The Composite and Dynamic Risks and Vulnerabilities of Ethiopian Children: The Case of Children in Addis Ababa

The article sketches an ethnographic portrait of the composite and dynamic risks and vulnerabilities of Ethiopian children. The sketch was based primarily on content analysis of 123 stories of child vulnerabilities told by frontline workers in 62 child-focused projects in Addis Ababa. Initial analysis distinguished between “culture” and “causes of child vulnerabilities” as two broad categories of concepts underlying the stories. The category of “culture” subsumes beliefs, values and norms that have structured relationship with and among children, while “causes” subsumes economic, social and psychological conditions that have resulted in actual and potential threats to the normal development and well-being of children in the ethnographic site. The complex relationships between these two categories were subsequently interpreted against the background of the integrative and disintegrative elements of the dominant Ethiopian culture (Korten 1972. Planned Change in a Traditional Society: Psychological Problems of Modernization in Ethiopia, With Frances F. Korten. New York: Praeger). The resulting portrait describes the multiple ways in which the identified causes of child vulnerabilities have grown in influence over the past decades to disturb the balance that historically existed between the integrative and disintegrative elements of culture, increasingly compromising the coherence of the social environment that provided for culturally normal development of children. Policy implications of the analysis are highlighted by way of conclusion.