Studying childhood and youth is an important means of understanding culture and society. In this subject students examine the ways anthropologists and sociologists have studied childhood from birth to adulthood and how their theories and methods have been influenced by work in other fields such as psychology and linguistics. Students are introduced to recent approaches which emphasise the active role children play in their own social development. Topics central to the study of childhood and youth cross-culturally are explored, such as infant care, identity construction, gender development, child labour and child survival, child abuse and children's rights.

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