Drawing pictures in the dust: Rajasthani children's landscapes

Abstract

Our paper conveys some of the ways children in rural Rajasthan, North India, think about their relationships with the environment, and how these relationships are enacted in their workday lives and expressed in their stories and songs. Due to severe deforestation in the region over the past 50 years, these children inherit a landscape very different from the one that was familiar to their parents and grand- parents. Interviews with children and the oral traditions they perform are our two major sources, supplemented with knowledge gained through participant obser vation and experience. We contrast children who work all day herding their families' livestock with children who attend school, focusing on attitudes toward work and on what daily chores and school books teach children about their natural surroundings. Folktales and folksongs rich in images and morals drawn from nature offer vivid insights into children's imaginative worlds.