Understanding Cultural Transmission and Individual Development

 
Cultural Transmission and
Individual Development
 
 
Cultural and biological transmission
 
C
ultural transmission
: 
certain features of a
population
 
are perpetuated
 (devam ettirmek)
over time across generations.
C
ultural transmission involve two processes:
E
nculturation
S
ocialization
 
2
 
Cultural and biological transmission
 
Enculturation
 takes place by the “enfolding”
(katlama) 
of individuals by their culture,
leading them to incorporate appropriate
behavior into their repertoires.
Socialization
 takes place by more specific
instruction
 
and training, again leading to the
acquisition of culture-appropriate behavior.
 
3
 
Cultural and biological transmission
 
In transmission
,
 parents transmit cultural
values, skills, beliefs, and
 
motives to their
offspring.
In this case it is difficult to distinguish
between cultural
 
and biological transmission,
since we typically learn from the very people
who are responsible for our conception; 
and
biological parents and cultural parents
 
are
very often the same.
 
4
 
Cultural and biological transmission
In cultural transmission, we learn from our
peers in day-to-day interactions during the
course of development from birth to
adulthood
.
I
n this case, there is no confounding of
biological and cultural transmission.
 
5
 
Cultural and biological transmission
In 
cultural transmission, we learn from other
adults and institutions
 
(for example in formal
schooling), either in our own culture or from
other cultures.
If the process takes place entirely within our
own or primary culture,
 
then cultural
transmission is the appropriate term
.
 
6
Cultural and biological transmission
 
However, if the process derives from contact
with another or secondary culture,
 
the term
acculturation
 is employed
.
Acculturation
 
refers to the form of
transmission experienced by individuals that
results from
 
contact with, and influence from,
persons and institutions belonging to cultures
other than their own.
 
7
 
Cultural and biological transmission
Individual development can be considered as
the outcome of interactions between
 
a
biological organism and environmental
influences.
A
 starting point for the discussion the
distinction between 
nature and nurture
.
 
8
Cultural and biological transmission
 
Thus, there are 
maturational theories 
that
place
 
great emphasis on biological factors.
In contrast, 
traditional learning theory
emphasizes the role of the environment.
In 
other theories 
more
 
attention is paid to the
interaction between the organism and the
environment
.
 
9
 
Infant development
Among human nomadic hunters weaning
(sütten kesme) 
takes
 
place around three or
four years of age (later if there is no new
baby)
.
Most sedentary
 (yerleşik)
 agricultural societies
have a
 
birth spacing (corresponding to the age
of weaning) of two to three years
.
In recent
 
decades, early weaning and bottle
feeding have spread to much of the world’s
population
.
 
10
 
Infant development
 
The first cross-cultural study of infant performance, one
that has had important
 influence
, was carried out by
Geber and Dean (1957).
They examined full
-
term
 
neonates 
(yenidoğan) 
who
weighed more than 2,500 grams in the maternity hospital
in
 
Kampala, Uganda.
They found a marked precocity
 (gelişmişlik)
 in
development in relation to
 
Western pediatric norms: an
advance of two to six weeks in holding the head, and
 
a
nearly complete absence of the archaic reflexes
(indicating an advanced state of
 
development).
This has come to be known as 
African infant precocity.
(ethnocentrism?)
 
11
 
Attachment patterns
Bowlby derived the idea that behaviors of
human
 
infants such as crying and smiling will
elicit care-giving reactions from
 
adults.
As a result of such interactions, especially with
the mother, attachment
 
develops.
This provides the child with a secure base
from which it can explore
 
the world.
 
12
Attachment patterns
 
Although attachment theory was originally
largely rooted in field observations,
 
the most
frequent method of assessment is by means
of a standard procedure
 
called the 
‘strange
situation’
The cross-cultural equivalence of the strange
situation as an
 
assessment procedure is
questionable.
 
13
 
Attachment patterns
 
For example, a
mong the Aka Pygmies
,
 the
father spends considerable time
 
with the baby
of a few months old
.
In some settings
,
 children become part of an
extended family or village community
 
in which
many adults and other children assume
caretaking roles
.
In urban Western settings
, 
bringing children
from a few months of age onward to a day care
center.
 
