Undertaking a Journey in Hybridity A Child-Centred Ethnographic Study on Well-Being in Southwest Sumba, Indonesia

This research seeks to elucidate how indigenous perspectives of the wellbeing of Wewewa children are being challenged by mainstream child-focused developments, and how children deal with this change. By following a childcentred ethnographic approach, this paper will explore the changing ways of thinking about contemporary child well-being in the Wewewa, a community who live on the island of Sumba, Indonesia. The hybridity of mainstream child-focused policy and indigenous knowledge change will be examined through three aspects of constructing childhood: children as economic contributors, the child gendered concepts of “becoming someone,” and the child as social order agent. This analysis brings into the discourse the childhood narratives of “being” and “becoming” someone they need to be to navigate market- tradition aspirations and negotiate the complexity of their community‟s religious identity. This represents a challenge to adult-controlled child policy approaches, and takes well-“being,” as seen through children‟s voices and participation, into account in the process of the legitimisation of child policy approaches