Showing papers on "Cultural analysis published in 1978"

Overview: foundations of cultural psychiatry.

Abstract: The authors demonstrate the significance of adding the cultural dimension to basic psychiatric concepts. They point out the areas in which the work of anthropology and social psychology are relevant to psychiatry, including understanding mental health and illness, child-rearing practices and their effects on personality, cognition, family and social networks, sex roles and behavior, alcohol use, communication, and therapy. They also present some of the major conceptual foundations of cultural psychiatry, which include ethnography, emic and etic approaches, the cross-cultural approach, and the study of subjective culture.

Variance in American kinship: implications for cultural analysis

Abstract: The question of variance in American kinship provides a rich basis for a discussion of several critical conceptual, theoretical, and methodological Issues embedded in the cultural analysis of kinship or any other cultural domain. The paper begins with an examination of the extent to which David Schneider's cultural account of American kinship represents and explicates the symbolic system of second-generation Japanese-Americans. This leads to the major theoretical problem: the way in which we formulate heuristic levels of analysis and construe their interrelationships. An explication of the theoretical consequences of Schneider's scheme of the behavioral, normative, and cultural systems and his articulation of the “pure” and “conglomerate” levels of the cultural system compels us to reassess the goals of cultural analysis and suggests the kind of theory of meaning and action that will prove most instructive in such an endeavor.

Recent Insights on the Culturally Different Gifted.

Abstract: * A modification of a paper presented at the 24th Annual Convention of the National Association for Gifted Children, San Diego California, October 21, 1977. For some time I have been concerned with identification and development of the gifted and talented from culturally different populations (Bruch, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1976). I have been writing on this topic, in a sense, since an early effort published in my senior year in college, many years ago. At that time, the discrepancy became apparent between my experiences in a traditional Southern family as a child, and an initial exposure to educated black adults and middle class black children. But, times have changed since then, and I returned to the Southeast from California over ten years ago. i

Towards a Theory of Cultural Evolution

Abstract: Previous experience in the development of the mathematical theory of biological evolution, has helped the authors toward their theory of cultural evolution. In this review a constant comparison between the two evolutions, in both directions, has led to an interdisciplinary understanding. Cultural transmission is discussed in detail and the ten major modes of transmission are enunciated; cultural traits are defined and the variance within, as well as between, groups considered. Cultural and environmental selection as well as complex transmission are further aspects leading the authors to the conclusion, that in spite of gross oversimplification, their theory is essential for a rigorous qualitative investigation of cultural evolution.

the transatlantic nanny: notes on a comparative semiotics of the family in English‐speaking societies

Abstract: The paper suggests that systems-building efforts in kinship studies have glossed over significant cultural variability in the institution of mother. A cultural analysis of family structure in Victorian England and English-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere focuses on the career of a prominent mother surrogate, the nanny. The diversity of fates experienced by nanny after her transatlantic voyage appears to support the view that the institution of mother is an eminently semiotic phenomenon, enmeshed in a system of meanings that comprises not only the family but also ethnic systems of the Americas.

Anthropology of the Young1

Abstract: This article has a double-barreled purpose: to raise some important questions and to sketch out a conceptual framework for an anthropology of the young. The first part of the article raises the question: Is anthropology of education, through an emphasis on such themes as school ethnography, observational methodology, curricular development, and the schooling of native peoples, moving towards narrowness and specialization? Or to turn the question around: To what extent is the field still based in an anthropology that is general, pan-human, and evolutionary in scope? The main thesis of the paper is that an anthropology of the young might be a useful move in the latter direction. In the second part of the paper, a conceptual framework for an anthropology of the young is sketched out, in terms of four points: defining the young, describing their cultural patterns, understanding their cultural dependence, and coping ethnographically with the problems of development. The article closes with a brief attempt to argue the advantages of such an approach to professional educators and anthropologists of education.

Cultural Pluralism--Then and Now.

Abstract: Should ethnic studies be incorporated into the curriculum? If so, to what extent and to what end? In considering these questions, the author reviews the evolution of attitudes and terminology relating to the cultural identity of foreign-born Americans.

Arts Education and the Language of Cultural Policy

Abstract: This essay discusses some of the ideas clustered around the term "cultural policy." An educator, certainly an art educator, cannot participate in international meetings without being bombarded with declarations of, and arguments about, cultural policy. This is not simply the observation of more than a decade of such participation in art education (INSEA and elsewhere), philosophical and humanistic studies, adult education, and curriculum planning. The same holds true for much of what has been published by and for art educators. One comes away feeling that most of it is sincere and impassioned, but that it confirms what Wittgenstein called the bewitchment of intelligence by language. And, if one may adapt another of Wittgenstein's epigrams, one sees ideology take over when philosophy goes on a holiday. Cultural policy has become such a prominent concern that an ongoing series of UNESCO monographs1 is devoted to it; to date, three general inquiries and thirty national reports. From amongst those national statements, I have chosen to comment on only a few that seem to be expressive of some common concerns. Two groups of nations are making their presence increasingly felt in international education circles: the developing nations and the countries of Eastern Europe. They are characteristic of societies which have a variety of political persuasions and are at various stages of development. I state this at the outset, lest the reader misinterpret my emphasis. The reader is further asked to bear in mind that I am not describing the cultural activities in these

After the Melting Pot

Abstract: of agent for developing cultural identity and understandings. Differences in the cultural backgrounds of students in American public schools have long been a fact of life ("Study of Selected Socio-economic Characteristics," 1974), and what is going to be done about these differences is one of the major questions facing education today. Answers to that question, placed on a continuum extending from, "Ignore them and they'll go away," to "Maintain and accentuate them and they'll grow," can be polarized into two major thoughts: The discourage differences approach and the encourage differences approach. The gradual shifting of some authors, such as McFee (1965, 1970, and 1977), makes one realize how much views on culture and education are a result of change over time. Some authors hold views which contain elements of more than one position, and there are many nuances between authors who nominally espouse the same position. An individual student's culture can be visualized by constructing a culturegram. The proximity and degree of overlap would indicate how similar the beliefs, values, and practices of one component are to the other components. The relative size of any given component indicates the degree of participation, affiliation, and importance. The more overlap in a student's culturegram, the less cultural conflict and diversity there are in his life.