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Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives
"Brilliant and intimate. The book is an eloquent rendition of the expansive spatial abstractions and mimetic revolutionary re-imagination it proposes." - Social and Cultural Geography
Growing Up Global examines the processes of development and global change through the perspective of children’s lives in two seemingly disparate places: New York City and a village in northern Sudan. At the book’s core is a longitudinal ethnographic study of children growing up in a Sudanese village that was included in a large state-sponsored agricultural program in the year they were born. It follows a small number of children intermittently from ten years of age to early adulthood, concentrating particularly on their work and play, which together trained the children for an agrarian life centered around the family, a life that was quickly becoming obsolete.
Shifting her focus to largely working-class families in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, Katz is able to expose unsuspected connections with the Sudanese experience in the effects on children of a constantly changing, capitalist environment—the decline of manufacturing jobs and the increase in knowledge-based jobs—in which young people with few skills and stunted educations face bleak employment prospects. In teasing out how “development” transforms the grounds on which these young people come of age, Cindi Katz provides a textured analysis of the importance of knowledge in the ability of people, families, and communities to reproduce themselves and their material social practices over time.
Growing Up Global examines the processes of development and global change through the perspective of children’s lives in two seemingly disparate places: New York City and a village in northern Sudan. At the book’s core is a longitudinal ethnographic study of children growing up in a Sudanese village that was included in a large state-sponsored agricultural program in the year they were born. It follows a small number of children intermittently from ten years of age to early adulthood, concentrating particularly on their work and play, which together trained the children for an agrarian life centered around the family, a life that was quickly becoming obsolete.
Shifting her focus to largely working-class families in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, Katz is able to expose unsuspected connections with the Sudanese experience in the effects on children of a constantly changing, capitalist environment—the decline of manufacturing jobs and the increase in knowledge-based jobs—in which young people with few skills and stunted educations face bleak employment prospects. In teasing out how “development” transforms the grounds on which these young people come of age, Cindi Katz provides a textured analysis of the importance of knowledge in the ability of people, families, and communities to reproduce themselves and their material social practices over time.
330 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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August 1, 2012
The main focus of this ethnography is Katz's observations of village life (particularly the work and play of children) in a Northern Sudanese village she calls Howa. She focuses on how the village's inclusion in a state-sponsored agricultural project geared towards capitalist development of the landscape (and people) alters and reshapes the practices and relations of production and reproduction in the village, with particular emphasis on the children's activities. She provides a brief, alternative view of "development" as it plays out in New York City's Harlem neighborhood, focusing on how neoliberal austerity and post-industrial restructuring of the economy has created a landscape that offers little to children -- both in the way of safe and quality public resources (schools, parks, etc.) and in future prospects. She attempts to draw parallels between the effects of "development" in these two locations, utilizing the notion of "deskilling" as describing the ways in which children are increasingly trained and educated for futures that are unstable and unsure.
I found no hard and fast conclusions to be drawn from this book, and I think that was Katz's intent -- she intentionally emphasizes that, in the case of Howa, that were no clear demarcations between "pre-capitalist" and "capitalist" relations of production, although she did trace some very telling trends towards increasing commodification of the commons and increasing social inequality in the village. But she makes clear that the village's involvement in the development project was not a cut-and-dry process of Marxian "primitive accumulation".
Due to the ambiguous, at times frustratingly post-modern narrative she weaves of events, it felt at times like she wasn't saying anything at all. Of course I think this is also a strength of this book -- it consciously avoids the trappings of more grandiose, broad-brush-strokes narratives that seek to explain the machinations of capitalist development to the detriment of accurately portraying the ambiguity and nuance of everyday life.
This notwithstanding, Katz makes several theoretical insights that I found fascinating and worthy of exploring further.
One is her analysis of children's activities in Howa: in their "pre-development" form, there was no solid demarcations between "work" and "play". As Katz describes, for children, work activities were imbued with playfulness and periods of play were "workful", in that the playfulness often intersected with activities and goals important to the material reproduction of the village -- imagining and enacting future careers, performing household tasks, etc. She characterizes this organization of activities as less alienated and more fulfilling than the clearer lines drawn between "work" and "leisure" under capitalism, and I would have to agree. I've found such a blurred line to be more satisfying and less alienated in my own experiences, and agree with Katz's contention that this blurred line could serve as a rough model for modes of production and reproduction beyond those of capitalism.
