At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil - Softcover

Hecht, Tobias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521598699 ISBN 13: 9780521598699

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Through innovative fieldwork and ethnographic writing, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why - given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns - there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions that participants called "radio workshops," street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researchers would be unlikely to pose. At the center of this study are children who play, steal, sleep, dance, and die in the streets of a Brazilian city. But all around them figure activists, politicians, researchers, "home" children, and a global crisis of childhood.

About this title

Book Description:

Through modest, sober, and honest ethnography, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why, given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns, there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions, street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. Guided by the children's questions, Hecht cuts through the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding street children in Brazil.

From the Inside Flap:

"This work achieves something very special: the children themselves set the frame and limits of the otherwise inevitable and predictable outsider's sympathetic discourse on their plight. Never in ethnography has the agency of the subject's voice been so creatively present; never have the stories of such children, who partly stand for contemporary Brazil, been so plainly compelling." George Marcus, Rice University

"Hecht's work is graceful, thorough, and level-headed. The power of his analysis is magnified by its compassion, and by the clarity and elegance of his approachable writing. This book is a much-needed contribution to the literature of Brazil, of children, and of anthropology. It will no doubt be read and argued for years to come." Robin Nagle, NYU

"A moving, provocative study that probes below the surface of everyday Brazilian life. This is ethnography at its best: riveting, compassionate, pithy, handsomely illustrated with photographs, always aware of the larger social and political context." Robert Levine, University of Miami

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0521598699
• ISBN 13: 9780521598699
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280