Anthropology is regarded as scientific study of ‘man and his work’. it studies the network of social relationship. Then the two important questions which come to our mind: (1) Are children NOT human beings? (2) Are children NOT part of network of social relationships or social structure?
Children were not taken seriously by earlier ethnographers or cultural/social anthropologists with a conviction that ‘the study of ‘children’ comes under the domain of ’psychology‘ and therefore ‘children‘ should no be taken seriously by them. Further children were probably thought by them to be immature informants for providing relevant field data for ethnographic writings.
an other reason my be that ethnographers in the field were usually not married and did not have children, so their personal focus and awareness was not on children. This has changes since the 70thies when Ethnographers came with their wifes/husbands and their children and then the focus was also more on the children. Now there are several studies on childen and childhood (See David Lancy : Te Anthopology of childhood (2014))
Please Go To This Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography
Ulrike Stohrer, Many thanks for your reply. David is a good friend of mine. He invited me to his department to deliver a lecture when I was in the US as a Fulbright fellow. I know about all his major publications. The reason stated by you is one. There are many other reasons. There is one interesting article titled “why anthropologists don’t like children?” Kindly read it. Children were probably viewed as “incompetent” and “irrational“ by earlier ethnographers. We therefore don’t find many child-centered ethnographies written by them. Then the question is how can we ignore children in a holistic study of a community when they constitute more than 30% of the total community population. Thank you very much for your participation in the discussio.
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