Call for Papers – Babies as World-Makers
Terrain 87
Babies as World-Makers
Call for Papers
Issue coordinated by Lise Foisneau, Léa Linconstant, Juliette Cleuziou & Emmanuel de Vienne
Scheduled for publication in September 2027
Argument
From the doorstep of her trailer, Nita broods: who is this gadjo[1] who comes to her home and has the nerve to tell her to dress her 2-year-old son, who is still in his pajamas? She, who has had four children and spent her life caring for them. Like the time when Tressy, her neighbor, had to leave in a hurry from the maternity hospital where she had just given birth because the medical staff suspected her of abuse simply because she was Roma. From the caravan site for Travellers where she lives near Marseille, Nita tells herself that this gadjo has to be pretty rude to tell them how to look after their babies. They, the gadje, who have babies to be raised by others, who put them away in cribs and leave them to cry for hours. For a gadjo, a good baby is a baby that isn’t there. How can one imagine a world without babies, since they are the ones who make heads turn, hearts beat, and worlds go round?
Ignored, mistreated, stillborn, killed—babies are of interest to ethnologists mainly when their fates are tragic. Indeed, what could be more difficult than grasping the full complexity of these creatures with uncertain futures who depend on others for survival and cannot communicate through speech? Yet, more than with animals, plants, spirits, or ghosts, adult humans create a world with babies. This world-making presupposes that a major ontological question has been answered: what kind of being is a baby? In what capacity and how do they participate in the shared world? While some anthropologists, mostly women, have described some of the processes by which communities resolve this difficulty, most often drawing on other fields of knowledge such as linguistics or psychology, babies occupy only a marginal place within the discipline.
This special issue of Terrain aims to put newborns at the heart of anthropological analysis of collectives. Every birth is preceded by alliances, precipitates ruptures or reconfigurations, and opens up possibilities. It represents both an unpredictable encounter and a beginning, a fragile possibility for the perpetuation and preservation of the highest values. It is a key element in the relationship to time, to generation, to the political organization of collectives and their practices. Reactivating symbolic structures or sparking controversy, it unleashes political forces that are overdetermined by ideological artifacts, including biological and reactionary ones. The aim of this issue is to take seriously the disruptive force of babies, from their undecided ontological position. While babies may not obviously make “heads turn and worlds go round” everywhere, as Nita imagines, their sudden appearance certainly creates disorder and reorganization that must be examined. This issue will attempt to do so through the four following axes.
What is a baby?
The absence of articulate speech seems to have slowed down the studies of babies as objects of anthropology (Gottlieb 2000; Hirschfeld 2003; Razy 2019), as if the lack of spoken language deprived babies of the capacity to act and made them passive beings, mere vessels for the desires and wills of their caregivers (Gottlieb 2000; Collomb 2019; Razy 2019), even though “the way in which speech comes to children” (Boysson-Bardies 1996) questions the place of the baby within the collective (Simenel 2017). Linguistic anthropology, particularly through the work of E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin (1984), has shown how the acquisition of language by very young children and becoming a member of society are inseparable, emphasizing the fact that the relationships formed between babies and their caregivers, often perceived as symbiotic and attributed to spontaneity and instinct, actually crystallize the practices and values that underpin each collective. However, anthropology has shown little interest in the specificity of babies’ language and modes of communication, often leaving the field to disciplines that are apparently better equipped to study babies, such as psychoanalysis and cognitive science. Contributions offering descriptions and analyses of these exchanges are therefore particularly welcome.
