The Anthropology of Childhood Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings

Camilla Morelli (2011, 2012) has been a recent participant observer – with a focus on children – in a transitional community of Matses Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. She marvels at how facile and active the Matses children are in the natural environment, compared to what she feels is her own ineptitude. She is cowed by three- and four-year-olds who competently paddle and maneuver canoes on the wide river. She observes young boys nimbly catching and handling enormous catfish (cover photo). And then she is struck by the painful contrast between the children’s mastery of their natural surroundings and the great discomfort and incompetence they display in the classroom.