1-119 - Cultural Diversity, Interventions, and Ethics

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

This Conversation Roundtable raises core scientific concerns, theoretical and methodological, that jeopardize many current large-scale efforts to implement change in the child-development-related practices of communities that differ from standards prescribed as optimal in mainstream Western culture. The research invoked to support those standards remains largely confined to a narrow “WEIRD” sample of the world’s population (Henrich et al., 2010). Intervention programs tend to rest on a premise that the practices of such populations are normal, while culturally different socialization practices need to be “improved” to maximize children’s development. In addition to lacking fundamental scientific rigor, such approaches raise complex political-ethical-moral issues related to social justice. Too often, they reflect an ethnocentric view of the “best way” to raise children. This Roundtable will consider several examples of prominent research (e.g., attachment, the word-gap, and early-childhood-education) that are being widely ‘applied’ in diverse cultural settings via well-funded practice or/and policy. Drawing on these discussions and their own inter-disciplinary research, the panelists will address a rich range of framing issues that emerge in areas such as Central America, India and Sub-Saharan Africa with a view to initiating a future-oriented conversation with the audience, We regard this topic as lying at the heart of both SRCD’s Strategic Plan (instantiated in the new Lecture Series on Child Development in a Diverse Majority Society) and this Biennial’s organizing themes. Exploration in this Roundtable should serve as a complement to several other sessions, notably the Invited/TAD presentations of Britto, Lombardi, and Smith.
 Moderator: Frank Kessel

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Moderator

• Frank Kessel, University of New Mexico

Panelists

• Barbara Rogoff, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Robert Serpell, University of Zambia

• Nandita Chaudhary, University of Delhi

• Richard Shweder, University of Chicago