14
 
Attachment patterns
 
What are the consequences of these differences in
cultural practices?
The
 
question is not easy to answer, because not
only the social settings per se, but
 
also
socialization goals, may differ across cultures.
Thus, it has been argued that
 
two orientations can
be distinguished:
I
n Western societies, socialization may be
 
more
oriented toward 
self-regulation and autonomy
W
hile in many non-Western
 
countries the orientation is
more toward 
social interdependencies
.
 
15
Enculturation and socialization
 
A
n individual is encompassed
 
or surrounded
by a culture; the individual acquires, by
learning, what the culture
 
deems to be
necessary.
There is not necessarily anything deliberate or
didactic
 
about this process; often there is
learning without specific teaching
.
 
16
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
The process
 
of 
enculturation
 involves parents,
and other adults and peers, in a network of
influences all of which can limit, shape, and
direct the developing individual.
The end result (if enculturation is successful) is
a person who is competent in the culture,
including its language, its rituals, its
 values,
and so on.
 
17
Enculturation and socialization
 
The concept of 
socialization
 refer to the
process of deliberate shaping, by way of
tutelage
 (himaye)
,
 
of the individual.
It is generally employed in cross-cultural
psychology in
 
the same way.
When cultural transmission involves
deliberate teaching from within
 
a group, we
are dealing with the process of socialization
.
 
18
 
Enculturation and socialization
T
he process of cultural transmission does not
necessarily
 
lead to exact replication of
successive generations; it falls somewhere
between
 
an exact transmission 
(with hardly
any differences between parents and
offspring)
 
and a complete failure of
transmission
 (with offspring who are unlike
their parents).
 
19
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
Functionally, either extreme would be
problematic for a society:
E
xact transmission would not allow for novelty
and
 
change, and hence the ability to respond to
new situations,
W
hile failure of transmission
 
would not permit
coordinated action between generations
.
 
20
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
By the mid-1950s
, 
on six central dimensions of
child rearing thought to be common to all
societies
:
obedience training
responsibility training
nurturance training
achievement training
self-reliance
general independence training
 
21
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
O
bedience training
: the degree to which children are trained to
obey adults
.
R
esponsibility training
: the degree to which children are trained
to take on responsibility
 
for subsistence or household tasks
.
N
urturance training
: the degree to which children are trained to
care for and
 
help younger siblings and other dependent people
.
A
chievement training
: the degree to which children are trained
to strive towards
 
standards of excellence in performance
.
S
elf-reliance
: the degree to which children are trained to take
care of themselves
 
and to be independent of assistance from
others in supplying their own
 
needs or wants
.
G
eneral independence training
: the degree to which children are
trained (beyond
 
self-reliance as defined above) toward freedom
from control, domination,
 
and supervision.
 
22
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
23
 
Enculturation and socialization
 
With the exception
 
of the dimension of
obedience training, girls were socialized more
often
 
for “compliance”; conversely, boys were
socialized more for “assertion”
 
24
Gender differences
 
The issue of gender differences in socialization
has received extensive treatment
 
in the cross-
cultural literature about gender differences in
behavior
.
T
here are gender differences
 
in behavior in
every society, and that every society has some
division
 
of labor by gender.
 
25
 
Gender differences
T
he two genders behave in different
 
ways is not
surprising, but it still leads to interesting questions.
For example,
 
have all societies observed different
inborn behavioral tendencies in males
 
and females
and then shaped their socialization practices to
reinforce such biologically
 
based tendencies?
Or are societies’ socialization practices merely
influenced
 
by certain physical differences between
males and females, with those
 
practices
responsible for behavioral differences?
 
26
 
Gender differences
S
tudies 
are 
showing 
males
 to
 
be 
more self-
assertive, achievement oriented
, and 
dominant
and 
females
 to be 
more
 
socially responsive,
passive, and submissiv
e.
Such an explanation takes into account
economic facts, including division of
 
labor and
socialization practices.
The argument begins with an early
anthropological
 
finding (1937) that a division of
labor by sex is universal (or
 
nearly so) and quite
consisten
t.
 
27
 
Gender differences
 
For example, food preparation is done
predominantly by females in nearly all societies.
Child care is usually the responsibility
 
of females.
Sometimes it is shared, but in no society is it the
typical 
practice for males to have the major
responsibility.
These differences are widely
 
viewed as arising
from biologically based physical differences
especially the female’s lesser overall physical
strength and, most of
 
all, her child bearing and
child caring functions.
 
