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There are three possible justifications of the claim cultural communities make for their right to transmit an identity to their children. A group strategy and a parenting strategy are both defective. More promising is the view that there is value to children in the sharing of a familial life. But parental authority is limited by the requirement that children acquire sufficient autonomy. Some multicultural policies are thus not ruled out by the recognition of the need to accommodate children's interests.

This chapter focuses on the arguments of the Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka for “special rights” designed to protect indigenous minorities and their cultures. Kymlicka rests his argument for the rights of cultural minorities on the fact that membership in a cultural community is “an important good for the individual.” He finds this good to be, in the first place, a function of the relation between membership in cultural communities and personal identity. However, he seems to be thinking of identity more as a matter of “identifying with” than as consisting in the traits by which a person can be identified and recognized. This identity would include, in addition to such traits as that person's appearance and voice, the characteristic ways in which she or he deals with the world and with other people. Identity in this sense can include having a sense of belonging to a cultural community.

Chapter 5 deals with the intangible aspects of cultural heritage and the notion of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ is introduced and defined and its significance for cultural communities and wider society considered, alongside the important related areas of traditional cultural expressions, traditional knowledge, and indigenous heritage. The history of UNESCO’s normative and operational activities in relation to intangible cultural heritage and the development of UNESCO’s 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention are presented, followed by an introduction to the treaty text and to the operation of the two international lists established by it. The potential for change and evolution in implementing approaches and measures that the flexible structure of this treaty, based on relatively broad provisions whose implementation is set out in detail by Operational Directives, is explored through two specific cases: the gender dynamics of safeguarding intangible heritage; and community participation in implementing the Convention.

This chapter examines the role and significance of a unified script and Mandarin Chinese for the political and cultural formation of ancient China. From the Qin dynasty on, the bureaucracy was staffed by intellectual elites selected from their localities but sharing a unified script system and approximately similar pronunciation. The forms of writing and pronunciation, therefore, became a crucial part of China's “cultural constitution.” The chapter shows how the script and its two aspects, reading and speaking, were unified. It considers the Qin dynasty's unification of the script system, based on the judgment that the standardization of Chinese characters became the basis of China's bureaucratic governance. It also discusses the constitutional significance of a unified speech, how Mandarin Chinese was maintained and spread, and how a unified script integrated the scholar-officials in different geographical locations in a transgenerational cultural community.

The U.S. child welfare system, made up of many variations at the state and local levels, is unified in design by federal laws and regulations. This chapter reviews the definition of maltreatment as set forth by the federal government, along with rates of maltreatment reporting nationwide. A description of the general parameters of the child welfare system is provided including prevention services, out-of-home care, and long-term living alternatives for children who cannot return to their birth parents. Major federal legislation shaping child welfare policy is reviewed, though many current reform efforts are initiated at the local level. Some of the most prevalent reforms are reviewed in some detail include practice changes related to family-centered services, and cultural and community continuity.

This chapter looks at the cultural assumptions that childbearing requires specialised medical knowledge in the United States, where expectant parents usually receive advice on all aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care from multiple medical experts. This guidance divides the care of mothers and infants under the supervision of separate medical experts, and further fragments various aspects of infant care, including feeding and sleep. The chapter uses historical and ethnographic research to explore the origins of these assumptions and their consequences for American parents who embark on breastfeeding. It suggests that severing the links between these evolutionarily and physiologically connected domains has had a significant detrimental impact on night-time infant care. Parents have been left without adequate community cultural knowledge about the interaction of breastfeeding and sleep, and assume that these processes are separate. As a result, they are frequently surprised by infants' night-time behaviour and have difficulties navigating night-time breastfeeding and sleep. These challenges constitute an important element of an already formidable set of barriers to breastfeeding in the United States, where structural support is extremely limited and breastfeeding remains a controversial practice.

Cultures in Cyberspace was a temporary communications network organized by the author in 1992 to connect five culturally diverse online communities in conversation: American Indian Telecommunications/Dakota BBS (US), Arts Wire (US), ArtsNet (Australia), the WELL (US), and Usenet (international). Produced at a time of impending transformational technological change, the project provided a platform for people to participate in co-creating cyberspace, bringing their cultural backgrounds, stories and histories to the table. Cultures in Cyberspace was based on the premise that social, political and cultural meanings are made possible or not depending on who is connected to whom and the forms of communication that are supported and prioritized. The chapter discusses the art practices and socio-political context that informed the project, as well as its concept, design, implementation, and content. It includes participants' contemporary reflections on questions raised by the project.

Chapter 6 explores how scholars define the word community within community psychology and cultural and cognitive anthropology. The chapter begins with how individuals see themselves in groups using David McMillan and David Chavis’s psychological sense of community. Next, the reader is introduced to Edith and Victor Turner’s communitas to speak to how communities work for individuals. Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave’s communities of practice is then discussed to aid educators’ understanding of how communities are built. The chapter encourages readers to consider the action cycle of Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell’s critical counter-cultural communities of practice. At the end of the chapter, challenges to building and sustaining community are proposed, with questions for reflection.

