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Culture, Context, and Development

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Adolescence in Urban India

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Abstract

This chapter centers on the fundamental idea that cultural worldviews and contextual contingencies interact to shape human development. Cultures are dynamic and evolve over time in response to contextual changes. This chapter begins with an overview of individual development as a function of culture–context interaction. Presented next is a discussion of the context of social change and globalization. Select theoretical frameworks that explain cultural and contextual variability in human development are then described. The next section discusses socialization and parenting as culturally embedded bidirectional phenomena. Following this, the Hindu model is presented as an Indian model of human development, family, and self, highlighting the cultural worldview, life goals, and ideal precepts and practices. The unique characteristic of the Indian self containing the spiritual and embodied forms is described, followed by the moral and religious significance of the parent–child relationship. A discussion on the socialization goals and approaches in traditional and contemporary contexts is described next. This chapter then turns to an overview of the urban middle class in contemporary India. Presented next is the conceptual framework that scaffolds the depiction of adolescence and parent–adolescent relationship presented in this book. The final section provides an account of the empirical studies discussed in this book.

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  1. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, Gujarat, India

    Shagufa Kapadia

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Kapadia, S. (2017). Culture, Context, and Development. In: Adolescence in Urban India. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3733-4_1

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