Suffering Children and Ethical Struggles:  An Anthropological Research in a Marginalized Neighborhood in Tabriz

Izadi-Jeiran, Asghar

doi:10.22034/jss.2025.551837.1684

Suffering Children and Ethical Struggles: An Anthropological Research in a Marginalized Neighborhood in Tabriz

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Asghar Izadi-Jeiran

Associate Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Director of Research Core for Cultural Anthropology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22034/jss.2025.551837.1684

Abstract

The early ethnographic works portrayed children as passive recipients of culture; however, more recent studies consider them as experiencing subjects endowed with meaning and value, deserving serious attention in social science. This article, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, examines how childhood is experienced in a marginalized neighborhood. The fieldwork was conducted in the Ghapanlar neighborhood of Tabriz from 2015 to 2020, with data collected through participation, observation, and interviews.
This anthropological study focuses on the actual living conditions of children, the expectations of their families and NGOs, and the children's responses to life in poverty. The ethnographic narrative of marginalized children begins from the prenatal stage, where children, affected by the commodification of healthcare services, face vulnerabilities and deficiencies. Subsequently, they experience hunger and repressed desires while living through periods of severe unemployment among their laborer fathers, navigating alleys with numerous steps, and residing in hillside homes with cracked, crumbling roofs. By the age of seven, Ghapanlar’s children fall victim to the symbolic violence of NGOs and their families due to the commodification of education, which imposes the lifestyle of higher social classes upon them. Nevertheless, the children's response to such conditions is described as a "ethical struggle." Finding their parents helpless in the face of poverty, these children support them by sewing shoes and scavenging waste.

Keywords

Anthropology of childhood

marginalized poor

social suffering

ethnography

Tabriz

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