Comparative Human Development Workshop

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our fifteenth talk of the year. Marco Del Giudice, Visiting Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development, will be presenting. His talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Marco.

The title of his talk will be: “Misleading means: A new look at gender differences in personality.”

ABSTRACT: According to the prevailing view, gender differences in personality traits are small and inconsequential. In this talk I will discuss some ways in which standard methodological practices underestimate the size and significance of gender differences. I will show that, when better procedures are employed in the measurement and aggregation of effect sizes, gender differences in personality turn out to be surprisingly large. I will also discuss the impact of gender differences in variability and present some findings from cross-cultural studies of personality.

The talk will be held on May 22nd, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Marco’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Marco for taking the time to present for the workshop. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our fourteenth talk of the year. Gaya Embuldeniya, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development, will be presenting. Her talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Gaya.

The title of her talk will be: “The politics of eliminating suffering: The scope for an inclusive Tamil nationalism.”

ABSTRACT: The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, like others formed in the shadow of compulsion, is haunted by memories of suffering. In this paper, I analyze the attempt to transform pain and suffering into political action – or as Elaine Scarry has put it, the objectification of pain – for the ultimate purpose of transforming and eliminating it. I do this by analyzing two events that have been of particular significance to Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto; the commemoration of the riots of July 1983, an event that marked the (re-)birth of the Tamil nation, and the protests following the end of the war in 2009, an event that marked the ostensible death of the imagined state. Wielded differently during these events, pain could be productive, cementing ties between a displaced people within and across generations, even as it was transformed into a political project. But this work was not without its costs. As with any attempt at essentialism, this nationalist project relegated to the margins the voices of those who did not consent to the hegemonic narrative of Tamil nationalism. Its essentialist qualities also made it vulnerable to dismissal by the Canadian multiculturalist state. It is perhaps through the re-centering of marginal voices, and the rediscovery of indeterminacy and ambiguity that the nationalist project can acquire broader appeal. This work has begun in a post-war diasporic context. Whether this is a feasible project given the urgency and single-mindedness of nationalism, or even a desirable one, given that a defensive nationalism might be the last stronghold of a vulnerable identity, is a question that this paper will explore.

The talk will be held on May 1st, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Gaya’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Gaya for taking the time to present for the workshop. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our thirteenth talk of the year. Professor Dario Maestripieri, from the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development, will be presenting. His talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Professor Maestripieri.

He will be presenting on his latest book, Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships, where he examines the curious unspoken customs that govern our behavior. These patterns and customs appear to be motivated by free will, yet they are so similar from person to person and across species, that they reveal much more than our selected choices. An idiosyncratic and witty approach to our deep and complex origins, Games Primates Play reveals the ways in which our primate nature drives so much of our lives.

The talk will be held on April 17th, 2012, at 6:00pm at the International House Home Room (please note the time and location change). Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Dario’s talk. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our twelfth talk of the year. Ece Demir, a postdoctoral research fellow in the University of Chicago’s Department of Psychology, will be presenting. Her talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Ece.

The title of her talk will be:  ”What’s in input: Unpacking the relations between early parental input and later child reading outcomes”

ABSTRACT: When children enter school, wide individual differences in reading performance already exist. These differences have important implications for later school achievement. The roots of such differences can be traced back to children’s experiences during preschool ages. The current presentation explores one aspect of children’s early preschool experiences in the home environment: the role of parental input. Using a longitudinal dataset of early parent-child interactions, we characterize parental input in three different contexts: parental input during book-reading interactions, parental use of decontextualized language, and parental input about letters. The relations between different aspects of early parental input and later child reading performance in school years are explored. In addition, we ask whether the effect of parental input interacts with characteristics of the children. The role of parental input in typically-developing children is compared to the role of parental input in children with early brain injury. The findings suggest that there are specific links between early parental input and different aspects of children’s early reading performance, and that the role of parental input might interact with other factors influencing development, e.g. brain injury at birth. We also discuss theoretical implications of the findings for our understanding of the mechanisms behind individual differences in reading development, and possible applications for practitioners and educators.

The talk will be held on April 3rd, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Ece’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Ece for taking the time to present for the workshop. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Medicine, Body and Practice and Comparative Human Development Workshops are proud to announce their eleventh talk of the year. Didier Fassin (M.D., M.PH, Ph.D), a James Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, will be presenting. His talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Professor Fassin.

The title of his talk will be: “Anthropology of Humanitarianism”

This talk will be based on his new book, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. No paper will be pre-circulated for this event.

The talk will be held on March 30th, 2012, at 12:00-1:30pm in Haskell 315. Lunch will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Professor Fassin’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Professor Fassin for taking the time to present for both workshops. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu. 

Below, please find the Spring Schedule for the Comparative Human Development Workshop on Culture. All workshops will be held from 4:30 – 6pm in Harper 130 unless otherwise noted.

March 30th – Didier Fassin; Co-Sponsoring with Medicine, Body, Practice (*12:30pm in Haskell 315)

April 3rd – Ece Demir

April 17th – Dario Maestripieri (*6pm, location TBA)

April 24th – Rebecca Seligman; Co-Sponsoring with Clinical Ethnography

May 1st – Gaya Embuldeniya

May 15th – TBD

May 29th – Janis Jenkins; Co-Sponsoring with Clinical Ethnography

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our tenth talk of the year. Coren Apicella, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Health Care Policy, will be presenting. Her talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Coren.

The title of her talk will be: “What can hunter-gatherers tell us about the origins of attractiveness, social and economic preferences?”

