Larry Nucci

Geoffrey B. Saxe

Elliot Turiel

In this volume, the reader will find a host of fresh perspectives. Authors seek to reconceptualize problems, offering new frames for understanding relations between culture and human development. Contributors include scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, law, theology, anthropology, developmental psychology, neuro- and evolutionary psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and physics. To help organize the discussions, the volume is divided into three parts. Each part reflects an arena of current scholarly activity related to the analysis of culture, cognition, and development. The editors cast a wide but carefully crafted net in assembling contributions to this volume. Though the contributors span a wide range of disciplines, features common to the work include both clear departures from the polemics of nature-nurture debates and a clear focus on interacting systems in individuals' activities, leading to novel developmental processes. All accounts are efforts to mark new and productive paths for exploring intrinsic relations between culture and development.

Culture, Thought, and Development

Drawing upon field studies conducted in 1978, 1980 and 2001 with the Oksapmin, a remote Papua New Guinea group, Geoffrey B. Saxe traces the emergence of new forms of numerical representations and ideas in the social history of the community. In traditional life, the Oksapmin used a counting system that makes use of twenty-seven parts of the body; there is no evidence that the group used arithmetic in prehistory. As practices of economic exchange and schooling have shifted, children and adults unwittingly reproduced and altered the system in order to solve new kinds of numerical and arithmetical problems, a process that has led to new forms of collective representations in the community. While Dr Saxe's focus is on the Oksapmin, the insights and general framework he provides are useful for understanding shifting representational forms and emerging cognitive functions in any human community.

Papua New Guinea Studies

Cultural Development of Mathematical Ideas

Indigo Esmonde

"The book presents a general framework for the analysis of culture-cognition relations that makes use of field studies with a remote Papua New Guinea culture group, the Oksapmin, as an illustrative case"--

Geoffrey B. Saxe

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