Castro, L. the Idea of Development and the Study of Children in Brazil as a Developing Society

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2012 24: 181Psychology Developing SocietiesLucia Rabello de CastroDeveloping Society

The Idea of Development and the Study of Children in Brazil as a

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Editors Introduction 181

Environment and Urbanization ASIA, 1, 1 (2010): viixii

Article

The Idea ofDevelopment and theStudy of Children inBrazil as a DevelopingSociety

Lucia Rabello de Castro

Centre for the Study and Research on ContemporaryChildhood and Youth Institute of Psychology, Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

Abstract

Development has been for long an idea and an ideal that moulded theteleological movement of nations as well as that of individual self-reali-sation. The present paper looks at such a paradigm of development inorder to examine its impact on the social science research agenda onchildren in Brazil. Looking at issues concerning the modernisation proc-esses and national development engendered contradictions, as far as achilds position in a developing country was concerned. The seeminguniversality and taken for granted truth about development has con-

cealed the relevance of evaluating its shortcomings, especially for thoselike children, who do not often benefit from its positive effects. Thearticle questions whether there can be univocal value-directions andobjectives whereby countries can envisage their futures. The effect ofdisembedding future cosmologies from given trajectories of develop-ment can have an impact on childrens research agenda as it opens upnew ways to look at children and their social realities in developingcountries.

Address correspondence concerning this article to Lucia Rabello deCastro, Institute of Psychology Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]

Psychology and Developing Societies24(2) 181204

2012 Department of Psychology,University of Allahabad

SAGE PublicationsLos Angeles, London,

New Delhi, Singapore,Washington DC

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182 Lucia Rabello de Castro

Psychology and Developing Societies, 24, 2 (2012): 181204

Keywords

Development, developing countries, Brazil, children, social research

The study of children in the field of social sciences is embedded in thefabric of the ample conceptions and understandings that a society pro-duces about itself, its past and its future. How a society envisages its keysocial problems becomes intertwined with how childhood issues are ren-dered visible. In this sense, childhood and children constitute social con-structions that reflect relevant values and cherished images of societies,

in particular historical and political moments.My intention here is to look at the way that childhood and childrenhave been studied in the social sciences field in Brazil, in order to articu-late childhood issues with what seems to be the major challenges andafflictions of the Brazilian society in the past century. Stepping backfrom this overall panorama, I would also like to take an extrinsic point ofview of the constitution of the field of childhood studies, in order to lookcritically at the contribution that social sciences have offered to the

understanding of children, their living worlds and their problems. Iwould like to ask questions such as: how have social sciences in Brazilfared in highlighting childhood issues? Which other concerns, issues and

problems on children and childhood should have been investigated, butwere not, and why? What other research alternatives on children andchildhood can and should be pursued?

These questions hinge on taken-for-granted assumptions about child-hood and children which make up the epistemological tenets and thegrounding normative views that guide childhood research. As social sci-entists trying to understand the lives of children in our different societieswe may embark on certain regimes of truth which veil the underpinningsof our research enterprise. By adopting a critical position it is possible tocreate some distance to what is established as seemingly conventionalwisdom and authority in the field of child studies. Above all, such a criti-cal standpoint seems necessary to grasp the complexities of specific cul-tural and political realities, such as those of developing countries. Asmany theories of childhood and children are produced in Western devel-

oped societies, it seems relevant to examine their relevance and applica-bility in different cultural and political contexts, rather than only Westerndeveloped contexts. This could be proved fruitful in a double sense: to

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The Idea of Development and the Study of Children in Brazil 183


render problematic certain notions which seem to have a universal appli-

cation; and to broaden the scope of problems that affect children turningeither more specific, or more general, certain analyses about childrensissues.

As a caveat, one point is worth stating: by the rubric of social sciencesI am taking into consideration, in the present work, the disciplinary fieldsof psychology, sociology, history, education, anthropology and politicalscience, all of which are concerned with issues related to the social con-stitution of human subjects, their social relationships and the role of

social groups and institutions. What is at stake here is that, increasingly,childhood studies have become a domain which draws upon diverse dis-ciplinary contributions. On the one hand, this may bring about certaindifficulties to validate concepts and theories across different disciplines;on the other hand, examining childhood issues in a transverse way mayresult in underscoring major aspects of the interplay between scientificknowledge about children and the values and projects that animate socie-ties at certain points of their historical trajectories.