More generally, this issue seeks to explore the consequences of this uncertain ontological status and the different ways in which various collectives approach it. Childbirth is not always a threshold marking a clear distinction between uterine life and earthly life (Morgan 1989; Conklin & Morgan 1996; Kaufman & Morgan, 2005). Ethnographic descriptions suggest that newborns are not universally understood as fully human (Gregor 1977; Stasch 2009; Stépanoff 2024). In some cases, birth is followed by a liminal period during which the baby is in a state of waiting, and will only obtain definitive status after one or more rituals (Bonnemère 2009; Pons 2009; Lancy 2014). In other cases, the collective keeps the newborn in a state that mimics uterine life (Walker 2009) or considers it to be a reincarnated soul already caught up in a network of relationships and carrying a history (Gottlieb 2004; Armanet 2021).. Even when childbirth allows newborns to acquire the legal status of a person, there are situations that blur this seemingly clear demarcation. This is the case, for example, with perinatal deaths in utero, where children may be registered in the family record book (Giraud 2015, 2016, Charrier & Clavandier 2019), or with premature births, which blur the difference between fetus and baby (Boltanski 2004; Lupton 2013; Rochat 2019). These situations raise questions about the nature of kinship ties—giving birth to a stillborn child does not mean that one does not become a parent (Giraud 2015, 2024) — but also about the place of babies as members of the collective. The emergence of embryos in the public arena through medically assisted reproduction, which allows them to be cryopreserved or even given up for “adoption,” has renewed debates around abortion legislation (Morgan 1997; Boltanski 2004; Mattalucci 2012; Linconstant 2020; Giraud 2025).
Fragility
This initial uncertainty about the baby’s status leads to a second one: that of the babies’ survival, which depends entirely on the group within which they are born. If birth is “the riskiest day to die” (Rochat 2019), death also looms over the early years. Babies face various types of threats: physical, such as cold and hunger; spiritual, because babies are said to be prime prey for invisible forces; and relational, since babies who are cut off from their parents sometimes let themselves die. The probability of sudden death poses a universal problem to which each collective will provide different answers: what place should be given to this precious but dependent being, whose survival is particularly uncertain? This issue will feature reflections on how collectives deal with this difficulty.
One of the tropes of European family history is to link the high infant mortality rate to parents’ lesser attachment (implying that today we love more because we die less) — a trope contradicted by numerous studies, including Didier Lett’s research (Lett 2025). This correlation between the quality of attachment and infant mortality, which depends on the socioeconomic conditions in which infants are born, is also found in certain anthropological studies (Scheper-Hughes 1985; Lancy 2014), which tend to be criticized today (Collomb 2020). Anthropologists have also paid attention to medical recommendations, which change over time but remain powerful producers of norms (Delaisi & Lallemand 1980; Ivry 2010). These recommendations often compete with local practices that remain widely used by mothers during pregnancy or childbirth (Le Dû 2022; Jullien & Gentile 2023). This issue welcomes contributions on the ways in which communities respond to the fragility that colors their relationships with babies from birth and their potential death.
A Copernican revolution?
Beyond a narrow definition of politics as the regulation of common affairs, this issue will examine how babies are “border disruptors who, through their situation or actions, reshape worlds” (Descola & Pignocchi 2022: 202). Given the ontological uncertainty that characterizes them, can they be considered a political subject, that is, “an operator who joins and separates regions, identities, functions, and capacities existing in the configuration of a given experience” (Rancière 1995: 65)? How can their action on the world be ethnographically studied? One of the hypotheses that this issue seeks to explore is that the arrival of a baby within a collective leads to a reconfiguration of relationships beyond kinship, on the one hand, and a dynamic of ontological requalification, on the other.
However, this recomposition does not take the same form everywhere: for example, some naturalist collectives have put measures in place (parental leave, daycare, nannies) that limit the redistributive power and agency of babies, weakening the way in which they consciously or unconsciously change their surroundings. These measures prevent the fundamental changes that babies could have on the overall organization of the collective, suggesting that these changes only concern the small circle of people surrounding the young children. In contrast, other collectives, such as the Roma of Provence mentioned in the introduction to this call for papers, see the arrival of a child as an opportunity to reconfigure the group: the living spaces and roles of each member of the collective are redefined, making each baby the starting point for a new world (Foisneau 2023). As initiators of bonds and new ways of making the world, babies also act on and for others, to use the terms of Pascale Bonnemère in her ethnography of Ankave rituals (Bonnemère 2008, 2014 et 2015); they can reconfigure the relational system as a whole. This call for papers is intended to stimulate case studies that will contribute to this problematic, either by describing cases of extreme power granted to infants, or, conversely, by focusing on babies whose capacity to act has been deliberately erased (successfully or unsuccessfully) through indifference, abandonment, or infanticide.
