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5. Nonhuman Children
- University of Wisconsin Press
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After eight months in Biombo I notice a comment about a particular child who is said to be an iran. The concept of iran is not new to me as it is so frequently used by Guinean people. Indeed, I have already spent a lot of time trying to understand what iran means. Referring to a particular child as iran is, however, something new. I am chatting with Margareta, an elderly woman. During our conversation a boy about twelve years old comes and exchanges a few words with Margareta before he leaves. “He is my grandchild,” she explains . Then she tells me that when her daughter-in-law gave birth to the boy, some people said that he was not a human child, he was an iran. “Iran?”I ask. “Yeah, that is what they said. Some people said he was dangerous and he had to die (ten ke muri).” “Why?” “He was born with a big head.” Margareta tells me that her husband, who is a Catholic, had reacted harshly against the idea that the boy is an iran and should therefore die. He 138 5 Nonhuman Children proclaimed that the boy is welcome in this world, as are all children, and proposed that he and Margareta should foster him. So they did. “He is such a nice boy,” Margareta says warmly. I am a little confused, but before I have time to ask for more details, another person comes and interrupts our conversation . It is late and already dark. I walk home and write my field notes that a child can somehow be an iran, nonhuman and dangerous, and had to die. I also note that being iran has something to do with being born with a big head. For the first time, the thought of infanticide enters my field notes. Infanticide refers to the killing of a child, though the term is used differently in different disciplines (Barfield 1997). Within criminology, infanticide is frequently limited to mean the killing of a child less than one year of age. It also sometimes refers to the killing of a child by one of the parents, or only by the mother. Various authors concerned with the killing of infants have classified infanticide as outright, direct, or violent in contrast to indirect or passive (Harris 1977, Miller 1987, Scrimshaw 1984). An outright, direct, or violent infanticide is committed when someone consciously causes the death of a child. On the other hand, an indirect or passive infanticide occurs through inaction, for instance by the withholding of food or the failure to seek care. Miller, who studied discrimination against females in India, argues that infanticide should be placed at “one extreme of the continuum effects of child abuse and neglect” (1987:96). In contrast, Scheper-Hughes (1992:357) distinguishes between child abuse in the United States and selective neglect as practiced in northeast Brazil because the latter is not motivated by anger, hate, and aggression toward the child. Howell (1979:62), who describes outright infanticide among the !Kung in South Africa, also emphasizes that feelings such as aggression and anger do not provoke the killing. Whether the direct or indirect killing of children is rational, irrational, or pathological is a debated issue. Evolutionary approaches within biology, psychology, and anthropology have in the last few decades increasingly come to regard infanticide as an adaptive strategy among most species, including humans (Bartlett, Sussman, and Cheverud 1993, Hausfater and Hrdy 1984, Parmigiani and vom Saal 1994). Within these approaches infanticide is explained as an adaptive behavior that contributes to population control (Birdsell 1993, Harris 1977), or encourages reproductive success through a kind of postnatal abortion in which “poor offspring quality” or untimely births are eliminated (Ball and Hill 1996; Daly and Wilson 1984, 1988; Hrdy 1994, 1999; Scrimshaw 1984).1 Nonhuman Children 139 [3.239.245.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:20 GMT) The sociobiologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson argue that the “adaptive functions of parental solicitude towards offspring seem obvious” (1984:488). In a worldwide study of infanticide based on ethnographic data from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), Daly and Wilson find that most of sixty randomly selected societies where infanticide was practiced can be divided into three categories based on predefined “cost-benefit questions ” (488 –92). The first category includes societies in which infants with “wrong” fathers are the victims of infanticide. The second group includes societies in which infants born with a deformity or some...