The fifth edition of the ‘Children and Rites’ workshop, the fruit of extensive inter-faculty and inter-institutional collaboration, addressed children’s relationship with objects and materiality in an interdisciplinary round-table discussion. It began with a talk by historian Antoine Mandret-Degeilh (LaSSP, University of Toulouse), entitled “The little ones in front? Childhood in civil baptisms in France and Germany (20th-21st centuries
Interdisciplinary round table on children’s relationship to objects and materiality in rituals
As in previous editions, this workshop continued the study of children’s participation in rituals, whether the rituals under consideration belong to established religions, emerging spiritualities, or the secular world (educational institutions, care facilities, leisure activities, etc.). The initial anthropological approach developed in previous meetings was combined with those of history and the sciences of education. This year’s theme is children’s relationship to objects and materiality in rituals. Several lines of inquiry were proposed: toys on the border between play and ritual; children’s relationship to ornaments (body shaping/adornment, children as creators); objects as attributes that construct and indicate a (changing) status related to age, gender, or a period of transition; objects as (sensory, emotional, etc.) learning aids for ritual practices; children’s relationship to musical instruments; objects as a sources of pleasure or desire (gifts, food giving etc.). Questions related to children’s handling of objects during rituals, or to the association of objects with children, stimulated the exchange. We thus reflected on what children do with objects, and what objects do to children in the contexts of everyday or institutionalised rituals, in an interdisciplinary dialogue open to the diversity of methodological approaches as well as disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.
Organizing committee
Neyra Alvarado Solís • PEA, El Colegio de San Luis A.C
Marie Daugey • LASC, ULiège
Marie Housen • RUCHE, PERF, FPLSE, ULiège
Florence Pirard • RUCHE, PERF, FPLSE, ULiège
Élodie Razy • IRSS-LASC, FaSS, ULiège
Charles-Édouard de Suremain • UMR 208 PALOC, IRD-MNHN
Philippe Swennen • Mondes anciens, FPL, ULiège
Viola Teisenhoffer • IRSS-LASC, FaSS, ULiège