Social Sciences in Brazil and the Child Question

(192080): The Invisible Child as the Epitome of a

Modern-Nation-To-Be

Two major, yet distinct, academic trends have contributed to make visi-ble the child question in Brazil: one stemming mainly from sociology

and anthropology, of which the more recent systematic production datesfrom the 1970s showing a slight upward increment towards the end ofthe century; the other, mainly from psychology and education, of whichthe systematic production goes back to the 1930s.1These trends showdistinct research concerns about children, though they converge on theoverall value-status of children, that is, their invisible and marginal posi-tion in society. In this sense, both trends reveal what Qvortrup (1993,quoting Kaufmann) has called the structural inconsiderateness of soci-

ety vis--vis children as the latter remain peripheric social actors whosecontribution to society is regarded as insignificant.Psychology owes much of its seminal inspirations about the study of

children from Brazilian social paediatricians of the beginning of last



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century (Bomfim, 1926; Moncorvo Filho, 1926). The notion of the child

as a developing creature reverberated the idea that living organismshave the capacity to grow (Tobach, 1981), as well as that historyon-togenetic and philogeneticcould be conceived as a movement towards

progress and evolution (White, 1983). Regarded as incomplete humanbeings who need to be socialised and educated, not yet capable to actrationally and responsibly, children became objects of social interven-tion in schools and homes. In the newly proclaimed Brazilian nation andrepublic,2 concerns about childhood converged on concerns about the

construction of a nation-to-be: children were considered the future citi-zens, the advent of a modern society, whereby a self-conscious subjectand citizen had to be fostered (Bomfim, 1932; Loureno Filho, 1940).Accordingly, psychology was the discipline that played a foremost rolein the characterisation of the child as the under-socialised subject posi-tioned in the irrevocable place of the learner (Loureno Filho a/b, nodate).

The discipline of psychologythrough its sub-field of developmen-tal psychology in Brazil, and elsewherehas been heavily influenced bythe works of the Jean Piaget whose main intellectual project consisted ofunderstanding the progressive unfolding of cognitive capacities from

birth to adulthood as a sequential, cumulative and teleological path ofgrowing capabilities (Modgil and Modgil, 1980; Piaget, 1967). In thisvein, psychology largely contributed to make up the national socialimaginary about children, as developing creatures. The position of thechild was characterised by its unfolding capacities as time elapsed andsocial/educational circumstances were favourable (Biaggio, 1970). Thus,

programming the adequate social intervention in schools became crucialto lead children to their eventual plenitude of performance as capableadults. Handbooks of child development published in the United Statescame out in Brazilian editions (Bee, 1969; Mussen et al., 1977) engross-ing the incipient Brazilian production on the developing child. As Rose(1989) has pointed out, following Foucault, the language and the prac-tices of psychology, as a scientific discipline, served to produce the self-governed individuals required in modernity. Through technologies of

government, whereby individuals willingly identify with forms of beingand feeling, self-regulation could be produced. In this vein, modern chil-dren, under adequate educational intervention, were led to identify with,and introject, an image of learners and future citizens, willinglly



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submitting themselves to their own process of development and self-

realisation.Childrens position of invisibility in Brazil during most of the 20thcentury stems from their dissolution in the privatised, thus not publicand not socially relevant, position of not being ready yet (a sort of half-subject-half human and half in-human), a subject-to-be preparing him/herself to assume her full status of citizen (Castro, 1996).

The deployment of a developmental paradigm which investigatedad infinitum the minutiae of childrens cognitive, emotional and moral

under-achievements (as compared to adults) consolidated the scientificand ideological apparatus whereby becoming human would be appre-hended as a linear and pre-determined trajectory of increasing abilities(McCall, 1977). By the same token, mirrorring the plane of human indi-vidual development, human societies were also teleologically orientedtowards progress and evolution. Development coined the notion whichstood as the taken-for-granted truth of what nations should strive for andsecure (Riegel, 1972). Development materialised the ethos of modernsocieties as well as epitomised the ethical and psychological duty ofevery child (Broughton, 1987; Morss, 1996).

Social knowledge produced within the disciplinary fields of sociol-ogy, history and anthropology in Brazil during this same period of time,focused on the notion of the poor child at risk. In an increasing number,childrenbegan to appear in the streets of big citiesbecoming a social

problem and calling for the States attention. Data published byFUNABEM (1984), the federal agency for the assistance and care ofminors, revealed the gravity of the situation. It was estimated that about

30 million minors (children up to 19 years of age) were in a situation ofneglect in 1981, i.e., one out of every two Brazilians in this age stratum.During the first-half of the 20th century, a swelling contingent of non-qualified migrant workers coming from rural areas found that they

became homeless and jobless in the big cities of Brazil. Bringing withthem a bulging number of neglected children idled in the streets.

