LAWRENCE A. HIRSCHFELD Why Don't Anthropologists Like Children? ABSTRACT Few major works in anthropolbgy focus specifically on children, a curiousstate of affairs given that virtually all contem- porary anthropology is based on the premise that culture is learned, not inherited. Although children have a remarkable and undis- puted capacity for learning generally, and learning culture in particular, in significant measure anthropology has shown little interest in them and their lives. This article examines the reasons for this lamentable lacunae and offers theoretical and empirical reasons for re- pudiating it. Resistance to child-focused scholarship, it is argued, is a byproduct of (1) an impoverished view of cultural learning that overestimates the role adults play and underestimates the contribution that children make to cultural reproduction, and (2) a lack of appreciation of the scope and force of children's culture, particularly in shaping adult culture. The marginalization of children and child- hood, it is proposed, has obscured our understanding of how cultural forms emerge and why they are sustained. Two case studies, ex- ploring North American children's beliefs about social contarmination, illustrate these points. [Keywords: anthropology of childhood, children's culture, acquisition of cultural knowledge, race] T HE TITLE QUESTION of course is only half serious and ldearly incomplete. Half serious in that anthropologists as individuals presumably enjoy the company of children as much as anyone else. Incomplete in that my intention is not only to draw attention to the marginalization of children, but also to persuade that there are good, indeed quite com- pelling, reasons that children deserve a broad-based scholarly regard.' Many readers might object that anthropologists have done a good deal of research on children, as the substantial literature concerned with the intersection of culture, chil- dren, and childhood attests. As one observer put it, there are "enough studies of children by anthropologists to form a tra- dition" (Benthall.1992:1). To cite a few examples familiar to most anthropologists: the work of Margaret Mead (1930, 1933); Beatrice and John Whiting (1975; Whiting 1963; Whiting 1941); Brian Sutton-Smith (1959); Mary Ellen Good- man (1970); Helen Schwartzman (1978); John Ogbu (1978); Charles Super and Sara Harkness (1980); Robert LeVine (LeVine et al.1994); and linguistic anthropologists Bambi Schieffelin (1990; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986), Elinor Ochs (1988), and Marjorie Goodwin (1990).2 Critically for the dis- cussion at hand, this work has not coalesced into a sustained tradition of child-focused research. Nor, as a chorus of re- searchers have lamented (Caputo 1995; Hardman 1973; Schwarz 1981; Stephens 1998; Toren 1993), has it succeeded in bringing children in from the margins of anthropology. Admittedly, mainstream anthropology (tacitly) acknow- ledges that work with children is a reasonable pursuit. By and large, however, it is accepted that it is a pursuit that can be ig- nored. I believe that it cannot. My goal is to address, ques- tion, and suggest ways to redress the neglect. In this article's first section, I review this curious marginalization, consider why, it is so widespread, and suggest that there is ample rea- son to believe that child-focused research should occupy,the attention of both specialists and those in the mainstream. In a second section I offer a brief empirical case study illustrat- ing this last point. With it I attempt to show that attending to children, their singular cultural forms, and their unique conceptual architecture paradoxically reveals significant in- sights about the nature of adult cultural experience. Many adult cultural beliefs, I suggest, are sustained precisely be- cause of the way the child's mind is organized and the way children organize their own cultural environments. Many cultural forms are stable and widely distributed just because children find them easy to think and easy to learn (Sperber 1996). Pursuing this argument affords an informative yet un- appreciated perspective on the relationship between individ- ual psychological phenomena and their role in the constitu- tion of cultural forms. In the briefest terms, mainstream anthropology has margi- nalized children because it has marginalized the two things that children do especially well: children are strikingly adept at acquiring adult culture and, less obviously, adept at creating their own cultures. Although it is uncontroversial that children AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 1 04(2):61 1-627. COPYRIGHT © 2002, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION