study of Cooperative Behavior among Children in Helsinki, Finland.” Ethos https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12385.

 

Read Maija’s article here

Maija Sequeira is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She is interested in how children learn and use social hierarchies in their everyday lives, and uses experimental and ethnographic methods in Finland and Colombia to explore this from both cross-cultural and developmental perspectives.

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