Cross-cultural Roots of Minority Child Development

<p>This book constitutes the first time in the field of developmental psychology that cross-cultural roots of minority child development have been studied in their ancestral societies in a systematic way--and by an international group of researchers. Most child development and child psychology texts take cultural diversity in development into account only as an addendum or as a special case--it is not integrated into a comprehensive theory or model of development. The purpose of this text is to redress this situation by enlisting insiders' and outsiders' perspectives on socialization and development in a diverse sampling of the world's cultures including developing regions that often lack the means to speak for themselves in the arena of international social science. <br><br> The unique feature of this text is the paradigm. For the minority groups represented the questions focused on how development was behaviorally expressed <i>within</i> the culture of origin and <i>in</i> new societal contexts. Thus developmental issues--such as language and mother-child interactions--for African-American children are considered in the United States as well as in the African culture of origin and in France as a country of immigration. This paradigm is considered for African and Asian cultures and the Americas including Hispanics from Mexico as well as Native Americans. <br><br> Specific questions posed consider the extent to which: <br> * the development and socialization of minority children can be seen as continuous with their ancestral cultures; <br> * the cultural and political conditions in the United States Canada and France have modified developmental and socialization processes yielding discontinuities with ancestral cultures; <br> * the ancestral cultures have changed yielding cross-generational discontinuities in the development and socialization of immigrants from the very same countries. <br> * the role of interdependence and independence in developmental scripts can account for historical continuities and discontinuities in development and socialization both across and within cultures. <br><br> These questions not only provide the unifying theme of this unique book but also a model for conceptualizing multi-culturalism within a unified framework for developmental psychology.</p>