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Considers the need for critical inquiry into the notion of identity, suggesting that the field might reconsider an approach that moves beyond identity toward consideration of cultural models of self. Cultural theory, multiculturalism, and transcultural comparisons of teacher and learning are suggested as areas where self appears to be a useful construct. (SLD)

The global spread of mindfulness-based interventions raises some interesting questions regarding the universality and translatibility of key ideas and practices of mindfulness. Based on ethnographic research, this article reflects on one effort to bring ideas and practices of mindfulness-based stress reduction to Haitian mental health practitioners and educators in Haiti. While core concepts of mindfulness-based stress reduction are often assumed to be universal, this analysis suggests that cultural meaning systems and social contexts, and in particular local cultural psychologies of personhood, strongly influenced the meanings that Haitian participants took away from their exposure to mindfulness-based stress reduction. These differences manifested in resistance to individualist concepts self-embedded in the discourse of mindfulness-based stress reduction as well as to its secularism. However, while rejecting an individualistic and amoral self-focus, Haitian participants also re-interpreted mindfulness in new ways that stressed its value for societal and national well-being. The article reflects on the larger questions that surround the making and re-making of meanings associated with well-being as mindfulness-based interventions move across cultural and national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long before the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010, but particularly since, international media and humanitarian groups have drawn attention to the ‘vulnerable child’ in Haiti, a child often portrayed as needing ‘saving’. Focusing in particular on the restavèk (child domestic laborer), this article first explores the ways in which such children are represented as vulnerable and victimized, despite emerging ethnographic evidence on children’s lived experience that paints a rather different picture. It then argues that far from being inconsequential, however, representations of children’s vulnerability enable a critique of the Haitian culture and nation itself as fundamentally flawed and in need of saving through the interventions of the international order. Raising the question of for whom and for what purposes such projects of critique and saving exist, the article suggests that the saving of Haiti’s children can be seen as a way to position the Haitian nation within a universalized and moralizing narrative of maturation/development that ultimately is not so much about meeting Haiti’s (and its children’s) needs as it is about satisfying the needs and desires of the more powerful in terms of their own security, prosperity and global dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the diffusion of ideas and concepts concerning children and their education has been the norm throughout history, this article argues that we are currently witnessing the emergence of a globalised cultural ideology of childhood based on Western cultural assumptions and research traditions. Examining the case of contemporary Chinese approaches to early childhood and childcare as reflected in parenting magazines, and comparing these with American parenting advice, the authors illustrate how certain basic themes such as the role of scientific expertise, individualism, and self-expression appear to draw from a convergence of ideologies regarding children's nature and needs. At the same time, there remain some fundamental differences between Chinese and American perspectives. The article considers alternative explanations for such covergences and divergences and suggests that attention to the gap between the idealised and actual practices with regard to children's welfare is central to addressing the paradox of an ostensibly child-centred ideology that in fact marginalises children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]