I am a former true believer in school, but lost my faith. Yet I'm still teaching in universities, more than three decades on. I have been trying to figure this all out—all the problems, reasons, and solutions—for most of the last twenty years, and since I think by writing, I've written/edited four books about higher education in that time. (I had a prior career as a China anthropologist, which is important to me, but a story for another day.) I also read like a fiend, and on this list, which is a distillation of hundreds and hundreds of books, I have presented a few of my formative favorites.
I love this book because I learn something new each time I open it. And I've opened it hundreds of times.
I love the boundless information here about how human societies, across time and space, have created concepts of the child and childhood, which always intertwine with ideas and practices about learning. Almost nowhere has it ever looked like the familiar-to-us “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies that are usually used to represent “human nature.” In fact, each time I read anything in this book, our own social and cultural practices look stranger and stranger.
This book gives me ideas about the struggles we often have to nurture children and students in our familiar ways—and that's because we are fighting all the natural tendencies of involvement, autonomy, and competence that guide most learning everywhere.
The raising of children, their role in society, and the degree to which family and community is structured around them, varies quite significantly around the world. The Anthropology of Childhood provides the first comprehensive review of the literature on children from a distinctly anthropological perspective. Bringing together key evidence from cultural anthropology, history, and primate studies, it argues that our common understandings about children are narrowly culture-bound. Whereas dominant society views children as precious, innocent and preternaturally cute 'cherubs', Lancy introduces the reader to societies where children are viewed as unwanted, inconvenient 'changelings', or as desired but pragmatically commoditized 'chattels'.…
