This critical examination of the theories, methods and political preoccupations that underpin modern developmental psychology will prove invaluable to students, and all professionals who draw on developmental psychological theories in their work.

How does developmental psychology connect with the developing world? What do cultural representations tell us about the contemporary politics of childhood? What is the political economy of childhood? This companion volume to Burman's Deconstructing Developmental Psychology helps us to explain why questions around children and childhood - their safety, their sexuality, their interests and abilities, their violence - have so preoccupied the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this increasingly post-industrial, post-colonial and multicultural world, this book identifies analytical and practical strategies for improving how we think about and work with children. Drawing in particular on feminist and postdevelopment literatures, the book illustrates how and why reconceptualising our notions of individual and human development, including those informing models of children's rights and interests, will foster more just and equitable forms of professional practice with children and their families. The book brings together completely new, previously unpublished material alongside revised and updated papers to present a cutting-edge and integrated perspective to the field. Burman offers a key contribution to a set of urgent debates engaging theory and method, policy and practice across all the disciplines that work with, or lay claim to, children's interests. Developments presents a coherent and persuasive set of arguments about childhood, culture and professional practice so that the sustained focus across a range of disciplinary arenas (psychology, education, cultural studies, child rights, gender studies, development policy and practice, social policy) strengthens the overall argument of each chapter. It will be invaluable to teachers and students in psychology, childhood studies and education as well as researchers in gender studies. It will also be a must-read for professionals working with children and adolescents.

In this vital volume, Erica Burman presents a synthesis of her work developed over the past decade. Building from her path-breaking critiques of developmental psychology to the strategy of plural developments, her more recent work elaborates a new approach, generated from postcolonial, feminist intersectionality and migration studies: Child as method. This text amplifies the Child as method’s success as a distinct way of exploring the alignments of current ‘new materialist’ or posthumanist approaches with supposedly ‘older’ materialist analyses, including Marxist theory, feminist theory, anticolonial approaches and psychoanalytic perspectives. It assumes that childhood is a material practice, both undertaken by children themselves and by those who live and work with them, as well as by those who define politics, policies and popular culture about children. Key chapters interrogate historical legacies arising from the Eurocentric origins of what are now globalised models of modern childhood and evaluate the problems posed by the structure of emotion and affectivity that surrounds children and childhood – by tracing its evolution and indicating some of its unhelpful current effects in recentring white/Majority world subjectivities Child as Method provides key contributions to a range of disciplines and debates including developmental psychology, critical childhood studies, education studies, legal studies, health and social care and literature.

Bridging childhood studies, pedagogy and educational theory, critical psychology, and postcolonial studies, this unique book reads the role and functions of ‘the child’ and childhood as both cultural motif and as embodied life condition through the work of Frantz Fanon. Based on innovative readings of Fanon and postcolonial cultural studies, the book offers new insights for critical pedagogical and transformative practice in forging crucial links not only between the political and the psychological, but between distress, therapy, and (personal and political) learning and transformation. Structured around four indicative and distinct forms of ‘child’ read from Fanon’s texts (Idiotic, Traumatogenic, Therapeutic, Extemic), the author discusses both educational and therapeutic practices. The pedagogical links the political with the personal, and Fanon’s revolutionary psychoaffective account offers vital resources to inform these. Finally the book presents ‘child as method’ as a new analytical approach by which to read the geopolitical, which shows childhood, education, and critical psychological studies to be key to these at the level of theory, method, and practice. By interrogating contemporary modalities of childhood as modern economic and political tropes, the author offers conceptual and methodological resources for practically engaging with and transforming these. This book will be vital and fascinating reading for students and scholars in psychology, psychoanalysis, education and childhood studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and mental health.

Drawing upon current feminist research and theory, this book explores key professional issues in psychology and its related disciplines. Topics covered include sexual abuse, menstruation, feminist therapy, the regulation of mothering, women's safety and the gendering of the "caring" professions.

Providing an accessible introduction to qualitative methods, this book combines a solid grounding in the theory behind research methods, with a practical guide to conducting qualitative investigations, and a critical assessment of these methods. Thoroughly revised, the new edition reflects the changes that have taken place in research methods in recent years and features a new three part layout, with the individual sections covering: Orientations – broad considerations about qualitative research Methodologies – includes worked examples of major different qualitative research approaches: observation, ethnography, interviewing, personal construct, psychosocial analysis, narrative enquiry and historical analyses Representations – a guide to writing up qualitative research, with an emphasis on reflexivity and ethics The new edition covers the BPS syllabus for qualitative methods and includes new chapters on: Phenomenology Psychosocial analysis Narrative inquiry Future directions for qualitative research Emerging forms of representation Problems in qualitative research Qualitative Methods in Psychology 2nd edition is key reading for psychology students and professionals who use psychological research methods in their work.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book locates internally focused, critical perspectives regarding the social, political, emotional, and mental growth of children. Through the radical openness afforded by psychoanalytic and related frameworks, this volume illuminates, promotes, and helps situate subjectivities that are often blotted out for both the child and society. The overall emphasis is on motifs of lostness and foundness, in terms of the geographies of the psycho-social, and how such motifs govern and regulate what have come to count as the normative indexes of childhood as well as how they exclude other real childhoods.

Revindicar la faceta pedagógica de FANON es poco habitual, sin embargo, sus escritos pueden ser de gran ayuda para el pensamiento educativo en un mundo poscolonial. La exposición erudita y minuciosa que Erica BURMAN realiza de la obra de FANON muestra una amplia diversidad de conexiones intelectuales e implicaciones políticas. La autora aporta ideas sumamente novedosas sobre la raza, el colonialismo, la psicología de las relaciones entre adultos y menores, y las múltiples formas de entender la infancia. Raewyn CONNELL, profesora emérita, autora de Schools & Social Justice y Southern Theory. La innovadora interpretación que Erica BURMAN hace en el "niño como método" se asienta en las ideas de Frantz FANON sobre el racismo, la opresión y el poder transformador del individuo y la resistencia social. El trabajo de BURMAN constituye una importante aportación a la interpretación de la obra de FANON y sus implicaciones radicales para los estudiosos de la infancia y la educación. Irene L. GENDZIER, profesora emérita, Departamento de Ciencia Política, Universidad de Boston, autora de Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study. Resulta imprescindible cuestionar la educación a escala global. El "niño como método", una idea inspirada en Frantz FANON, es una intervención indispensable para vislumbrar otros futuros posibles para el mundo, la tierra, y el planeta. Kuan-Hsing CHEN, profesor de Investigación Social y Estudios Culturales, Universidad Nacional de Chengchi, Taiwán, autor de Asia as Method: Towards De-Imperialization. El "niño como método" ofrece un enfoque muy novedoso y de gran interés para los estudios poscoloniales interesados en la educación. La interpretación novedosa del trabajo de Fanon, con la importancia que concede a cuestiones relacionadas con la infancia, hace de este libro una aportación extraordinaria para la investigación ética y políticamente comprometida con la educación, como parte de un proyecto de cambio subjetivo y social más amplio. Yoonmi LEE, profesora del Departamento de Educación. Universidad Hongik, Seúl, Corea.