Read more
"Attachment theory has massively influenced contemporary psychology, primarily from an American perspective. However, the anthropological criticism of ethnocentrism has wider implications for the discipline of psychology, which often unintentionally introduces psychologists' culturally biased assumptions into theory intended to be general, and is so devoted to culturally decontextualized experimental procedures that fail to challenge this ethnocentrism. Thus the current volume is not only challenge to attachment theorists, but also an object lesson for psychologists of many other stripes. Beyond simply a Euro-American perspective, attachment theory must be contextualized by examining it through local meanings and childrearing practices, along with cultural models of virtue and psychodynamics, all of which are best discovered through ethnography. The contributors expand this critique beyond questions of classification and measurement, to question the cultural assumptions and extend this line of questioning to other ethnocentric concepts"--
List of contents
PART I: A FRAMEWORK Introduction: Situating and Summarizing Our Critiques; Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Mageo 1. The Puzzle of Attachment: Unscrambling Maturational and Cultural Contributions to the Development of Early Emotional Bonds; Suzanne Gaskins PART II: CAREGIVING 2. Cooperative Care among the Hadza: Situating Multiple Attachment in Evolutionary Context; Alyssa N. Crittenden and Frank W. Marlowe 3. Cooperative Breeding and Attachment in Early Childhood: A Case Study Among the Aka Foragers; Courtney L. Meehan and Sean Hawks 4. 'It Takes a Village to Raise A Child': Attachment Theory and Multiple Childcare in Alor, Indonesia, and in North India; Susan Seymour PART III: AUTONOMY AND DEPENDENCE 5. Childcare, Dependency, and Autonomy in a Sri Lankan Village: Enculturation of and through Attachment Relationships; Bambi L. Chapin 6. Attachment and Culture in Murik Society; Kathleen Barlow PART IV: CHILDHOOD-ADULT CONTINUITIES 7. Towards a Cultural Psychodynamics of Attachment; Jeannette Mageo 8. Adult Attachment Cross-Culturally: A Reanalysis of the Ifaluk Emotion Fago; Naomi Quinn Afterword; Gilda A. Morelli and Paula Ivey Henry
About the author
Kathleen Barlow, Central Washington University, USA
Bambi L. Chapin, University of Maryland, USA
Alyssa Crittenden, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
Suzanne Gaskins, Northeastern Illinois University, USA
Sean Hawks, Washington State University, USA
Paula Ivey Henry, Harvard School of Public Health, USA
Frank W. Marlowe, University of Cambridge, UK
Courtney Meehan, Washington State University, USA
Gilda Morelli, Boston College, USA
Susan Seymour, Pitzer College, USA
Report
"A richer, more contextualized rethinking of attachment theory. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries." - CHOICE
"Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Marie Mageo have guided the development of a stunning interdisciplinary book! Attachment Reconsidered challenges exclusive attention to the mother-infant bond in classical attachment theory and the universal applicability of a single measuring instrument, the Strange Situation. For example, systematic natural observation reveals that, for Aka children, it is the sensitivity of nonmaternal rather than maternal care that determines their degree of distress during separation from their mothers." - Patricia M. Greenfield, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
