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.