help wih assess 2 due in 36 hours

INTRODUCTION

The concept of culture: Introduction to spotlight series on conceptualizing culture

Catherine Raeffa, Allison DiBianca Fasolib, Vasudevi Reddyc, and Michael F. Mascolod

aIndiana University of Pennsylvania, USA; bMiddlebury College, USA; cUniversity of Portsmouth, UK; dMerrimack College, USA

Questioning traditions and conventions was part of the postmodern order of the 1980s and 1990s. Some social scientists were questioning whether universal laws characterize human functioning and develop- ment, and whether development is context-free or value-free. It was increasingly recognized that human behavior and development are situated in particular action settings, in particular times, and in particular cultures. Within the context of these trends, develop- mentalists were seriously embracing the view that cul- ture is essential to human behavior and development. Doing so was further bolstered during this time through increasing access to Vygotsky’s ideas about culture and development that resulted from new translations of his work and contact between Western and Russian scholars.

The last 25 to 30 years have been fruitful for draw- ing attention to cultural differences in behavior and development, and much research has illuminated cul- turally particular developmental trajectories. Today, it is widely recognized (and maybe even taken for granted by many) that culture matters and that cul- ture influences behavior and development. Continuing to conduct research on culture promises to advance our understanding of development around the world and to inform culturally sensitive programs and applications.

While it remains important and interesting to show that culture matters by investigating cultural diversity and identifying cultural differences in behavior and development, there are dimensions of culture that are not well understood. It is thus necessary to go beyond showing that culture matters to investigating how cul- ture matters. We need to know more about how cul- ture shows up in behavior and development.

Advancing understanding of how culture matters can also inform designing culturally sensitive and effi- cacious programs for addressing some of the world’s

pressing practical and applied issues. We live in the midst of globalization and new migrant patterns that are affecting lifespan development around the world. Social media facilitate contact among people of diverse cultures, and make such contact easy and fast. While increased cultural contact promotes the development of mutual understanding among people around the world, alas it also sometimes engenders conflict among people of different cultural circumstances. Within diverse cultures, divisiveness makes it difficult for people to recognize common concerns and to develop ways of cooperating toward common goals. Global climate change challenges the culturally diverse people of the world to cooperate toward common goals. It is now April/May 2020, and we are literally writing this Introduction during the coronavirus pan- demic. If ever there was a challenge for the culturally diverse people of the world to deal with together, this pandemic is it. It is a global crisis that knows neither geographic nor cultural boundaries. Understanding cultural processes will be crucial for the culturally diverse people of the world to collectively address the crisis now and the aftermath in the years to come. In the context of this new reality, questions also arise about what development will look like in different cul- tures in the aftermath of the pandemic.

But what is culture? How can we investigate culture in ways that permit understanding the specific proc- esses through which culture shows up in and informs behavior and development? How can we advance understanding of culture in ways that facilitate collect- ive action for addressing some of the world’s pressing problems? Answering these questions depends on how you define or conceptualize culture. Any kind of sci- entific analysis depends on how one conceptualizes the phenomena under scrutiny. Thus, before we can analyze culture and understand how it matters and

� 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC CONTACT Catherine Raeff [email protected] Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA

APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 2020, VOL. 24, NO. 4, 295–298 https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2020.1789344

how it influences development, we must first concep- tualize it.

Conceptualizing culture is no easy task. As with so many (if not all) complex human phenomena, culture can be and has been defined and understood in many ways. In 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhon analyzed the concept of culture, pointing out that it goes back to biblical times, to Homer, Hippocrates, and Herodotus, as well as to Chinese scholars from the Han dynasty. They famously identified over 100 definitions of cul- ture that were in use during the early 20th century across varied academic fields, including history, phil- osophy, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Geertz (1973) lamented that in his work on culture he has never “gotten anywhere near to the bottom of anything I have ever written about…Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete” (p. 29). Jahoda (2012, p. 300) argued that “the concept of ‘culture’ is probably indispensable,” yet it cannot be defined definitively. He advised that insofar as all facets of culture cannot be considered at once, it is most prac- tical to articulate what facets of culture one is consid- ering at a particular time. He went on to advise that people “should not be presented with a rigid formula or a smorgasbord of definitions, but given some insight into the ways the concept is useful in spite of the impossibility of pinning it down” (p. 300).