Another key concept she grapples with, and one that forms the core of her reason for focusing on the activities of children, is that of the "mimetic faculty" as articulated by Walter Benjamin. Admittedly, this is the part of the book and I had the most difficult time understanding clearly -- her description of the mimetic faculty often strayed into theoretical territory that was far over my head. However, my basic understanding is that an important component of "mimesis" in children's play is their action of imagining themselves in village (adult) occupations in ways that reflect the prevailing social forms. There are some cool passages where Katz describes what she calls "dramatic-modeling" games the children play where they enact, in miniature, common village activities such as (for boys) subsistence agriculture (bildat), irrigated agriculture as part of the development project (hawashaat), and shopping at the general store (dukan). Girls play similar games, though often with a more domestic focus (such as enacting household chores, entertaining guests, and so on).
These "dramatic-modeling" games, Katz contends, are more then mere mimicry (or have the potential to be). In "playing at" these social forms and relations of production, the children inevitably rework, reimagine, and alter those forms in their playful practice, reflecting their desires, dreams, and dissatisfactions. Through this process they intuitively learn that the "real" village activities that happen on a much larger scale are socially "played" as well, and that they are not immutable or unchangeable. In the words of Katz: "For [Walter] Benjamin it is the fugitive and fleeting nature of playing at something that may spark a realization that the original is also made up: not a fiction, but a performance, or more dryly, a social construction, that might also be made different." This potential denaturalization of prevailing (and oppressive) social relations such as those incorporated into the village through its inclusion in the capitalist development project is at the heart of developing a revolutionary consciousness, a consciousness that Katz is clearly eager to see realized in those she works with in Howa and elsewhere.
To sum up, this book, while sometimes difficult to get through due to over-verbosity and the ambiguity of what to draw from it, was valuable due to two major theoretical insights of Katz that have the potential to bear a lot of fruit in further explorations of anti-capitalist praxis. I also value her nuanced narrative that clearly acknowledges the contradictions and dilemmas inherent in human struggle for a better world.
I found no hard and fast conclusions to be drawn from this book, and I think that was Katz's intent -- she intentionally emphasizes that, in the case of Howa, that were no clear demarcations between "pre-capitalist" and "capitalist" relations of production, although she did trace some very telling trends towards increasing commodification of the commons and increasing social inequality in the village. But she makes clear that the village's involvement in the development project was not a cut-and-dry process of Marxian "primitive accumulation".
Due to the ambiguous, at times frustratingly post-modern narrative she weaves of events, it felt at times like she wasn't saying anything at all. Of course I think this is also a strength of this book -- it consciously avoids the trappings of more grandiose, broad-brush-strokes narratives that seek to explain the machinations of capitalist development to the detriment of accurately portraying the ambiguity and nuance of everyday life.
This notwithstanding, Katz makes several theoretical insights that I found fascinating and worthy of exploring further.
One is her analysis of children's activities in Howa: in their "pre-development" form, there was no solid demarcations between "work" and "play". As Katz describes, for children, work activities were imbued with playfulness and periods of play were "workful", in that the playfulness often intersected with activities and goals important to the material reproduction of the village -- imagining and enacting future careers, performing household tasks, etc. She characterizes this organization of activities as less alienated and more fulfilling than the clearer lines drawn between "work" and "leisure" under capitalism, and I would have to agree. I've found such a blurred line to be more satisfying and less alienated in my own experiences, and agree with Katz's contention that this blurred line could serve as a rough model for modes of production and reproduction beyond those of capitalism.
Another key concept she grapples with, and one that forms the core of her reason for focusing on the activities of children, is that of the "mimetic faculty" as articulated by Walter Benjamin. Admittedly, this is the part of the book and I had the most difficult time understanding clearly -- her description of the mimetic faculty often strayed into theoretical territory that was far over my head. However, my basic understanding is that an important component of "mimesis" in children's play is their action of imagining themselves in village (adult) occupations in ways that reflect the prevailing social forms. There are some cool passages where Katz describes what she calls "dramatic-modeling" games the children play where they enact, in miniature, common village activities such as (for boys) subsistence agriculture (bildat), irrigated agriculture as part of the development project (hawashaat), and shopping at the general store (dukan). Girls play similar games, though often with a more domestic focus (such as enacting household chores, entertaining guests, and so on).
