1. Think of socio-cultural contexts of our development. What do you think it can include? (orally)

2. Read the news item Socio-cultural Contexts. Are the four concepts of socio-cultural development equally important?

SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXTS

1. The tapestry of American culture has changed dramatically in recent years. Nowhere is the change more noticeable than in the increasing ethnic diversity of America's citizens. Ethnic minority groups – Black American, Hispanic American (American Indian), and Asian – made up 20 percent of all individuals under the age of 17 in 1989. By the year 2010, over one-third of all schoolchildren will fall into this category. This changing demographic tapestry promises not only the richness that diversity produces, but also difficult challenges in extending the American dream to individuals of all ethnic groups.

2. Socio-cultural contexts of development include four important concepts: context, culture, ethnicity, and gender. These concepts are central to our discussion of life-span development, so we need to clearly define them. Context is the setting in which development occurs, a setting that is influenced by historical, economic, social and cultural factors. Every individual's development occurs in a cultural backdrop of contexts. These contexts or settings include homes, schools, peer groups, churches, cities, neighborhoods, communities, university laboratories, the United States, China, Mexico, Japan, Egypt, Somalia, and many others — each with meaningful historical, economic, social, and cultural legacies.

Three socio-cultural contexts that merit special attention are culture, ethnicity, and gender.

3. Culture is the behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a particular group of people that are passed on from generation to generation. The products result from the interaction between groups of people and their environment over many years. A cultural group can be as large as the United States or as small as an African hunter-gatherer group. Whatever its size, the group's culture influences the behavior of its members. For example, the United States is an achievement-oriented culture with a strong work ethic, but recent comparisons of American and Japanese children revealed that the Japanese are better at math, spend more time working on math in school, and do more math homework than Americans.

4. Ethnicity (the word ethnic comes from the Greek word for “nation”) is based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language. Ethnicity is central to the development of an ethnic identity, which is a sense of membership based on the shared language, religion, customs, values, history, and race of an ethnic group. Each of you is a member of one or more ethnic groups. Your ethnic identity reflects your deliberate decision to identify with an ancestor or ancestral group. You might choose to align yourself with the traditions of Native Tatars, although an outsider might believe that your identity is Russian.

5. A third very important aspect of socio-cultural contexts that is receiving increased attention is gender. Gender is the socio-cultural dimension of being female or male. Sex refers to the biological dimension of being female of male. Few aspects of our development as human beings are more central to our identity and our social relationships than our gender or sex. Society’s gender attitudes are changing. But how much? Is there a limit to how much society should determine what appropriate behavior for females and males is?