We are at the AAA!

We had a great time presenting at our panel, All play and no work: (Re)defining play and work among forager children. Many thanks to all the presenters for their great papers, to our thoughtful discussant, Alyssa Crittenden, and to the wonderful audience, who asked many provocative questions.

We’ll be posting the abstracts from our respective talks shortly. In the meantime, if you are here and would like to talk to us, shoot us an email! foragerchildstudies@gmail.com

Left to right: Adam Boyette, Rachel Reckin, Kate Ellis-Davies, Renee Hagen, Noa Lavi, Sheina Lew-Levy

[Paper Spotlight] The river echoes with laughter: a child-centred analysis of social change in Amazo

Check out Camilla Morelli’s paper on the role of children in social change among the Matses of Peru! The full paper is available here

Abstract: This article examines radical social, cultural, and political changes taking place in Amazonia from the perspective of indigenous children and youth: a group who, despite their demographic prevalence, have received limited attention in the regional literature. Drawing on fieldwork with Matses people in Peru, I consider how children and youth are playing a critical role in the transition from a hunter-gatherer, forest-based society towards a riverine lifestyle that is increasingly engaged in trade, the market economy, and exchanges with chotac, or non-indigenous people. I argue that by engaging with their surroundings through playing and working, Matses children are becoming affectively attached to some parts of the world rather than others. This represents a purposeful shift from the lifestyle and worldviews of older generations and highlights how children are active agents who shape possible future directions of Matses society and transform the community’s relationships with the world. Accordingly, I propose a child-centred view of social change that seeks to demonstrate the implications of children’s creativity and agency for society at large and its future development.

[Paper Spotlight] Teaching in Hunter-Gatherers

A new review by Adam Boyette and Barry Hewlett chronicles the evidence for teaching in hunter-gatherers. Check it out here!

Abstract: Most of what we know about teaching comes from research among people living in large, politically and economically stratified societies with formal education systems and highly specialized roles with a global market economy. In this paper, we review and synthesize research on teaching among contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. The hunter-gatherer lifeway is the oldest humanity has known and is more representative of the circumstances under which teaching evolved and was utilized most often throughout human history. Research among contemporary hunter-gatherers also illustrates a complex pattern of teaching that is both consistent with and distinct from teaching in other small- and large-scale societies with different subsistence practices and cultural forms. In particular, we find that the cultural emphasis on individual autonomy and socio-political egalitarianism among hunter-gatherers differently shapes how teaching occurs. For example, teaching clearly exists among hunter-gatherers and appears in many forms, including institutionalized instruction in valued cultural and technical skills. However, teaching tends to be less common in hunter-gatherer societies because people live in small, intimate egalitarian, groups that support each other’s learning in a variety of ways without teaching. Furthermore, foundational cultural schemas of autonomy and egalitarianism impact the nature of teaching. For example, adults and older children limit their interventions, permitting autonomous learning, and, when they occur, teaching episodes are generally brief, subtle, indirect, and situated in a present activity (i.e. knowledge is not objectified or intended to be generalizable). We discuss the implications of this research in terms of discussions of the evolution of human cognition and the co-evolution of teaching and culture through the process of cultural niche construction.