Moral Development in the Global South: Youth's Judgments of Economic Inequality and Civic Engagement

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Abstract

In the last decade, developmental psychology has increasingly focused on youth's judgments of economic inequality and the association between those judgments and youth's civic engagement. However, most of this research was carried out in the Global North. The problems inherent to an approach that generalizes the reach of findings drawn from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples are now well recognized in psychology. This approach is uniquely problematic in regards to questions bearing on the psychological and developmental sequelae of growing up in the midst of economic inequality, given that millions of children in non-WEIRD contexts grow up in countries where the rates of economic inequality are much higher than in the Global North and also inextricably associated with profound levels of poverty.
In this discussion table moderated by Cecilia Wainryb, we bring together four moral development and civic engagement researchers in Argentina (Alicia Barreiro), Brazil (Kendra Thomas), Chile (Maria Loreto Martinez), and Mexico (Everardo Perez Manjarrez) to discuss the main trends of their research and consider how these diverge from comparable research conducted in countries of the Global North. Specifically, participants will discuss Latin American youth's conceptions of justice, their judgments about the fairness of systems and institutions in their countries, and the links between those judgments and youth's engagement with transformative civic and political practices geared to change such inequalities. Participants will also weigh in on the main similarities and differences between findings drawn from Latin America and North America.

Sub Unit

• Solicited Content: Global South

Moderator

• CECILIA WAINRYB, University of Utah

Panelists

• Alicia Viviana Barreiro, University of Buenos Aires, FLACSO-Argentina and National Council of Scientific and Thecnical Research

• M. Loreto Martínez, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Kendra J Thomas, Hope College

• Everardo Perez-Manjarrez, Harvard University