Franziska Fay. Disputing Discipline: Child Protection, Punishment, and Piety in Zanzibar Schools. Rutgers University Press, 2021. 240pp. ISBN: 9781978821736 (paperback).
In Disputing Discipline, anthropologist Franziska Fay utilizes eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and a participatory visual approach, incorporating drawings and photos by children, to examine the complex reality of corporal punishment in Zanzibar’s schools. The book explores a fundamental tension between the “universalist” child protection frameworks of international aid organizations and local Islamic ontologies, where attributes such as obedience and silence are viewed not as a lack of agency, but as essential components of moral personhood and social responsibility. By deconstructing local concepts like adabu (manners) and utu (personhood), Fay argues that what outsiders may perceive as simple abuse is often locally understood as a necessary “civilizing” process and an expression of adult care. Ultimately, the work challenges educators and development practitioners to reflect on the limitations of Western-centric protection models and the necessity of engaging with the deeply engrained religious and cultural values that define childhood in non-Western contexts.