embroiled in philosophical, epistemological, ethical and political issues, as will be apparent in this chapter.
illustrated by Pere's (1982) description of how New Zealand's Maori children are taught cultural tasks:
Within the Maori context, the teacher-pupil relationship is an in- timate one based on high expectation with both the more learned and the learner working together on a set task. For example, a grand- mother teaching her grand-daughter(s) about the mythology and art of finger weaving.... The pupil (s) and the teacher are in a position jointly to evaluate the ongoing process and development of their efforts. When the pupil proves that she has learned the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to perform the task on her own, both teacher and pupil are then ready to move on to another task.
(Pere, 1982: 67) As we saw in Chapter 7,Vygotsky's theory of thought was that the inter- personal becomes internalized as the intrapersonal, so that the way a per- son thinks is inculcated through linguistic interaction with others, the nature of which is culturally determined. That cultural differences can operate even at the perceptual level was brought home to him when he dis- covered that, in Uzbekistan, the visual illusions that fooled city folk did not work. Vygotsky's work was little recognized by western developmentalists until the 1980s.
While Vygotsky's theory acknowledged that culture plays an integral role in development, developmental researchers have often seen sociocultural variables as something to be controlled in studies to enable 'pure process' to be observed. A shift from this type of thinking is becoming apparent, how- ever, in the direction of thinking about the place of social environmental variables as something to be studied to enable development to be under- stood. This shift is acknowledged by the more recent versions of Bronfenbrenner's theory described in Chapter 11. Bronfenbrenner and Morris (1998: 1016) provide a quotation from a 1995 work by Steinberg and colleagues that makes this point well:
[I]t made no sense at all to control for ethnicity, social class, or household composition in an attempt to produce 'pure' process. No process occurs outside of a context. And if we want to understand context, we need to take it into account, not pretend to control it away.
Like Bronfenbrenner, the dialectical psychologist Riegel developed his theory in the USA in the 1970s (see Chapter 7). Influenced by the earlier Soviet-based work of Rubinstein rather than Vygotsky, he maintained that it was inappropriate to study the isolated individual as the focus of devel- opment: rather, the individual can only be understood in relation to histor- ical and societal changes related to issues such as demography, political structures and majority/minority group relations. Thus, the individual does
not just exist within the boundaries of the body, but within a 'psychological space' that encompasses interactions with family, friends and the broader culture (Meacham, 1999).
In a similar vein, Joan Miller (1999) draws a distinction between eco- logical perspectives and the approach of cultural psychology. The former sees culture as merely providing a context for development: development happens through universal processes and mechanisms, with culture merely providing specific content. The cultural approach, by contrast, is con- cerned with shared meaning systems, so that psychological notions such as 'mind', 'self and 'emotion' are themselves culturally created and under- stood. From the perspective of cultural psychology, cultural practices are not based only on adaptive considerations, but may be non-rational, such as when members of a culture refuse to eat certain animals for cultural rea- sons although they are edible. Thus, psychological explanations need to take account of not just the person and the ecological context, but also the culture.
Indeed, culture itself can be seen as subject to evolutionary processes:
rather than viewing humans as 'biologically complete hominids' who 'sud- denly invented culture' (Miller, 1999: 87), the cultural view sees culture itself as a factor contributing to evolutionary selection. Thus, apart from some innate propensities in infancy and some involuntary responses, devel- opment must occur within a cultural setting for most psychological processes to develop. This more radical approach owes much to the views of the dialectical psychologists and, as Miller observes, presents a major challenge to the Piagetian theory that development occurs independently of enculturation. Rather, research indicates that the stages and end-points of cognitive development are dependent upon the provision of culturally specific support.
One anecdotal example we are aware of is that Australian Aboriginal children in some remote communities, who 'should' be in the concrete operations stage, have a well-developed understanding of abstract econom- ic principles derived from their involvement in a local economic system based on bartering six-packs of beer. Formal research can provide similar examples. In general terms, Miller points out the need to recognize that all research findings are dependent upon the constructs that underlie them, and that these may be culture-specific. She suggests that cultural psych- ology may best be seen not as a separate area of inquiry within psychology, but as a perspective that can inform whatever field is under consideration.
It is certainly the case that mainstream developmental psychology pays far more attention to cultural influences on development than previously.
A cross-cultural study of infant temperament (de Vries, 1984) was (by chance) particularly telling in terms of the differing perceptions about chil- dren that parents in some cultures hold in comparison with western researchers' beliefs. The notion of differences in temperament between
infants was being studied, researchers in the USA having established that infants vary in how easy or difficult they are to manage. The researchers applied their temperament criteria to infants of Masai parents (people of Kenya and Tanzania). Then, a tragic drought occurred in which many infants died; it turned out that the survivors were the 'difficult' babies, who had, presumably, demanded more frequent feeding than the 'easy' babies and survived as a result. Furthermore, Masai parents valued more assertive characteristics in children, perhaps the very characteristics that US parents regarded as difficult to handle, but that promoted survival for the Masai.
Thus, a characteristic that is valued in one culture may not be highly valued, and may even be detrimental to survival, in another. This illustrates the notion of 'goodness-of-fit' between a child's propensities and the en- vironment in determining development (Thomas and Chess, 1977).
Parental ethnotheories, or parental belief systems, are now being pro- posed as a way of capturing the link between cultural forces and parenting practices (Harkness et a/., 2001). Researchers draw upon both anthropol- ogy and developmental psychology (following in the footsteps of Mead and Erikson), and note the need for tolerance of research methods coming from different traditions. This cross-cultural approach aims to elicit the often implicit theories that parents have about the correct way to raise children. As Ritchie and Ritchie (1979: 147) noted,
... socialisation is not conducted in terms of the literature on child development but in terms of cultural goals. Adults everywhere want their children to grow up not simply to be good human beings in universal terms but to be good people in their own cultural terms.
In the new millennium, the beliefs of middle-class parents and teachers across seven western countries are being investigated through the Parenting-21 project. Although some have argued that the sample is too homogeneous for this to constitute a true cross-cultural study, differences in parenting beliefs between, and in some instance within, countries, have emerged (Harkness et al, 2001). For example, Dutch parents value rest, expect their babies to sleep through the night at an early age and have babies who sleep long hours; US parents, by contrast, value both rest and stimula- tion, have more trouble settling their babies to sleep and have infants who in fact sleep less than their Dutch counterparts. Thus cultural influences are apparent even in a behaviour as heavily biologically determined as sleep.
With an increasing recognition of such cultural differences, Nsamenang (1999) has proposed that editors of textbooks and journals, and scientific panels, should have multicultural audiences in mind. As Australian researchers, we are often made acutely aware that there is still a long way to go. Our research samples appear to be perceived by international (gen- erally US) journal editors as oddities, and we are frequently requested to specify in the titles of our journal articles that the study is Australian. By
contrast, US authors are rarely required to specify this in their titles, pre- sumably because they are perceived by the journal editors as the norm.
One of us also has the experience of having a paper rejected by the editor of a journal solely on the grounds that the topic was no longer relevant to a US readership because of US policy changes - the fact that the journal had an international readership, that the issue was still a major consideration elsewhere in the world, or that US readers might benefit from exposure to overseas experience, was apparently not of interest. In such ways do the guardians of knowledge unwittingly operate to perpetuate a particular hegemony.