On social suffering

Research on age in geography has become highly compartmentalized into separate literatures on younger and older generations that rarely intersect. As such, the geographies of intergenerational relationships – and particularly, extrafamilial intergenerational relationships – remain substantially under-researched. This essay reviews how geographers have approached issues of intergenerational relationships while also drawing on recent work from other fields (including sociology, anthropology and queer theory) that can extend current thinking on the geographies of intergenerationality and age relations. How does space facilitate and limit intergenerational contact and relationships? How do the geographies of intergenerational relationships vary between social groups and contexts? And if generational separation and segregation are problems (as a substantial body of work suggests), how can this be ameliorated? Throughout the essay, I examine how social scientists have attempted to address these questions while also identifying the significant gaps that remain in our understanding.

Intergenerational Geographies: Age Relations, Segregation and Re‐engagements

Social Policy for Development Local, National and Global Dimensions Poverty and Development The Challenge for Social Policy Social Policy and Rural Development From Modernization to Sustainable Livelihoods Social Policy and Urban Development Basic Education for Social Development Health Systems in Developing Countries Social Work and the Human Services Social Security Policies and Programmes International Development Co-Operation and Social Policy

Social policy for development

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Children and the politics of culture

Africanizing Anthropology tells the story of the anthropological fieldwork centered at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) during the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on collaborative processes rather than on the activity of individual researchers, Lyn Schumaker gives the assistants and informants of anthropologists a central role in the making of anthropological knowledge.\n\nSchumaker shows how local conditions and local ideas about culture and history, as well as previous experience of outsiders’ interest, shape local people’s responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them, in turn, to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives. Bringing to the fore a wide range of actors—missionaries, administrators, settlers, the families of anthropologists—Schumaker emphasizes the daily practices of researchers, demonstrating how these are as centrally implicated in the making of anthropological knowlege as the discipline’s methods. Selecting a prominent group of anthropologists—The Manchester School—she reveals how they achieved the advances in theory and method that made them famous in the 1950s and 1960s.\n\nThis book makes important contributions to anthropology, African history, and the history of science.

Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa

How can children simultaneously be the most important and least powerful people in a nation? In this innovative ethnography of Ugandan children - the pillars of tomorrow's Uganda, according to the national youth anthem - Kristen E. Cheney answers this question by exploring the daily contradictions children face as they try to find their places amid the country's rapidly changing social conditions. Drawing on the detailed life histories of several children, Cheney shows that children and childhood are being redefined by the desires of a young country struggling to position itself in the international community. She moves between urban schools, music festivals, and war zones to reveal how Ugandans are constructing childhood as an empowering identity for the development of the nation. Moreover, through her analysis of children's rights ideology, national government strategy, and children's everyday concerns, Cheney also shows how these young citizens are vitally linked to the global political economy as they navigate pitfalls and possibilities for a brighter tomorrow.

Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development

The Case of Gender-Based Violence: Assessing the Impact of International Human Rights Rhetoric on African Lives Abstract: In 2009, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in Uganda's Parliament reignited homophobic sentiment across Africa. Despite a well-documented history of sexual diversity in Africa, claims that homosexuality is "un-African" are being used to justify violence and exclusion. This article, based primarily on a discursive analysis of public media sources, delves into various cultural logics that reveal the tensions and contradictions in Ugandans' widespread opposition to homosexuality. U.S. evangelical influence, postcolonial amnesia in regard to "tradition," fertility concerns, and human rights exceptionalism drive this moral panic over issues of sexual diversity. Such sentiments must be addressed by confronting neocolonial religious influence and cultivating renewed respect for human rights and Africa's history of sexual diversity. Resume: En 2009, la presentation d'un projet de loi anti-homosexualite dans le parlement ougandais a rallume un sentiment d'homophobie a travers le pays. En depit d'un historique bien documente sur la diversite sexuelle en Afrique, des revendications declarant que l'homosexualite va a rencontre de "l'identite africaine" sont utilisees pour justifier des actes de violence et d'exclusion. En se basant principalement sur une analyse discursive de sources provenant des media publiques, cet article etudie de maniere approfondie les differentes logiques culturelles qui revelent les tensions et contradictions emanant de l'opposition generalisee des ougandais contre l'homosexualite. L'influence evangeliste americaine, l'amnesie postcoloniale de la "tradition," les problemes de fertilite, et la creation d'exceptions concernant les droits de l'homme sont les moteurs principaux de cette panique morale concernant la question de diversite sexuelle. De tels sentiments doivent etre remis en question en confrontant l'influence religieuse neocoloniale et l'encouragement d'un respect renouvele pour les droits de l'homme et l'historique de la diversite sexuelle en Afrique. In the fall of 2009, Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati introduced a bill proposing tighter strictures on homosexuality. Though sodomy laws already existed in Uganda in the 1950 Penal Code and the 1995 Constitution, the bill proposed further measures, such as the provision that a person could be put to death for "aggravated homosexuality" - meaning die commission of a same-sex act with a minor, family member, or disabled person - or in cases in which the "aggressor" is HrV-positive (BBC News 2009). Further, the bill would make it obligatory for people who "discover" that another person is gay to act as an informant to the police. Those who failed to do so would face jail time. Dubbed Uganda's "gay death penalty, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill quickly gained media attention in Europe and the U.S., whose own "culture wars" raged over the question of gay marriage and military service. The U.K. and the U.S. expressed "grave concern" about the harsh penalties in the bill, and Sweden threatened to pull all donor funding from Uganda if the bill passed into law. In March 2010 Parliament was presented with petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures protesting the bill, mostly signed by foreigners but well supported by Ugandan activists. But mass demonstrations in support of the bill also occurred in Kampala and Jinja, and Ugandan pastors showed gay pornography in their churches to incite violent sentiments against homosexuals. Finally, a parliamentary review committee tabled the bill in May 2010, claiming that it was weak and redundant in the context of existing laws (see Muhumuza 2010). Nevertheless, the bill became the iconic instigator of a wave of African homophobia. Debate over homosexuality - and violence against LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex) people - continues, spreading beyond Uganda's borders to other countries in Africa. …

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0002020600006971

Locating Neocolonialism, "Tradition," and Human Rights in Uganda's "Gay Death Penalty"

This article describes the situation of children forcibly abducted by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. The involvement of children complicates efforts to end rebellion, and particular notions of childhood circulate through government and aid agencies to affect children's ‘rehabilitation’. This paper examines national, ethnic, and generational causes of the conflict, discussing the ways in which normative and ideal concepts of childhood are employed by different players. Through a situated analysis of children's circumstances, I suggest the need for interlocutors to re-evaluate their goals and methods of assisting war-affected children.

‘our children have only known war’: children's experiences and the uses of childhood in northern uganda

Critiques of child participation within aid programming suggest that it is superficial and insubstantive for the fulfilment of children’s rights. By employing former child research participants as ...

Children as Ethnographers: Reflections on the Importance of Participatory Research in Assessing Orphans' Needs.

Concurrent with the decline in intercountry adoption, there has been an increase in commercial global surrogacy over the past decade, but no international law yet exists to reconcile conflicting national laws and protect the interests of infant/child, surrogate mother, and commissioning parent(s). Previous discussion has focused on the vulnerability of the surrogate mothers and insufficient attention has been given to the best interests of the child, despite the fact that some children have been left stateless for years as a result of conflicting policies. Using the principles of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, social workers and policy makers should advocate for the development of international law to regulate commercial global surrogacy in order to prevent children’s rights violations and act in the best interests of the child.

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Kristen E. Cheney

Papers

Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development

Locating Neocolonialism, "Tradition," and Human Rights in Uganda's "Gay Death Penalty"

‘our children have only known war’: children's experiences and the uses of childhood in northern uganda

Children as Ethnographers: Reflections on the Importance of Participatory Research in Assessing Orphans' Needs.

Regulating Commercial Global Surrogacy: the Best Interests of the Child