ABSTRACT: Human preferences are usually studied in European descendant peoples in industrialized contexts (often undergraduate students). However, these well-studied people may not be representative of the wider breadth of contemporary and historic humanity living in different cultures and ecological contexts. To better understand the flexibility and fixity of human psychology, I explore behavior within an evolutionarily relevant population of hunter-gatherers living in remote regions of Tanzania—the Hadza. I will discuss three studies on the origins of physical attractiveness, economic and social preferences. The first study concerns preferences for averageness in judgments of attractiveness in faces and suggests that experience is important in shaping standards of beauty. Second, I examine the problem of cooperation and how social structure may have supported cooperation in our ancestors. In the last study, I show that the endowment effect bias is not a human universal – a result that points to the importance of culture in generating differences in economic behavior.

The talk will be held on March 6th, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Coren’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Coren for taking the time to present for the workshop. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development and Clinical Ethnography Workshops are proud to announce their Faculty-Student Roundtable.

The title of the roundtable will be: “Ethnography Praxis in the Clinic: A Faculty-Student Roundtable about Ethngoraphic Research in Institutional Settings.”

This event will feature Professors Paul Brodwin (UW-Milwaukee), Eugene Raikhel, and Summerson Carr (Chicago) as well as advanced post-field students. As this will be an informal roundtable discussion, we will not have our typical lecture series. However, we do ask that you bring plenty of questions for the panel.

The roundtable will be held on February 21st, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and we are grateful to the panelists for taking the time to present for both of the workshops. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development and Clinical Ethnography Workshops are proud to announce their eighth talk of the year. Kathryn Goldfarb, a PhD Student in the University of Chicago’s Department of Anthropology, will be presenting. Her talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Kathryn.

The title of her talk will be: “Archaeologies of Care in Japan“

ABSTRACT: This chapter, the first in my dissertation, is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted between the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2010, in which I focused on elements of the Japanese child welfare system as a lens to explore kinship practices, embodied relationships, and the ways in which cultural ideologies inform legal and institutional welfare structures. Here I illustrate the ways in which the concept of care articulates across multiple social domains—from politically infused public discourses regarding child welfare, to mundane, daily practices of nurturance—and becomes a key modality by which my research interlocutors understand the social realm to infuse and shape the bodies and brains of children, drawing into tension a host of beliefs about the nature of nurture. I argue that we might productively consider the concept of care as describing the perceived limits of the ability to change and cause change. Discourses surrounding the possibilities and impossibilities of systemic change within the Japanese child welfare system itself, speak simultaneously to broader cultural discourses regarding national character and persistent stasis and decline, as well as to narrower logics regarding the capacity of individual children who have been denied proper care to transform over time.

The talk will be held on February 7th, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in HD North Seminar Room. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Kathryn’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Kathryn for taking the time to present for both of the workshops. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.

The Comparative Human Development Workshop is proud to announce our seventh talk of the year. Jacob Hickman, from Brigham Young University’s Department of Anthropology (and a former PhD Student in the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development), will be presenting. His talk promises to be very informative and engaging, and we encourage you to attend and offer questions or feedback for Jacob.

The title of his talk will be: “Legitimate Pasts, Utopian Futures: New Religious Dynamics in the Hmong Diaspora”

ABSTRACT: Scattered resettlement patterns in the Hmong diaspora have fractured traditional, kinship-based ritual networks through which ancestral rites are carried out. Historically, lineage-based ritual knowledge was widely distributed throughout patrilines, with various sub-specialists maintaining patrlineal ritual knowledge for different rites. The divergent resettlement of families in different countries and communities has directly challenged the ability of families to carry out the entire ritual repertoire, given sparse access to all of the necessary ritual specialists. This has led to two coinciding trends. First, a trend of “outsourcing” ancestral rites to “more knowledgeable” kin in Thailand and Laos has emerged. These increasingly common transnational kinship-ritual networks provide one means of overcoming the limits of ritual expertise in one’s resettlement community. Kin from an extended lineage group are drawn upon to vicariously conduct essential ancestral rites and send videos of the rites to the direct descendants of the target ancestors in the United States. A second trend is the emergence of multiple messianic religious movements in the Hmong diaspora. I encountered three independent movements during 18 months of comparative ethnographic fieldwork with Hmong refugee families, and other anthropologists have documented other movements. These messianic movements fill the void left by the diasporic dispersal of traditional ritual networks. They paint “traditional” Hmong religion as constituting a limited, “fallen” state, from which the messianic visions depart in order to restore a former greatness. One movement’s leader proclaims that Hmong messianic religion will eventually constitute the fifth pillar of world religions. In this paper I document these two trends and explain how they help Hmong in the diaspora deal with the social and religious disruption that resettlement has presented. These messianic movements also seem to rely on a broader sense of Hmong ethnonationalism that is probably a more recent development in the diaspora. Through exploring Hmong conceptions of the past, present, and future within these new religious movements, I argue that these developments constitute particular psychocultural responses to the resettlement experience and modernity in general. In other words, these independent (and even competing) movements seem to present various yet structurally similar responses to the same problematic that social dispersal has presented to traditional ritual practice.

The talk will be held on January 31st, 2012, at 4:30-6:00 in Harper 130. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for questions and comments after Jacob’s talk. As usual, we expect a lively discussion and are grateful to Jacob for taking the time to present for the workshop. Hope to see you there!

Persons with disabilities who feel they may need assistance or anyone else with further inquiries should contact either Cassie Freeman at cafreeman@uchicago.edu or Ashley Drake at adrake@uchicago.edu.