Call for papers for proposed panel on "Children and the Semiotics of Giving" for 2011 SPA Meeting

[Elise Berman]

Hi all,

Since the deadline for the SPA meetings has been extended, we would like to
extend the call for papers for the proposed panel on “Children and the
Semiotics of Giving” for the 2011 SPA meeting next April.  The abstract for
the panel is copied below.  If you would be interested in being part of this
proposed panel, please send an email with your abstract to Allison DiBianca
Fasoli at adibianc at uchicago.edu or to Elise Berman at
eberman at uchicago.eduby Friday December 10th.  For information on the
SPA's please go to http://www.aaanet.org/sections/SPA//.  Thank you
- Hide quoted text -


 Best,

Allison & Elise

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*Abstract for Proposed Panel: Children and the Semiotics of Giving*

This panel explores the semiotic processes of children's giving
interactions. Giving and exchange have long been seen as processes central
to human social existence. Anthropological research tends to examine giving
at a macro-level, in terms of economic systems or formal giving. But, giving
must take place through microprocesses that are fundamentally semiotic.  Acts
of exchange cannot take place unless people speak and act in particular ways
so as to assign goods social value and to invest actors with social
identities as givers and receivers.

Processes of exchange have largely been explored in the realm of adult life.
Yet some of those speakers and actors in transactions are children.  In
fact, children's immaturity may give them unique semiotic and developmental
capabilities that enable them to be influential actors in transactions.
Moreover, children's peer relationships often revolve around informal acts
of exchange, ones rarely recorded in the literature as they are not seen as
pertinent to social relations as a whole.

Drawing on perspectives in cultural anthropology, developmental psychology,
and pragmatics, this panel investigates children as participants in giving
transaction. How do children use semiotics to give?  Do they give
differently than adults? How do children learn to give through participating
in transactions? By investigating these questions this panel will provide
insights into how children learn communicative norms of giving, how goods
obtain their meaning or status as signifiers for children, how children
invest acts of giving with social, moral, and spiritual significance, and
how their changing semiotic abilities affect their roles as givers and
receivers in exchange processes. We demonstrate how a semiotics of childhood
giving can link everyday microprocesses of talk with broader global
processes shaping contemporary issues related to giving, such as
conversational patterns in formal education, volunteer organizations, and
transnational adoption.



 Elise Berman

PhD Candidate

Department of Comparative Human Development

University of Chicago

eberman at uchicago.edu



Allison DiBianca Fasoli

PhD Candidate

Department of Comparative Human Development

University of Chicago
adibianc at uchicago.edu