L’ecologia
culturale
Ecologia culturale è un termine
ideato da Julian Steward per spiegare la relazione dinamica tra la società
umana e il suo ambiente, in cui la cultura è vista come il principale
meccanismo adattivo. L'ecologia culturale è il filone di ricerca
delle scienze etnoantropologiche che investiga le relazioni tra gli aspetti
socio-culturali dei gruppi umani e l'ambiente nel quale vivono, in stretto
rapporto con altre discipline quali ecologia, geografia umana, biologia, archeologia,
economia, demografia. Tale branca disciplinare fu proposta per la prima volta,
appunto, da Julian Steward nel 1955, nel testo Theory of Culture Change; The
Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Questa breve, ma importante, premessa
per ricordare quello che l’associazione Culturale SECEM ( Scuola di ecologia
culturale euro mediterranea) porta avanti anche in questo Blog con contributi e
post che si ispirano a questo modello. Vi proponiamo, oggi – fine d’anno 2013,
anno in cui abbiamo trattato l’Etica della retorica e l’etica stessa della
comunicazione un documento, in lingua originale, sull’ecologia culturale, un brano dal titolo:
An
Eco-Cultural and Social Paradigm
An Eco-cultural and Social
Paradigm
for Understanding Human
Development:
A (West African) Context
Prima
di inserire il documento vi facciamo i nostri migliori auguri e vi ringraziamo
per la vostra attenzione, quest’anno abbiamo superato le nostre previsioni di
visitatori delle nostre pagine che dal 2008, con successivi tre blog, anche per
la chiusura di splinder, abbiamo realizzato per voi, hanno raggiunto quota
50000! Solo quest’anno ci hanno seguito 21000 lettori e questo significa che il
nostro lavoro di ricerca, anche se svolto con una “naturale” forma di ironia e
autocritica per alleggerire l’insostenibile leggerezza dell’essere e con
riflessioni sul mondo politico che ci circonda e nel quale dobbiamo navigare, è stto se è di vostro gradimento. cerchheremo sempre di darvi un po più di quello che le normali agenzie di divulgazione della "Cultura" vi danno!
Grazie a tutti voi e buon 2014 da tutta la redazione SECEM.
An Eco-cultural and Social
Paradigm
for Understanding Human
Development:
A (West African) Context
Dorris E. Ngaujah
Biola University
Human Development and Learning
(DE803)
Dr. Dennis H. Dirks
Fall 2003
Introduction
In understanding how the human person de velops
and learns, the age–old debate over nature versus nurture has been challenged
by the growing body of contemporary wisdom affirming the latter’s profound
significance. Theorists and their theories--that have attempted to study humans
in isolate ion--devoid of their embedded culture and specific socialization,
have been critiqued, analyzed and found wanting. Many psychologists in the past
have raised the issue of the developmental environment as a determinant in the
overall development of the individual. However, psychology, being a science of
the Western worldview, and its mainstream gatekeepers has insisted on studying
the individual as though he or she develops and comes in to full maturity of
self without being affected by the social a nd eco-cultural environment in
which the development occurs.
Not all Western psychologists and huma n
scientists, though, are so naïve and lacking in intellectual prowess, for some,
those affiliated with Critical Psychology and Cross-Cultural Psychology, have
dared to acknowledge that the social context of the individual in fact,
determined the very experimentation (the methods, tools and tasks) researchers
used to determine development.
Consider: The use of a paper and pen to answer
researchers’ questionnaires is a western socialized construct.
The problem with Western theories is that they
are just that—Western theories.
Consequently, the assumption of universality—the
belief that the findings (or the results) of studies done in narrow and unique
cultural contexts (though few have been done with the socio-cultural context in
mind) are universal and applicable to all human contexts--is fraught with
error, misconceptions and misinformation. As a western minority person and as
an experienced traveler and novice teacher, I am keenly aware of the
inapplicability of some popular development theories to my own sense of
development and to certain people groups I have had the privilege to visiting
in Africa. With eagerness, I have sought to know what theorists and/or
educators from the African continent had to say about human development (and
learning) in their own context. So I was delighted to discover the writings of
the theorist I am presenting in this paper.
He is a psychologist from the West African
country of Cameroon, trained in his native country, in Nigeria and in the
United States who posits the imperative that human development in Third World
(a term no longer in vogue in the 21century) countries is to be understood and
investigated quite differently from human development in the West.
