At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil - Softcover

Hecht, Tobias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521598699 ISBN 13: 9780521598699

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Through innovative fieldwork and ethnographic writing, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why, given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns, there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions they called 'radio workshops', street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. At the center of this study are the children who play, steal, sleep, dance and die in the streets of a Brazilian city. But all around them figure activists, politicians, researchers and a global crisis of childhood.

About this title

Review:

'Hecht's work is graceful, thorough, and level-headed. This book is a much needed contribution to the literature of Brazil, of children, and of anthropology. It will no doubt be read and argued for years to come.' Robin Nagle, author of Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil

'Hecht has been very lucky in the appropriation of the ethnographer's tape recorder by the street children themselves to hold their own 'radio workshops'. As a result, this work achieves something very special: the children themselves set the frame and limits of the otherwise inevitable and predictable outsider's sympathetic discourse on their plight. Never in ethnography has the agency of the subject's voice been so creatively present; never have the stories of such children who partly stand for contemporary Brazil been so plainly compelling.' George Marcus, Rice University

'A moving, provocative study that probes below the surface of everyday Brazilian life ... This is ethnography at its best: riveting, compassionate, pithy, handsomely illustrated with photographs, always aware of the larger social and political context.' Robert M. Levine, University of Miami

Book Description:

This book lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. Speaking in recorded sessions, street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. Guided by the children's questions, Hecht cuts through the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding street children in Brazil.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0521598699
• ISBN 13: 9780521598699
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280