ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have focused primarily on various understandings of young children and early childhood institutions in the Minority World. The influence of that minority is, however, felt around the globe. In particular, we have argued, United States thinking and practice, which is dominated by a particular discipline (developmental psychology) and is located firmly within the project of modernity, is assuming hegemonic proportions on an increasingly global scale, with the increasing likelihood of ‘complex globalizations of once localized, western constructions of children’ (Stephens, 1995:8), rationalized through the discipline of developmental psychology which offers a ‘Western construction [of childhood] that is now being incorporated, as though it was
universal, into aid and development policies’ (Burman, 1994:183). It is ironic that a country that professes grave concerns about the ‘toxicity’ of its social environments and the well-being of many of its children and families (Garbarino, 1996), as well as about the quality of its early childhood services (Kagan et al., 1996) is looked to as a source of knowledge and guidance about children and services. In such cases, however, hegemonic relationships do not depend on the application of military force or other means of coercion, but rather the influence of economic, cultural and scientific power which combine to produce dominant discourses which dictate that only certain things can be said or thought, as well as matching technologies of normalization-such as measures of quality.
