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2017 SHCY Article Prize Winner in Spanish or French: Fábio Macedo

The committee for the 2017 SHCY Prize for the Best Article on the History of Childhood and Youth written in French and/or Spanish and published between 2015 and 2017 has received eight high-quality articles, and selected the following two to receive the Prize and an Honorable Mention: 

Prize Winner:

Fábio Macedo, “Action Humanitaire et Adoption d'Enfants Étrangers en Suisse. Le Cas de Terre des Hommes (1960-1969)”, Relations internationales 2015/2 (n° 161), p. 81-94.

The article represents an innovative, thoroughly researched, and original approach to the study of both humanitarian action and child adoption over an understudied decade. It builds upon a wide array of primary sources, and pays close attention to the interconnections of State-led and civil initiatives, including their tensions and negotiations. The article contributes to ongoing historiographical debates surrounding child mobility, adoption, and the effects of international wars (in this case, the Algerian War and the Vietnam War). It also adds to a better understanding of the making of new legislation, especially by combining the perspectives of discourse analysis and political history. It will surely become a major reference for those scholars interested in childhood history from a transnational perspective. 

Honorable Mention:

Elena Jackson Albarrán, “Los niños colaboradores de la revista Pulgarcito y la construcción de la infancia, México 1925-1932”, Iberoamericana, XV, no. 60, 2015, pp. 155-168. 

The article represents an original, finely argued and written, piece of research that sheds light on both State initiatives and child agency. By focusing on the children’s magazine Pulgarcito, depending on the Mexican Public Education Secretariat, the article reconstructs the history of how the authorities understood the role of child’s drawings in connection with ideas of civility and modern nationhood. Equally important, the article approaches to children’s drawings in their own terms, in an effort to elucidate the meanings that children created out such concepts as cleanliness, education, and the nation. 

Prize Committee
Dr. Célia Keren, History, Sciences Po Toulouse – LaSSP
Dr. Valeria Manzano (Chair), History, Universidad de San Martín/CONICET
Dr. Amélie Nuq, History, LARHRA – Institut des Sciences de l’Homme. UFR Sciences humaines