Professors Uwe Gielen and Sunghun Kim will discuss their new book, Global Changes in Children’s Lives (Cambridge University Press, 2019), comparing the nature of childhood and adolescence in three representative societies differing in their subsistence activities. The societies include Tibetan nomadic pastoralists, traditional farmers in India, and South Korean students growing up in a digital information society. In addition, Gielen and Kim will trace a variety of intertwined global changes that have led to sharply reduced child mortality rates, lower birthrates, shrinking family sizes, contested gender roles, increased marriage ages, long-term enrollment of children and adolescents in educational institutions, and the formation of culturally mixed identities in places such as Ladakh in India.
