Ante-Autobiography and the Archive of Childhood

This essay examines the concept of children’s autobiography via several autobiographical extracts written by the author as a child. Although only a small proportion of people will compose and publish a full-length autobiography, almost everyone will, inadvertently, produce an archive of the self, made from public records and private documents. Here, such works are seen as providing access to writing both about and by children. The essay explores the ethics and poetics of children’s writing via the key debates in life writing; in particular, the dynamic relationship between adults and children, both as distinct stages of life and dual parts of one autobiographical identity. The term “ante-autobiography” is coined to refer to these texts which come before or instead of a full-length narrative. They are not read as less than or inadequate versions of autobiography, but rather as transgressive and challenging to chronological notions of the genre

Children’s Agency in Translocal Roma Families

Peer reviewe

Towards an anthropology of childhood sickness : an ethnographic study of Danish schoolchildren

This thesis is an analytical ethnography of children, aged between six and twelve, who live in Vanlose, a local district of Copenhagen, Denmark. The data were produced during fourteen months of fieldwork in the children's homes, their local school and two after school centres. The methodological insights produced through this point to the importance of a dialogical, reflexive ethnography in conducting research with children. The thesis develops synergies between two theoretical frameworks: first, a reformed anthropology of children; second, critical medical anthropology, in particular the notion of sickness as cultural performance. The study focuses on children as individual and collective actors in interaction with other children and with adults during everyday illness and minor accidents. The cultural performance approach allows illness to become a lens revealing key aspects of childhood in contemporary Danish society. The substantive chapters of the thesis are organised around the five themes that emerged during the fieldwork: illness as a variety of `time-off' and its cultural similarities and differences with family holidays; children's collective action in help-giving at school and after school centres; children's cultural learning about the body in its subjective and objective forms; the cultural constitution of children as vulnerable and the implications of this for interactions during illness; and, finally, the constitution of children's' competence in illness and treatment. A key theme developed through the thesis is the cultural representation of children in the past, present, and future. It is shown that children's present lives and subjective experiences tend to be subordinated to understandings that give priority to childhood as a symbol of a nostalgia for the past or as a hope for the future. The thesis ends with a discussion of children's greater potential as contributors to health and self care and its implications for their wider participation in social life

SÅRBARE KROPPE: Om den sociale og kulturelle konstituering af børns sårbarhed

I et antropologisk studie, som jeg udførte i et lille lokalområde i Danmark, viste interaktioner mellem bøm og voksne og mellem bøm indbyrdes at basere sig på kulturelle opfattelser af barnet som en social person, af barnets krop og af sundhed og sygdom i barndommen. Disse opfattelser havde betydning for de sociale positioner, som bøm og voksne konventionelt indtog, når et bam kom til skade eller blev sygt. Et sygt bam blev betragtet som værende særligt sårbart. Det betød, at voksne i sådanne situationer var aktive, handlende og ansvarsfulde, hvilket til dels tildelte bøm positionen som det passive, afhængige og modtagende objekt. I artiklen viser jeg, hvordan disse næsten rutinemæssige sociale positioner kan ses som et specifikt udtryk for nogle fundamentale forestillinger om bøm og barndom i dansk kultur