Culture, thought, and development

In this volume, the reader will find a host of fresh perspectives. Authors seek to reconceptualize problems, offering new frames for understanding relations between culture and human development. Contributors include scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, law, theology, anthropology, developmental psychology, neuro- and evolutionary psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and physics. To help organize the discussions, the volume is divided into three parts. Each part reflects an arena of current scholarly activity related to the analysis of culture, cognition, and development. The editors cast a wide but carefully crafted net in assembling contributions to this volume. Though the contributors span a wide range of disciplines, features common to the work include both clear departures from the polemics of nature-nurture debates and a clear focus on interacting systems in individuals' activities, leading to novel developmental processes. All accounts are efforts to mark new and productive paths for exploring intrinsic relations between culture and development.

Contents: Preface. Part I: Epistemological Issues.J. Margolis, Would You Say Developmental Psychology Was a Science? The Cultural Paradigm of Mind. M. Donald, The Central Role of Culture in Cognitive Evolution: A Reflection on the Myth of the "Isolated Mind." Part II: Personal, Social, and Affective Development.M.C. Nussbaum, Emotions and Social Norms. M.J. Chandler, C.E. Lalonde, B.J. Sokol, Continuities of Selfhood in the Face of Radical Development and Cultural Change. C. Strauss, The Culture Concept and the Individualism-Collectivism Debate: Dominant and Alternative Attributions for Class in the United States. L.P. Nucci, E. Turiel, The Moral and the Personal: Sources of Social Conflicts. Part III: The Development of Physical and Spatial Knowledge.A.A. diSessa, Does the Mind Know the Difference Between the Physical and Social Worlds? P. Brown, S.C. Levinson, Frames of Spatial Reference and Their Acquisition in Tenejapan Tzeltal. M. Bowerman, Where Do Children's Word Meanings Come From? Rethinking the Role of Cognition in Early Semantic Development. P.M. Greenfield, Culture and Universals: Integrating Social and Cognitive Development.