Arianne M. Gaetano
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824840990
- eISBN:
- 9780824868192
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824840990.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This book is a longitudinal and multifaceted ethnographic study of rural Chinese women who, as youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, migrated from their rural hometowns to Beijing to take up jobs ...
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This book is a longitudinal and multifaceted ethnographic study of rural Chinese women who, as youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, migrated from their rural hometowns to Beijing to take up jobs in domestic service and hotel housekeeping, and as schoolteachers to the children of migrant workers. For over a decade, Gaetano sustained close contact with several individuals, interacting with their friends, coworkers and employers, visiting their village homes, and meeting their families and, eventually, in-laws and children. With engaging anecdotes and insightful testimonies, the book describes aspects of migrant women’s changing lives: their motivations and aspirations, journeys to the city, employment searches, promotions and changes, work conditions and relationships, shopping and leisure pursuits, illnesses, self-improvement efforts, romance and courtship, and transitions to marriage and motherhood. The longitudinal and biographical perspective provides a rich empirical basis for analysis of structural constraints, rooted in ideologies and discriminatory practices associated with intersecting gender and rural-urban hierarchies, that shape desires and identities, and have deleterious material consequences. Nevertheless, by pursuing new opportunities afforded by migration, and strategically applying accumulated knowledge and resources, these women forged better lives for themselves and their families. Migration for work thus increases rural women’s choices and possibilities for exercising agency, and advances gender equality, even as broader social inequalities persist to make their futures precarious.Less
This book is a longitudinal and multifaceted ethnographic study of rural Chinese women who, as youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, migrated from their rural hometowns to Beijing to take up jobs in domestic service and hotel housekeeping, and as schoolteachers to the children of migrant workers. For over a decade, Gaetano sustained close contact with several individuals, interacting with their friends, coworkers and employers, visiting their village homes, and meeting their families and, eventually, in-laws and children. With engaging anecdotes and insightful testimonies, the book describes aspects of migrant women’s changing lives: their motivations and aspirations, journeys to the city, employment searches, promotions and changes, work conditions and relationships, shopping and leisure pursuits, illnesses, self-improvement efforts, romance and courtship, and transitions to marriage and motherhood. The longitudinal and biographical perspective provides a rich empirical basis for analysis of structural constraints, rooted in ideologies and discriminatory practices associated with intersecting gender and rural-urban hierarchies, that shape desires and identities, and have deleterious material consequences. Nevertheless, by pursuing new opportunities afforded by migration, and strategically applying accumulated knowledge and resources, these women forged better lives for themselves and their families. Migration for work thus increases rural women’s choices and possibilities for exercising agency, and advances gender equality, even as broader social inequalities persist to make their futures precarious.
Aomar Boum
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804786997
- eISBN:
- 9780804788519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804786997.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
The introduction lays out the argument of the book, the challenges of native ethnography, and the issue of data collection. It provides a general history of Moroccan Jews and the reasons behind the ...
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The introduction lays out the argument of the book, the challenges of native ethnography, and the issue of data collection. It provides a general history of Moroccan Jews and the reasons behind the methodological focus on a remote Muslim population. This chapter also discusses in detail the social, economic, and educational background of the different generations.Less
The introduction lays out the argument of the book, the challenges of native ethnography, and the issue of data collection. It provides a general history of Moroccan Jews and the reasons behind the methodological focus on a remote Muslim population. This chapter also discusses in detail the social, economic, and educational background of the different generations.
Lucinda P. Bernheimer, Ronald Gallimore, and Barbar A K. Keogh
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226328522
- eISBN:
- 9780226328836
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226328836.003.0016
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
We discuss two longitudinal projects designed to understand the development and adaptation of children with developmental problems and their families. Project REACH and Project CHILD followed cohorts ...
