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This book examines how the global spread of capitalism has transformed the everyday lives of children in disparate and far flung geographical contexts. In wonderful intricate detail, it draws parallels between the changes occurring in the processes of everyday social reproduction in northern Sudan and those that are at play in the restructuring of the everyday lives of children in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. Katz's major argument is that global economic restructuring transforms the scale of uneven development producing similar changes in the relationship between economic production and social reproduction in disparate local settings. Focusing on the geographies of everyday life, Katz documents how the systematic devaluation of their children's skills and knowledge and the widening inequalities among them accompanied attempts to integrate both places into global markets. Although much of the book is concerned with documenting the actual work of social reproduction in Howa and the commonalities between the transformations brought by global capitalist restructuring in the global north and south, Katz also seeks to provide the building blocks of a research methodology for political engagement, which she defines as topographical analysis . She argues that by producing thick descriptions of social relations, material social practices, and the construction of meaning within specific historicosocial landscapes, we can begin to produce a countertopography--a political imaginary able to counter the disabling effects of globalized capitalism.
For the first four chapters Katz, takes us on a journey that starts with a thick description of a child's day in Howa and follows with a detailed historiography of the political economy and ecology of Howa village; the entanglement of processes of economic production and social reproduction in children's work and play in Howa and the role of both processes in the creation of particular ways of knowing and being. In chapters 5 and 6, she guides us through the transformations occurring between production and reproduction in Howa and the...