Ambivalent Encounters: Childhood, Tourism, and Social Change in Banaras, India

Jenny Huberman

Open Access Published by Rutgers University Press 2012

Ambivalent Encounters

Childhood, Tourism, and Social Change in Banaras, India

Jenny Huberman

In the series Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813554082

Overview
Contents

About this book

Jenny Huberman provides an ethnographic study of encounters between western tourists and the children who work as unlicensed peddlers and guides along the riverfront city of Banaras, India. She examines how and why these children elicit such powerful reactions from western tourists and locals in their community as well as how the children themselves experience their work and render it meaningful.

Ambivalent Encounters brings together scholarship on the anthropology of childhood, tourism, consumption, and exchange to ask why children emerge as objects of the international tourist gaze; what role they play in representing socio-economic change; how children are valued and devalued; why they elicit anxieties, fantasies, and debates; and what these tourist encounters teach us more generally about the nature of human interaction. It examines the role of gender in mediating experiences of social change—girls are praised by locals for participating constructively in the informal tourist economy while boys are accused of deviant behavior. Huberman is interested equally in the children’s and adults’ perspectives; her own experiences as a western visitor and researcher provide an intriguing entry into her interpretations.

Author / Editor information

JENNY HUBERMAN is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Reviews

"A useful contribution to our understanding of interactions with children that take place in the context of tourism, and of children’s economic
activities more generally."

— Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"Through her research on tourist-child encounters in Banaras, Huberman makes a real contribution to the ethnographic and psychological literature on working children and changing gender systems in India."

— Ethos

"Huberman provides profound insights on the lives of children who work the streets of the tourist industry, and equally profound insights on the experience of tourists and their search for meaning and self understanding in India."

— Joseph S. Alter, professor of anthropology, University of Pittsburgh

"Ambivalent Encounters is one of the most ethnographically detailed and multifaceted books on children. Huberman expertly captures and explores relationships between value, age, and work in a contemporary Indian city."

— Chaise LaDousa, associate professor of anthropology, Hamilton College

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	i
Contents Open Access Download PDF	vii
Preface Open Access Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Open Access Download PDF	xiii
Note On Translation And Transliteration Open Access Download PDF	xv
Part 1. Introductions
1. Children, Tourists, And Locals Open Access Download PDF	3
2. A Tourist Town Open Access Download PDF	18
Part 2. Conceptions Of Children
3. Girls And Boys On The Ghats Open Access Download PDF	35
4. Innocent Children Or Little Adults? Open Access Download PDF	67
5. The Minds And Hearts Of Children Open Access Download PDF	93
Part 3. Conceptions Of Value
6. Earning, Spending, Saving Open Access Download PDF	119
7. Something Extra Open Access Download PDF	141
8. Money, Gender, And The (Im)Morality Of Exchange Open Access Download PDF	165
9. Conclusion Open Access Download PDF	182
Notes Open Access Download PDF	189
References Open Access Download PDF	205
Index Open Access Download PDF	221
About The Author Open Access Download PDF	229

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 246
Illustrations
- Other: 1 map

eBook

Published: December 1, 2012
ISBN: 9780813554082