Following the first part of Jahoda’s advice, the goal of this spotlight series is to present a set of papers on “culture as a concept” to explore different facets of culture and to explore some of the specific ways in which culture shows up in human functioning and matters for development. The series includes research- ers known for their work on culture and development who are at various points in their careers. They also come from varied cultural backgrounds and they con- ceptualize culture in relation to research in varied cul- tures.1 The work of putting together this spotlight series, including reviewing and providing extensive substantive feedback to contributors, was done by the

Associate Editor (Catherine Raeff) and Editorial Board (Allison DiBianca Fasoli, Michael F. Masolo, and Vasudevi Reddy) of the Cultural Perspectives and Processes section of this journal.

Taken together, (and despite space limitations) we have a rich, and neither random nor rigid, set of con- ceptualizations of culture that can be used to advance applied developmental science. In particular, these conceptualizations can take our understanding and analyses of culture beyond recognizing that culture matters and that culture influences development. They provide insight into how culture matters and the processes by which culture influences development. Addressing these conceptual issues actually takes us back to Vygotsky whose work focused on how devel- opment occurs through social interaction and involves regulating one’s own action by using cultural tools— especially language—in culturally particular ways (1986/1987). Sociocultural perspectives in develop- mental psychology have advanced Vygotsky’s enter- prise and echo throughout the current series (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 2003; Valsiner, 1997; Wertsch, 1998).

Another way of putting it is that the papers move us beyond treating culture as a measurable variable that can be used to discern if there are statistical dif- ferences between this or that culture. Say a study shows statistically significant differences in develop- mental outcomes across some cultures, permitting us to assert that culture influences and even “predicts” development. That is all well and good, but we are left ignorant about how culture matters for the differ- ent developmental outcomes. We are left ignorant about the particular processes through which culture influences development. Say another study shows that there are no statistically significant differences in behavior and/or developmental outcomes across some cultures. Does that mean that culture is irrelevant? Can you now exclude culture from your remaining analyses? Can you exclude culture from your applica- tions and interventions? No, no, and no. Culture always matters; culture is always significant (Raeff, 2020). We can thus work to identify some facets of culture, and also work to conceptualize how they mat- ter, or how they show up in what people do. We can work to conceptualize the processes through which they influence development. We can then use an enhanced understanding of how culture matters and influences development to address applied concerns in varied cultural circumstances.

Quite honestly, when C. Raeff first proposed assembling a set of papers on culture as a concept, she thought it would be enough for contributors to

1Invitees were asked to write conceptual papers with the following guidelines. The general goal for each paper is to articulate a conceptual framework for thinking systematically about culture and applied developmental issues. More specific questions to address are: What is culture? What facets of culture do you focus on and why? What are the roles of culture in development? How can culture be understood as a process, and how can we conceptualize the relations between cultural processes and other processes that affect development (e.g., social, biological, environmental processes)? How can culture be studied and what methods derive from how you conceptualize culture? In keeping with the Journal’s overall aims, what are some implications of that definition/conceptualization for public dialogue, social policy, and preventive and development optimizing interventions (fully recognizing that what counts as development optimizing is partly a cultural issue)?

296 C. RAEFF ET AL.

offer clear definitions of culture. In doing so, they would be explaining what they think culture is. If the- definitions of what culture is are clear, then we will also know how culture matters and how culture influ- ences development. But a definition of what culture is does not necessarily tell us how culture matters or shows up in behavior and development. For example, in one way or another all of the papers in this spot- light series include beliefs and values in their defini- tions of culture. And it is not surprising to find out that there are often cultural differences in beliefs and values. However, identifying beliefs and values as fac- ets of what culture is does not tell us about how they influence behavior and development. Moreover, beliefs and values are abstract phenomena. They are not tan- gible forces that can make people behave or that can make development happen. How then do beliefs and values show up in what people do? What are the processes through which beliefs and values influence development? Answering questions about how culture matters requires a further conceptual step, beyond defining what culture is. Conceptualizing and investi- gating how culture shows up in behavior and develop- ment can then provide a theoretical basis for addressing applied issues, as well as promoting mutual understanding and cooperation among people of diverse cultures.

As a whole, the six papers in this spotlight series go that extra conceptual step and offer some ways of thinking about and investigating how culture matters for behavior and development. In doing so, they move our understanding and investigations of culture in new substantive directions. In doing so, the contribu- tors also continue the tradition of questioning conven- tional practices in psychology that began to illuminate the importance of culture several decades ago. The contributors additionally use their conceptualizations of culture as a theoretical basis for addressing applied developmental issues around the world. The papers encompass other issues as well (e.g., culture as dynamic and changing, culture as constructed by peo- ple, applied implications, methodological implica- tions), and ultimately raise many further questions about culture and development that will hopefully inspire developmentalists to think deeply about the concept of culture and to incorporate cultural analyses in their research and applications.

