ABSTRACT

Adoption is currently subject to a great deal of media scrutiny. High-profile cases of international adoption via the internet and other unofficial routes, have drawn attention to the relative ease with which children can be obtained on the global circuit, and have brought about legislation which regulates the exchange of children within and between countries. However a scarcity of research into cross-cultural attitudes to child-rearing, and a wider lack of awareness of cultural difference in adoptive contexts, has meant that the assumptions underlying Western childcare policy are seldom examined or made explicit.

 These articles look at adoption practices from Africa, Oceania, Asia and Central America, including examples of societies in which children are routinely separated from their biological parents or passed through several foster families. Showing the range and flexibility of the child-rearing practices that approximate to the Western term 'adoption', they demonstrate the benefits of a cross-cultural appreciation of family life, and allow a broader understanding of the varied relationships that exist between children and adoptive parents.

chapter |2 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|18 pages

Adoption and the circulation of children

A comparative perspective

chapter 2|10 pages

Adopting a native child

An anthropologist’s personal involvement in the field

part |2 pages

Part I Africa

chapter 3|15 pages

‘The real parents are the foster parents’

Social parenthood among the Baatombu in Northern Benin

chapter 5|15 pages

Adoption practices among the pastoral Maasai of East Africa

Enacting fertility

part |2 pages

Part II Asia and Oceania

chapter 7|14 pages

Transactions in rights, transactions in children

A view of adoption from Papua New Guinea

chapter 9|16 pages

Adoptions in Micronesia

Past and present

part |2 pages

Part III Central and South America

chapter 10|20 pages

‘The one who feeds has the rights’

Adoption and fostering of kin, affines and enemies among the Yukpa and other Carib-speaking Indians of Lowland South

chapter 11|17 pages

The circulation of children in a Brazilian working-class neighborhood

A local practice in a globalized world

chapter 12|15 pages

Person, relation and value

The economy of circulating Ecuadorian children in international adoption

chapter 13|12 pages

Choosing parents

Adoption into a global network

part |2 pages

Part IV Intercountry and domestic adoption in the ‘West’

chapter 14|16 pages

National bodies and the body of the child: ‘completing’ families through international adoption

“Completing” families through international adoption Mofiz

chapter 15|15 pages

The backpackers that come to stay

New challenges to Norwegian transnational adoptive families

chapter 16|15 pages

Partial to completeness

Gender, peril and agency in Australian adoption

chapter 17|17 pages

Adoption

A cure for (too) many ills?