He argues “Western worldviews and social reality
that organize and inform research differ markedly from those of Third World
cultures” (Nsamenang 1992b:16).
His name is Augustine Bame Nsamenang (preferably
called, Bame). His professional and academic work is identified with Critical
Psychology and his theory of Eco-Cultural and Social Paradigm.
2. human development embraces a biological,
ecological, sociological, political and cultural paradigm.
His book, Human Development in Cultural Context:
a Third World Perspective is an expose of the “characterization of ontogeny as
a cumulative process of integration within the community and clan [that]
differs in theoretical focus from the more individualistic accounts proposed by
Freud, Erikson and Piaget” (Serpell, 1994:18)
In this paper, I will attempt to articulate 1)
the impetus for such a different way of understanding human development, 2)
Bame Nsamenang’s nine-stage theory, 3) a synopsis of his empirical studies done
with Nso children of his country, and 4) his perceived shortfall of effective
psychological studies in his and other African contexts.
Subsequently, I will suggest how Bame’s theory
and those of other critical and/or social theorists inform the cross-cultural
education and missiological communities. Lastly, I will attempt to show what
biblical and/or theological integration came be made from this particular view
of human development.
Definition of Terms
1. Apprenticeship (used metaphorically) is an
activity in which novices advance their skills and understanding through participation
with more skilled partners in culturally organized activities. The extended
value of the apprenticeship model is that it includes “more people than a
single expert and a single novice: the apprenticeship system often involves a
group of novices (peers) who serve as resources for one another in exploring the
new domain and aiding and challenging one another” (Rogoff 1990:39).
2. Ecology of human development involves the
scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation between an active,
growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settings in
which the developing person lives as this process is affected by relations
between these settings and by the larger contexts in which the settings are
embedded. It includes reciprocity (Bronfenbrenner 1979:21-22).
3. Ecological environment (Bronfenbrenner
1979:22-26) is conceived topologically as a nested arrangement of concentric
structures, each contained with the next. These structures are referred to as
the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems.
a) Micro-system – a pattern of activities, roles,
and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person in a given
setting.
b) Meso-system - comprises the interrelations among
two or more settings in which the developing person actively participates (such
as for a child, the relations among home, school, and neighborhood peer group;
for an adult, among family, work, and social life).
c) Exo-system refers to one or more settings
that do not involve the developing person as an active participant, but in
which events occur that
affect, or are affected by what happens in
setting containing the developing person.
d) Macro-system refers to consistencies in the
form and content of lower order systems (micro-, meso-, exo-) that exist or
could exist at the level of the subculture or the culture as a whole, along
with any belief systems or ideology underlying such consistencies.
4. Ecological experiment is an effort to
investigate the progressive accommodation between the growing human organism
and its environment through a systematic contrast between two or more
environmental systems or their structural components, with a Eco-Cultural
and Social Paradigm 3 careful attempt to control other sources of influence
either by random assignment (planned experiment) or by matching (natural experiment).
The purpose of which is “not hypothesis testing but discovery—the identification
of those systems properties and processes that affect and are affected by the
behavior and development of the human beings” (Bronfenbrenner 1979:37-38).
5. Ecological transition occurs whenever a
person’s position in the ecological environment is altered as the result of a
change in role, setting,
or both (Bronfenbrenner 1979:26).
6. Ecological orientation to research emphasizes
the subjects definitions of the situation and accord far more importance to the
knowledge and initiative of the persons under study (Bronfenbrenner 1979:32).
7. Experienced as used in micro-systems is used
to indicate that scientifically relevant features of any environment including
not only its objective properties but also the way in which these properties
are perceived by the person s in that environment . . . . Very few of the
external influences significantly affecting human behavior and development can
be described solely in terms of objective physical conditions or events: the
aspects of the environment that are most powerful in shaping the course of psychological
growth are overwhelmingly those that have meaning to the person in a given
situation” (Bronfenbrenner 1979:22).
8. Human Development (in the environmental
context) is the process through which the growing person acquires a more
extended differentiated and valid conception of the ecological environment and
becomes motivated and able to engage in activities that reveal the properties
of, sustain, or restructure that environment at levels of similar or greater
complexity in form and content (Bronfenbrenner 1979:27).
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