Abstracts
Abstract
Children’s growth has long been measured against the axis of time. Yet anthropometric indexes such as age for height measurements do not simply mark the passage of time and associated growth but themselves indicate “norms” that stand as markers of potential. Charting changing modes of representing the problem of children’s growth over the 20th century and into the 21st, this paper attends to visual technologies that distribute potential unevenly around the world, asking what is at stake in making children’s growth and development visible, and whose potential is affirmed in the process?
Keywords:
- growth,
- development,
- stunting,
- potential,
- visual culture
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Bibliography
- Adams, V. (2016). Introduction. In V. Adams (Ed.), Metrics: What counts in global health (pp. 1–17). Duke University Press.
- American Red Cross. (1919). Watch New York’s children grow: A report of nutritional activities for children in New York County. New York County Chapter Health Service. Blanchard Press.
- Baughan, E. (2022). Saving the children: Humanitarianism, internationalism, and empire. University of California Press.
- Burman, E. (1994). Innocents abroad: Western fantasies of childhood and the iconography of emergencies. Disasters, 18(3), 238–253. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.1994.tb00310.x
- Child Hygiene Committee of Philadelphia. (1913). Report of the Philadelphia baby saving show and the proceedings of the conference on infant hygiene (May 18–26, 1912). W. F. Fell Co.
- Chudacoff, H. (1989). How old are you? Age consciousness in American culture. Princeton University Press.
- de Onis, M., & Branca, F. (2016). Childhood stunting: A global perspective. Maternal and Child Nutrition, 12(1),12–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12231
- Department of Foreign Affairs. (1983, December). What would you like to be when you grow up? Alive! Australian Foreign Affairs Record, 54(12).
- Dumit, J., & de Laet, M. (2014). Curves to bodies: The material life of graphs. In D. L. Kleinman & K. Moore (Eds.), Routledge handbook of science technology and society (pp. 71–89). Routledge.
- Eßer, F. (2017). Enacting the overweight body in residential child care: Eating and agency beyond the nature-culture divide. Childhood, 24(3), 286–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568216688245
- Emerson, W. (1919). Nutrition clinics. In Children’s Bureau (Ed.), Standards of child welfare: A report of the Children Bureau conferences May and June 1919. U.S. Department of Labor.
- Evans, B. (2010). Anticipating fatness: Childhood, affect, and the pre-emptive “war on obesity.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(1), 21–38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40647286
- Fehrenbach, H., & Rodogno, D. (2015). “A horror photo of a drowned Syrian child”: Humanitarian photography and NGO media strategies in historical perspective. International Review of the Red Cross, 97(900), 1121–1155. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383116000369
- Fitz Roy, A. (1904, December). Minutes of evidence taken before the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. Privy Council Office, Whitehall. In Report of the Inter-departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. Wyman & Sons. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/uy7sevtp i
- Galton, F. (1874). Proposal to apply for anthropological statistics from schools. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 3, 308–311.
- Galton, F. (1885). On the Anthropometric Laboratory at the late International Health Exhibition. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 14, 205–221.
- Glasman, J. (2020). Humanitarianism and the quantification of human needs: Minimal humanity. Routledge.
- Gotz, N., Brewis, G., & Werther, S. (2020). Humanitarianism in the modern world: The moral economy of famine relief. Cambridge University Press.
- Gowen, G., & Marteli, J. (2010, December 14). Severe stunting: Twelve years old going on five. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/malnutrition-severe-stunting-guatemalan-children/story?id=12381731
- Gupta, A. (2002). Reliving childhood? The temporality of childhood and narratives of reincarnation. Ethnos, 67(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840220122959
- Gupta, A. (2012). Red tape: Bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty in India. Duke University Press.
- Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. (1904). Appendix. In Report of the Inter-Departmental committee on Physical Deterioration. Wyman & Sons. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/uy7sevtp i
- Jelliffe, D. (1966). The assessment of the nutritional status of the community. WHO.
- Jelliffe, D. (1969). Child nutrition in developing countries: A handbook for fieldworkers. U.S. Government Printing Office.
- Kind-Kovács, F. (2016). The Great War, the child’s body, and the American Red Cross. European Review of History, 23(1–2), 33–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2015.1121971
- Latour, B. (1986). Visualisation and cognition: Drawing things together. In H. Kuklick (Ed.), Knowledge and society: Studies in sociology of culture past and present, Volume 6. Jai Press.
- Lee, L., & Motzau, J. ( 2011). Navigating the bio-politics of childhood. Childhood, 18(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568210371526
- Manzo, K. (2008). Imagining humanitarianism: NGO identity and the iconography of childhood. Antipode, 40(4), 632–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00627.x
- Morley, D. (1984). Growth monitoring. In UNICEF (Ed.), The state of the world’s children (pp. 77–81). Oxford University Press.
- Nieuwenhuys, O. (2013). Theorising childhood(s): Why we need postcolonial perspectives. Childhood, 20(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.11770907568212465534
- Nott, J. (2019). “No one may starve in the British Empire”: Kwashiorkor, protein, and the politics of nutrition between Britain and Africa. Social History of Medicine, 34(2), 553–576. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkz107
- Pentecost, M. (2018). The first thousand days: Epigenetics in the age of global health. In M Meloni et al. (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of biology and society (pp. 269–294). Palgrave Macmillan.
- Perumal, N., Bassani, D. G., & Roth, D. E. (2018). Use and misuse of stunting as a measure of child health. The Journal of Nutrition, 148(3), 311–315. https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxx064
- Quetelet, M. A. (1842). A treatise on man and the development of his faculties (W. R. Chambers, Trans.). Published online by Cambridge University Press.
- Ryan, K. W. (2011). The new wave of childhood studies: Breaking the grip of bio-social dualism? Childhood, 19(4), 439–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568211427612
- Ryan, K. W. (2014). Childhood, biosocial power, and the “anthropological machine”: Life as a governable process? Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory, 15(3), 266–283. https://doi.org/10.1179/1440991714Z.00000000035
- Sandler, A. (2021). The legacy of a standard of normality in child nutrition research. Population Health, 15, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100865
- Sathyamala, C. (2017). Global nutrition report: Towards global governance in nutrition. Development and Change, 48(5), 1227–1242. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12332
- Save the Children Fund. (1978, December). If you ever wondered … The World’s Children.
- Save the Children Fund (UK). (1979, June). Why children cannot wait. The World’s Children [UK edition].
- Save the Children Fund (Australia). (1982, June). How children suffer. The World’s Children [NSW edition].
- Scott-Smith, T. (2013). The fetishism of humanitarian objects and the management of malnutrition in emergencies. Third World Quarterly, 34(5), 913–928. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2013.800749
- Smuts, A. (2006). Science in the service of children 1893–1935. Yale University Press.
- Steedman, C. (1995). Strange dislocations: Childhood and the idea of human interiority. Harvard University Press.
- Strong, A. L. (1915). Child-welfare exhibits: Types and preparation. U.S. Government Printing Office.
- Tanner, J. M. (1981). A history of the study of human growth. Cambridge University Press.
- Thorne, B. (2007). Crafting the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. Childhood, 14(2), 147–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568207078324
- Turmel, A. (2008). A historical sociology of childhood: Developmental thinking, categorization, and graphic visualization. Cambridge University Press.
- UNICEF. (2013, April). Improving child nutrition: The achievable imperative for global progress. https://data.unicef.org/resources/improving-child-nutrition-the-achievable-imperative-for-global-progress/
- UNICEF. (2019). The state of the world’s children: Children, food, and nutrition—Growing well in a changing world. Author.
- UNICEF, WHO, & World Bank Group. (2015). Levels and trends in child malnutrition. UNICEF / WHO / World Bank Group joint child malnutrition estimates. Key findings of the 2015 edition. UNICEF.
- UNICEF, WHO, & World Bank Group. (2018). Levels and trends in child malnutrition. UNICEF / WHO / World Bank Group joint child malnutrition estimates. Key findings of the 2018 edition. UNICEF.
- UNICEF, WHO, & World Bank Group. (2020). Levels and trends in child malnutrition UNICEF /WHO / World Bank Group joint child malnutrition estimates Key findings of the 2020 edition. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240003576
- UNICEF, WHO, & World Bank Group. (2021). Levels and trends in child malnutrition UNICEF /WHO / World Bank Group joint child malnutrition estimates Key findings of the 2021 edition. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240025257
- Upton, G. N. (1965, November 15). Letter to N. W. Lamidey. Manuscript collection of the Australian Freedom From Hunger Campaign, MS 4529, Box 4, National Library of Australia.
- Victoria, C. G., Adair, L., et al. (2008). Maternal and child undernutrition: Consequences for adult health and human capital. Lancet, 371, 340–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61692-4
- WaterAid. (2016). Caught short: How a lack of toilets and clean water contributes to malnutrition. https://www.wateraid.org/in/publications/caught-short-how-a-lack-of-toilets-and-clean-water-contributes-to-malnutrition-2016
- Waterlow, J. (1972). Classification and definition of protein-calorie malnutrition. British Medical Journal, 3(5826), 566. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.3.5826.566
- Worboys, M. (1988). The discovery of colonial malnutrition between the wars. In D. Arnold (Ed.), Imperial medicine and Indigenous societies (pp. 208–225). Manchester University Press.
- World Health Organisation (WHO). (2006). WHO child growth standards: Length/height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length, weight-for-height and body mass index-for-age: Methods and development. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/924154693X
- Yates-Doerr, E. (2017). Counting bodies? On future engagements with science studies in medical anthropology. Anthropology and Medicine, 24(2), 142–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2017.1317194
- Yates-Doerr, E. (2020). Reworking the social determinants of health: Responding to material-semiotic indeterminacy in public health intervention. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 34(3), 378–397. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12586