Interrogating Race and Ethnicity as Constructs in the Examination of Cultural Processes in Developmental Research.

Lee, Carol D.

This article examines the limitations of the construct of race in the study of the diversity of human development. The author proposes that a focus on ethnicity as relates to people of African descent in the United States offers greater explanatory power. The article acknowledges the value of moving away from social address registers in the study of human development, but cautions that this emerging theoretical orientation should not diminish the stable and enduring patterns of continuity within and across the African-American community. The author argues that the field faces both conceptual and methodological challenges in studying human development in its complexity. She offers additional cautions in terms of methodological approaches that seek to capture that complexity.

RACE; PHYSICAL anthropology; ETHNICITY; GROUP identity; RESEARCH; COMMUNITY development; LEARNING

Human Development (0018716X), 2002, Vol 45, Issue 4, p282

0018-716X

Academic Journal

10.1159/000064990