Hi Alex,
>my point was that big theories demand big
>evidence - if the "best evidence" for her theory that children's culture
>is transmitted down the generations through children (rather than
>through adults) is what happens to adult and child culture "when you
>throw populations from different cultures together" than that is not
>going to cut it.
Why not? What's the evidence that children's culture reflects adult culture? JH would
argue that if you make no effect of parents on children the null hypothesis its pretty
hard to come up with evidence against that null. I have actually argued this point
with her. I've said that she has no more right to claim the high ground of the null
hypothesis than her opponents. In fact, I've suggested that conventional wisdom, at
least rhetorically, deserves to be disproved rather than having to prove itself. Of
course her whole book is full not only of evidence against the mainstream view. One
point in her favor is (she claims) that US culture is almost unique in the degree to
which kids are concerns of adults. Most other cultures they are much more in their own
world.
> Just a couple of questions about this evidence - how often has this
>happened?, how closely has the process been observed?, and, most
>importantly, isn't a more plausible explanation not that children create
>their "own" culture but that they adopt parts of the *total* adult
>culture they see around them.
This becomes a semantic argument. JH points to Hawaii and argues that the Asian and
European kids thrown together there developed their own language and their own culture
which was quite distinct from the cultures of their parents. The language wasn't an
entirely new language. For the most part it borrowed words from the parents languages,
but there were new words in the language. So did the kids learn the culture from the
adults or did they make their own culture? I think its interesting that the kids
learned to speak the pidgin but the parents never did. The kids continued to use it
when they grew up (though I imagine that English became the dominant language even for
the kids). I seem to remember that JH cited this as one of many examples and that
there were footnotes, but I can't remember for sure and I never looked up those
footnotes.
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
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