28
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km5ZO6
4EmjE
 
29
 
Gender differences
 
A second argument was to suggest that
differential socialization evolved as a means
for preparing children to assume
 
their sex-
linked adult roles.
Then, the behavioral differences could best be
viewed
 
as a product of different socialization
emphases
 
and appropriate training for
different adult activities
.
 
30
 
Gender differences
 
H
igh food
 
accumulating societies not only will
females be subjected to more training to be
nurturant and compliant, but the degree of the
difference between the sexes’ training
 
will also be
high.
In low food accumulating societies, such as
gathering or
 
hunting societies, there will be less
division of labor by sex and little need for
 
either sex
to be trained to be compliant.
Hence, women’s work is
 
valued by the men, who
are then not inclined to derogate women or to insist
on
 
subservience from them.
 
31
Gender differences
 
One of the ways in which division of labor
varies across cultures is in the degree
 
to which
women contribute to subsistence
 (geçim).
For example, if food is acquired by 
gathering
,
women’s participation is
 
usually high; in eleven
of fourteen 
(79 percent) 
gathering societies for
which
 
women were high contributors.
By contrast, in
 
only two of sixteen 
(13 percent)
hunting
 societies did women make a high
contribution.
 
32
 
Gender differences
 
Where women played a relatively large
subsistence role, the features of polygyny
 (çok
kadınla evlilik)
,
 
exogamy
 (dış evlilik)
, brideprice
(başlık parası)
, birth control, and work
orientation training for girls prevailed.
And under these same conditions (high
contribution by females to subsistence),
females were relatively highly valued, allowed
freedoms, and were generally less
 
likely to be
perceived as objects for male sexual and
reproductive needs.
 
33
Moral development
 
 
34
 
Moral development
At
 
the 
pre-conventional level
, moral conduct
is in the interest of individuals themselves,
 
or
in the interest of relatives; reasons for doing
right are the avoidance of
 
punishment and the
principle of fairness in an exchange.
 
35
 
Moral development
 
At 
the conventional level
,
 
concern about loyalty
and about the welfare of other persons and
society at large
 
are given as reasons to justify
one’s actions.
At 
the post-conventional level
, actions
 
are based
on ethical principles to which individuals have
committed themselves,
 
and that serve as
absolute standards, even taking priority over the
laws of society
 
that may violate these principles.
 
36
 
Moral development
 
C
ultural groups can be expected
 
to differ in the
modal stage or level of moral reasoning because
of differences in
 
values and social organization.
To assess whether they were “universal,” Kohlberg
proposed three
 
different criteria:
the first was whether the stages could be identified
(empirically)
 
in all cultures;
the second was whether the same “operations”
applied to
 
all human beings;
the third was whether all people acted in a specific
way
 
in similar situations.
 
37
 
Moral development
 
With these distinctions in mind, “universality”
does not mean that morality is completely
invariant
 
or shows identical manifestations in
all cultures
.
Rather, levels and stages in various cultures
reveal
 
«
local adaptations
»
 
38
Moral development
 
Overall, what can be concluded about the
universality of Kohlberg’s stage theory
 
of
moral development?
There are some culture-specific moral
principles like 
“respect for older people,”
“obligation,” “harmony,” and “non-violence.”
 
39
 
Key Words
 
acculturation
attachment
child training
cultural transmission
enculturation
gender
moral development
socialization
 
 
40
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Cultural transmission plays a crucial role in perpetuating features across generations through processes like enculturation and socialization. It involves the transmission of values, beliefs, and skills from parents and peers, shaping individual development. The interaction between biological and cultural transmission influences how individuals learn and adopt behavior within their own culture and through acculturation from other cultures.


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  1. Cultural Transmission and Individual Development

  2. Cultural and biological transmission Cultural transmission: certain features of a population are perpetuated (devam ettirmek) over time across generations. Cultural transmission involve two processes: Enculturation Socialization 2

  3. Cultural and biological transmission Enculturationtakes place by the enfolding (katlama) of individuals by their culture, leading them to incorporate appropriate behavior into their repertoires. Socialization takes place by more specific instruction and training, again leading to the acquisition of culture-appropriate behavior. 3

  4. Cultural and biological transmission In transmission, parents transmit cultural values, skills, beliefs, and motives to their offspring. In this case it is difficult to distinguish between cultural and biological transmission, since we typically learn from the very people who are responsible for our conception; and biological parents and cultural parents are very often the same. 4

  5. Cultural and biological transmission In cultural transmission, we learn from our peers in day-to-day interactions during the course of development from birth to adulthood. In this case, there is no confounding of biological and cultural transmission. 5

