The Cultural Nature of Human Development

by Rogoff, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780195131338
• ISBN10: 0195131339
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Three-year-old Kwara'ae children in Oceania act as caregivers of their younger siblings, but in the UK, it is an offense to leave a child under age 14 ears without adult supervision. In the Efe community in Zaire, infants routinely use machetes with safety and some skill, although U.S.middle-class adults often do not trust young children with knives. What explains these marked differences in the capabilities of these children? Until recently, traditional understandings of human development held that a child's development is universal and that children have characteristics and skills that develop independently of cultural processes. Barbara Rogoff argues, however, that human development must be understood as a culturalprocess, not simply a biological or psychological one. Individuals develop as members of a community, and their development can only be fully understood by examining the practices and circumstances of their communities.

Author Biography

Barbara Rogoff is UCSC Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Table of Contents

Orienting Concepts and Ways of Understanding the Cultural Nature of Human Development	p. 3
Looking for Cultural Regularities	p. 7
One Set of Patterns: Children's Age-Grading and Segregation from Community Endeavors or Participation in Mature Activities	p. 8
Other Patterns	p. 9
Orienting Concepts for Understanding Cultural Processes	p. 10
Moving Beyond Initial Assumptions	p. 13
Beyond Ethnocentrism and Deficit Models	p. 15
Separating Value Judgments from Explanations	p. 17
Diverse Goals of Development	p. 18
Ideas of Linear Cultural Evolution	p. 18
Moving Beyond Assumptions of a Single Goal of Human Development	p. 20
Learning through Insider/Outsider Communication	p. 24
Outsiders' Position	p. 26
Insiders' Position	p. 28
Moving between Local and Global Understandings	p. 29
Revising Understanding in Derived Etic Approaches	p. 30
The Meaning of the "Same" Situation across Communities	p. 32
Development as Transformation of Participation in Cultural Activities	p. 37
A Logical Puzzle for Researchers	p. 38
An Example: "We always speak only of what we see"	p. 39
Researchers Questioning Assumptions	p. 41
Concepts Relating Cultural and Individual Development	p. 42
Whiting and Whiting's Psycho-Cultural Model	p. 43
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological System	p. 44
Descendents	p. 48
Issues in Diagramming the Relation of Individual and Cultural Processes	p. 48
Sociocultural-Historical Theory	p. 49
Development as Transformation of Participation in Sociocultural Activity	p. 51
Individuals, Generations, and Dynamic Cultural Communities	p. 63
Humans Are Biologically Cultural	p. 63
Prepared Learning by Infants and Young Children	p. 67
Where Do Gender Differences Come From?	p. 71
Participation in Dynamic Cultural Communities	p. 77
Culture as a Categorical Property of Individuals versus a Process of Participation in Dynamically Related Cultural Communities	p. 77
The Case of Middle-Class European American Cultural Communities	p. 85
Conceiving of Communities across Generations	p. 89
Child Rearing in Families and Communities	p. 102
Family Composition and Governments	p. 104
Cultural Strategies for Child Survival and Care	p. 106
Infant-Caregiver Attachment	p. 111
Maternal Attachment under Severe Conditions	p. 111
Infants' Security of Attachment	p. 114
Attachment to Whom?	p. 116
Family and Community Role Specializations	p. 118
Extended Families	p. 118
Differentiation of Caregiving, Companion, and Socializing Roles	p. 121
Sibling Caregiving and Peer Relations	p. 122
The Community as Caregiver	p. 128
Children's Participation in or Segregation from Mature Community Activities	p. 133
Access to Mature Community Activities	p. 133
"Pitching in" from Early Childhood	p. 135
Excluding Children and Youth from Labor--and from Productive Roles	p. 138
Adults "Preparing" Children or Children Joining Adults	p. 140
Engaging in Groups or Dyads	p. 141
Infant Orientation: Face-to-Face with Caregiver versus Oriented to the Group	p. 142
Dyadic versus Group Prototypes for Social Relations	p. 144
Dyadic versus Multiparty Group Relations in Schooling	p. 147
Developmental Transitions in Individuals' Roles in Their Communities	p. 150
Age as a Cultural Metric for Development	p. 152
Developmental Transitions Marking Change in Relation to the Community	p. 157
Rates of Passing Developmental "Milestones"	p. 159
