Why Do Men Barbecue?

Why do American children sleep alone instead of with their parents? Why do middle-aged Western women yearn for youth, while young wives in India look forward to being middle-aged? In these essays, one of the 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 judgements 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 co-sleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications - that we may initially find alien or disturbing. He invites is to reject both radical relativism (the view that whatever is, is OK) 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.

ISBN 067401135X   Pages 430 ISBN13 9780674011359 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Harvard University Press   Weight (grammes) 463 Imprint Harvard University Press   Published in Cambridge, Mass Format Paperback   Height (mm) 210 Publication date 16 May 2003   Width (mm) 140 Library of Congress GN502 \.S5   Spine width (mm) 32 DEWEY 306   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

		Introduction: Anti-Postculturalism (or, The View from Manywheres)		1
1		Who Sleeps by Whom Revisited by Richard A. Shweder and Lene Balle-Jensen and William Goldstein		46
2		The "Big Three" of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the "Big Three" Explanations of Suffering by Richard A. Shweder and Nancy C. Much and Manamohan Mahapatra and Lawrence Park		74
3		Cultural Psychology of Emotions: Ancient and New by Richard A. Shweder and Jonathan Haidt		134
4		"What about Female Genital Mutilation?" and Why Understanding Culture Matters		168
5		The Return of the "White Man's Burden" and the Domestic Life of Hindu Women by Richard A. Shweder and Usha Menon		217
6		Culture and Mental Development in Our Poststructural Age		276
7		A Polytheistic Conception of the Sciences and the Virtues of Deep Variety		291
8		Fundamentalism for Highbrows: The Aims of Education Address at the University of Chicago		318
		Conclusion: From Manywheres to the Civilizing Project, and Back		340
		Notes		363
		References		369
		Acknowledgments		401
		Index		407

Shweder's "recipes" are lucid, timely investigations of suffering, the domestic life of Hindu women, the sleeping arrangements parents of different nationalities and classes institute with their children, and female genital mutilation--to name a few. Publishers Weekly 20030301 Whether writing about the lives of Hindu women in rural India, comparing the family sleeping arrangements of different societies, or challenging feminist criticisms of female genital surgery in sub-Saharan Africa, Shweder describes the results of his ethnography of difference with elegance and wit. He avoids the dehumanizing fetishism of difference that characterizes all too much contemporary social science and social theory, and resists familiar relativist bromides demanding 'tolerance.' -- Michele M. Moody-Adams Times Literary Supplement 20030912

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