event
Anthropology and Sociology
Tuesday
12
October
Franziska Fay

On Refusal and Discontinuities: Politicising Reflections on Child Protection (in Zanzibar)

Franziska Fay, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
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Maison de la Paix - Genève, Room S5 Petal 1 (hybrid event)

PLEASE NOTE: Access to indoor public events is limited to attendees with a Swiss or European COVID certificate. In addition, face masks must be worn to all in-person events at the Graduate Institute.

This event is part of the ANSO Tuesday Seminar Series.

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Abstract

In this talk I reflect on my ethnographic work on child protection in Zanzibar through the lens of a political anthropology of childhood. I think with ‘refusal’ and ‘discontinuities’ in order to highlight some political moments in child protection contexts that can tell us much about the questions at stake and in need of further examination in order to abstain from interrupting aspirations for decolonisation. Zanzibari children’s own refusal to submit to certain practical translations of ‘child protection’ and structural discontinuities that destabilise the potential sustainability of protection efforts reveal the fundamentally political nature of attempts to govern children’s safety and well-being.

 

About the Speaker

Franziska Fay is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. She holds a PhD from SOAS, London. Her research focuses on child protection, female political authority, belonging and diaspora, translation and decolonization. Her book “Disputing Discipline: Child Protection, Punishment and Piety in Zanzibar Schools” was published by Rutgers University Press (2021).