Alvim and Valladares (1988) pioneered the very first mapping of thesocial sciences literature on childhood whose key aspects converged on

the idea of child as the neglected victim of modernisation processes inBrazil. The social and economic context of Brazil in the first decades ofthe 20th century was that of a recently proclaimed republic based on astill predominantly rural and oligarchic society marked by three



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centuries of African slavery, with no clear national identity except for the

unifying language, Portuguese, spoken in its vast territory. Ribeiro(1995), a well-known Brazilian social anthropologist, notes in thisrespect that Brazilians had a difficult task as a recently independentrepublic to construct their national identy with no past ancestries, mythsor heroes to rely on. At the same time, the three main ethnic groups, theindigenous Indians, the Portuguese and the Blacks of Africa, from whichthe miscegenated Brazilians descended, stood as others which providedno direct and immediate source of identification. As such, Brazilians suf-

fered from nobodilessness, being cultural orphans in search of anational identity and a nation to be constructed.Macro issues related to the impasses of a wanting-to-be modern nation

became the prominent focus of research in the social sciences, subordi-nating childhood issues to these foremost topics, such as the formation ofsocial classes in Brazil, the state, social institutions like syndicates, andindustrialisation and urbanisation and so forth. The emphasis lay on theStates apparatus and its operation in favour of the lites and their hege-monic interests leading to an unfair structure of rewards where childrenof the lower classes were positioned at the bottom.3

The abandonment and neglect of children are then considered conse-quences deriving from modernisation processes in Brazil as a developingnation-state. Accordingly, lower class children became an object of con-cern insofar as they incarnated the perverse effects of Brazilian moderni-sation, with the installation of free as opposed to slave labour, intenseurbanisation processes and industrialisation. Therefore, it is to the poorchild that social sciences turn to as a convocation to provide relevant

knowledge to those who make policies and deal directly with children(Alvim and Valladares, 1988, p. 15). Poor childhood stood as the mostvisible aspect of a nation which was not modern enough, some Braziliansocial scientists would say a de-traditionalised society (Duarte, 1995).Brazilian childhood was definitely not modern as an enormous numberof children countered the modern imaginary about childhood. Only bet-ter-off children could fulfil the role of the dutiful learner duly preparinghim/herself in the recondite contexts of school and home.

Along this period research topics of interest in the social science lit-erature about childhood were: delinquency and criminality, child labour,legislation on the minor, the poor childs family, the institutionalisedminor and its problems, socio-economic characteristics of the poor child,



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street children, social policies for minors. Also, the discussion of the

reproduction of educational institutions and their relationships with theState and the family became an important concern.The specificity of research on children envisaged a general concern

with children as an object of protection in the modernized legal appara-tus of the State which was seen as not fulfilling its corresponding dutieswith regards to most children.

In this sense, social sciences scholarship stood as an important arenafor debates on childhood issues, highlighting to a certain extent the con-

tradictions of modernisation and development in Brazil. In this vein,some debates became prominent: (a)The conception of poor children asmenacing and dangerous (the association between poverty and criminal-ity); (b)the conception of street children as having no bonds with theirfamilies (the moral incapacity of the latter to care and protect); (c)theevaluation of institutionalisation measures as remedial for childrenscriminal offences; (d)the view of child labour as a mere expression ofexploitative class relationships overlooking its role as a socializing fac-tor and a value for poor families and children.

By and large, during this period, social sciences imagined children ascaptives of the modernisation effects of the recently formed nation-state.However, it was poor childrens realities which made explicit, verycrudely, the contradictions of Brazilian development whereby modernitydid not reach enormous contingents of people, children included, who, as

powerless victims of the modern State, represented one of the dysfunc-tional aspects of the Brazilian republic.

The Child as Upholder of Rights: Rhetorical

Prerogatives of the Modern Nation of Brazil?

The re-democratisation process of Brazil after 20 long years of militarydictatorship (196484) and the promulgation of the new Constitution of1988, set a new scenario for children as well as stirred a new impetus to

childhood studies in Brazil. The Federal Law 8069/90, most commonlyknown as the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent (ECA), of 1990,was approved, establishing a juridical conception of children as a sub-

ject of rights. Accordingly, this legislation had the virtue of establishing



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the judicial equivalence of all children, de-characterising, at least, de

jure, the derogatory status of minors attributed to poor children, who, inthe course of the 20th century, had been regarded as at risk, and possibly,delinquent. At least on a rhetorical level, Brazil, who signed theInternational Convention of Childrens Rights of the United Nations,was a modern nation.

