one of the reasons why I've always found infant studies fascinating is
because of what would perhaps be minimal cultural effects on behaviours
(and of course this I have argued with many who claim that these is no such
thing as "minimal" cultural effect...)
but, say with boys & girls, the effects of the ways babies are handled by their
primary care-givers has been shown to be gender-specific: boys are tossed,
rough-housed, played with in aggressive and exciting ways; girls are
coddled, pampered, soothed, cooed at...
primary caegivers tend to talk more with girls, and play more with boys -
so, their bodies/"ears"/rhythms are being encultrued into different kinds
of spatial-awarenessspatial participation, with the boys being "stimulated"
with exposure to complex space and girls being protected from open
spaces...
so girls seek comfort in doll houses, tiny doll-games, secrets, diaries,
whispers, perhaps trying not to ever take up too much space;
and boys seek comfort in open-field contact sports, aggressive games,
wrestling, and dominating space.
I'm generalizing here, but there are gender-distinction in concepts of
space: there are studies on this, too, with women and men, although I am
not sure such studies have been tried with children.
but if this were possible, spatial-differentiations which are
culturally-organized,
then girls, who are less likely to be moving in "space" and are more likely
to be in "stillness" are more sensitive to the changes in temp.;waves; air
pressures; electric charges; subtle patterns; and so on...
whereas boys are not encouraged to be attuned to the stillnesses of being
in space,
(e.g., the space our bodies fill, as well as the space within which we fill
our bodies.)
With regards to emotions, I think this is key-key-key-key to the ways
emotions are epxressed, suppressed, repressed, acted out, and empathized
with. And certainly empathy is inextricable from emotional development.
ADD to this varying degrees of stress, based on class, race, sex, histories
of family violence; the quality of primary interactions;
ADD to *this* the extent of childhood disease, ear infections, illnesses,
injuries,
and privilege, over-protection, excess materialism, ...
and childhood emotions take on massive complexities and proportions.
Jay's been talking about a "topology" which I understand to be a
representation of surfaces as they extend and intersect in space, which are
then
layered, multi-dimensionally, through time-scale analyses... have I got
that? or am I misinterpreting?
In trying to understand children's complex emotions, there are degrees of
what might be deemed physiological responses, such as
fear-tears-smiles-anger which manifest across cultures - so grasping the
extent of the continuum would, perhaps
require a cross-cultural analysis as a way to understand the different
ranges, the different interpretations which influence expressions of
fear-tears-smiles-anger...?
Research on resiliency in children often looks to countries at war to
"find" the children who "cope" the "best" - often what this means is
children who "behave" well - it does not actually account for how they are
dealing with the losses, fears, anger, horror,... which suggests that an
understanding of emotions is profoundly more complex than current
"instruments' can account for...
Now is a topological tool an 'instrument" or a conceptual frame?
...am just thinking aloud here.
diane
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Ani Difranco
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction,
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-874-4807
mail:
3519 Hull Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V5N 4R8