Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth

Young Rural Lives

Ruth Panelli, Samantha Punch, Elsbeth Robson, Ruth Panelli, Samantha Punch, Elsbeth Robson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134153893
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études des enfants en sociologie

This collection of international research and collaborative theoretical innovation examines the socio-cultural contexts and negotiations that young people face when growing up in rural settings across the world. This book is strikingly different to a standard edited book of loosely linked, but basically independent, chapters. In this case, the book presents both thematically organised case studies and co-authored commentaries that integrate and advance current understandings and debates about rural childhood and youth.

1
From difference to dialogue

Conceptualizing global perspectives on rural childhood and youth

Ruth Panelli, Samantha Punch, and Elsbeth Robson

Adamu (Northern Nigeria) Robson (2004a:194)

‘Butthead’ (Southern New Zealand) McCormack (2000:137–139, 82)

Adamu is about nine or ten years old, he lives in… Zarewa village…. Adamu wakes up at home in the morning to the sound of the call for prayers so he quickly…washes…in a ritual manner and immediately says his prayers kneeling inside Adamu eats a bowl [of porridge] before leaving for the farm with his father at about 8am Adamu and his father spend over two hours working on their family farm before walking back home. On the way… Adamu gathers a bundle of fresh grass from along the path for the sheep and goats tethered in the family compound. When they arrive back home Adamu hauls a bucket of water from the well for them to wash their hands before eating the steamed bean cakes (dan wake) his mother has prepared for them. After…[midday prayers] his mother then sends him on an errand to buy some cooking oil… Adamu then says the afternoon prayers at home before his mother sends him to the grinding

Butthead [is about nine or ten and lives] on a sheep farm…[His drawing of ‘rural New Zealand’] presents an agricultural scene, in which both work and recreation take place. This construction was specialised For instance, Butthead drew a crop of turnips being grazed by sheep. This area was fenced off from the rest of the scene, which was home to a number of pigs. This extensive knowledge of agriculture was derived from his rich experiences in this arena. Indeed, the farm that he lived on had crops of turnips and farrowing sows at the time of this construction. Butthead also drew his brother riding a motorbike to check the sheep feeding in the crop area. This image illustrated Butthead’s understanding of ‘rurality’ as a site of work, however…his brother is pulling a wheelstand on the motorbike for fun, indicating that ‘rurality’ was also a site of recreation and pleasure Butthead [also] drew himself being towed on a sack behind a farm

machine with a bowl full of grain for the evening stiff porridge (tuwo)…when he gets there he has to wait in line with the other children—The machine is noisy and the dust of the flour is all around, but he sees his friend—Then before the evening prayers he plays for about an hour with other children outside in the street…[Later] he says the final prayers of the day…. Until he finally goes to sleep Adamu spends an hour or so playing with other children

vehicle being driven by his father…. Butthead also based his constructions on his material experiences. Within the interview session he [explained, “I] go out on the motorbikes to see what the creek’s like, if it’s risen, and go checking the eeling hole”…. [Also] he referred to…‘running around in the paddocks’, ‘getting muddy from working on the farm’ and ‘working hard at hay making time’,

The conditions and experiences of children and young people who work in rural areas have long been a source of concern for non-governmental organisations as well as academics specialising in development studies and health (e.g. Fyfe 1993; Vlassoff 1985). In contrast, western scholars have paid little attention to these matters until quite recently. This variance can be clearly traced. Studies of young people, such as Adamu in Northern Nigeria, build on a tradition in development geography that has for some time recognized the work and vulnerable positions of children and young people in the Majority world.¹ For it is in the Majority world that the greatest proportion of population, poverty, debt, and child mortality is found (Potter et al. 2004). Recent accounts such as Robson’s (2004a) show young people are integral players in the life and work of rural societies, although oftentheir lives are quite different from those of the adults in such settings.

In contrast, geographies of young people in the Minority world have concentrated initially on urban environments and cultures (Andrews 1985; Blaut and Stea 1971; Hill and Michelson 1981; Matthews 1984; Ward 1978; Winchester and Costello 1995). Rural geographies of childhood and youth in ‘western’ settings have only developed in breadth since the mid-1990s as wider debates concerning social exclusion, marginalisation, and otherness, have informed studies of children and young people as one group of marginalized or under-recognized rural dwellers (Matthews et al. 2000a; Philo 1992). Consequently, studies recording the lives and experiences of young people like ‘Butthead’ have sought to redress what has been reported as a countryside overwhelmingly recorded through adult eyes, and promoting adult interests (McCormack 2000; Valentine 1997a; Ward 1990).

