Comparisons in Human Development: Understanding Time and Context

by Edited by Jonathan Tudge , Michael J. Shanahan , Jaan Valsiner

• ISBN13: 9780521087957
• ISBN10: 0521087953
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This important volume deals with the issue of how to make comparisons in the field of human development. In their comparisons of various social groups, social scientists generally focus on what the differences are, rather than elucidating how and why the groups differ. Comparisons in Human Development examines ways in which different disciplines have treated comparisons and development and provides empirical examples that take a comparative, developmental approach to human activity and thought. Contributors share the view that the study of development must be concerned with processes that operate over time and are regulated by their physical, biological, social and cultural contexts. Development is understood in systemic terms, with multidirectional influences that cross levels of analysis, including the cellular, the individual, the family, and the cultural and historical.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Metatheoretical Approaches to Developmental Comparison

Developmental comparison

Developmental concepts across disciplines

Ecological perspectives in human development: a comparison of

Paradigmatic Statements

Nested comparisons in the study of historical change and individual adaptation

The value of comparisons in developmental psychology

Implications from developmental cross-cultural research for the study of acculturation in Western civilizations

Comparisons at the Level of Data

The co-development of identity, agency and lived worlds

Sociocultural promotions constraining children's social activity: comparisons and variability in the development of 'friendships'

The everyday experiences of North American preschoolers in two cultural communities: a cross-disciplinary and cross-level analysis

Commentaries

Developmental science: a case of the bird flapping the wing, or the wing flapping the bird?: commentary on Winegar's chapter

Conceptual transposition, parallelism and inter-disciplinary communication: commentary on Shanahan, Valsiner, and Gottlieb's chapter

The 'ecological' approach: when labels suggest similarities beyond basic concepts in psychology

Problems of comparison: methodology, the art of story-telling, and implicit models

The promise of comparative, longitudinal research for studies of productive-reproductive processes in children's lives

Integrating psychology into social science: a commentary on Tudge and Putnam, and Holland and Skinner

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