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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
In this chapter I argue that teaching, as we now understand the term, is historically and cross-culturally very rare. It appears to be unnecessary to transmit culture or to socialize children. Children are, on the other hand, primed by evolution to be avid observers, imitators, players and helpers—roles that reveal the profoundly autonomous and self-directed nature of culture acquisition (Lancy in press a). And yet, teaching is ubiquitous throughout the modern world—at least among the middle to upper class segment of the population. This ubiquity has led numerous scholars to argue for the universality and uniqueness of teaching as a …
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
An important part of the common lore of anthropology is that “other people have culture.” That is, most people fail to recognize or appreciate how much of their lives are governed by habits, values, and expectations that are largely the product of history and culture. They fail to acknowledge that their own way of doing things is not necessarily universal or even widely shared. This ethnocentrism can have enormous consequences for the construction of child development theory and education.
Why Anthropology Of Childhood? A Short History Of An Emerging Discipline, David F. Lancy
Why Anthropology Of Childhood? A Short History Of An Emerging Discipline, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
The paper has four goals: to refute the claim that anthropologists have not studied childhood; to provide a cursory history of the field; to provide an organizational schema for reviewing the literature in the field and; to suggest a strategy for future scholarship in the anthropology of childhood.
When Nurture Becomes Nature: Ethnocentrism In Studies Of Human Development, David F. Lancy
When Nurture Becomes Nature: Ethnocentrism In Studies Of Human Development, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
This commentary will extend the territory claimed in the target article by identifying several other areas in the social sciences where findings from the WEIRD population have been over-generalized. An argument is made that the root problem is the ethnocentrism of scholars, textbook authors, and social commentators, which leads them to take their own cultural values as the norm.