Through Their Eyes Child and Adolescent Agency in the Urban Environment

Abstract

Abstract: There is an emerging approach in anthropology that investigates children and adolescents, not just as additions to adult-centered studies, but as active social actors who experience, react to, change, and create the worlds around them. In this paper, I report on research which utilized a child-centered focus to understand how children and youth in an inner-city Southern community understand their local environments. I examine children's perceptions and negotiations in both their urban physical and social landscapes using ethnographic methods. I document children's particular modes of thought and actions which help them move through the urban world within and beyond the confines of their families.