The papers will be distributed as a series in several issues of the Journal. We now end the Introduction with a brief preview of each paper.

Sara Harkness and Charles Super conceptualize cul- ture in terms of the developmental niche framework

that they initially articulated in the 1980s and that has influenced developmental science for decades. They identify varied facets of culture, including shared meanings and patterns of behavior. They explain that culture shows up in the developmental niche and influences children’s development through the non- random organization of children’s physical and social settings and as children interact with caregivers in repeated culturally-regulated activities. To integrate academic theorizing and applied goals, Harkness and Super illustrate how the developmental niche frame- work enables us to understand and evaluate interven- tion programs in the United States and Bangladesh. More generally, identifying the cultural structuring of children’s developmental niches can inform designing culturally sensitive programs.

Joan G. Miller, Jessica Engelbrecht, Zhenlan Wang, and Gen Tsudaka present a symbolic approach to cul- ture that highlights “shared meanings embodied in artifacts and practices” (p. 5). A symbolic approach to culture focuses on how culture shows up in behavior and influences development through ways of under- standing and interpreting experience. People may find themselves in the ostensibly same context, but that does not guarantee that people of different cultures will understand and interpret it in the same way. It does not guarantee that it will have the same meaning and implications for behavior to people of different cultures. It is thus not necessarily the same context for all involved. Culture also influences development through different conceptions of developmental goals and how to achieve those goals. Miller et al. present research that illustrates how different cultural ways of understanding varied domains of functioning (i.e., social attribution and personal description, verbal emotion display rule knowledge, interpersonal motiv- ation, readiness to sacrifice to family) are reflected in culturally variable patterns of change in varied cultural settings (i.e., the United States, India, Japan, China). Miller et al. also discuss culture and neuroscience, emphasizing that current neurological explanations of behavior and development are deterministic and obfuscate the role of culture and culturally variable socialization processes.

Allison DiBianca Fasoli presents an interpretive approach to culture which focuses on the meaning of historically-based beliefs, values, and practices that are actively constructed and shared by people within com- munities. She argues that culture shows up in or informs children’s moral development through mean- ings about the sociomoral order that are expressed in parent-child conversations. DiBianca Fasoli illustrates

APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 297

how culture informs development within US evangel- ical and mainline Christian religious cultures more specifically through the communicative processes of aligning, countering, and scaffolding. The findings also point to how culture shows up in what people do as they actively construct and re-construct shared meaning. DiBianca Fasoli further draws attention to how culture is part of conducting research, suggesting that researchers can reflect on their own cultural interpretations of phenomena and how those interpre- tations interact with the cultural meanings of their participants.

Jin Li and Heidi Fung define culture in terms of historically based values that differ across groups and with which people identify. They pose the general developmental question of how the cultural becomes personal, and they focus on how culture shows up in or “works” to shape children’s development during the course of interaction in everyday settings. They illustrate this conceptualization of how culture works by presenting analyses of European-American and Taiwanese mother–child conversations about learning. In particular, they argue that culturally particular ways of structuring intentionality and intersubjectivity during these conversations are the processes through which culture influences development.

Jos�e Causadias presents a “p-model” of culture, whereby he defines culture as a system of people, pla- ces, and practices that shows up in ways of acting that reflect shared and contested beliefs and values. He further posits that a purpose of culture is to establish and maintain, as well as resist power. As such, culture informs behavior and development through the struc- turing of power among people as they engage in cul- tural practices in particular places. Causadias illustrates this conceptualization of culture by

considering how racism is played out in the United States in terms of people, places, practices, and power.

Marie Suizzo begins by going back to the agricul- tural etymology of the word “culture” as tilling the soil. This metaphor allows her to see culture as a pro- cess – of culturing – and to focus on the ways in which cultural pathways of acting and development are continually maintained and elaborated in everyday interactions. She defines culture in terms of three processes through which culture shows up in action and development, namely, carving, categorizing, and communicating about pathways of action. She uses her research on Parisian mothers’ childrearing goals, as well as research on how low-income Mexican American and African American parents talk to their children about school achievement to illustrate how carving, categorizing, and communicating show up in children’s developmental experiences.

References

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future dis- cipline. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/71.2.709

Geertz. C (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Jahoda, G. (2012). Critical reflections on some recent defini- tions of “culture.” Culture and Psychology, 18, 289–303.

Raeff, C. (2020). Exploring the complexities of human action. Oxford University Press.

Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human develop- ment. Oxford University Press.

Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action: A theory of human development. Wiley.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1986/1987). Thought and language. The MIT Press.

Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford University Press.

298 C. RAEFF ET AL.

Copyright of Applied Developmental Science is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.