title: Look-normal: the colonized child of developmental science.
abstract: This article provides an analysis of the techniques, methods, materials, and discourses of child study observation to illuminate its role in the sociohistorical colonization of childhood. Through analysis of key texts it explains how early 20th-century child study provided for the transcendence of historical, racial, and social contexts for understanding human development. The colonizing project of child study promoted the advancement of Eurocentric culture through a generic "White" development. What a child is and can be, and the meaning of childhood has been disembodied through observation, record keeping, and analytical processes in which time and space are abstracted from behavior, and development symbolized as a universal ideal.
authors.affiliation: Mount Saint Vincent University.
authors.forename: Donna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Varga
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016487:Parenting / Q000266:history*; D010781:Photography / Q000266:history*; D002666:Psychology, Child / Q000266:history*; D012945:Social Values; D013240:Stereotyping; D014481:United States; D044465:White People / Q000266:history*