This book celebrates the growth in rural studies of children and young people, and of childhood and youth. In this opening chapter we trace some of the history of these endeavours. But the genesis and motivation for this book stems from our recognition that studies of rural young people can be invigorated by cross-world dialogue. We heed Philo’s (2000b: 253) call that:

…our scholarship must also look at the larger picture encompassing many different sets of children spread across different places, and must accept the challenge of tackling the macro-scale, structure-based geographies of childhood as shaped by broad-brush political-economic and social-cultural transformations.

Consequently, this book demonstrates ‘macro-scale’ approaches to the conceptualisation and analysis of young rural lives while also respecting the value of in-depth, context-specific accounts of individual young people in particular places. As a result, the following chapters include both individual research accounts and co-authored collaborations that seek to push our understandings in more generic, conceptual directions.

While pursuing these goals we employ key definitions via a standardized set of terminology; however, we also recognize that each term has a diverse and rich history. First, in denoting the subjects of our research we adopt both the terms child/ren and young people. We recognize the critiques of linear, transition-oriented conceptualisations that situate children, adolescents, and adults along a continuum of assumed increasing agency, competency, and rights (Punch 2002b; Valentine 1996; Wyn and Dwyer 1999). In such cases, children are often uncritically considered as pre-adults or ‘human becomings’ (Valentine 1996). Thus, we prefer to employ the term young person/people as a way of acknowledging the integrity of the person/people’s lives and experiences in their own right, even while registering that they belong to a particular ‘young’ age group.²

We concur with Wyn and White (1997:10–11) who note that ‘age is socially constructed, institutionalized and controlled in historically and culturally specific ways’. Consequently, the term children is included at times when the institutional (e.g. school, legal system, government policy) or historical and cultural particularity of a group of young people defines them as children. For example, see O. Jones’s (1997; 1999) discussion of ‘children’ as depicted in cultural constructions of childhood. The term child or children is also included when culturally-specific acknowledgment of immediate kinship to parent/s is relevant.

Second, the terms childhood and youth are adopted to convey the socially and culturally constructed notions of particular stages of the lifecourse. While not pinpointing specific ages in years, the term childhood identifies life periods associated with pre-adolescent contexts. In contrast the term youth denotes life periods of older young people where cultural and social constructions highlight contexts and expectations that constitute a separate and unique set of sub-cultures that are documented in some cultural contexts after childhood and before adulthood (Skelton and Valentine 1998).

FINDING YOUNG PEOPLE IN RURAL SETTINGS: A REVIEW OF EXISTING LITERATURE

In order to situate this account of global perspectives we first wish to explore how young rural lives have been identified, conceptually framed, and empirically recorded in the past. Reflecting the traditional separation of these works we first consider Majority world scholarship before noting the burgeoning Minority world studies. While disparate, we propose that these works provide a seedbed for the more challenging task of interconnecting and formulating cross-world approaches that are proposed in the following section.

Young people in Majority world rural contexts

Although in global terms the world is becoming more urbanized, in many parts of the Majority world most people still live in rural areas (Potter et al. 2004). Most young people in the Majority world live (and work) in rural areas yet most research is carried out with urban young people (Boyden et al. 1998; Johnson et al. 1995) since those in rural areas are less visible and accessible than their urban counterparts (Bequele and Myers 1995).³ Compared with urban areas, rural areas tend to suffer from a greater lack of access to basic services (e.g. schools, safe drinking water, electricity, medical services, transport and communication networks—see Albornoz 1993; Ansell 2005; Punch 2004). Likewise young people’s health and livelihoods are affected by higher rural rates of mortality and malnutrition (Potter et al. 2004; Wilkinson 2000).

Despite the predominantly urban focus there have been some significant rural studies of children’s work in the Majority world. It has long been recognized that rural children are economically valuable to their parents for their work on peasant farms (Tienda 1979), both for their unpaid labour (Onyango 1988), and for security in old age (Nugent 1985), thereby reinforcing interdependent household relations. In these situations children are not subject to the same risk of exploitation as those working in labourintensive industries or in an urban environment (Bequele and Myers 1995; Bonnet 1993), but children are not automatically protected when working with kin. Exploitation may be more concealed and difficult to accept in family enterprises but that does not render it non-existent (Boyden 1988).

In rural areas of the Majority world, young people are crucial in both productive and reproductive household tasks, and may contribute to their household maintenance in both paid and unpaid ways. However, frequently children’s tasks are not recognized as work and thus can be compared to the invisibility and undervaluation of women’s work (Nieuwenhuys 1994; Schildkrout 1981). It can also be disguised as ‘training’ or ‘helping’ (Goddard and White 1982; Punch 2001a). Partly this may be because such labour is often controlled by women (Reynolds 1991) and is intended to help or replace women’s tasks; releasing them for more productive labour. However, care must be taken not to assume that all young people’s work is within the stereotypical female sphere of domestic work and childcare. In addition, gender, age, and birth order can affect the division of labour (Punch 2001a; Robson 1996).

Since the 199...