Transfers of Belonging

Child Fostering in West Africa in the 20th Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-35980-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 19, 270 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

Reihe: Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies

In Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber traces the history of child fostering in northern Benin from the pre-colonial past to the present by pointing out the embeddedness of child foster practices and norms in a wider political process of change. Child fostering was, for a long time, not just one way of raising children, but seen as the appropriate way of doing so. This changed profoundly with the arrival of European ideas about birth parents being the ‘right’ parents, but also with the introduction of schooling and the differentiation of life chances. Besides providing deep historical and ethnographical insights, Transfers of Belonging offers a new theoretical frame for conceptualizing parenting.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Alber, Erdmute

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Familiensoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Sozialethnologie: Familie, Gender, Soziale Gruppen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Glossary

Introduction
Baatombu Peasants
National and Regional Embeddedness
Social Relations
Kinship Terminology
Fieldwork and Methods
Field Research
Thick Participation
Childhood Studies
Norm, Practice, Emotion

1 Theoretical Approaches and Concepts on Child Fostering
A Structural-functionalist Perspective: Parenthood and Social Reproduction
Bearing and Begetting: Birth Parenthood
Status Entitlement: Legal Parenthood
Nurturance, Training and Sponsorship: Social Parenthood
Delegation of Parenthood: Types, Reasons and Functions
Discussion
A Structuralist Perspective: The Circulation of Children
Discussion
Other Perspectives
The Turn to the Actor
Transfers of Imagined Belonging

2 Parenthood in Rural Borgu
Birth Parenthood
An Open Secret
Birth
Giving Birth in the Health Centre
Rites of Transition
Everyday Practices
Acquiring Knowledge
Yearning
Happy Foster Children
Conceptions of Parenthood
Motherhood
Fatherhood
Child Fostering
Decisions
Transferring a Child
Possible Foster Parents
Same Sex
Kinship
Hierarchy
Order of Siblings
Reasons for Child Fostering
Kinship Cohesion
Preventing Regressive Behaviour in Children
Social Parenthood Supports the Hierarchies
Children as Workers
Childlessness
Crisis Fostering
Women’s Interests
Child Fostering, Gender and Marriage
Exchanging Children and Women
&

Über Autor(innen)

Erdmute Alber (Ph.D. 1997) is chair of Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University (Germany). She has undertaken long-term field research in West Africa, especially in northern Benin. She has directed several research projects on kinship, generational relations and child fostering in West Africa and published widely in the field of political anthropology, childhood, kinship, intergenerational relations and care.