Age Timing of Learning	p. 160
Mental Testing	p. 161
Development as a Racetrack	p. 162
According Infants a Unique Social Status	p. 163
Contrasting Treatment of Toddlers and Older Siblings	p. 164
Continuities and Discontinuities across Early Childhood	p. 165
Responsible Roles in Childhood	p. 168
Onset of Responsibility at Age 5 to 7?	p. 169
Maturation and Experience	p. 170
Adolescence as a Special Stage	p. 171
Initiation to Manhood and Womanhood	p. 174
Marriage and Parenthood as Markers of Adulthood	p. 176
Midlife in Relation to Maturation of the Next Generation	p. 179
Gender Roles	p. 181
The Centrality of Child Rearing and Household Work in Gender Role Specializations	p. 183
Sociohistorical Changes over Millennia in Mothers' and Fathers' Roles	p. 184
Sociohistorical Changes in Recent Centuries in U.S. Mothers' and Fathers' Roles	p. 186
Occupational Roles and Power of Men and Women	p. 190
Gender and Social Relations	p. 192
Interdependence and Autonomy	p. 194
Sleeping "Independently"	p. 195
Comfort from Bedtime Routines and Objects	p. 197
Social Relations in Cosleeping	p. 197
Independence versus Interdependence with Autonomy	p. 200
Individual Freedom of Choice in an Interdependent System	p. 202
Learning to Cooperate, with Freedom of Choice	p. 203
Adult-Child Cooperation and Control	p. 207
Parental Discipline	p. 208
Teachers' Discipline	p. 211
Teasing and Shaming as Indirect Forms of Social Control	p. 217
Conceptions of Moral Relations	p. 221
Moral Reasoning	p. 221
Morality as Individual Rights or Harmonious Social Order	p. 222
Learning the Local Moral Order	p. 224
Mandatory and Discretionary Concepts in Moral Codes	p. 225
Cooperation and Competition	p. 227
Cooperative versus Competitive Behavior in Games	p. 228
Schooling and Competition	p. 229
Thinking with the Tools and Institutions of Culture	p. 236
Specific Contexts Rather Than General Ability: Piaget around the World	p. 238
Schooling Practices in Cognitive Tests: Classification and Memory	p. 241
Classification	p. 242
Memory	p. 243
Cultural Values of Intelligence and Maturity	p. 246
Familiarity with the Interpersonal Relations used in Tests	p. 247
Varying Definitions of Intelligence and Maturity	p. 249
Generalizing Experience from One Situation to Another	p. 253
Learning to Fit Approaches Flexibly to Circumstances	p. 255
Cultural Tools for Thinking	p. 258
Literacy	p. 258
Mathematics	p. 261
Other Conceptual Systems	p. 266
Distributed Cognition in the Use of Cultural Tools for Thinking	p. 270
Cognition beyond the Skull	p. 271
Collaboration in Thinking across Time and Space	p. 272
Collaboration Hidden in the Design of Cognitive Tools and Procedures	p. 274
An Example: Sociocultural Development in Writing Technologies and Techniques	p. 276
Crediting the Cultural Tools and Practices We Think With	p. 278
Learning through Guided Participation in Cultural Endeavors	p. 282
Basic Processes of Guided Participation	p. 285
Mutual Bridging of Meanings	p. 285
Mutual Structuring of Participation	p. 287
Distinctive Forms of Guided Participation	p. 301
Academic Lessons in the Family	p. 302
Talk or Taciturnity, Gesture, and Gaze	p. 310
Intent Participation in Community Activities	p. 317
Cultural Change and Relations among Communities	p. 327
Living the Traditions of Multiple Communities	p. 329
Conflict among Cultural Groups	p. 331
Transformations through Cultural Contact across Human History	p. 334
An Individual's Experience of Uprooting Culture Contact	p. 335
Community Changes through Recent Cultural Contacts	p. 337
Western Schooling as a Locus of Culture Change	p. 340
Schooling as a Foreign Mission	p. 342
Schooling as a Colonial Tool	p. 344
Schooling as a Tool of U.S. Western Expansion	p. 346
The Persistence of Traditional Ways in Changing Cultural Systems	p. 347
Contrasting Ideas of Life Success	p. 350
Intervention in Cultural Organization of Community Life	p. 352
Dynamic Cultural Processes: Building on More Than One Way	p. 355
Learning New Ways and Keeping Cultural Traditions in Communities Where Schooling Has Not Been Prevalent	p. 356
Immigrant Families Borrowing New Practices to Build on Cultural Traditions	p. 358
Learning New Ways and Keeping Cultural Traditions in Communities Where Schooling Has Been Central	p. 360
Cultural Variety as an Opportunity for Learning--for Individuals and Communities	p. 361
The Creative Process of Learning from Cultural Variation	p. 362
A Few Regularities	p. 366
Concluding with a Return to the Orienting Concepts	p. 367
References	p. 371
Credits	p. 413
Index	p. 415
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