Instructor:
Toys, games, rules, education, discipline, childhood foods, clothing, friendships, celebrations, hierarchies… how do the experiences and expectations of children contribute to the production of the adults that they later become? This course considers how experiences and expectations of childhood can be dramatically different across cultural, geographical, ideological and temporal boundaries, but quite consistent within certain communities – largely as a result of common values present within particular cultural contexts. In some cultural spaces, children are expected to defer to their elders and are reined in by complex social rules while in others, children are encouraged to break rules and taboos that adults must adhere to strictly. When the expectations and demands of children vary across physical spaces and cultural boundaries, how do distinctive ways of acculturating children translate into structuring the very different norms of adulthood across cultural spaces and the world?