Review by Choice Review
Anthropological studies of children and childhood go back at least to Margaret Mead's empirical Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and perhaps even further, to Edward Tylor's hypothesis that children are living representatives of prehistoric cultures (Primitive Culture, 1871). But only in the last 25 years has this subfield of cultural and social anthropology burgeoned, achieved the respect it deserves, and amassed a body of sophisticated and theorized literature dedicated to the subject. Opening her book with a brief history of childhood studies in anthropology, Montgomery (childhood studies, Open Univ.) provides a fine review of the literature and a synthesis of anthropological work in eight areas. Succeeding chapters cover diverse social definitions of the child; children as parts of families and peer groups; child discipline and abuse; children playing, working, and learning language; child sexuality; and adolescence and initiation. Childhood studies clearly contribute to larger anthropological understandings and reinforce the anthropological insight that human universals--in this case, developmental processes that are part of the growth of all children--are treated, interpreted, assigned meanings, and experienced differently in different cultures. A timely, readable, and important work for all academic libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Berleant-Schiller emerita, University of Connecticut
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
