Abstract
It is common to see children in Indian families participating in all aspects of family living along with activities that have economic value. They perceive and articulate their capabilities to participate in a variety of familial and household responsibilities including that of taking care: of children, adults, animals, plants and the household. Children also go to school and engage in play. In their world of play, they build microcosms where they make sense of the ways of the world. The physical and social spaces, in which the children live, are densely populated in addition to being dominated by adult voices. A myriad of sociocultural features such as caste, class and gender are woven into the contours of daily living. Nevertheless, the children are not passive recipients. They actively reconcile their life-worlds, at times often subverting it. They develop strategies to find a way out: infusing their activities with a playful quality as they negotiate these ecological spaces. It is indeed through acts of defiance/resistance and compliance/conformity that children make sense of the cultural patterns of their society. Vignettes from the daily lives of children in rural and urban ecologies will be examined to locate the “rhythms of resistance”.
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Notes
- 1.
The fieldwork is a part of the first author’s on-going PhD study titled “Ecology of care of children by siblings”, under the supervision of Dr. Nandita Chaudhary and Dr. Bhanumathi Sharma.
- 2.
Names of the participants have been changed to maintain confidentiality.
- 3.
Translated from Hindi. All the subsequent quotes by participants have been translated from Hindi or the local dialect spoken by participants in Rajasthan.
- 4.
Krishna is a Hindu deity who is worshipped across India in various forms.
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Suneja, S., Sharma, B. (2017). Children Finding Their Ways Through Life Spaces: Glimpses from the Indian Ecology. In: Chaudhary, N., Hviid, P., Marsico, G., Villadsen, J. (eds) Resistance in Everyday Life. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3581-4_6
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