ABSTRACT
We saw in the previous chapter how certain theorists acknowledged the importance of environmental contexts in children’s development. The total context consists of all the conditions surrounding an event, including the physical and social world. In Bronfenbrenner’s account, the outermost ‘ring’ of the environment is the sociocultural context within which the inner environmental systems operate. It is this sociocultural context, according to Georgioudi and Rosnow (1986), that gives meaning to the event. However, the field of child development, as understood by ourselves and (presumably) most of our readers, is a product of western society, and so it can be questioned how far theorizing about development is truly sensitive to sociocultural issues.
