Enfance, âge et développement chez les Wolof du Sénégal

RésuméLe discours qui désigne les étapes de l’enfance chez les Wolof du Sénégal mobilise des séries associatives différentes selon les périodes d’âge envisagées. Les termes utilisés font allusion au corps et aux qualités sensibles pour la construction du social. Ils reflètent les représentations qu’ont les adultes des changements d’état et de sphères de préoccupation marquant les différentes phases de l’enfance. L’analyse des interactions et des dialogues entre jeunes enfants et adultes familiers fournit des outils pour mettre au jour les attentes implicites des adultes, et leurs représentations des compétences de l’enfant à certains âges clés, comme celui où émerge chez l’enfant la capacité de comprendre, expliquer et prédire les représentations mentales.AbstractThe vocabulary referring to the stages of childhood among the Wolof in Senegal hinges on different series of associations depending on the age. To socially construct ages, these terms allude to the body and sensory qualities. They reflect adults’ ideas about how these stages change and about the preoccupations characteristic of these stages. Analyzing interactions and dialogues between young children and adults close to them sheds light on adults’ unspoken expectations and their ideas about abilities at certain key stages, such as the age when the child starts having the ability to understand, explain and predict mental representations

‘An elephant cannot fail to carry its own ivory’: Transgenerational ambivalence, infrastructure and sibling support practices in urban Uganda

This article examines how urban Ugandans navigate family support systems through a focus on the under-researched area of sibling care practices. We conceptualise such systems as transgenerational infrastructure to capture the complex flows, negotiations and dilemmas of both inter- and intra-generational relationships, orderings and power, situating family support practices within their spatial, structural and social contexts. Drawing on grounded narratives of lived experience collected in Jinja, Uganda, the article offers an alternative interpretation to what is commonly portrayed as a weakening of family support systems in sub-Saharan Africa. We develop a transgenerational ambivalence perspective which allows for a deeper understanding of the heterogeneity and fluidity of family support as an ethical practice replete with complex emotions and dilemmas shaped in the junctures between social norms, agency, resources and material conditions. Through focusing on working-age Ugandans, we demonstrate the potential for a transgenerational ambivalence approach to make visible contradictions at structural and subjective levels and focus greater attention on the importance of sibling relationships and birth order than is evident in the existing intergenerational literature. This can help researchers in the task of linking family dynamics to the growing precarity and uncertainties of life in the marginal socio-economic contexts of urban sub-Saharan Africa

A gestural repertoire of 1-2year old human children : in search of the ape gestures

This project was made possible with the generous financial help of the Baverstock Bequest to the Psychology and Neuroscience Department at the University of St Andrews.When we compare human gestures to those of other apes, it looks at first like there is nothing much to compare at all. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into the thought processes accompanying language, and sign languages are equal to spoken language with all of its features. While some research firmly emphasises the difference between human gestures and those of other apes, the question about whether there are any commonalities has rarely been investigated, and is mostly confined to pointing gestures. The gestural repertoires of nonhuman ape species have been carefully studied and described with regard to their form and function – but similar approaches are much rarer in the study of human gestures. This paper applies the methodology commonly used in the study of nonhuman ape gestures to the gestural communication of human children in their second year of life. We recorded (n=13) children’s gestures in a natural setting with peers and caregivers in Germany and Uganda. Children employed 52 distinct gestures, 46 (89%) of which are present in the chimpanzee repertoire. Like chimpanzees, they used them both singly, and in sequences; and employed individual gestures flexibly towards different goals.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe