Rooted in one year of ethnographic research in the central highlands of Angola, this dissertation examines the distinct cultural and linguistic worlds of girls ages eight to eighteen who are growing up in a centro de acolhimento, one of more than 100 residential centers—or group homes—built in the aftermath of Angola’s 27-year-long civil war (1975–2002) to provide shelter and care for children in need. Currently housing over nine thousand young residents throughout the country, centros de acolhimento have emerged as institutional replacements, or supplements, for traditional family structures. As a result, they have become an integral part of growing up for a generation of Angolan youth, shaping their lived experiences, social networks, and access to resources. The dissertation draws on Victor Turner’s formulation of liminality to provide an anthropological analysis of the residential centers as liminal spaces and to understand the ways in which liminality shapes institutionalized childhood, including children’s sense of identity, relatedness, forms of sociality, and caregiving practices. Using audiovisual recordings of everyday interactions in an all-female center, the dissertation analyzes how girls are socialized to behave, think, feel, and talk in institutionally preferred ways as part of the center’s goal to rear idealized versions of Angolan women. It also investigates what it means to “care” and the paradoxes of caregiving in a setting where resources are very limited, affective ties are fragile, and a sense of security is unstable for both children and adult staff. The dissertation illuminates the complexities of institutionalized childhood in Angola and, more broadly, the global phenomenon of children growing up outside of normative family networks. Since the 1990s, anthropological studies of youth have investigated how the instabilities of economic conditions of the late 20th century impact the lives of young people (Scheper-Hughes & Sargent 1998; Stephens 1995), powerfully unsettling the “convenient fictions” of childhood as a time characterized by belonging to the domestic sphere and dependency upon adults (Lee 2001). Yet, despite this long-standing interest in examining childhood outside of the normative contexts of family, there is a surprisingly small body of long-term ethnographic research on children’s lives in institutional care (Carpenter 2021; Goldfarb 2017; Heying 2022; Khlinovskaya Rockhill 2010; Van Vleet 2019). Recent ethnographic work on migration (Coe et al. 2011; Heidbrink 2014; Statz 2016; Terrio 2015), orphanhood (Cheney 2017), and homelessness (Cox 2015) reveals how contemporary socio-economic structures have reshaped traditional notions of family and home, making extra-familial and transitory settings across different borders important sites of socialization for unaccompanied child migrants, orphaned youth, and homeless youth. This dissertation is a contribution toward understanding children’s lives in, and negotiations of, these challenging liminal contexts. / Anthropology
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/9543 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Nazimova, Kristina João |
| Contributors | Garrett, Paul B., 1968-, Garcia-Sanchez, Inmaculada Ma. (Inmaculada Maria), Williams, Kimberly D., Upton, J. Christopher, Heying, Shirley A. |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 227 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/9505, Theses and Dissertations |
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