In fact, the ECA legitimated a thorough attack on all sorts of socialprejudice against poor children, most often mulatoes and blacks, whoidled around in the city surviving as best they could. However, the social

imaginary about underprivileged children would not change by decree,but only if effective measures had been taken so as to improve the lengthand the quality of their lives. The fate of a great contingent of poor chil-dren, especially in urban areas, has not, up to our days, changed as the law

publicly summoned, as several studies have shown (Castro et al., 2005;Craidy, 1998; Guimares, 1998; Kosminsky, 1991; Minayo, 1993; Rizzini,1989, 1993; Sawaia, 1999; Zaluar, 1994). The paramount understandingof children under this new legislation was that they were developing sub-

jects who needed special provision. Therefore, the idea of children inneed of protection, guidance and tutelage from the adults is maintained asfrom the preceding period except in the sense that such a conception isextended to all children, irrespective of their social and economic status.

The restructuring of the legal statute of the child, as a subject of rights,reverberated in the amplification of topics of social research on children.Issues like childrens citizenship, alternative institutional care for chil-dren, children and youths criminal responsibility, parental responsibil-ity, violence against children, participation of children in civil society

and children adoption are instances of the diversification of researchchildhood themes. A significant number of studies showed a more trans-disciplinary approach to childhood studies on the above-mentioned top-ics, revealing a certain fluidity of discipline boundaries as far as conceptsand methodologies are concerned.

In the 2000s, novel theoretical perspectives on childrens issues wereopened by anthropological studies of children (Cohn, 2005; Nunes,1999; Silva, 1987; Silva et al., 2002), inspired by the recent relevance of

the issue of cultural differences. Children represented a specific age sta-tus providing for particular ways and territories of social relationship andinteraction began to be regarded as producing a culture of their owna

peer culture (Faria et al., 2002) and a school culture (Faria Filho et al.,



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2004). A new outlook on children as competent social actors who con-

tribute to mainstream culture transforming it as they learn and interactwith adults was on the way. Anthropological studies are also responsiblefor systematic investigations concerning racial differences in Brazil andtheir implications in educational contexts, childrens ethnic construc-tions about peers (Fazzi, 2004; Ribeiro, 2006); a timely undertaking inview of the current governmental policies to bring about a debate aroundracial equality in Brazil.

In addition to anthropologists, historians have also increasingly

focused on childhood and children (Freitas, 1997; Marcilio, 1998; Priore,1999; Venncio, 1999) providing growing scholarship on the history ofchildhood in Brazil in different historical periods from colonial times upto the present.

In the favourable context of the upgraded status of children as a sub-ject of rights, thus as recipients of public policies and financial invest-ments, new social actors have come to dispute political space andresources with regards to children research. During the 1990s and 2000sa significant participation of international organisms like UNICEF,UNESCO, as well as a great many national and international NGOs,have exerted an influential provision in the delineation of child needs,realities and issues. Research topics financed by NGOs follow hotissues that circulate in the public agenda, especially in the media, enhanc-ing their own institutional visibility. Big Brazilian financial institutions,like Bradesco and Ita, and private and state enterprises, like Petrobrs,Vale, Odebrecht, Votorantim and many others, have set up their ownfoundations for research on children as well as for provision of alterna-

tive care/education for those underprivileged ones, in response to whathas been lately labelled corporate social responsibility. In some sense,the newly approved set of childrens rights has become attractive as newmarkets (Baxi, 2010) for a variety of social institutions and actors whichtake up the cause of children and their development as a new way toenhance their own social visibility and image.

The advancement of NGOs, international and national organisms inthe domain of childrens research and action is accompanied by the wan-

ing role of the state, which, increasingly, looks for partners to carry outits obligations. The re-dimensioning of the Brazilian state and the redi-rection of investments according to neoliberal policies puts in questionthe understanding that education, health and care for children and youth



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should be carried out by state agencies and institutions. The conventional

wisdom present in the earlier period of social science research, that thestate should provide effective responses to the social issues relating tochildren, is now subtly contested by the avalanche of institutions andagencies that compete to define the agenda and share governmental and

private resources for children.Therefore, during the 1990s and early this century, a more consistent

picture of the research agenda of the social sciences on children emerges.The research perspective of children as a social problem demanding

policies in terms of education or institutionalisation has been certainlywidened and invigorated on account of the new representation of chil-dren as a subject of rights. Furthermore, anthropological and historicalstudies have taken up significant and up-to-date empirical studies, which,though not numerically abundant, were significant enough to establish anew research field in these discipline traditions. The combined value ofthese studies indicates an innovative conception of children as socialactors and active contributors to their social worlds. The role of the childas a passive learner becomes increasingly problematic in view of thestudies that focus on the capacities of children to re-create culture.Studies of consumer culture and its impact on children also highlight the

position of the child as a learner preparing herself for the adults role ofworker, and tend to emphasize childrens abilities of individual decisionand agency (Pacheco, 1998; Souza, 2000).

