Culture and development

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of culture in development by considering a question that I have been thinking about for some time without coming to any fixed conclusion: Do any new principles of development appear once a child is born? As a means of motivating this discussion, I begin by asking the reader to consider the following statements by leading developmental theorists. Some of these statements imply strongly that no new principles of development are introduced following birth. Others imply that the change in environmental conditions has a significant impact on the process of development. Still others are ambiguous on the matter: ‘Child psychology should be regarded as the embryology of organic as well as mental growth, up to the beginning of … the adult level’ (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969, p. vii). ‘Neither physical nor cultural environment contains any architectonic arrangements like the mechanisms of growth. Culture accumulates; it does not grow’ (Gesell 1945, p. 358). ‘The human being is immersed right from birth in a social environment which affects him just as much as his physical environment. Society, even more, in a sense, than the physical environment, changes the very structure of the individual … Every relation between individuals (from two onwards) literally modifies them …’ (Piaget, 1973, p. 156). ‘A new level of organization is in fact nothing more than a new relevant context’ (Waddington, 1947). The levels of generalization in [a child's use of words] correspond strictly to the level of social interaction. Any new level in the child's generalization signifies a new level in the possibility for social interaction (Vygotsky, 1956, p.423).