  6. Cultural and biological transmission In cultural transmission, we learn from other adults and institutions (for example in formal schooling), either in our own culture or from other cultures. If the process takes place entirely within our own or primary culture, then cultural transmission is the appropriate term. 6

  7. Cultural and biological transmission However, if the process derives from contact with another or secondary culture, the term acculturation is employed. Acculturation refers to the form of transmission experienced by individuals that results from contact with, and influence from, persons and institutions belonging to cultures other than their own. 7

  8. Cultural and biological transmission Individual development can be considered as the outcome of interactions between a biological organism and environmental influences. A starting point for the discussion the distinction between nature and nurture. 8

  9. Cultural and biological transmission Thus, there are maturational theories that place great emphasis on biological factors. In contrast, traditional learning theory emphasizes the role of the environment. In other theories more attention is paid to the interaction between the organism and the environment. 9

  10. Infant development Among human nomadic hunters weaning (s tten kesme) takes place around three or four years of age (later if there is no new baby). Most sedentary (yerle ik) agricultural societies have a birth spacing (corresponding to the age of weaning) of two to three years. In recent decades, early weaning and bottle feeding have spread to much of the world s population. 10

  11. Infant development The first cross-cultural study of infant performance, one that has had important influence, was carried out by Geber and Dean (1957). They examined full-term neonates (yenido an) who weighed more than 2,500 grams in the maternity hospital in Kampala, Uganda. They found a marked precocity (geli mi lik) in development in relation to Western pediatric norms: an advance of two to six weeks in holding the head, and a nearly complete absence of the archaic reflexes (indicating an advanced state of development). This has come to be known as African infant precocity. (ethnocentrism?) 11

  12. Attachment patterns Bowlby derived the idea that behaviors of human infants such as crying and smiling will elicit care-giving reactions from adults. As a result of such interactions, especially with the mother, attachment develops. This provides the child with a secure base from which it can explore the world. 12

  13. Attachment patterns Although attachment theory was originally largely rooted in field observations, the most frequent method of assessment is by means of a standard procedure called the strange situation The cross-cultural equivalence of the strange situation as an assessment procedure is questionable. 13

  14. Attachment patterns For example, among the Aka Pygmies, the father spends considerable time with the baby of a few months old. In some settings, children become part of an extended family or village community in which many adults and other children assume caretaking roles. In urban Western settings, bringing children from a few months of age onward to a day care center. 14

  15. Attachment patterns What are the consequences of these differences in cultural practices? The question is not easy to answer, because not only the social settings per se, but also socialization goals, may differ across cultures. Thus, it has been argued that two orientations can be distinguished: In Western societies, socialization may be more oriented toward self-regulation and autonomy While in many non-Western countries the orientation is more toward social interdependencies. 15

  16. Enculturation and socialization An individual is encompassed or surrounded by a culture; the individual acquires, by learning, what the culture deems to be necessary. There is not necessarily anything deliberate or didactic about this process; often there is learning without specific teaching. 16

  17. Enculturation and socialization The process of enculturation involves parents, and other adults and peers, in a network of influences all of which can limit, shape, and direct the developing individual. The end result (if enculturation is successful) is a person who is competent in the culture, including its language, its rituals, its values, and so on. 17

  18. Enculturation and socialization The concept of socialization refer to the process of deliberate shaping, by way of tutelage (himaye), of the individual. It is generally employed in cross-cultural psychology in the same way. When cultural transmission involves deliberate teaching from within a group, we are dealing with the process of socialization. 18

  19. Enculturation and socialization The process of cultural transmission does not necessarily lead to exact replication of successive generations; it falls somewhere between an exact transmission (with hardly any differences between parents and offspring) and a complete failure of transmission (with offspring who are unlike their parents). 19

  20. Enculturation and socialization Functionally, either extreme would be problematic for a society: Exact transmission would not allow for novelty and change, and hence the ability to respond to new situations, While failure of transmission would not permit coordinated action between generations. 20

  21. Enculturation and socialization By the mid-1950s, on six central dimensions of child rearing thought to be common to all societies: obedience training responsibility training nurturance training achievement training self-reliance general independence training 21

