The social norms approach (SNA), the new entrant from the behavioural sciences into the field of development practice, professes a scientific, more accurate, efficient and cost-effective methodology for identifying, measuring and changing harmful social norms. Despite its increasing popularity, no systematic, robust or long-term field evaluations are available to demonstrate the effectiveness and sustainability of using the SNA, nor its superiority over other, pre-existing methods. This article critiques the SNA from the perspective of development praxis, highlighting three concerns: the underlying cultural presumptions about development and its subjects; the problematic methodological design and its complexity; and the lack of contextual framing in the approach and its focus on individual behaviour to the exclusion of the structural constraints embedded in the social and economic environment. The recent drift to broaden the SNA framework is also discussed and assessed. To illustrate a contrasting approach, a case study is presented of MV Foundation, a civil society organization that works on changing social norms on issues of education and child labour. The article concludes that the SNA is arguably yet another instance of colonization of the field of development through hegemonic control of the creation of knowledge.I am grateful to Shantha Sinha, Linda van der Wijk and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their careful reading and extensive comments on the text.

Globally, there is a vast array of social indicators, many of these specifically oriented to the lives, experience and needs of children. This approach is much more advanced in developed economies and rich countries, where the focus has widened and shifted progressively towards a full recognition of the non-monetary dimensions of child wellbeing. At present, there would appear to be a propitious academic, activist and policy conjuncture for the widening of the discourse on child deprivation in India. This environment is created partly by the emerging reporting requirements and exhortations of the international development regime. But it is also fuelled by dissatisfaction over the inability of the existing methodologies, dominated by the reductionist monetary poverty line approach, to provide a meaningful intellectual or operational frame for contending with issues of child wellbeing in a holistic manner. The basic argument of this paper is that a double paradigm shift is urgently necessary: from mainstream approaches which tend to focus overwhelmingly on the material poverty and deprivation experienced by some children, deemed by definition to be those in households-in-poverty, to one that widens the field of vision to include both material and non-material dimensions of wellbeing of all children. Clearly, fresh epistemological and methodological challenges will have to be met with innovative and creative responses. It is time for India to catch up with best practices in rich countries, and given the impressive dimensions of India’s academic and professional infrastructure, this should not be an unrealistic goal.

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Rekha Wazir and Nico van Oudenhoven, sociologist and psychologist, are co-founders of International Child Development Initiatives (ICDI), Hooglandse Kerkgracht 17, 2312 HS Leiden, The Netherlands, email: icdiȰmsn.com ICDI is an international development support agency specializing in programmes, policy and research for marginalized children and young people. The authors have written extensively on these issues and also on the topic of NGO management. Their forthcoming publications include Partnership -a Development Strategy for Children (1997).

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