If, on the one hand, the research agenda on children was expandedand invigorated, on the other hand, adhesion to neoliberal policies con-curred to a waning role of the State in terms of childrens care and pro-

tection. A multiplication of NGOs in Brazil, taking up many of the statesfunctions with regards to children, has also contributed towards a moresubservient role of the research agenda on children to short-term objec-tives and the social and political visibility of both government and thethird sector. Childrens rights have been a foremost topic suiting theagenda of private foundations and NGOs. Nevertheless, there is still along way to go to make effective real changes in order that the child can

be a recognised contributor to social life. Thus, much more in a rhetori-

cal way, children have been celebrated as a subject of rights, although, infact, there are still uncountable situations of oppression affecting them.The proclamation of childrens rights did have a high sounding politicaleffect to project a collective image of the nation as developed and



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modern, though it has had insofar timid effectiveness to change the harsh

realities of childrens lives.

Developing Children in Developing Countries:

In What Ways has Developing Mattered in

Such a Research Agenda?

Brazil, together with India, China and Russia, and now South Africa,make up a group called developing countries; a typology once created byhegemonic powers (nations and international corporations such as theWorld Bank) directed to highlight the underachievement of these coun-tries in relation to various social, economic and cultural indexes in com-

parison to other Western/European/American national trajectories. Sucha terminology is not politically or ethically neutral as it provides specificvalue orientations, models and guidelines which developing nationsshould strive to cultivate and attain.

Therefore, development apparently constitutes the univocal horizonwhereby countries can envisage their futures. This means that for thesecountries caught in this progressive arc of history positioning them asthose which come after,4or, are not yet there where they should be,such future cosmologies may entice their adhesion to values distinctfrom the predispositions cultivated in the traditions of these countries.

In Brazil, the paradigm of development has assumed a universalvalidity in where human biography as well as societies trajectories is

concerned. The developing child became a taken-for-granted truth asone who should be placed under the adults tutelage and protection com-missioned to a long preparation in schools before eventually being seenas a legitimate actor in the public sphere. This representation hasremained very distant from the lives and realities of a great number ofBrazilian children. Indexes such as infant mortality,5schooling,6accessto water and sanitary conditions of living,7show that efforts to transformthe status quo of children have been subordinated by the macro direc-

tives of the modernisation processes.The demands of modernisation have in fact been pursued in Brazil,like those of industrialisation, urbanisation, technologisation; contradic-torily enough, they have brought about migration, urban poverty and



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anomie, processes which bore more heavily on childrens lives enhanc-

ing their social and economic disadvantages. A case in point refers toformal education, a cultural good that has not, to this day, been in factuniversalised in Brazil. Although, Brazilian economy has been ranked asthe ninth in the world in terms of its gross domestic product in 2010,

participating with 2.7 per cent of the world economy (World Bank, 2010)the wealth of the country has not been converted into the long cherishedvalue and public commitment to the younger generations developmentin terms of a universal public education for all.8Thus, development

has favoured multifarious projects which have increasingly accumulatedthe wealth of the nationmaterial and symbolicin the hands of theolder generation, specially the lites, to the detriment of Brazilian chil-dren and youth whose entitlement to the cultural heritage has been so fara failed promise.

Nevertheless, though children were tamed and invisibilised both bythe developmental paradigm and by an outlook which regarded them asvictims of society and the States neglect, many a times, children cameforward to the public scene, as a social problem, disturbing the peace-ful scenery of a nation wanting to be modern. Moved by the force ofsocial disadvantages, children had to transgress the normative viewwhich considered them privatised/emptied/powerless subjectivities asthey went out to the streets to earn their living as labourers in the infor-mal market. However, the struggle to counter the adverse conditions ofexistence and the positive affirmation of their own selves have beenregarded as a deviance from the normative notion of the learner-child,approximating it to juvenile delinquency and parents moral incapacity.

