Culture and Social Development: Explanations and Evidence

For the human species, adaptability has been the key to success in a wide variety of different ecologies. From the icy coasts and plains of the arctic to the jungles and savannahs of the equator, we encounter families and communities of people living recognizably human, yet strikingly different, lifestyles. Nowhere is this plasticity more evident than in social development, as children grow and learn to be members of a myriad of different culturally organized milieux. How to explain the ways that culture shapes children’s social development has been a central task of social anthropology, and more recently social and developmental psychology. This chapter will review selected frameworks for understanding how culture affects children’s social development from early through middle childhood. Beginning with anthropological formulations of the early twentieth century, we will trace the historical progression of explanatory frameworks, including those that have emerged more recently within psychology. Since the measure of a theory’s adequacy is its usefulness for understanding the reality it addresses, we will also consider the kinds of evidence associated with each model.