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Dr.
Enid Schildkrout is Curator of Anthropology at the American Museum
of Natural History and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University
and at the City University of New York. She has studied children
in urban Ghana and written extensively on children's work and women's
work among Muslims in Kano, northern Nigeria. She has also curated
museum exhibits and published books and articles about African art
and material culture. In recent years, Enid Schildkrout has returned
to the study of children, working with Ghanaian immigrants, who
come from families she knew in Ghana in the 1960s. She is especially
interested in how these children learn about Africa and how they
think about their identity in New York City. *
Dr. Schildkrout's presentation on November 14, 2002 examined childhood
and art from a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. Her colorful
slides of children's creations from Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana
and Mali explored how childhood activities and the meaning of play
differs vastly according to the cultural context.
Her extensive research on the role of children in African societies
informed her discussion as she alerted her audience to the cultural
meaning of work and play. Unlike in our consumer oriented society,
where parents buy objects for children to play with, in Mali, children
make their own toys; the process of building or making the object
is what children do to entertain themselves or to learn how things
work. Schildkrout also deconstructed the meaning of dependency in
an North Nigerian context. She convincingly argued that in this
strict Muslim society, children play an active role in their family's
economic life. She even argued that not only are adults dependent
on children, but the whole social system, is dependent on children
to carry out vital activities, such as going to the market, selling
family products, etc. In most strict Muslim societies the movement
for women is restricted, so children are taking on domestic responsibilities,
like going to the markets.
Among Dr. Schildkrout's beautiful visual aids were slides of art
children had produced in a UNESCO school in Dakar, Senegal which
was run by an NGO called ENDA. This school was set up to help the
poorest children survive. Children learned to create art objects
from recycled materials, such as cassette tapes or plastic garbage
bags. These dolls, baskets, or sophisticated ornaments, representing
objects such as automobiles or bicycles, would be largely sold to
tourists. The money these children would earn would be divided into
three parts: 1/3 for all the kids, 1/3 for the child who produced
the object, and 1/3 to the teacher. In sum, these children are engaged
in many income-earning enterprises.
Schildkrout also touched on the potential impact of tourism on children
and childhood in West African societies by exploring the drawings
and toys that Dogon children, in Mali, make and sell to tourists.
In this art work the children are representing aspects of Dogon
culture that are disappearing and in some cases mainly being preserved
as tourist attractions. Dr. Schildkrout raised questions about the
way the artwork enabled children to learn about their culture, but
raises questions about how they actually relate to it.
* Source: Schildkrout, E., Childhood, Aug 2002, Vol. 09 Issue
3, p344
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Seminar
Pictures
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Dr.
Myra Bluebond-Langner chatting with
our distinguished guest speaker Dr. Enid Schildkrout.
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Dr.
Bill Whitlow (psychology) and senior fellows engaged
in pre-seminar conversation. Drs. Bluebond-Langner and
Schildkrout in background
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Dr.
Enid Schildkrout is pointing to dwellings in the northern
Nigerian city of Kano, where married women are kept
in seclusion according to Islamic practices; thus children
have to carry out economic activities, such as going
to markets. |
A
captive audience is treated to beautiful slides which
depict not only art objects, including toys, made by
children, but they also demonstrated West African children's
social and economic roles in their societies. |
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