“Don’t bring me any chickens with sad wings”: Discipline, surveillance, and “communal work” in peri-urban childcare centres in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Cara Donovan, Alder Keleman Saxena, Carol Carpenter, Debbie Humphries

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter explores the experiences of feeding children outside the home within the context of feeding programmes at child centres serving children under six years old in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with staff and observations in kitchens and at parent meetings. Drawing on surveillance as a conceptual framework, we argue that these Bolivian child centre food programmes are a form of the state’s disciplinary power. In this system, administrators are instructed to increase or decrease the weight of children based on the results of medical monitoring of the children’s bodies. In state-supported child centres, discipline transfers to the mothers in the form of “communal work” between the government, child centre staff, and mothers. The programme’s staff manages mothers by imposing expectations on them, declaring moral judgments of success and failure, and displaying an overall mistrust of mothers’ feeding practices. Furthermore, the state programmes rely on the unpaid work of the mothers who are already experiencing the heavy burdens of financial and time poverty. The result is that a system meant to improve the nutritional status of children of low-income families may contribute to rising trends in obesity; and programmes meant to support working women rely on women’s work.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationFeeding Children Inside and Outside the Home
Subtitle of host publicationCritical Perspectives
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages63-83
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)9781351800730
ISBN (Print)9781138633865
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2018
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Social Sciences

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