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common variant forms and changes indrawing style. These discussions areas clear as in any book on the market.

In summary, this is a work that pre-sents its topic in an outstandinglyclear way, negotiating the three snagswell. The exposition uses the appara-tus of coping with sampling error,thinking in terms of testable hypothe-ses, and not jumping to conclusionsabout oddities; but I think that it doesso with too light a touch to enthusereaders about the process of discovery.Let me give an example. On page 39, itis correctly pointed out that sincelimbs are ‘long things’ it is not surpris-ing that children use single lines torepresent them, and that the main al-ternative is to use double lines to looklike ‘tubes’. Now, tadpole drawersrarely double up, and those who dotend to produce more squared offshapes than older children who dou-ble up. Why should that be? It haslong been agreed that the double line

is not a simple duplication of two sin-gle lines, as common sense might leadone to think, but a radical change infunction towards the denotation of oc-cluding contour. So what commonsense tells a lot of people is rather asimple graphic trick, leading to thepuzzle of why children are so slow toavail themselves of it, is actually amajor pictorial discovery, leading tothe puzzle of why some children dis-cover it early. I rather like writing thatmakes such things explicit for readers,because it helps people change fromone sort of puzzlement to another. Af-ter all, that is what has been cumula-tively happening to those who doresearch with drawings. But thatdownplaying is really my only majorreservation about the book. I highlyrecommend the work.

Norman FreemanUniversity of Bristol, Bristol, UK

RACISM, GENDER IDENTITIESAND YOUNG CHILDREN: SOCIALRELATIONS IN A MULTI-ETHNICINNER-CITY PRIMARY SCHOOL.By Paul Connolly, Routledge, London,1998, pp. 214, £13.99, ISBN 0-415-18319-7.

The disciplinary boundaries that mili-tate against psychology’s engagementwith the social sciences mean that it isunlikely that a book written by a soci-ologist would find its way on to thebookshelves of many social and devel-opmental psychologists. Such intellec-tual isolation is particularly unfor-tunate with regard to the present vol-ume because it contains much that isof empirical and theoretical interest.

Traditionally, social and develop-mental psychologists have exploredquestions of children’s identitythrough investigating the degree towhich individuals define themselvesas members of particular groups and

how they evaluate these groups in re-lation to others. Typically, these datahave been obtained through experi-mental procedures or through one-to-one interviews. In the present volume,the author starts from a rather differ-ent position. Rather than studying in-dividuals and the degree to whichthey define themselves in terms of so-cial categories (e.g. as Black or White),the author considers how children(aged between 5 and 6 years) activelydraw upon certain ideas, themes anddiscourses circulating within wider so-ciety as they negotiate their identity inday-to-day life and social interaction.Thus, the research question is not somuch concerned with identifying thenumber of children from different ageranges who define themselves in termsof (say) ‘racial’ categories, but ratherwith how discourses that concern‘race’ are taken up and continuallyre-worked by children in their day-to-day lives. Instead of employing

Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 8: 173–178 (1999)

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quantitative measures (e.g. of identifi-cation, inter-group attitudes, sociomet-ric/friendship choice, etc.), Connollyspent 18 months observing teachersand children in their classes and play-ground activities. Further, instead ofinterviewing children one-to-one ac-cording to a tightly prescribed sched-ule, he interviewed them in smallgroups. The result is a set of rich em-pirical findings chronicling the diverseand contradictory ways in which racistideas circulating within the localneighbourhood come to shape lifewithin the school.

Throughout, Connolly is at greatpains to emphasize that identity can-not be analysed without regard to con-text. For example, when talking ofhow racism comes to shape these chil-dren’s lives he devotes a chapter to theways in which Britain’s national poli-tics have been racialized so that arange of social problems are construedin terms of the highly problematic ide-ological category of ‘race’. Further, hedevotes another chapter to the ques-tion of how these broader develop-ments have shaped the social relationson the housing estate in which theschool he studied was located. In turn,when recounting the empirical find-ings concerning teachers (chapter 5)and children (chapters 6–9), Connollyaddresses the ways in which theracialization of social relations outsidethe school impacted upon classroomand playground life.

