Siblings in South Asia: Brothers and Sisters in Cultural Context

0.0

Despite the obvious importance of sibling relationships in human development, questions such as these are not readily answerable for a number of reasons: To date, psychologists have not adequately considered the impact of culture on sibling relationships; anthropologists generally have not studied cultural processes as they unfold in individual development; and, perhaps most important, few studies of siblings outside the United States and Britain currently exist. Addressing the issues of greatest concern to psychologists and anthropologists alike, this interdisciplinary volume\m-\including social and structural, developmental psychological, psychoanalytic, and ethnopsychological perspectives\m-\examines the development of sibling relationships in several different regions. The book opens with an overview of sibling similarities and differences around the world and an introduction to the cross-cultural study of sibling relations. The volume is then divided into two parts. The first focuses on the organization of sibling relations in childhood and adulthood. Chapters analyze the organization of sibling relations as they relate to socialization practices, family economics and structure, and customs of marriage and dowry. The second part of the book focuses on the representation of cultural and psychological meanings of sibling relations through mythology, astrology, and life history. Rounding out the volume is a discussion of how this work contributes to the developmental literature.

0.0

Charles W. Nuckolls, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1987) is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. Working at the crossroads of cognitive and psychoanalytic anthropology, he is interested in creating a unified approach to the study of mental organization and emotional motivation. His current work, a comparison of south Indian divinatory and American psychiatric explanation, is an attempt to apply such an approach cross-culturally. Nuckolls is editor of the IASTAM Newsletter (International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine), associate editor of Medical Anthropology, and guest editor of "The Cultural Construction of Diagnostic Categories: The Case of American Psychiatry," a special issue of Social Science and Medicine. In 1989, he received the Stirling Award for contributions to psychological anthropology.