These "dramatic-modeling" games, Katz contends, are more then mere mimicry (or have the potential to be). In "playing at" these social forms and relations of production, the children inevitably rework, reimagine, and alter those forms in their playful practice, reflecting their desires, dreams, and dissatisfactions. Through this process they intuitively learn that the "real" village activities that happen on a much larger scale are socially "played" as well, and that they are not immutable or unchangeable. In the words of Katz: "For [Walter] Benjamin it is the fugitive and fleeting nature of playing at something that may spark a realization that the original is also made up: not a fiction, but a performance, or more dryly, a social construction, that might also be made different." This potential denaturalization of prevailing (and oppressive) social relations such as those incorporated into the village through its inclusion in the capitalist development project is at the heart of developing a revolutionary consciousness, a consciousness that Katz is clearly eager to see realized in those she works with in Howa and elsewhere.
To sum up, this book, while sometimes difficult to get through due to over-verbosity and the ambiguity of what to draw from it, was valuable due to two major theoretical insights of Katz that have the potential to bear a lot of fruit in further explorations of anti-capitalist praxis. I also value her nuanced narrative that clearly acknowledges the contradictions and dilemmas inherent in human struggle for a better world.
March 25, 2012
It is written by a faculty at CUNY who travels to a small village in Northern Sudan and also observes children’s lives in Harlem. Her distinctions between the two cultures are really interesting, specifically surrounding the idea of environmental knowledge. In a small village in Sudan and something I noticed in The Gambia, children don’t really ask ‘why’ questions the way they do in industrialized cultures. In these children’s lives in this small village, there is no such thing as abstractions- children learn about the environment from their everyday experiences. Whereas children in the U.S. learn about nature and the environment through abstract ideas and teaching methods.
The book is also a fascinating insight into how capitalism can rapidly change a culture, and how it opens up entirely new standards of wealth that weren’t there before. I saw this in The Gambia too. Who had the nicest cell phone, the bigger house- it was not so different all of a sudden, from life in America. A fascinating finding was that counterintuitive to what one might think, family wealth is not related to child labor, in fact children of families who have higher wealth oftentimes do more labor, as poor families lack resources to keep children working. The biggest barrier to children attending school (which again is what I saw in Gambia) was that it takes away from family labor contributions.
Another interesting observation which really sticks with me is that of children’s play and work. In the small village, children's work was very playful and childrens play was very serious. I noticed this exact same pattern in The Gambia. The two overlap so that they become indistinguishable. In play children learn about the social world. Often in play children would play “house” - like cook or wrap a baby on to their back. Similarly, the children in The Gambia would often pretend to be professional drivers often yelling out the stops- ‘Brikama! Westfield!’
The book is a powerful insight into globalism and capitalism. But more than anything, I loved her descriptions of childhood in Northern Sudan.
The book is also a fascinating insight into how capitalism can rapidly change a culture, and how it opens up entirely new standards of wealth that weren’t there before. I saw this in The Gambia too. Who had the nicest cell phone, the bigger house- it was not so different all of a sudden, from life in America. A fascinating finding was that counterintuitive to what one might think, family wealth is not related to child labor, in fact children of families who have higher wealth oftentimes do more labor, as poor families lack resources to keep children working. The biggest barrier to children attending school (which again is what I saw in Gambia) was that it takes away from family labor contributions.
Another interesting observation which really sticks with me is that of children’s play and work. In the small village, children's work was very playful and childrens play was very serious. I noticed this exact same pattern in The Gambia. The two overlap so that they become indistinguishable. In play children learn about the social world. Often in play children would play “house” - like cook or wrap a baby on to their back. Similarly, the children in The Gambia would often pretend to be professional drivers often yelling out the stops- ‘Brikama! Westfield!’
The book is a powerful insight into globalism and capitalism. But more than anything, I loved her descriptions of childhood in Northern Sudan.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews