Child as Method

by Erica Burman

In this vital volume, Erica Burman presents a synthesis of her work developed over the past decade. Building from her pathbreaking 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 child as method. This text amplifies 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, anti-colonial 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.

322 pages, Hardcover

Published March 19, 2024