Human Development and Culture

Abstract

This chapter discusses advances in both concepts and methods directed toward the integration of culture and human development. In extending prior syntheses of emergent convergences across varying disciplinary perspectives that emphasize culture and human development, we bring to the fore parallels between sociohistoric‐cultural perspectives and relational development science perspectives. We begin with a brief summary of how three subfields of psychology (i.e., cultural, cross‐cultural, and developmental) began to converge in significant ways over the past three decades in order to provide a context within which the current conceptual, theoretical, and methodological advances toward the integration of culture and human development can be understood. This is followed by the main focus of the chapter–a discussion of both conceptual issues and methodological advances that have been made in the integration of culture and human development. In particular, we call attention to four key advances: (1) the relation of person and culture as embodied or mutually constitutive, (2) the integration of meaning‐making as part of context, (3) action and epigenesis as the source and process of developmental change, and (4) the simultaneous focus on both idiographic and nomothetic levels of analysis. Finally, to highlight the significant progress that has been made in application of these advances in theory and methods, we provide brief overviews of two specific topics of research in the field…