NEUROSCIENCES AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT: DIALOGUES BETWEEN ETHICS AND KNOWLEDGE AROUND A MINED FIELD

Abstract

In this article I inquire the way in which neuroscientists discuss the production, circulation and appropriation of arguments that link child poverty and cognitive development. In the ethnographic research, the relational nature of the production of knowledge was evidenced as well as the persistent politicity of expert knowledge about childhood. In these dialogues, the uses of brain-based knowledge that abound in early childhood policy today were largely nuanced, if not openly discussed. Child development seems to have become a minefield, in which doing neuroscientific research requires getting involved in a public controversy about the scope of the evidence and its ethical-political implications.

Keywords

• child development
• neuroscience
• expert knowledge
• poverty
• parenting