ABSTRACT

Children's Lifeworlds examines how working children face the challenge of having to combine work with school in Kerala. Moving beyond the usual concern with child labour and welfare to a critical assessment of the daily work routine of children, this book questions how class and kinship, gender and household organization, state ideology and education influence and conceal the lives of children in developing countries. Presenting an extraordinarily sympathetic and detailed case study of boys' and girls' work routine in a south Indian village, this book shows children creating the visibility of their work. The combination of personal experience, quantitative data and in-depth anthropological methods, sheds light on the world of those who, though they hold the future, have been left in the dark.

chapter |7 pages

PROLOGUE

chapter 1|27 pages

THE CHILDREN OF THE RURAL POOR

chapter 2|24 pages

BETWEEN THE RIVER AND THE SEA

chapter 3|29 pages

GROWING UP IN POOMKARA

chapter 4|37 pages

POOMKARA’S SMALL FRY

chapter 5|33 pages

HANGING BY A THREAD

Coir-making girls

chapter 6|22 pages

KERALA FISHERIES’ INVISIBLE NETS

chapter 7|24 pages

THE COIR INDUSTRY’S SAVING ANGELS

chapter 8|9 pages

CONCLUSION

Rural children’s exploitation