Childhoods, family and schooling in Engabao: School ethnography in a fisher village in Ecuador

Abstract

Throughout an ethnographic method, this paper explores the ways children and teenagers in the fisher’s tows of Engabao, Ecuador, live their age and family experience, in a culturally different way from the norms that occidental models impose, and how this affects their schooling. The research problematizes the concept of “universal childhood”, and explores the anthropological and sociological models that help to interpret those childhoods that work, date and reproduce at an early age, and circulate among households. The participant observation was the main method, with the support of different tools such as the diary field and structured and non-structured interviews; the second ones in formal groups, and the first ones in an individual way and in informal groups. In the other hand, there is the bibliographical research. The concept of child agency is the main theoretical support, in order to interpret the activity of children and teenagers as social agents, who are empowered to take decisions and transform the world they inhabit.