Childhood and adolescence : cross-cultural perspectives and applications /

The first edition of this book (CH, Mar'05, 42-4314) focused on the interplay of divergent cultural beliefs and practices as individuals and families constructed and adjusted to varied realities. Since then, worldwide data on children, adolescents, and their families have become increasingly available, and this second edition reflects a qualitative shift to view cross-cultural matters from perspectives of a higher order. The number of systematic cross-cultural research projects has grown dramatically, and researchers--as this collection makes clear--now have the information necessary to assess, on a global scale, how children and adolescents develop and learn in multicultural environments. In recent decades rapid technological, economic, social, and cultural changes have reached the most remote corners of the world, with the result that "teenage culture" has changed worldwide and now includes the challenge of being prepared for change itself. The focus of cross-cultural scholarship such as this has moved from testing a theory across different cultures to assessing ecological-cultural contexts of processes impacting the lives of children, adolescents, and families around the world. This focus on contextualism, which is on display in this collection, not only permits one to study cultural similarities and differences in developmental processes but also to make developmental comparisons within cultural contexts by integrating contributions by anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Robert B. Stewart, Oakland University