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

Abstract

Development has been for long an idea and an ideal that moulded the teleological movement of nations as well as that of individual self-realisation. The present paper looks at such a ‘paradigm of development’ in order to examine its impact on the social science research agenda on children in Brazil. Looking at issues concerning the modernisation processes and national development engendered contradictions, as far as a child’s position in a developing country was concerned. The seeming universality and taken for granted truth about development has concealed the relevance of evaluating its shortcomings, especially for those like children, who do not often benefit from its positive effects. The article questions whether there can be univocal value-directions and objectives whereby countries can envisage their futures. The effect of disembedding future cosmologies from given trajectories of development can have an impact on children’s research agenda as it opens up new ways to look at children and their social realities in developing countries.