Ethnographing babies
What role do babies play in ethnographic practice? Ethnography has always given considerable attention to collectives that include interlocutors who are not necessarily capable of articulate speech, such as the dead, spirits, ghosts, spiritual entities, and animals (Descola 2005; Basso 2016; Martin 2022). Anthropologists know that while these groups cannot always do things, they are part of a regime of action that allows them to “make things happen” (Pons 2002; Vilaça 2002; Kwon 2008; Despret 2015; Delaplace 2024). Why would it be any different for babies? Anthropology has focused more on practices and rituals surrounding babies than on babies as members of a community (Gottlieb 2000; Collomb 2019 ; Daugey, Razy & Campignotto 2020 ; Luciani 2023). While several researchers have called for babies to be considered as full actors worthy of ethnography (Gottlieb 2000; Razy 2007; Collomb 2019; Daugey, Razy & Campignotto 2020), it must be noted that little guidance is given on how to proceed from a practical standpoint (Collomb 2019; Luciani, 2023). Language socialization has developed a vocabulary and techniques for analyzing interactions involving very young children, but what about anthropology? In addition to contributions that describe and comment on ways of giving babies a voice (since they undeniably have one) within social sciences, or that take a historical and comparative look at these issues, this issue will focus on innovative proposals related to babies and fieldwork. We particularly welcome contributions that place the observation of babies within the system of relationships in which they are involved.
Finally, the presence of ethnographers’ babies can be part of research strategies: they open doors, break the ice, and attract sympathy or antipathy (Gottlieb, Graham & Gottlieb-Graham 1998). Those born during fieldwork even blur the boundaries between observers and observed, transforming the ethnographic encounter into a lifelong companionship. This issue will also consider situations where the ethnographer is invited to take on an educational or caregiving role (godparent, babysitter, or bogeyman).
Format
The journal publishes articles of 45,000 characters (including spaces), as well as shorter formats (portfolios, focus pieces, annotated documents, interviews, stories, comics, etc.).
Guidelines for authors can be found here, and examples of the different formats here.
Translations
The journal accepts contributions in French and English. Articles will be translated and published in French in the print version. The original version and its French translation will be published online on OpenEdition Journals.
To submit a proposal in other languages, please contact us before submission to assess feasibility. Thank you.
Timeline
Proposals, consisting of a title and a 300-word abstract, should be sent before December 1, 2025, to terrain.redaction@gmail.com
Full articles should be sent before March 15, 2026, to the editorial staff of the journal Terrain.
You can contact the editorial staff at any time for more information on formats, the call for papers, or any other questions: terrain.redaction@gmail.com
Carnet de Terrain – blog related to the issue
The blog of the journal “Carnets de Terrain” also publishes short articles (2,000 words) aimed at an informed but non-specialist audience. Blog posts are a particularly good way of showcasing multimedia content. For more details, please consult the guidelines for authors. Proposals should be sent in the form of a summary (300 words) before March 15, 2026, to the following addresses: cduterme[a]unistra.fr and cecile.guillaume-pey[a]ehess.fr.
See the calls for papers on the Terrain journal website on OpenEdition Journals: https://journals.openedition.org/terrain/24602
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« “Babies aren’t persons” : A survey of delayed personhood », dans Hiltrud Otto, (dir.) Different faces of attachment: Cultural variations on a universal human need, New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, p. 66‑109.
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[1] Gadjo, i, é: in romani, someone who is not Roma.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Carnets de Terrain (6 septembre 2025). Call for Papers – Babies as World-Makers. . Consulté le 16 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14nyj




