Beyond Parents: The Social World of Early Childhood and its Developmental Significance (Palgrave Studies on the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth) - Hardcover

Scheidecker, Gabriel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3032057671 ISBN 13: 9783032057679

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

This book provides a detailed look into the social world of infants and toddlers and explores the consequences of that environment on learning and socio-emotional development. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and systematic observation in a rural community in Madagascar, it shows that children there grow up in dense social networks from birth, surrounded not only by parents and siblings but also by peers, cousins, aunts, grandparents, neighbours, and more. It challenges dominant parent-centric frameworks that assume socio-emotional development begins in relationships with parents, which form the basis for a gradual expansion of children's social relations. By contrast, the multiple coexisting but distinct social relationships of young children in this study provide parallel developmental pathways. This enables them to acquire simultaneously hierarchical-interdependent and egalitarian-autonomous modes of relationships, emotion, and self. The book presents a powerful critique of mainstream developmental science and calls for a broader, more inclusive understanding of early childhood across cultures.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gabriel Scheidecker is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His ethnographic research focuses on childhood and the politics of parenting in Madagascar, Vietnam, and Germany. He currently leads an SNSF Starting Grant that critically examines early childhood and parenting interventions in the Global South.

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"Beyond Parents is an outstanding contribution to developmental  science and Anthropology.  Self-construal, social and emotional trust, and competence, and the contexts in Madagascar where these ways of learning and growth occur, are brilliantly brought to life by Scheidecker. He expands our understanding of socialization to include a wider range of complementary children’s social partners – not only caretakers/parents but many others as well. Intervention and development programs should always begin with this kind of understanding of the communities and children they intend to support."
—Tom Weisner, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

This book provides a detailed look into the social world of infants and toddlers and explores the consequences of that environment on learning and socio-emotional development. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and systematic observation in a rural community in Madagascar, it shows that children there grow up in dense social networks from birth, surrounded not only by parents and siblings but also by peers, cousins, aunts, grandparents, neighbours, and more. It challenges dominant parent-centric frameworks that assume socio-emotional development begins in relationships with parents, which form the basis for a gradual expansion of children's social relations. By contrast, the multiple coexisting but distinct social relationships of young children in this study provide parallel developmental pathways. This enables them to acquire simultaneously hierarchical-interdependent and egalitarian-autonomous modes of relationships, emotion, and self. The book presents a powerful critique of mainstream developmental science and calls for a broader, more inclusive understanding of early childhood across cultures.

Gabriel Scheidecker is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His ethnographic research focuses on childhood and the politics of parenting in Madagascar, Vietnam, and Germany. He currently leads an SNSF Starting Grant that critically examines early childhood and parenting interventions in the Global South.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 3032057671
• ISBN 13: 9783032057679
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 299
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Paradox Interactive; https://plaion.com/; ; Embracer Platz 1; H�fen; 6604; Österreich