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Humanities
- ISSN: 2155-7993
- Journal of Modern Education Review
Beyond the Harvard Six Cultures Project: Effects of Sociocultural Change
on Mexican Children’s Cooperative Behavior
Camilo Garcia , Tania Vidaña-Rivera and Jannethe Colorado
(Laboratory of Social Interaction, Veracruzana University, Mexico)
Abstract: The Harvard Six Cultures Project focused on socialization cultural practices of six different groups in the world, based on fieldwork and intense interviews. Among those groups, Romneys reported that Mixtecan rural children in Juxtlahuaca (ethnic enclave in Mexico) were more cooperative in comparison to those in the downtown area of the same village. Recently, it had been reported changes in socialization patterns and the decrease of cooperation and increase of competition in Mexican rural areas. Greenfield’s theory (2009) proposed that transitions from rural to urban ecology leads to shifts in cultural values which affect the socialization practices and in turn, social development. Thus, it is hypothesized that sociodemographic changes in Juxtlahuaca, would lead to an increase in competition. To test this, we used the Madsen Marble Pull Game (1971) with a 2×2 experimental design to analyze 63 children’s pair interaction. Results showed that there was significant increase of competition in the Mixtecan barrio to the point that those differences reported by the Romneys do not exist anymore. This is attributed to the sociocultural transformation among Mixtecans from the last 50 years.
Key words: sociocultural change, cooperation, mixtecans