  22. Enculturation and socialization Obedience training: the degree to which children are trained to obey adults. Responsibility training: the degree to which children are trained to take on responsibility for subsistence or household tasks. Nurturance training: the degree to which children are trained to care for and help younger siblings and other dependent people. Achievement training: the degree to which children are trained to strive towards standards of excellence in performance. Self-reliance: the degree to which children are trained to take care of themselves and to be independent of assistance from others in supplying their own needs or wants. General independence training: the degree to which children are trained (beyond self-reliance as defined above) toward freedom from control, domination, and supervision. 22

  23. Enculturation and socialization 23

  24. Enculturation and socialization With the exception of the dimension of obedience training, girls were socialized more often for compliance ; conversely, boys were socialized more for assertion 24

  25. Gender differences The issue of gender differences in socialization has received extensive treatment in the cross- cultural literature about gender differences in behavior. There are gender differences in behavior in every society, and that every society has some division of labor by gender. 25

  26. Gender differences The two genders behave in different ways is not surprising, but it still leads to interesting questions. For example, have all societies observed different inborn behavioral tendencies in males and females and then shaped their socialization practices to reinforce such biologically based tendencies? Or are societies socialization practices merely influenced by certain physical differences between males and females, with those practices responsible for behavioral differences? 26

  27. Gender differences Studies are showing males to be more self- assertive, achievement oriented, and dominant and females to be more socially responsive, passive, and submissive. Such an explanation takes into account economic facts, including division of labor and socialization practices. The argument begins with an early anthropological finding (1937) that a division of labor by sex is universal (or nearly so) and quite consistent. 27

  28. Gender differences For example, food preparation is done predominantly by females in nearly all societies. Child care is usually the responsibility of females. Sometimes it is shared, but in no society is it the typical practice for males to have the major responsibility. These differences are widely viewed as arising from biologically based physical differences especially the female s lesser overall physical strength and, most of all, her child bearing and child caring functions. 28

  29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km5ZO6 4EmjE 29

  30. Gender differences A second argument was to suggest that differential socialization evolved as a means for preparing children to assume their sex- linked adult roles. Then, the behavioral differences could best be viewed as a product of different socialization emphases and appropriate training for different adult activities. 30

  31. Gender differences High food accumulating societies not only will females be subjected to more training to be nurturant and compliant, but the degree of the difference between the sexes training will also be high. In low food accumulating societies, such as gathering or hunting societies, there will be less division of labor by sex and little need for either sex to be trained to be compliant. Hence, women s work is valued by the men, who are then not inclined to derogate women or to insist on subservience from them. 31

  32. Gender differences One of the ways in which division of labor varies across cultures is in the degree to which women contribute to subsistence (ge im). For example, if food is acquired by gathering, women s participation is usually high; in eleven of fourteen (79 percent) gathering societies for which women were high contributors. By contrast, in only two of sixteen (13 percent) hunting societies did women make a high contribution. 32

  33. Gender differences Where women played a relatively large subsistence role, the features of polygyny ( ok kad nla evlilik), exogamy (d evlilik), brideprice (ba l k paras ), birth control, and work orientation training for girls prevailed. And under these same conditions (high contribution by females to subsistence), females were relatively highly valued, allowed freedoms, and were generally less likely to be perceived as objects for male sexual and reproductive needs. 33

  34. Moral development 34

  35. Moral development At the pre-conventional level, moral conduct is in the interest of individuals themselves, or in the interest of relatives; reasons for doing right are the avoidance of punishment and the principle of fairness in an exchange. 35

  36. Moral development At the conventional level, concern about loyalty and about the welfare of other persons and society at large are given as reasons to justify one s actions. At the post-conventional level, actions are based on ethical principles to which individuals have committed themselves, and that serve as absolute standards, even taking priority over the laws of society that may violate these principles. 36

  37. Moral development Cultural groups can be expected to differ in the modal stage or level of moral reasoning because of differences in values and social organization. To assess whether they were universal, Kohlberg proposed three different criteria: the first was whether the stages could be identified (empirically) in all cultures; the second was whether the same operations applied to all human beings; the third was whether all people acted in a specific way in similar situations. 37

  38. Moral development With these distinctions in mind, universality does not mean that morality is completely invariant or shows identical manifestations in all cultures. Rather, levels and stages in various cultures reveal local adaptations 38

  39. Moral development Overall, what can be concluded about the universality of Kohlberg s stage theory of moral development? There are some culture-specific moral principles like respect for older people, obligation, harmony, and non-violence. 39

  40. Key Words acculturation attachment child training cultural transmission enculturation gender moral development socialization 40

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