We interview María Florencia Amigó about her book, Infants, Children, and Youth: Multi-sited Stories of Adversity from South Asia to Australia
Our member, Dr. María Florencia Amigó (the University of Sydney, Australia), talks about her book, Infants, Children, and Youth: Multi-sited Stories of Adversity from South Asia to Australia (Lived Places Publishing, 2025).
Q: What is this book about?
This is a book for those interested in the diverse pathways that take us through the transition into “adulthood”, and in the variety of experiences, circumstances, and interactions that can accompany that journey. Drawing on real stories derived from two decades of anthropological fieldwork in diverse settings, the book intends to expand our emotional understanding of what it takes to go through infancy, childhood, and youth to eventually become an independent member of a community. The stories take place in contexts of adversity in Indonesia, Nepal and Australia. Be it due to restricted access to resources, environmentally sound environments, employment, education, or healthcare, or due to human norms and relationships that limit the autonomy of individuals, the stories convey that these contexts where infants, children, and youth unfold their lives turn into hostile forces that in turn shape particular personhoods.
The chapters are deliberately organised following the sequence in the early stages of a human being, from birth to the early twenties, when almost anywhere young adults are expected to be self-sufficient. Each of the five core chapters contains a handful of stories stemming from a single ethnographic project that revolved around a particular theme (infant malnutrition, schooling as a migrant, child labour, early marriage and youth underemployment). The stories reinforce the ethnographic reality around how the lives of many infants, children, and youth on the planet diverge significantly from dominant, media-bloated discourses on how humans should progress through life.
Q: What made you write this book?
My aim for writing the book was to put the stories together to reflect on what learnings would emerge. Although each chapter is self-contained and can be read in isolation, my intention as an author is for the reader to find how one chapter leads to the following one, if only as a way of tracing the evolution of a new life and the different fronts against which that life must fight, in the contexts of nutrition and physical care, language and basic education, economic contribution to the family unit, coming of age and mating, and getting paid for work to achieve financial independence. Despite the geographically distant and culturally distinct contexts in which the stories are located, the young lives within them may be subject to forces that are relatable to each other.
Katz (2001) uses the metaphor of “contour lines” to convey how distant physical spaces are interconnected through similar social, economic, and political processes. My aim is for the reader to draw mental contour lines that traverse and link each of the stories in this book, and in doing so identify how the uniqueness of human experiences often reveals shared aspects of our collective existence. My aim is also for readers to consider how emotions, as a fundamental common feature of our humanity, connect us with others and become instrumental in our efforts to survive, thrive, and leave descendants, no matter where we are situated.
Excerpts from the book:
From Chapter 4
Sam (male, 12 –child worker in Lombok, Indonesia):
"My household is one of the poorer ones and it is worse for two reasons: we don’t have land and I don’t have sisters. My mother always says she would have loved to have daughters to alleviate her work. We are just three brothers, I am the middle one and am 12. Myself and my older brother of 14 have to do many of the chores girls would do, like the dishes and hanging clothes, so that my mother and father can go out and cari uang (chase money). Our younger brother is still little. Before and after school I do chores, and when there is opportunity for money I also have to go and get it, otherwise my parents get really angry. Even my mother has to gather sand from the river together with me and my older brother. This is a child’s job but we don’t have many other options during the rainy season. If my mother sees I am playing too much with the other children, splashing and swimming instead of getting sand she chases me and hits me with a stick. But I understand, because do you know how much I eat? I usually eat at least two plates of rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so of course I have to work. We are poor and I am an expense.
During the tobacco season I tie up tobacco leaves before they go into the kiln. That is much better than getting sand from the river. Many children can keep the money they earn for this job but I can’t. I have to hand it all to my parents who try to save by buying kids. Once they become young goats we sell them. My mother became so attached to one of the goats that she didn’t want to sell it. But at the end of Ramadan last year we had no money at all and we had to sell this goat. It was slaughtered in front of our house by the neighbours who had bought it for a Ramadan feast. My mother was so upset and couldn’t stop crying. But that is how it is, money comes in, money goes out."
From Chapter 5
Kajaal (female, 18 –young wife married at 17 in Sunsari, Nepal):
"Of course, I know about the law in Nepal that you can only get married after 20, but my family forced me to get married. My aunts forced me to get married. I know it’s not good to get married at such a young age. It’s not good at all. But my family would say, “You will do it, it will happen, there will be a wedding.” I said, “I won’t do it.” And they would say, “you will do it” … Before, I was free to do many things. I could get out of home and do many things. Now, I have to ask for permission to go out. Now, they can say “no”. I had to drop out of school because of this marriage. I am burdened with extra responsibilities. My responsibility is to help my mother-in-law and look after her. There is a lot of work at my husband’s house. I have a lot of farm work to do. I wake up around 5 in the morning and do the household chores. I cook rice and prepare breakfast. After that, I feed the goats. I feed the chicken, and after that I go to the fields to work, then I go home in the afternoon, and after that I cook dinner and eat with my husband before he goes fishing. Sometimes my husband doesn’t support me, and I feel like I’m dying. And if I die, what will happen? My life will be gone. But sometimes I feel like I’m going to be strong and take care of myself."
From Chapter 7
I propose the stories in this book are also, and more importantly, connected by “contour lines of hope”, as no matter how monstrous the adversity is, there will be plans, dreams, and aspirations, in the minds of these young individuals and in the ones who care for them. And it is hope that will make them resistant to adversity. Be it because of the resilience of their bodies, the courage when living in a language they don’t understand, the commitment to help their families survive, the grit shown when forming a new family unit when still very young, or the crave for full financial independence, it is hope and the realisability of that hope that matter.
Hope – together with value, morality, imagination, wellbeing, empathy, care, the gift, time, and change – is a focus of the “anthropology of the good”, a term anthropologist Joel Robbins (2013) uses to propose an anthropology that focuses on how human groups in diverse places strive to “create the good in their lives” (p. 457) and which can act as a counterpart to the “anthropology of the suffering”. I propose the stories in the book are appraised through the lens of “hope”, not just as a unit of anthropological analysis but as a way of promoting dignity for human life anywhere and supporting and respecting their ideals for better futures.
References:
Katz, C. (2001). On the Grounds of Globalization: A Topography for Feminist Political Engagement. Signs, 26(4), pp. 1213–1234.
Robbins, J. (2013). Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(3), pp. 447–462. doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.12040