The relationship between everyday experience and culture is revealed through essays concerned with the role of symbols and meaning in the development of mind, self and emotion and the dynamics of cultural interaction and transmission.

The symptoms of middle age are often defined in terms of lower back pain, mortgages, and an aversion to loud late-night activities. This construction of "midlife", most often rendered in chronological, biological and medical terms, has become an accepted reality to European Americans, and has spread to non-Western capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi. This study explores the significance of this pervasive cultural representation compared to other cultures where "middle age" does not exist. It examines topics ranging from the Western ideology of "midlife decline", to cultural representations of mature adulthood which ignore middle age. It also looks at the myths surrounding the life span from 30 to 70.

Clifford Geertz is the most influential American anthropologist of the past four decades. His writings have defined and given character to the intellectual agenda of a meaning-centered, non-reductive interpretive social science and have provoked much excitement and debate about the nature of human understanding. As part of the American Anthropological Association's centennial celebration, the executive board sponsored a presidential session honoring Geertz. Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues compiles the speeches given then by a distinguished panel of social scientists along with a concluding piece by Geertz in which he responds to each speaker and reflects on his own career. These edited speeches cover a broad range of topics, including Geertz's views on morality, cultural critique, interpretivism, time and change, Islam, and violence. A fitting tribute to one of the great thinkers of our age, this collection will be enjoyed by anthropologists as well as students of psychology, history, and philosophy.

Why do American children sleep alone instead of with their parents? Why do middle-aged Western women yearn for their youth, while young wives in India look forward to being middle-aged? In these provocative essays, one of the most brilliant advocates of cultural psychology reminds us that cultural differences in mental life lie at the heart of any understanding of the human condition.

Drawing on ethnographic studies of the distinctive modes of psychological functioning in communities around the world, Richard Shweder explores ethnic and cultural differences in ideals of gender, in the life of the emotions, in conceptions of mature adulthood and the stages of life, and in moral judgments about right and wrong.

Shweder, a cultural pluralist, dares readers to broaden their own conceptions of what is good, true, beautiful, and efficient and to take a closer look at specific cultural practices--parent/child cosleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications--that we may initially find alien or disturbing. He invites us to reject both radical relativism (the view that whatever is, is okay) and imperial visions of universal progressive cultural development (for example, the idea that "the West is Best") and to engage in more deeply informed cultural critique.

The knowable world, Shweder observes, is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular. This work strives for the "view from manywheres" in a culturally diverse yet interdependent world.

Informed parents know there is an abundance of information about children and child development available on the Internet, but can they trust that the content they find is authoritative? Professionals who work with children know where to find research relevant to their specialty, but where can they go to find reliable information on other related disciplines? "The Child" offers both parents and professionals access to the best scholarship from all areas of child studies - and from all regions of the world - in a remarkable one-volume reference. This encyclopedic companion brings together contemporary research on children and childhood from pediatrics, child psychology, childhood studies, education, sociology, history, law, anthropology, and other related areas - in sum, more than five hundred articles, all written by experts in their fields and overseen by noted anthropologist Richard A. Shweder. Each entry begins with a concise and accessible synopsis of the topic at hand. For example, the entry on 'adoption' begins with a general definition, followed by a detailed look at adoption in different cultures and at different times, a summary of the associated mental and developmental issues that can arise, and an overview of applicable legal and public policy both within the United States and elsewhere. Within the scope of a few pages, readers encounter a wide range of information and perspectives on this complex and fascinating topic. Entries also include multiple cross-references to guide readers toward related topics within the volume and suggestions for further reading. While many of the entries address universal, biological facts about children - most fetuses suck their thumbs, for example, and most babies develop musical rhythm by seven months - they also consider the many worlds of childhood within the United States and around the globe. Alongside the topical articles, "The Child" includes more than forty 'Imagining Each Other' essays, which focus on the experiences of particular children in different cultures. In 'Work before Play for Yucatec Mayan Children', for example, readers learn of the work responsibilities of some modern-day Mexican children, while in 'A Hindu Brahman Boy Is Born Again', they witness a coming-of-age ritual in contemporary India. This is the best scholarship from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology; child development; childhood studies; education; History; Law; Literature; Pediatrics; Psychology; public policy; religion; and, Sociology. Compiled by some of the most distinguished child development researchers in the world, "The Child" will broaden the current scope of knowledge on children and childhood. It is an unparalleled resource for parents, social workers, researchers, educators, and others who work with children, and will spark a necessary discussion about children and childhood around the world. Offering a unique global perspective - selections from the 'Imagining Each Other' essays include: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf Family; Formality and Fun in Kinship Relations among the Gusii; Educated at Home in the United States; Children as Family Caregivers in Mexico; On Infants Sleeping Alone; The Luminous Books of Childhood; Trial by Fire: Emotional Socialization among Canadian Inuit; The Parenting Style of a Turkish Reformer; Memories of Childhood on an Israeli Kibbutz; Summer Camp for Diabetic Children: A Stigma-Free Zone; An African American Grandmother Combats Racial Hatred; Early Childhood Education in Japan; and, A Refugee's Childhood in the West Bank.

Educators and policymakers who share the goal of equal opportunity in schools often hold differing notions of what entails a just school in multicultural America. Some emphasize the importance of integration and uniform treatment for all, while others point to the benefits of honoring cultural diversity in ways that make minority students feel at home. In Just Schools, noted legal scholars, educators, and social scientists examine schools with widely divergent methods of fostering equality in order to explore the possibilities and limits of equal education today.The contributors to Just Schools combine empirical research with rich ethnographic accounts to paint a vivid picture of the quest for justice in classrooms around the nation. Legal scholar Martha Minow considers the impact of school choice reforms on equal educational opportunities. Psychologist Hazel Rose Markus examines culturally sensitive programs where students exhibit superior performance on standardized tests and feel safer and more interested in school than those in color-blind programs. Anthropologist Heather Lindkvist reports on how Somali Muslims in Lewiston, Maine, invoked the American ideal of inclusiveness in winning dress-code exemptions and accommodations for Islamic rituals in the local public school. Political scientist Austin Sarat looks at a school system in which everyone endorses multiculturalism but holds conflicting views on the extent to which culturally sensitive practices should enter into the academic curriculum. Anthropologist Barnaby Riedel investigates how a private Muslim school in Chicago aspires to universalist ideals, and education scholar James Banks argues that schools have a responsibility to prepare students for citizenship in a multicultural society. Anthropologist John Bowen offers a nuanced interpretation of educational commitments in France and the headscarf controversy in French schools. Anthropologist Richard Shweder concludes the volume by connecting debates about diversity in schools with a broader conflict between national assimilation and cultural autonomy. As America s schools strive to accommodate new students from around the world, Just Schools provides a provocative and insightful look at the different ways we define and promote justice in schools and in society at large."

A discipline is emerging called cultural psychology; it will serve as a force of renewal for both anthropology and psychology. In this book Richard Shweder presents its manifesto. Its central theme is that we have to understand the way persons, cultures, and natures make each other up. Its goal is to seek the mind indissociably embedded in the meanings and resonances that are both its product and its components.

Over the past thirty years the person as a category has disappeared from ethnography. Shweder aims to reverse this trend, focusing on the search for meaning and the creation of intentional worlds. He examines the prospect for a reconciliation of rationality and relativism and defines an intellectual agenda for cultural psychology.

What Shweder calls for is an exploration of the human mind, and of one's own mind, by thinking through the ideas and practices of other peoples and their cultures. He examines evidence of cross-cultural similarities and differences in mind, self, emotion, and morality with special reference to the cultural psychology of a traditional Hindu temple town in India, where he has done considerable work in comparative anthropology. And he critiques the concept of the "person" implicit in Western social science, as well as psychiatric theories of the "subject." He maintains that it will come as no surprise to cultural psychology if it should turn out that there are different psychological generalizations or "nomological networks"--a Hindu psychology, a Protestant psychology--appropriate for the different semiotic regions of the world. Shweder brings the news that God is alive not dead, but that there are many gods.