An Anthropologist and Children in a Street War with Social Exclusion

Confessions from Fieldwork

Bibliographic Data

ID9784853
AuthorsLucyna Tumanowicz (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume104
Issue3
Pages361-382
Publication date2017-09-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueČeský lid (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-0794 • E-ISSN: 2570-9216
PublisherInstitute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences (PUBLISHER • CZ)
DOI10.21104/cl.2017.3.04
OpenAlexW2757005197
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

The author discusses the issue of social exclusion from an anthropological point of view, incorporating into it elements of both feminist and biomedical discourse. She argues for the universal vulnerability of every human body as well as for the universality of certain features and mechanisms of social exclusion entwined within the experience of trauma. Drawing on the concept of 'misfitting' borrowed from the feminist theory of vulnerability, she explores trajectories of socially excluded bodies caught up in a vicious circle of violence. In her view, the only valid way to break this circle is to evoke empathy in human beings by means of a visceral rather than intellectual approach. "Embodied cognition" as a means of fighting social exclusion is a case in point of this approach. The arguments presented in the paper are based on the author's fieldwork experiences among street children in Tanzania, which have inextricably intermingled with her own lifespan trajectory

Criminology · Political science · Social exclusion · Sociology · Law · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

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