Erica Burman - Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology

Burman’s 1994 work, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, provided a critical response to mainstream theories of child development, and drew upon feminist theory to show how this aspect of psychology serves to regulate family behavior, marginalize working class and minority ethnic women and pathologise their experience as mothers. The book covers the spectrum of dominant approaches in psychology, and finds each of them wanting. The specific cultural assumptions that give rise to different forms of psychology are examined, and the book provides new ways of thinking about the position of children in modern society.

Following this book much of Burman’s research has been devoted to representations of children, and to the connections between different kinds of "development". She has continued critical examination of the role of developmental psychology, and her work turned to study the way images of children are used in connection with the "developing" world. She has also focused her research on the question of how such images of women and children hold in place models of the "progress" of the development of the nation state.