Decolonising child studies: development and globalism as orientalist perspectives

This paper examines the production of scientific knowledge on children from a decolonial perspective, with two major concerns. The first relates to the interrogation of developmentalism and globalism as part of the hegemonic project of modernisation originated in Northern countries and projected onto the world as an inevitable and to-be-desired future. I argue that these major paradigms about children and nations attempt to legitimate a scientific framework which universalises the way in which all childhoods, their generational value and the future orientation of societies should be envisaged. They can be considered orientalist perspectives framing childhoods all over the world in normative ideals produced by and articulated with specific Western/Northern social and political conditions. The second interrogation, by relying on the insights provided by the orientalist critique, deploys the North–South divide as a strategic perspective from which to look at present geopolitical structures of world domination that condition forms of knowledge production about nations, collectivities, individuals and children.