This book is about how work enters and affects the lives of children in Africa, taking for granted neither the traditional values surrounding childrens work, nor the international standards against it. Many African societies nurture their children on the ingrained notion that children must work as part of their process of growing up. Children participate in their families and communities through the work they do in the house and in whatever else their families do. Such views are, however, antithetical to the dominant views in Europe and North America which see childhood as a time of freedom from responsibility and economic activity. These views have become so popular with the elites in other countries to the extent that they now drive international campaigns against child labour, and have been incorporated into what are now considered universal international standards and conventions. This book was conceived within the framework of the CODESRIA tradition of taking African perspectives seriously and not allowing social research in Africa to become subservient to values from outside. African scholars remain keenly aware of the need not to isolate themselves from developments in the wider world, which could lead to stagnation. This book, through empirical observation of the lives of African children, the work they do, its place in their lives, and what the children say about it, proposes new perspectives towards a new understanding of this complex stage of human development. Work is not simply about the right to income: work provides identity and status in society, and participation in the community. People relate to one another through work. Those who do not work are often without status and are at the periphery of society. One of the major ways in which this book differs from most of the available literature is in the understanding it brings to the problem of child labour. There are economic reasons why children may need an income of their own. There is the demographic fact that the proportion of children to adults in low-income countries is nearly double that in high-income societies. This book attempts to demonstrate that work is both necessary and beneficial in terms of a childs development to become a full, responsible, and respectable member of society.

This book is about how work enters and affects the lives of children in Africa, taking for granted neither the traditional values surrounding children’s work, nor the international standards against it. Many African societies nurture their children on the ingrained notion that children must work as part of their process of growing up. Children participate in their families and communities through the work they do in the house and in whatever else their families do. Such views are, however, antithetical to the dominant views in Europe and North America which see childhood as a time of freedom from responsibility and economic activity. These views have become so popular with the elites in other countries to the extent that they now drive international campaigns against ‘child labour’, and have been incorporated into what are now considered universal international standards and conventions. This book was conceived within the framework of the CODESRIA tradition of taking African perspectives seriously and not allowing social research in Africa to become subservient to values from outside. African scholars remain keenly aware of the need not to isolate themselves from developments in the wider world, which could lead to stagnation. This book, through empirical observation of the lives of African children, the work they do, its place in their lives, and what the children say about it, proposes new perspectives towards a new understanding of this complex stage of human development. Work is not simply about the right to income: work provides identity and status in society, and participation in the community. People relate to one another through work. Those who do not work are often without status and are at the periphery of society. One of the major ways in which this book differs from most of the available literature is in the understanding it brings to the problem of ‘child labour’. There are economic reasons why children may need an income of their own. There is the demographic fact that the proportion of children to adults in low-income countries is nearly double that in high-income societies. This book attempts to demonstrate that work is both necessary and beneficial in terms of a child’s development to become a full, responsible, and respectable member of society.

Most children in Africa start working from a very early age, helping the family or earning wages. Should this work be abolished, tolerated, or encouraged? Such questions are the subject of much debate. International and national organizations, employers, parents, and children often have diverse opinions and put pressure in different directions. The contributions in this book offer intensive fieldwork and careful analysis of children's activities, considering childhood and family, work and play, work in rural and urban contexts, paths to learning, work and school, and children's rights. (Series: Reports on African Studies / Beitrage zur Afrikaforschung - Vol. 52)

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Millions of children throughout Africa undertake many forms of farm and domestic work. Some of this work is for wages, some is on their family's own small plots and some is forced and/or harmful. This book examines children's involvement in such work. It argues that framing all children's engagement in economic activity as 'child labour', with all the associated negative connotations, is problematic. This is particularly the case in Africa where many rural children must work to survive and where, the contributors argue, much of the work undertaken is not harmful. The conceptual and case-based chapters reframe the debate about children's work and harm in rural Africa with the aim of shifting research, public discourse and policy so that they better serve the interest of rural children and their families.

This examination of changes in adolescent fertility emphasizes the changing social context within which adolescent childbearing takes place.

With 70 per cent of its people under the age of 30, Africa is the world's youngest continent. African youngsters have been largely characterized as either vulnerable victims of the frequent humanitarian crises that plague their homelands, or as violent militarized youth and 'troubled' gang members. Young people's contributions to processes of educational provision, peace building and participatory human development in Africa are often ignored. While acknowledging the profound challenges associated with growing up in an environment of uncertainty and deprivation, African Childhoods sheds light on African children's often constructive engagement with a variety of societal conditions, adverse or otherwise, and their ability to positively influence their own lives and those of others.

Spanning the countries of South Africa, Swaziland, and Ghana, this collection of work brings into focus child and youth experience together as a collage of anthropology, creative writing, poetry, and the fine arts. Woven together by questions related to the political economy of child and youth well-being, identity formation, and the multiple layers through which children articulate their health-narrative, ‘ Bodies of Knowledge’ considers living in and coping with chronic illness, spirit-possession, and death. The growth in Critical Health Humanities and the Arts globally, suggests the desire for blended efforts to draw in a wider breadth of knowledge that cuts across the divided worlds of critical social science and the arts. This book, set in an African context, offers myriad possibilities for cross-disciplinary synergies as learning sites. It is a critical contribution to the field of children and childhood studies.

This book focuses on African childhood and youth within the context of development and socialization where children are expected to be moulded in the image of adults. In many African societies children are generally held as passive bearers of the demands of adults, regardless of the fact that they are often exposed to a multitude of challenges that originate from the capriciousness of those adults. However, buoyed by international conventions and national legislations that offer them greater protection, and the ubiquitous internet that exposes them to childhood and youth experiences elsewhere, many of them are increasingly becoming assertive in homes, schools, and communities as well as re-invigorating their survival and self-preservation instincts. It is in this regard that this book, through the various chapters, engages with their competencies, skills and creativity to respond to experiential challenges as independent migrants or ones under coercion working in city streets and markets or cocoa farms or juggling work and schooling in pursuit of some education. Confronted with their parents and siblings health predicaments and the inadequacies of state and familial care, or urgent negotiation of their sexualities, they demonstrate incredible resilience. Similarly, their perceptiveness is demonstrated in a unique appreciation of politics and its actors and a capacity to assume responsibilities beyond their chronological age. Thus while highlighting some of the challenges confronting African children, the book provides gripping evidence of how they resiliently negotiate those challenges.

For all that is known about the depth and breadth of African American history, we still understand surprisingly little about the lives of African American children, particularly those affected by northern emancipation. But hidden in institutional records, school primers and penmanship books, biographical sketches, and unpublished documents is a rich archive that reveals the social and affective worlds of northern Black children. Drawing evidence from the urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Crystal Webster's innovative research yields a powerful new history of African American childhood before the Civil War. Webster argues that young African Americans were frequently left outside the nineteenth century's emerging constructions of both race and childhood. They were marginalized in the development of schooling, ignored in debates over child labor, and presumed to lack the inherent innocence ascribed to white children. But Webster shows that Black children nevertheless carved out physical and social space for play, for learning, and for their own aspirations. Reading her sources against the grain, Webster reveals a complex reality for antebellum Black children. Lacking societal status, they nevertheless found meaningful agency as historical actors, making the most of the limited freedoms and possibilities they enjoyed.