Culture, Health and Human Development Seminar

HDFS 302
Spring semester 2005

Instructor: Professor Sara Harkness
Meeting time and place: Thursdays, 4:00-6:30, Family Studies Building room 18
Contact information: Sara.Harkness@UConn.edu; Office phone: 486-4379

January 20
Introduction to the course: Building syntheses across disciplinary boundaries
           
January 27
Concepts of culture
Readings:

1. LeVine, R.L. (1984) “Properties of culture.”  In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on minds, self, and emotion (pp. 67-87). New York: Cambridge University Press.
2. D’Andrade, R. (1984) “Cultural meaning systems.”  In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on minds, self, and emotion (pp.88-119). New York: Cambridge University Press.
3. Greenfield, P. M. (2000) “What psychology can do for anthropology, or Why anthropology took postmodernism on the chin.”American Anthropologist, 102(3): 564-576.

February 3
Culture and human development
Readings:

1. Dasen, P. R. (1994) “Culture and cognitive development from a Piagetian perspective.” In W. J. Lonner & R. Malpass (Eds.), Psychology and culture (pp. 145-149). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
2. Harkness, S. 2000) “Developmental agenda.” In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology, Vol. 3 (pp. 1-4).  New York: Oxford University Press.
3. Weisner, T. S. (1996) “Why ethnography should be the most important method in the study of human development.” In R. Jessor, A. Colby, & R. A. Shweder (Eds.), Ethnography and human development: Context and meaning in social inquiry (pp. 305-324). Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.

February 10
Culture, health and human development
Readings:

1. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (2000). “The developmental niche: A model for culture and child development. In L. Pachter (Ed.), Child health in the multicultural environment (pp. 50-59). Report of the thirty-first Ross Roundtable on Critical Approaches to Common Pediatric Problems. Columbus, Ohio: Ross Products Division, Abbott Laboratories.
2. Worthman, C. M. (1999) “The epidemiology of human development.” In C. Panter-Brick & C. M. Worthman (Eds.), Hormones, health and behavior (pp. 47-104). New York: Cambridge University Press.

February 17
Biocultural regulation of individual differences in development
Readings:

1. Kagan, J. (1989) “Temperamental contributions to social behavior.” American Psychologist, 44(4): 668-674.
2. Plomin, R. (1989) “Environment and genes: Determinants of behavior.” American Psychologist, 44(2): 105-111.

February 24
NO CLASS: Proposal and bibliography for term paper due.

March 3
Stephen Suomi: “How gene-environment interactions can shape biobehavioral development in primates”
Readings:

1. Suomi, S.  (n.d.)  “How gene-environment interactions shape biobehavioral development: Lessons from studies with rhesus monkeys.”  Research in Human Development, 1(3), 205-222.
2. Champoux, M., Bennett, A., Shannon, C., Higley, J.D., Lesch, K.P., & Suomi, S. J.  (2002). “Serotonin transporter gene polymorphism, differential early rearing, and behavior in rhesus monkeys.”  Molecular Psychiatry, 7, 1058-1063. 
3. Barr, C. S., et al.  (2004).  “Sexual dichotomy of an interaction between early adversity and the serotonin transporter gene promoter variant in rhesus monkeys.”PNAS, 101(33), 12358-12363.

March 17
Culture and the development of competence
Readings:

1. Berry, J.W. (2004). “An ecocultural perspective on the development of competence.” In Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (Eds.), (pp.3- 22), Culture and competence. Washington. DC: APA Books.
2. Dasan, P.R. (1994). Culture and cognitive development from a Piagetian perspective. In W. J. Lonner & R. Malpass (Eds.), Psychology and culture (pp. 157-163). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
3. Serpell, R. (1994). The cultural construction of intelligence. In W. J. Lonner & R. Malpass (Eds.), Psychology and culture (pp. 157-163). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
4. Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2004). Why cultural psychology is necessary and not just nice: The example of the study of intelligence. In Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (Eds.), (pp.207- 223). Culture and Competence. Washington. DC: APA Books.
5. Wang, Q., Ceci, S.J., Williams, W.M. & Kopko, K.A. (2004). “Culturally situated cognitive competence: A functional framework.” In Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (Eds.), (pp.225- 249). Culture and Competence. Washington. DC: APA Books.

March 24
Robert Sternberg: “Culture and intelligence”

March 31
Readings:

1. Worthman, C.M., DeCaro, J., & Brown, R. (2002). Cultural consensus approaches to the study of American family life. MARIAL Working Paper 13. Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology and the Department of Anthropology, Emory University.
2. DeCaro, J. & Worthman, C.M. (2004). The “time bind” and the cultural ecology of stress in metropolitan Atlanta, GA. Working Paper 30. The Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life.
3. Wacquant, Loic (in press). “Habitus”. In M. Zavirovski (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology. London: Routledge.

April 7
NO CLASS: Term papers due.

April 14
Carol Worthman: “How to get a life: Cultural models, individual differences, and the problem of habitus among youth in western North Carolina”

April 21
Lee Pachter: “Effects of parenting styles, maternal depression, neighborhood and poverty on children of diverse ethnic groups”
Readings:

1. 1) Garcia Coll C., Lamberty G, Jenkins R McAdoo HP, Crnic K, Wasik BH, Vasquez Garcia H. (1996) An integrative model for the study of developmental competencies in minority children. Child Development 67(5):1891-1914.
2. Garcia Coll C, Pachter LM. Ethnic and minority parenting. In: Bornstein MH, editor. Handbook of Parenting. 2nd ed. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2001. p. 1-20.
3. Duncan GJ, Magnuson KA. Off with Hollingshead: socioeconomic resources, parenting, and child development. In: Bornstein MH, Bradley RH, editors. Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2003. p. 83-106.
4. Bradley RH, Corwyn RF. Age and ethnic variations in family process mediators of SES. In: Bornstein MH, Bradley RH, editors. Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2003. p. 161-188.

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