Table Of ContentDeconstructing Developmental Psychology
How do lived childhoods connect with theories about child development? This fully updated
third edition of the best-selling Deconstructing Developmental Psychology raises many
new and compelling questions about the ways in which ‘experts’ have tried to ‘ understand’
children. Erica Burman looks beyond the current mainstream frameworks to interrogate the
assumptions and practices surrounding the psychology of child development, providing a
critical evaluation of the role and contribution of developmental psychology within social
practices. The book brings into clear focus how history, geography, culture and politics have
shaped the concerns and concepts of developmental psychology and produced powerful,
often oppressive, effects for children which extend also to others (families, parents, commu-
nities and practitioners) who care for and work with them.
Taking a strong international perspective, the book combines discussions about contempo-
rary research about young children with everyday examples from children’s lives, to explore
the major changes in the understanding of children over the past 100 years. New cover-
age includes an examination of the neuro-scientific research on babies’ brains and related
claims on early intervention policies and resilience; the impact of the global economic crisis,
migration, changes in technology and their impact, and contemporary families and chang-
ing family dynamics with ‘key updates on child abuse and exploitation’. It also engages the
debates between childhood studies and child rights, including both the ethical-political and
conceptual-disciplinary questions these pose.
This engaging and accessible text provides key resources to inform better professional
practice in humanitarian aid, social work, education and health contexts. It offers critical
insights into the politics and procedures that have shaped developmental psychological
knowledge. It will be essential reading for anyone working with children, or concerned with
policies around children and families. It was also be of interest to students at undergraduate
and postgraduate levels wishing to examine notions of development in psychology, counsel-
ling, social work, international development studies or education.
Erica Burman is Professor of Education at the University of Manchester, UK; Visiting
Professor at the Centre for the Study of Migration and Society at the University of
Witwatersrand, South Africa; Visiting Professor in the Instituto de Psciologia at Universidade
de São Paulo, Brasil; Visiting Professor in Cibersomosaguas, Facultad de Ciencias Politicas
y Sociologia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain and Adjunct Professor, Institute of
Social Work and Child Welfare, Oslo and Akershus University College, Norway.
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Deconstructing Developmental
Psychology
Third edition
Erica Burman
Third edition published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Erica Burman
The right of Erica Burman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
First edition published by Psychology Press 1994
Second edition published by Routledge 2007
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-84695-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-84696-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-72712-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman PS
by diacriTech, Chennai
To Ian and the Discourse Unit and its allies - a magnificent transnational, transinstitutional
and transdisciplinary network with gratitude and appreciation for all the support, solidarity
and inspiration
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Contents
Preface to the third edition ix
Introduction: Commitments, resources and methodological frameworks 1
1 Origins: How animals, humans, colonial and gender dynamics structure
the study of childhood 14
PART I
Constructing the subject 31
2 Researching infancy: The conflation of the technical with the conceptual
and an ethical interruption 33
3 Attributing sociality: From smiling and jiggling to mentalisation and
the problem of mirror perspectives 49
4 Discourses of the child: Textbook representations, childcare advice,
the schooled child and the celebrity child of humanitarian aid 67
5 Models of childhood migrating across zones of political practice: The
inner child, endangered (groomed?) and dangerous children, working
children, listening to children, shrinking the social, early intervention
and how resilient babies’ brains make pensions 87
PART II
Social development and the structure of caring 111
6 Familiar assumptions: How developmental psychology has (re)produced
the imperial family, child rights and service provision, which children
(get support or protection), cross cultural psychology and the
(ir)relevance of age, new topics and agendas in family research 113
7 Bonds of love or losing attachment: From ethology to neuromythology,
and from maternal sensitivity to the erasure of subjectivity. Love
in the laboratory, but what about childcare? 139
viii Contents
8 Involving fathers, new masculinities and whether gender bending
subverts or maintains the developmental imperative 166
PART III
Developing communication 183
9 Language talk: Labels, actions, routines; inner speech vs. egocentrism,
emotions in and through language, multilingualism as a critique
of monolingualism 185
10 Discourses of caregiving talk: What we learn from cultural
practices of language addressed to children with some
Piagetian and Vygotskyan influence too 202
11 Language and power in developmental research: Six examples of
how power relations constitute and constrain speaking positions
for children 217
PART IV
Cognitive development: The making of rationality and its others 233
12 Piaget and Vygotsky: Their methods, models and histories in the
making of the developmental psychological project 235
13 Child-centred education and beyond: Shifts, continuities and
contradictions from whole children to feral parents 251
14 Morality and the goals of development: Ethical-political dilemmas of
developmentalism as inscribed within models, and some proposals 272
References 292
Author index 337
Subject index 352
Preface to the third edition
This third edition has taken me somewhat by surprise, not only in the sense of how fast
the time has passed since 2008, when the second edition of Deconstructing Developmental
Psychology was published, but also in how much has changed – sociopolitically but also
within psychology. This version is correspondingly extensively revised and updated to engage
with this changed context – although plus ça change….?
I have retained the same chapter structure (largely for those who know the earlier edi-
tions), but readers will find that the text has changed quite substantially (as well as getting
longer). As I noted in the Preface to the second edition, developmental psychology engages a
geopolitical situation which remains in the throes of major geopolitical turmoil, both political
and ecological. The refugee crisis and transnational migration, which did not appear much in
the second edition, now figures in these pages, as well as an awareness of the deepening and
proliferation of forms of racism. While neoliberalism continues to penetrate both the gross
and intimate aspects of our lives, economic recession (discoursed in Europe, and especially
Britain via the retro-kitsch designation ‘austerity’) has changed the definition of childhood
as also the structure of families and familial ties. Precarity has become a feature not only of
employment but of subjectivity. Alongside the general deterioration in personal and global
security, further contradictions and contests around children and childhood have emerged.
The twin strands of feminisation and psychologisation remain a continuing preoccupation,
that have also marked a key shift in normative models from the culturally masculine detached
autonomous mini-scientist of the industrialised labour market to the creative, relational sub-
ject of feminised and casualised precarious work.
If the second edition of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology reflected the rise and
impact of children’s rights and childhood studies literatures and debates, this third edition is
formulated from a profound engagement with this and a desire to show what they can offer to
and for psychology. In this sense it is both a text and a countertext. An equivalent influence
(reflected also in my own changing institutional location) is the proliferating educational
literatures, that are increasingly addressing questions of cultural diversity and postcolonial
debates. While I would still situate as a companion to this book its (second edition) contem-
porary, Developments: Child, Image, Nation (Burman, 2008a), as engaging in more theo-
retical detail the resonances between representations of childhood and national development
noted here, it is both a matter of relief and inspiration that there are now so many other won-
derful texts around, albeit few directly addressing or read within developmental psychology.
So, we might ask, now approaching 22 years since the first edition of Deconstructing
Developmental Psychology was published: what’s the same? What’s more of the same?
What’s different?