The developing child in the developing societystood as a univocal syn-tagma uniting both child and nation under the aegis of modernisation,although the burden of failing to keep the representation true concerned

basically the children, specially the poor ones.Such a paramount worldview led to a constrained research perspec-

tive on childrens work. Inasmuch as relevant knowledge has been gainedby understanding how deleterious some labours can be to children, itseems, however, that often childhood research has tacitly assumed the

vileness of childs work evading to put into question its importance andpositive contribution to childrens lives. Other positive meanings of childwork came to be obliterated in childrens research, with very fewexceptions, like the work of Dauster (1991), in Brazil. By the same token,



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the deleterious effects of school work on childrens livesits irrelevance,

its effect of domesticating childrens minds and lowering their self-esteem,plus its antagonism to work itselfseems to seldom catch researchnotice at all, both in Brazil or in other developing countries contexts(Behera, 2001; Dimenstein and Alves, 2003; Outeiral and Cerezer,2005).

In the late context of modernisation the universal notion of childrensrights has colonised the theory, the practices and the policies concerningchildren and childhood. The rights discourse has provided a most impor-

tant frame for adult-children relationships leading to far-reaching effectson former practices of reciprocity that have sustained the normative basisof such relationships. Especially in the so-called developing societies thenormative juridical basis of rights has many times collided with otherconsistent cultural/religious/collective sources of solidarity between dif-ferent generations. Panikkar (1982), in his relevant discussion on theuniversality of human rights, has warned us, among other things, againstmaking any conceptincluding that of human rightsa universal con-cept since all concepts reflect the conditions of the context from wherethey arose. Besides, continues Panikkar, the future of those non-Westernsocieties which have had an altogether different basis, culturally andmaterially, may not necessarily be to follow Western standards. Heclaims that by having to declare rights something has been lost when

Human Rights are declared; this is a sign that the very foundation on

which they rest has already been weakened(Ibid., pp. 8889) this fortu-nate insight helps us to question whether children as upholders of rightshave greatly benefited from such a more visible and relevant subject

position. Have children become less peripheral in social life by the mod-ernized rhetoric of rights? The modern regime of rights as a sort ofnecessary normative regulation of children-adult relationships in modernsocieties must be the target of analysis and scrutiny by the social sci-ences, especially in developing societies. Such an analysis would neces-sarily warrant an examination of former sources of social regulation, ifand how they have been transformed and to what effects, once laws aremade, they stand as the only legitimate basis to support fair practices and

policies towards children.The production of knowledge about children and childhood, in theso-called developing countries faces the task of examining suchuniversal notions about children and childhood against the backdrop of



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our seemingly former non-modern practices. For instance, how can the

notions of rightsand its levelling effects on hierarchical relationshipssuch as those between adults and childrencan be supplemented byother notions, such as that of duty, so that it better suits other culturalcontexts? Or, how can the notion of rights (individual rights) gain and bemodified from a perspective of solidarity and other collective values?These are certainly questions that need to be answered by our researchefforts.

The paradigm of development has lately underscored the relevance

of individual competence and performance, specially under the neolib-eral policies of the globalised world (Apple, 2001). The FrankfurtianSchool through its prominent figures like T. Adorno and H. Marcusehave contributed to our understanding of how the emergence of theenlightened rationality that came to preside over processes of subjectiveconstruction in the West became entrenched with the capacity to con-quer, dominate and calculate (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1970). Thecompetent and the capable man is the one who can deploy his instru-mental reason to control the course of events and manipulate them to hisfavour. Thus, the competence/capability model does not stand for acontent-free model as far as ability or performance is concerned butglides to what has been proclaimed as the most valuable capacities ofthe modern subject: his rational command and his calculating quality.Furthermore, competence acquires a substantive, almost reifying qual-ity, something that you have, or you have not, an attribute, a one ornothing subjective state.

If we sideline the competence paradigm, I suspect that a more fruitful

line of inquiry can be derived if we look at notions that seem to be closerto the Brazilian cultural heritage. Bakhtin (1997), the Russian critic andsocial theorist, pointed at the carnival as a literary element that intro-duces chaos, disorder and defiance to the world as it is normally seen. Asa literary recourse, but not only, the carnivalistic mode indicates poten-tial transformative powers of reality when movements of resistance tohegemony and the status quo are put forward and ideas and truths arecontested bringing forth a jolly relativity of all things.

