2-134 - Unique Approaches to Capturing Culture as Process in Human Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The notion that culture plays a central role in human development is widely endorsed among developmental psychologists. However, it is difficult to capture how this happens. For example, how do cultural conceptions shape children’s developmental trajectories? How are individuals agents of cultural change? How do interactional routines promote cultural development? To answer these questions requires treating culture not as a grouping or demographic variable, as either a static quality of persons or as an external entity, but as a process. Our symposium brings together culturally-attuned developmental researchers to present unique analytic approaches that psychologists can use to capture cultural process of development.

The first paper illustrates a language-interaction approach to cultural processes, showing how microanalyses of parent-child interactions can reveal social-communicative processes that underlie trajectories of moral reasoning development among U.S. evangelical Christian communities. The second paper uses the theoretical foundation of self-schemas to reveal how Maya adolescents and adults negotiate sociocultural change to maintain a stable self. The third paper demonstrates how culturally-grounded theories of the moral life-course can be used as analytic frames to understand the role of divinity in the moral reasoning of mainline and evangelical community members.

These papers illustrate where to look for cultural process and how to interpret psychological data in light of those processes, across the life-course, including middle childhood (papers 1 and 3), adolescence (papers 2 and 3), and adulthood (papers 2 and 3). Discussion will encourage critical perspectives on advancing dynamic and process-oriented approaches to culture in human development.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chair

• Allison DiBianca Fasoli, Middlebury College

Individual Presentations

• A Language-Interaction Approach to Culture as Process in Children's Moral Reasoning Development - Presenting Author: Allison DiBianca Fasoli, Middlebury College

• The Self as a Negotiator of Sociocultural Change: Examples from Indigenous Maya Women in Mexico - Presenting Author: Adriana Manago, Western Washington University

• Moral Reasoning as Cultural Process: Evangelical and Mainline Protestants’ Culturally Constituted Moral Life Course Narratives - Presenting Author: Jessica McKenzie, California State University, Fresno; Lene Arnett Jensen, Clark University