Anthropology of the Young¹

Abstract

This article has a double-barreled purpose: to raise some important questions and to sketch out a conceptual framework for an anthropology of the young. The first part of the article raises the question: Is anthropology of education, through an emphasis on such themes as school ethnography, observational methodology, curricular development, and the schooling of native peoples, moving towards narrowness and specialization? Or. to turn the question around: To what extent i s the field still based in an anthropology that is general, panhuman, and evolutionary in scope? The main thesis of the paper is that an anthropology of the young might be a useful move in the latter direction.In the second part of the paper, a conceptual framework for an anthropology of the young is sketched out, in terms of four points: defining the young, describing their cultural patterns, understanding their cultural dependence,