SCHEPER-HUGHES ASSIGNMENT
1. What is the difference between the type of treatment of children engaged in by Rosa and that engaged in by Lourdes and many others in the village?
2. If Rosa’s report is correct, how did her children’s behavior differ from most of the children discussed in the article who received a folk diagnosis of doenca de crianca and fraqueza?
3. Background for question 3: Scheper-Hughes argues that widely held assumptions of maternal love and mother-child bonding derive from the modern Western, bourgeois family. Scheper-Hughes further asserts that such maternal thinking was foreign to most of European history and is currently foreign to many women living in the third world. By contrast, as discussed several times in class, evolutionary theory (parental investment theory) asserts that there is strong investment in children among women.
Actual question: Do Scheper-Hughes’ observations mean that women in general (independent of cultural background) are not biologically predisposed to invest heavily in the young (as she seems to suggest)?
Alternatively, can her observations be reconciled with an evolutionary perspective which indicates considerable investment in the young?