This chapter primarily focuses on American religion and globalization. The local focus of American religion comes through loud and clear when people talk about their congregations. Further perspectives on the resources of American religion can be gained by comparing the United States with the second most populous Christian country in the world—Brazil. The globalization of American Christianity is part of the nation's wider participation in the international economic, political, and cultural community. Because of foreign trade and finance, travel, and the mass media, the typical church member in the United States participates daily in this wider community. Globalization intersects with faith on many different levels. Theologians and Christian ethicists have begun to emphasize the ways in which globalization challenges Western assumptions about God, prosperity, suffering, social justice, the environment, military intervention, and a host of other issues. Globalization, concludes the study committee of one ecumenical body, affects the work of churches everywhere by advancing international networks, promoting communication, diminishing the boundaries separating nations and cultures, generating in some instances a corresponding backlash of nationalism and xenophobia, undermining the traditions and lifestyles of local communities, transferring power and wealth, fueling border conflicts, and creating large populations of refugees and immigrants.

The theoretical framework of this volume integrates theories of attachment relationship formation with theories of cultural community. It is intended to guide our understandings both of children’s social development within child care and the construction of the social and emotional climate of the classroom. In this chapter, the endpoint of this framework is not “child care quality” but instead the social and emotional climate of classroom. This change in endpoint reflects an evolution from thinking of quality child care as structure and process to our current focus on responsive teaching.

This chapter considers the recent explosion of theories of democratization within a globalized world. It demonstrates how ‘democracy’ has too quickly become, both academically and politically, all things to all people: it represents a philosophical ideal, a political strategy, and an instrument of economic well-being. Democracy is seen to exert a globalizing force upon the international community. The basic principles of democracy are open-ended enough to permit a broad spectrum of social organizations. The most prominent theme characterizing most ‘democracy and development’ literature has been simply to account for the phenomenon of democratization globally; or to explain, more selectively, why certain states or regions have or have not participated in this experience. Modern democracy appeared originally within the context of a sovereign state system. The preservation of a discrete cultural community has become synonymous with democratic legitimacy.

This chapter addresses the question of cultural identity and cultural minorities, particularly the state's proper relationship to the values associated with Christianity and Judaism—the two main religions represented among the nation's population. As a precondition of entry to the League of Nations, the governments of new states in central and eastern Europe with a regional history of ethnic strife were required to negotiate treaties guaranteeing specific rights for people who did not identify as the national majority and thus faced a danger of discrimination. The League Council's commission on minorities had not, however, required the German government to sign any special protection treaty regarding Jews. Leaders of the central Jewish organizations in Germany had never sought a legal minority status. On the contrary, they claimed to be an integral part of the German cultural community, a religious faith group just like Protestants or Catholics whose members were inseparable from and contributed actively to German culture as Jews.

This chapter illuminates the relatively neglected global aspect of American Christianity and broadens the framework in which one customarily thinks about the successes, failures, and variations among faith communities. The central need is to reorient perspective in such a way that the chronology of religious events in particular national locations is understood in a wider, more diverse, and interconnected cultural context. As globalization increases, that task becomes ever more urgent. The globalization of American Christianity poses significant questions about the changing role of Christianity within the United States itself. One of these is whether being part of a church makes any difference to the way Christians think about America's role in the world, particularly on questions of international policy. An aspect of globalization that has become trite, because it is so often mentioned, is the fact that international transportation and communication have become quicker and easier.

This chapter examines Amerasians, those who could have been but were not adopted by American families in the 1970s. National concern about this population revived ideas about responsibility to the unwanted children of Vietnam and enabled the passage of legislation that facilitated their migration. Amerasians imagined rediscovering their fathers, winning social acceptance, and escaping poverty, but charges of fraud and misrepresentation, the complexity and rarity of father-child reunions, and the difficulties of adjustment in a national where one was presumed an American rather than guided to become one, compromised their sense of citizenship.

This chapter examines German soldiers' organized activities in captivity, which included celebrations of the Kaiser's birthday, the establishment of camp schools, and the formation of competitive athletic associations. For the prisoners, camp pursuits did not only constitute a means for relieving the boredom of captivity but also displayed an unbroken desire to serve the higher cause. Prisoners strove to express their identity as German warriors through acts of defiance and by establishing cultural communities that illustrated the “German spirit.” For men battling feelings of humiliation and inadequacy, organized events gave their lives meaning. By preparing themselves for the challenges of postwar life, military prisoners believed that they continued to serve German interests. This chapter demonstrates how the culture of captivity became a culture of resistance and redemption of manhood for German prisoners of the British.