The Indian political theorist, Kaviraj, has pointed to the fact that insti-tutional arrangements in very different historical settings from those ofthe Western centres are conducive to unprecedented and unforeseen



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features, a process that he terms as improvisation (Kaviraj, 2010). Thus,

improvisation and the carnivalesque remind us of the ever so presentpotential to depart from what is given and established. For, on the onehand, to improvise leads to go beyond the script, invent and go astrayfrom what is prescribed and anticipated; on the other hand, the carnivalreminds us of the subversive potential of not to conform. Both thesenotions invite us to envisage the human subject not in terms of antici-

pated performance, attributes and rationality, but of potentiality andcreativity.

Childhood research following the understanding of children as cre-ative beings may prove indeed to be a promising line of research. Itcan focus on the process of becoming, and not on the anticipated orexpected attributes and abilities that children must eventually showand be able to develop. Creativity has to do with action, as an on-go-ing social process, that transforms and creates realities, the self andthe others (Dalal and Misra, 2010, p. 135). Action is produced in thecourse of social interaction whose outcomes are unforeseen (Arendt,1997). Modernisation processes in developing countries are enmeshedwith contradictions and deviations leading to improvisation and doingthings differently. In childrens research receptivity to the idea of cre-ativity should help to focus on the different ways that children makeuse of their environment to solve their problems and find ways of cop-ing with adversities.

The focusing on childrens competence may reinforce the structuralinconsiderateness of society vis--vischildren, insofar as competenceis, and has been, defined by adults who will necessarily defend their

own interests in detriment of those of childrens. Competence echoeswhat adults are: their abilities and ways of behaving. The insistence onthe stipulated developmental trajectory from childhood to adulthood, asa competence-acquisition paradigm, announces a model of future citi-zenship for children well known in developed societies of the West.Such a good-enough modern society, with its good-enough democ-racy and good-enough model of civilized and developed individual are

bound to continue to feed social imaginaries about the necessary direc-

tions related to the future of developing societies, unless other under-standings and values can be put forward to orient the agenda of childhoodresearch.



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The Child Issue in Developing Countries:

What Futures can be Envisaged?

In what critical vein, then, in what untamed spirit of judgement shouldthen be the contribution of academic knowledge in face of past historiesand futures to be? Is it possible that social knowledge can help us toenvisage futures not yet given beforehand taking into account our strate-gic position of having come after? Are we, after all, in a particular

position which, permitting us to see ahead, can unfasten the obliging

commitment to do what must be done? To think what must be thought?Are we in a position to disembed our future from its apparently neces-sary course?

The fact that children have remained privatised in the spaces of thehousehold and the schools alludes to the relative small importance ofchildrens activities, their marginal contribution to society. The publicsphere has been consideredin westernised societiesthe territory ofliable actors, those who can be competent enough for the rational dia-logue required in civic life. Ranciere (2001) ironically states that the

public sphere has been regarded as the radiant luminosity of the publiclife of equals. Without any doubt, what is publicin the sense of whatshould be transparent to all, and all should know aboutis a question of

political dispute. That children should be kept as powerless and un-important subjects of our societies is as matter of political discussion,negotiation and decision.

In this sense, changes in our present scenario, such as globalisation,consumerism, media and internet communications and such have intro-

duced new elements in childrenadult relationships. Children are notwhat they used to be, and to some extent, intergenerational relationshipshave been upset by changes in value orientations affecting youth andchildren. These changesformerly limited to the space of the privatesphere, of ones own decisionare increasingly taking the ground of

public awareness. It is not just a matter of ones own decision and choicehow one goes along to care about ones own children, since adultsendeavours, as the older generation, can and should be accountable with

regards to childrens welfare. Moreover, adults decisions can also bequestioned from the point of view of intergenerational solidarity whichmeans, taking the vantage point of children in order to highlight theadults governance of our common world. Many decisions which are



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taken today, though bringing short term benefits, may radically jeopard-

ize the lives of those who will live longer than todays adults. A keyaspect of this dispute points to problems of development projects versusthe preservation of the environment. Therefore, it is from the point ofview of the younger generations that discussions and decisions about thefuture can also be understood and examined. Adults decisions that donot take into consideration their long term effects leading to the extinc-tion of some future possibilities for coming generations should be con-sidered morally flawed.

Globalisation processes throughout the world impose a homogeneousworld order demanding from all nations enormous investments of anincreasingly sophisticated technological apparatus. Very often these

processes pose painstaking dilemmas, especially to developing countries(Dasgupta and Pieterse, 2009). The claims of those groups who can beeasily overruled by powerful corporate economic organisations should

be in the agenda of public concern. But, it is the vantage point of chil-drenespecially, the younger generation of developing countries whoare at risk of receiving their due in what development proclaimsthatmust impact the political agenda and decisions. Thus, new public spacesof concern and discussion should be opened up, not only for childrensspokesmen and professional representatives, but also for childrenthemselves.

