Child-rearing is the means by which persons become incorporated into the groups that the world has delivered them into. Being child-reared is at one and the same time a process of empowerment and of disciplining – through enculturation and socialization processes we learn how to navigate discrete social terrains, yet we are also put into a social place in terms of status, role and position.

In their research, Maija Sequeira and Kristian Garthus-Niegel both investigate the role of power in processes of enculturation and socialization. Maija is currently doing fieldwork in Helsinki, Finland, studying how children learn, experience and enact social hierarchies. Kristian’s doctoral work addressed the role of ideology in children’s learning and behavior in primary schools in Oslo, Norway. Talking about their individual designs and research experiences, they will shed light on two alternate fruitful anthropological venues into the field of power and hierarchy in child-rearing. The adjoint discussion will revolve around methodological challenges in doing anthropological research among children as well as the potential of such research to generate insights about the interrelated roles of cultural models and social power in children’s learning and development.

Speakers: Dr. Kristian Garthus-Niegel is an educational anthropologist focusing through historical as well as contemporary lenses on themes of migration, multiculturalism, sociocultural integration, and education policies and practices in The Global North. His Ph.D. dissertation from 2019 centers on social integration processes in ethnically diverse schools in Oslo, Norway. Currently Kristian Garthus-Niegel lives as an independent scholar in Germany where he works with refugee-NGO, monitoring the development of European migration policies and laws as well as the ongoing social and cultural transformations set off by recent refugee immigration to Europe.
Maija-Eliina Sequeira is a PhD researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her interdisciplinary project uses methods from anthropology and developmental psychology to explore and compare how children in Colombia and Finland learn, enact and navigate social hierarchies in their everyday lives. She is currently carrying out fieldwork and aims to graduate in early 2023.

Discussion will be moderated by Prof. Dr. Victor de Munck (Vilnius University).