A particularly attractive feature ofConnolly’s analysis concerns his atten-tion to the relationship between ‘race’,peer group activity and gender identi-ties. Thus, whereas social and devel-opmental psychologists may betempted to talk of gender identitiesand ‘racial’ identities as discrete enti-ties, Connolly is concerned to addressthe way in which the discourse of‘race’ (and the racialization of socialrelations that this makes possible)comes to impact upon children’s gen-der identities. The exploration of these

processes takes the form of a series ofcase studies. For example, one chapterfocuses upon the way in which Blackboys were construed by others (in-cluding teachers) and how in turn thisshaped the resources available to theboys themselves as they negotiatedtheir place in the school. In this chap-ter, Connolly suggests that theoverdisciplining of Black boys and theresulting image of them as ‘bad’ and‘quintessentially masculine’ (p. 114)contributed to a context in which theywere more likely to be verbally andphysically attacked by others, whichin turn lead to their developing ‘hard-ened’ identities, which meant that theyattracted still further attention. In an-other, Connolly explores how Asianboys were often ‘feminized’ by teach-ers with the consequence that theseboys’ access to the public sphere ofplayground games (e.g. games of foot-ball) were reduced with still furtherconsequences for others’ perceptionsof their gendered identity. Thus, Con-nolly considers how girls’ talk about‘boyfriends’ reflected and reproducedthis ‘feminization’ such that the Asianboys’ masculinity was mocked andridiculed. Given the importance ofsuch issues as football and talk of het-erosexual relations as arenas in whichmasculine identities are won and lost,Connolly’s analysis has much to sayabout the strategic constraints placedupon these children in their struggleto win a social and physical placewithin the school. Two further chap-ters dealing with the way in which thegirls’ relations with each other andwith the boys are racialized illustrateanother of Connolly’s key themes.Cautious of the dangers of overgener-alizing and sensitive to the resource-fulness of the young girls, he paysgreat attention to the variety of strate-gies that these girls exhibit in theirnegotiation of their symbolic and so-cial place in the school.

The theoretical framework adoptedthroughout the book (a reading of

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Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice) isone with which many in psychologywill be unfamiliar. It is, however, wellexplained (chapter 2) and the analysisinvites a series of connections to bedrawn with rather more familiar socialpsychological analyses (e.g. I was atvarious stages reminded of the lovelyanalysis by Emler and Reicher (1995)of strategy and identity managementamongst adolescents). However, thedifferences between this sociologicaltext and those to be found in psychol-ogy are many and should not bedownplayed. Rather, this book shouldbe read and used to prompt a criticalreflexivity amongst psychologists—especially those concerned with how‘race’ and gender shape children’slives. The emphasis upon agency and

the strategic re-working of discoursesto be found outside the school, theattention given to peer group relationsin mediating the reproduction andtransformation of these discourses in-side the school, the critical stance inrelation to ‘race’ and the author’s re-flexive sensitivity concerning his rela-tions with the children offer much ofvalue to a psychological audience.

REFERENCES

Emler, N. and Reicher, S. (1995). Adoles-cence and Delinquency. Oxford: Blackwell.

Nick HopkinsUniversity of Dundee, Dundee, UK

THE SOCIAL CHILD. Edited by A.Campbell and S. Muncer, PsychologyPress, Hove, 1998, pp. 418, £39.95,ISBN 0-86377-822-4.

This text gathers together many inter-esting contributions from researchersin different areas of children’s socialdevelopment. The chapters in generaltake the form of focused reviews ofvarious literatures on the topic of chil-dren’s social behaviour and social cog-nition, and as such will be of great useto advanced undergraduates and post-graduates, as well as professionalsseeking an overview of particular re-search areas.

The book is divided into three sec-tions. Starting with a thoughtful chap-ter on the development of varioustheoretical positions on children’s so-cial development, the first section,‘Theories’, presents a contrast betweenevolutionary or genetic approaches todevelopment (chapters by MacDonaldand Rowe) and cross-cultural ap-proaches to development (chapter byJahoda). Some strong points are madein favour of the need to address theformer perspectives. MacDonald, for

example, claims that an evolutionaryperspective provides more a priori pre-dictive power than other perspec-tives—though whether the ability tomake sense of some social phenomenonwithin an evolutionary framework canbe seen as a demonstration of predic-tive power is rather debatable. Rowe,in an interesting consideration of theinteraction of genes and environmentin development, argues that studies ofthe environment should be framedwith the notion that humans are ‘activeorganisms, carving out environmentalniches for themselves’. He rejects tradi-tional socialization theories and sug-gests that we should not see culture,social class, and race as matters only ofenvironmental influence. Finally, Ja-hoda’s contribution on cultural varia-tions in various aspects of socialdevelopment, notwithstanding Muncerand Campbell’s rather critical conclud-ing remarks, does make the undeniablepoint that there still remains an unac-ceptable equation of developmentalpsychology with Euro-American childpsychology. Indeed, only a few of thesucceeding chapters focus on cross-cultural evidence in any depth.

Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 8: 173–178 (1999)