Differently from scientific knowledge, recent film production on chil-drenboth Brazilian and also from countries such as Indiahas cap-tured moments of adult-child relationships which disturb usual ways tolook at children. In the Brazilian film called Central do Brazil(1998, by

Walter Salles), an old spinster earns her living in the centre of a big citywriting letters for illiterate migrants. She cheats them because she never

posts the letters to their destinations, and one day her life is turned upsidedown by the child whose mother, a migrant for whom she has just writ-ten a letter to her husband, is run over in front of her. This child becomesthe old womans nightmare and bliss. The story unfolds to tell us the

potency of this encounter, the harsh and deep transformation of bothpartners, woman and child, and the full-blown position of the child as a

desiring, knowing and deciding human being who in a clear way com-mands the course of events. In the other film, Children of Heaven(1997)of the Iranian director Majid Majidi, children are on their own to solvetheir everyday problems, difficulties and existential dilemmas. It is not



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that they are neglected by their parents, but rather are not regarded as

powerless. Thus, they are left to solve by their own means and at theirown discretion their everyday lives. A father exclaims to his son: Yourealready 9 yrs old, youre not a child anymore. The Indian film Maya

produced in 2002 and directed by Digvijay Sing, tells the story of a girlwho as her menses appear is subjected to a collective rape ritual in hervillage. What is most touching is her brothers attitude, who, being just alittle older than her, perceives the situation as morally problematic,

becomes very restless on account of his sister and suffers with her. Father

and mother, each on their own way, are conformed: this is how thingsshould be in the village where they live, as if there were no alternativesexcept submission. However, resistance to the status quo comes from the

boys unrest who shows us how human destiny can be changed, howthings are never ever how they have to be, unless we choose so.

In these film productions we are led to see the intense conflicts andimpasses of adult-child relationships, but also of the potential and thestrength of childrens action. We do not see them as subjects under thesupervision of protecting adults, who, if, on the one hand, grant thoserights, and on the other hand, take their initiative away from them byinscribing their action under a certain formal register of competence.

In modernity, children have been regarded as those who come afteradults and must follow their steps in order to integrate themselves insociety. Such a univocal trajectory has safeguarded adult society and itsadult-centred institutions away from transformation and criticism: doesour democracy suit children? Is our educational system compatible withchildrens interests? Can our economy be receptive to childrens

demands? Are our cities child-friendly? The effective inclusion of chil-dren in society will necessarily lead to highlighting problems in our cur-rent institutions and way of living in order to include childrens ways offeeling, thinking and relating.

By the same token, developing societies can make use of their strate-gic position on account of coming after. On the one hand, we know thatchildrens lives must be improved and their unnecessary suffering allevi-ated. Conditions of living, educational opportunities and access to the

symbolic and material goods produced by societies have a thoroughlyunfair distribution among social groups, and children, especially poorchildren, are among them. On the other hand, what directions should oursocieties take? If we take the word development as an empty signifier



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that education fulfils the task of transmitting the orthodoxy of basic skills,

like reading and understanding what one reads, realising how to use numbersand mathematical reasoning, writing and the development of insightfulunderstanding of nature and society.

7. Only 62.6 per cent of urban households in Brazil have proper sanitaryconditions, including a drains system, access to water and garbage collection,though this figure conceals the enormous differences between the northern(poorer) and the southern (richer) parts of the country. Only 49.1 per cent ofhouseholds have a telephone (IBGE/Brasil, 2010).

8. Taking the population of children from 10 to 14 yrs of ageabout 17 milllion

children70 per cent only studies (approx. 11 million); 13.05 per cent studiesand works (approx. two and a half million); 12.1 per cent does not study andworks (approx. 2 million, in various types of work, paid or non-paid, rural orurban, domestic or not) and 2.7 per cent does not do anything of the previous(approx. 500,000) (Source: IBGE, 2010).

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Lucia Rabello de Castro is Ph.D. from the University of London,

and is Professor of Child and Adolescent Development at Institute ofPsychology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is founderand present Scientic Director of the Interdisciplinary Research and

Exchange Centre on Contemporary Childhood and Youth (NIPIAC/UFRJ). Her research interests are: childrens and youths social andpolitical participation; research methodologies with children and youth;theories of childhood; the impact of cities on childrens and youthslives; cultural worlds of children and youth.

Documents

Castro, L. the Idea of Development and the Study of Children in Brazil as a Developing Society