Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Work, Play, Race, and Childhood

在Bruce Mannheim博士的指导下，密歇根大学的博士生Alysa Handelsman将探索厄瓜多尔非洲裔街头儿童的游戏和工作形式之间的相互联系，以此来理解这些儿童如何概念化他们的世界，以及这些概念化如何挑战传统的工作、游戏和童年理论。厄瓜多尔超过30%的人口年龄在15岁以下，截至2006年，厄瓜多尔大约有20%的儿童在街头生活和工作。这项研究调查了贫困如何改变游戏，并使儿童在面对不确定的生存和面对来自看护人、教师、警察和其他成年人的相互冲突和竞争的期望时采取战略行动。此外，这项工作批判性地考虑了非洲裔儿童经历、学习、讨论和想象种族的方式——这是人类学家研究不足的话题，特别是在安第斯山脉的背景下。这项研究的主要贡献之一将是显示经济环境、种族分类和童年概念之间的联系。这项研究将展示这些联系是如何产生和调节那些必须通过与中产阶级或富裕家庭的孩子截然不同的策略和环境来玩耍和表演的年轻人。通过18个月的实地考察，主要在瓜亚基尔，部分在埃斯梅拉达斯，汉德尔斯曼将在非政府组织、学校、街道和街头儿童社区进行研究。她将采用社会科学的方法，如参与观察、访谈和焦点小组。作为一名民族志学者，她致力于在多个空间和背景下进行实地调查，为她的研究对象提供不同的机会和场所来分享他们的故事和想法，因此她将利用许多创新的方法，包括一个photovoice项目。这些混合的方法和设置形成了项目协作性质的一部分，因为它们使孩子们能够参与研究过程。研究结果将分发给社区成员，该项目将有助于培养一名研究生。

University of Michigan doctoral student Alysa Handelsman, under the guidance of Dr. Bruce Mannheim, will explore the interconnections between forms of play and work of Afro-descendant street children in Ecuador as a means of understanding how these children conceptualize their worlds, and how these conceptualizations challenge traditional theories of work, play, and childhood. Over 30 percent of Ecuador's population is under the age of 15, and, as of 2006, approximately 20 percent of the children in Ecuador live and work on the streets. This research investigates how poverty transforms play and produces children who act strategically in the face of uncertain survival and in the face of conflicting and competing expectations from caretakers, teachers, police officers, and other adults. Additionally, this work critically considers the ways race is experienced, learned, discussed, and imagined by Afro-descendant children -- a topic that is understudied by anthropologists, particularly in the context of the Andes. One of the major contributions of this research will be to show the links between economic circumstances, racial classifications, and conceptions of childhood. The research will demonstrate how these links are producing and regulating young people who must play and perform to survive by means of strategies and contexts that are configured quite differently from those of middle-class or wealthy children. Through 18 months of fieldwork, primarily in Guayaquil and partially in Esmeraldas, Handelsman will conduct research in NGOs, schools, streets, and street children's neighborhoods. She will employ social science methods such as participant observation, interviews, and focus groups. As an ethnographer, she is committed to conducting fieldwork in multiple spaces and contexts to provide diverse opportunities and venues for her research subjects to share their stories and ideas, and so will be utilizing many innovative methods, including a photovoice project. These mixed methods and settings form part of the collaborative nature of the project, as they enable the participation of the children in the research process. The research findings will be disseminated to community members, and the project will contribute to the training of a graduate student.