Observing Adam’s children
Missionary ethnographers and the discovery of a new world of childhood
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7796845 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ran Segev (Akademie der Weltreligionen, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1016-1038 |
| Publication date | 2024-08-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0275-7206 • E-ISSN: 1477-2612 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02757206.2023.2204882 |
| OpenAlex | W4376616451 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 47 |
One of the striking elements in proto-ethnographic literature is the attention given by colonial writers to child-rearing practices around the world. This article revisits the early modern "discovery of childhood" by analyzing case studies in which religious writers documented the experience of growing up in non-European societies. Taking examples from Spanish America and North Africa, I argue that missionaries of various confessions raised awareness about the diversity of childhood experiences and lifestyles, and in so doing, exposed the multiple ways by which children were expected to integrate into their societies as they grew. I further claim that documenting the different ways of nurturing children opened new paths to conceptualize childhood and education, and helped to expose the socially constructed nature of human values and practices
Colonialism · Developmental psychology · Diversity (politics · Early childhood · Ethnography · Sociology · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Early Modern Women Writers · Gender Studies · History · Latin American history and culture · Psychology
Culture
The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke
Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800
Inventing Human ScienceEighteenth-Century Domains
Anthropology
John Locke and America
Experiencing Nature
Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Secret Science
Forgotten children
Centuries of childhood
A History of Curiosity
Jesuit Political Thought
The Formation of the Child in Early Modern Spain
Jean de Brébeuf and the Wendat Voices of Seventeenth-Century New France
John Locke's Images of Childhood
A Different Mode of Civility’
Ethnography and Cultural Translation in the Early Modern Missions
Locke's Anthropology
The Policy of "Francisation" as Applied to the Indians During the Ancien Regime
Iberian missionaries in God’s vineyard
Catholic Orientalism
Painting the Aztec Past in Early Colonial Mexico
The French Enlightenment and Its Others
Savage or Solitary
Jesuit Scientific Activity in the Overseas Missions, 1540-1773
Translating Nature
Montaigne and the Cannibals
Inhabitants of rustic parts of the world
New worlds and renaissance ethnology1
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |