The Practices of Childhood: Coproducing Child Health in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis addresses the question: How do children participate in the coproduction of their health? Aotearoa New Zealand childhoods are characterised by persistent inequities which concentrate in the intersection of class and ethnicity. One manifestation of these inequities is the disproportionate burden of acute and chronic illness for Māori and Pasifika children, particularly those living in low socio-economic areas. A large, interdisciplinary body of research has considered questions of child health inequities from broader epidemiological and social perspectives, identifying the role of structural determinants of health: for example, links between housing and distribution of morbidity. Yet, as a robust anthropological literature on children’s agency demonstrates, children are not passive recipients of health care, but actively negotiate social relations and collectively produce cultural meanings and practices. What, then, are the impacts of such activities on child health; what are the processes through which children help to shape their own wellbeing? I approach these questions through ethnographic fieldwork in a school with children aged between 8-12, located in an area of South Auckland characterised by social marginalisation and material deprivation. Drawing on the work of Corsaro, Bourdieu, Shilling, and Prout on relationships between individuals—or individual bodies—and society, I propose a coproduction framework which places children as participants in their health by positioning their activities in dialectical relationship with adults, the body, and social structures including the state, the institution, cultural ideologies, and the economy. Using this framework, I document how Tūrama School children’s practices are produced from their experiences of their bodies and these wider structures, and how these practices, such as monitoring the body, eating, using pharmaceuticals, negotiating health care, risk management, and constructing relationships can, in turn, help to pattern children’s bodies and health in significant ways. Findings from this thesis suggest ways to situate children’s embodied practices in relation to political-economic and social forces, elevating their perspectives and activities without conferring upon them sole responsibility for their own health status.