Annual Review of Anthropology · 1996 · 267 citations · 70 references
Social SciencesAnthropologyGender StudiesEconomic AnthropologyLabor EconomicsSocial InequalityAnthropology Of ChildhoodChild ExploitationEmploymentGender And WorkGender DiscriminationLaborChild Labor PolicyChild Labour PolicyForced Child LaborGendered Labor Systems
In the developing world, child work has long been framed as socialization, education, training, or play, but anthropological analysis shows that age and gender are used to justify low valuation, leading to vulnerability and exclusion from paid employment. This review examines the child labor debate by relating it to diverse patterns of children's work and exposes the limits of prevailing concepts of labor, gender, and exploitation. I argue that child labor policies that ignore children's exclusion from value production paradoxically reinforce their vulnerability to exploitation.
▪ Abstract In relating the child labor debate to the observed variety of children's work patterns, this review reveals the limits of current notions such as labor, gender, and exploitation in the analysis of this work. Particularly in the developing world, most work undertaken by children has for a long time been explained away as socialization, education, training, and play. Anthropology has helped disclose that age is used with gender as the justification for the value accorded to work. The low valuation of children's work translates not only in children's vulnerability in the labor market but, more importantly, in their exclusion from remunerated employment. I argue that current child labor policies, because they fail to address the exclusion of children from the production of value, reinforce paradoxically children's vulnerability to exploitation.
70
The Making of the English Working Class.
Neil J. Smelser, E. P. Thompson · History and Theory · 1966 · 4.3K citations
Tanja Schultz, John C. Caldwell · Population and Development Review · 1983 · 1.3K citations
The Making of the English Working Class
Humphrey McQueen · Labour History · 1968 · 1.3K citations
Humanities, English, Labor History +11