ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests theoretical, historical and ethnographic work for a reader interested in exploring the ever-growing literature on children’s lives in diverse contexts. As child-focused research has become more acceptable and popular within anthropology, there have been an increasing number of ethnographies published focusing on children and childhood. Play has long been approached as the quintessential activity of children. Anthropologists have long been concerned with the broad process of education and see a major difference between this process and the rather specific institutions of modern schooling. American high schools have long provided fertile ground for popular explorations of the constitution of gender and sexuality. As research with children has moved away from descriptions of childhoods and evocations of children’s cultural worlds, it has become increasingly oriented towards broader theoretical issues, including globalization and economic change.