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We discuss two longitudinal projects designed to understand the development and adaptation of children with developmental problems and their families. Project REACH and Project CHILD followed cohorts of 3 and 4-year olds with ambiguous developmental delays and their families for 30 and 20 years, respectively. At the time REACH began, many parents of children with delays were told that their child would eventually “grow out of it” suggesting that the child would eventually achieve his or her developmental milestones. What was lacking was a solid research base that examined this assumption: Will these children indeed “catch up?” Project REACH was designed to describe child characteristics and to address issues of measurement. Project CHILD, initiated 10 years later, replicated the REACH sampling procedure, and continued to track child characteristics over time. Inspired by ecocultural theory, the CHILD team broadened REACH’s design and methods to include children’s impact on family daily routines. Findings demonstrated that early delays were not transitory—a finding with important implications for the service delivery system. The mixed methods approach was critical to our understanding that a problem child does not necessarily mean a problem family, rather, that child and family outcomes are loosely linked.Less
We discuss two longitudinal projects designed to understand the development and adaptation of children with developmental problems and their families. Project REACH and Project CHILD followed cohorts of 3 and 4-year olds with ambiguous developmental delays and their families for 30 and 20 years, respectively. At the time REACH began, many parents of children with delays were told that their child would eventually “grow out of it” suggesting that the child would eventually achieve his or her developmental milestones. What was lacking was a solid research base that examined this assumption: Will these children indeed “catch up?” Project REACH was designed to describe child characteristics and to address issues of measurement. Project CHILD, initiated 10 years later, replicated the REACH sampling procedure, and continued to track child characteristics over time. Inspired by ecocultural theory, the CHILD team broadened REACH’s design and methods to include children’s impact on family daily routines. Findings demonstrated that early delays were not transitory—a finding with important implications for the service delivery system. The mixed methods approach was critical to our understanding that a problem child does not necessarily mean a problem family, rather, that child and family outcomes are loosely linked.
Kristen E. Cheney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226437408
- eISBN:
- 9780226437682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437682.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter brings attention to the daily struggles faced by young people in contemporary Uganda, where indeed all children are affected in some way by HIV/AIDS but also by persistent structural, ...
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This chapter brings attention to the daily struggles faced by young people in contemporary Uganda, where indeed all children are affected in some way by HIV/AIDS but also by persistent structural, household-level, and/or individual poverty. While HIV/AIDS has certainly shaped the lives of the young people who became youth research assistant for this study, their life stories also demonstrate that it is primarily poverty that continues to mark their experiences, influence their choices, and impinge on their life chances. Aside from growing up in the era of HIV/AIDS, these children are also part of the ‘youth bulge’ in population that has experienced the neoliberal retreat of the state, first under global economic restructuring and later under economic austerity. These factors all intersect to create the challenges and obstacles that shape young people’s lives today, providing illustrative examples of the life trajectories of orphans and vulnerable children as well as insights into the resilience and survival strategies employed by young people throughout Africa. In the process, it also reveals how an engaged researcher can become entwined with the lives of her research subjects.Less
This chapter brings attention to the daily struggles faced by young people in contemporary Uganda, where indeed all children are affected in some way by HIV/AIDS but also by persistent structural, household-level, and/or individual poverty. While HIV/AIDS has certainly shaped the lives of the young people who became youth research assistant for this study, their life stories also demonstrate that it is primarily poverty that continues to mark their experiences, influence their choices, and impinge on their life chances. Aside from growing up in the era of HIV/AIDS, these children are also part of the ‘youth bulge’ in population that has experienced the neoliberal retreat of the state, first under global economic restructuring and later under economic austerity. These factors all intersect to create the challenges and obstacles that shape young people’s lives today, providing illustrative examples of the life trajectories of orphans and vulnerable children as well as insights into the resilience and survival strategies employed by young people throughout Africa. In the process, it also reveals how an engaged researcher can become entwined with the lives of her research subjects.
Sarah Bronwen Horton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520283268
- eISBN:
- 9780520962545
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520283268.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Why do farmworkers experience heat death more frequently than other outdoor workers, and why are migrant men at particular risk? While heat death may appear a “natural” phenomenon, this book instead ...
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Why do farmworkers experience heat death more frequently than other outdoor workers, and why are migrant men at particular risk? While heat death may appear a “natural” phenomenon, this book instead implicates U.S. public policies in its production. Drawing upon nearly a decade of ethnography with the same 15 migrant farmworkers, this book examines the way that U.S. labor and immigration policies place them at particular risk in the fields, even as health and social assistance policies offer them little succor when their bodies begin to decline. Yet this book is not about heat death alone; instead, it uses the phenomenon to shed light on migrant farmworkers’ higher burden of chronic illness and cardiovascular mortality at home as well. The introduction addresses the ethical and logistical challenges posed by conducting longitudinal research with vulnerable populations such as migrant farmworkers and makes the case for an advocacy anthropology.Less
Why do farmworkers experience heat death more frequently than other outdoor workers, and why are migrant men at particular risk? While heat death may appear a “natural” phenomenon, this book instead implicates U.S. public policies in its production. Drawing upon nearly a decade of ethnography with the same 15 migrant farmworkers, this book examines the way that U.S. labor and immigration policies place them at particular risk in the fields, even as health and social assistance policies offer them little succor when their bodies begin to decline. Yet this book is not about heat death alone; instead, it uses the phenomenon to shed light on migrant farmworkers’ higher burden of chronic illness and cardiovascular mortality at home as well. The introduction addresses the ethical and logistical challenges posed by conducting longitudinal research with vulnerable populations such as migrant farmworkers and makes the case for an advocacy anthropology.
