Learning From the Children: Childhood, Culture and Identity in a Changing World

Children and youth, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, are experiencing lifestyle choices their parents never imagined and contributing to the transformation of ideals, traditions, education and adult–child power dynamics. As a result of the advances in technology and media as well as the effects of globalization, the transmission of social and cultural practices from parents to children is changing. Based on a number of qualitative studies, this book offers insights into the lives of children and youth in Britain, Japan, Spain, Israel/Palestine, and Pakistan. Attention is focused on the child’s perspective within the social-power dynamics involved in adult–child relations, which reveals the dilemmas of policy, planning and parenting in a changing world.

Jacqueline Waldren (1937-2021) was Research Associate, Lecturer and Tutor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and International Gender Studies and a member of Linacre College, University of Oxford. Her research on Europe included identity, gender, migration, tourism and lifestyle changes. Her publications include Insiders and Outsiders (1996), Tourists and Tourism (co-ed., 1997), Anthropological Perspectives on Local Development (co-ed., 2004) and many articles. She was Director of DAMARC, Deia Archaeological and Anthropological Museum and Research Centre in Mallorca, Spain.

Ignacy-Marek Kaminski is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Mejiro University, Tokyo; Associate Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Goteborg University; and Visiting Senior Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford University. He has done fieldwork among the Ainu, Inuit, Roma and Ryukyuans; his research focuses on transitive identity, conflict resolution and leadership. His works are published in twelve languages.