Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine: The Rise of Developmental Science: Debates on Health and Humanity
Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Social Science
& Medicine: The Rise of Developmental Science: Debates on Health and
Humanity
Guest Editors
Dominique P Béhague, Vanderbilt University & King’s
College London
Samuel Lézé, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Social Science & Medicine is soliciting papers for a
Special Interdisciplinary Issue on the unique challenges arising in the
creation of child/adolescent developmental expertise throughout the 20th and
21st centuries. Since the Enlightenment, the child’s developmental journey to
adulthood has served as a prism for philosophical and scientific formulations
of what it means to be healthy, normal, and human. Relative to other subfields
in psychiatry and psychology, however, the focus on child/adolescent development
and mental illness is both new and increasingly contested. As clinicians begin
to work with an ever younger patient-population, critics from both outside and
within relevant fields have begun sounding warning bells, since much of the
evidence about early intervention, “normal/abnormal” development and treatment
is uncertain and prone to undue pathologisation. Thus, experts are also calling
for increased interdisciplinarity to better account for the unpredictability of
development and the socio-cultural, economic, and biological heterogeneity in
which normal/abnormal development and mental illness unfold.
Taking child/adolescent developmental expertise as an
object of socio-cultural analysis, this special issue aims to explore how
normative and marginal trends in this scientific subfield evolve in diverse
socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts. The call builds on an existing set of
manuscripts drawn from a workshop co-sponsored by Brunel University and the
Royal Anthropological Institute entitled “The Rise of Child Science and
Psy-expertise” (London, May 29-30, 2012).(i) We welcome submissions that
consider the institutionalized worlds of science, medicine and education
alongside the everyday lives of children and youth from historical and/or
contemporary perspectives. Papers should be both empirically-based and
theoretically informed. As we aim to influence core practices in science,
medicine and policy, authors are also invited, though not required, to consider
how the critical study of expert knowledge – and the diversity that exists
therein -- can inform constructive debate on how best to produce and apply this
knowledge.
Paper topics may include:
Comparative analysis of distinct
ethno-psychiatric/psychological traditions and of normative and marginal
research trends in child/adolescent science and clinical practice, including
their institutionalized and increasingly globalized applications
Intersection of child/adolescent science and
policy-development; e.g.
growing interest in prevention and early intervention;
emerging work on adolescent brain plasticity and implications for public policy
and juridical practice
Implications of diverse trends in developmental science
and child psychiatry for pedagogy, including psychologization of learning and
school life through specific diagnoses (ADHD) and broader concepts (well-being,
self-esteem, mindfulness)
Social vulnerability, ethnicity, inequity and minority
status in child development research and clinical practice; global
humanitarianism and medicalization of traumatic experience in children and
youth
Popular uses and interpretations of emerging models of
child development by advocacy groups, with special attention to the recent turn
towards “child-centric” research and constructs of child agency
Interaction between “child” and “adult” categories in
science, e.g. the methodological and conceptual tensions that research on
child/adolescent development injects into mainstream adult
psychiatry/psychology
Biologization of the child/adolescent in biopsychiatry
and neuroscience, e.g. the adolescent brain; mother-infant bonding;
geneticization; pharmaceuticalization
Authors can submit their papers any time after October
1st and up until the 31st of December 2013. Online submission can be found at:
http://ees.elsevier.com/ssm.
When asked to choose article type, please stipulate ‘Special Issue: Child
Development Expertise.’ In the ‘Enter Comments’ box, the title of the Special
Issue, along with any further acknowledgements, should be inserted. All
submissions should meet Social Science & Medicine author guidelines (http://ees.elsevier.com/ssm). Please
contact Dominique.Behague@Vanderbilt.edu
and Samuel.Leze@ens-lyon.fr for
further questions.