Book
Child Fostering in West Africa
New Perspectives on Theory and Practices
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Edited by:
Erdmute Alber
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2013
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About this book
Child fostering is an age-old and also modern phenomenon whose importance stretches much further than the boundaries of so-called ‘traditional’ African societies. As a mobile and creative kinship practice, child fostering is of growing importance in the global world as it goes along with other forms of mobility such as migration and transnationalism. The book aims to revitalize the study of fostering by situating the issue in more recent theoretical approaches to kinship. It also examines what functionalist and structuralist theory may still contribute to the understanding of child fostering. Historical and recent child fostering practices in several West African countries are discussed from the angles of Anthropology, History and Law.
Author / Editor information
Erdmute Alber holds the chair of Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University. Her empirical and theoretical interests are in kinship, inter-generational relations, childhood and parenting, as well as in political anthropology. She has realized long term fieldwork in Latin America and West Africa.
Jeannett Martin is a postdoctoral research fellow in Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University. She has done research on educational migration between southern Ghana and Germany and on child fostering and inter-ethnic relations in northern Benin.
Catrien Notermans is an anthropologist and senior researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She has been doing long-term fieldwork in West Africa, Europe and Asia, concentrating on kinship, gender, and religion.
Jeannett Martin is a postdoctoral research fellow in Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University. She has done research on educational migration between southern Ghana and Germany and on child fostering and inter-ethnic relations in northern Benin.
Catrien Notermans is an anthropologist and senior researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She has been doing long-term fieldwork in West Africa, Europe and Asia, concentrating on kinship, gender, and religion.
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
May 15, 2013
eBook ISBN:
9789004250611
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
250
eBook ISBN:
9789004250611
Keywords for this book
Benin; Ghana; Cape Verde; Cameroon; ethnography; childhood; fostering; kinship; functionalism; structuralism; Africa; 9
Audience(s) for this book
All interested in anthropology, kinship, childhood, mobility, and West Africa.
