MAKING HISTORY - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILDHOOD COGNITION FOR A COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MIND

This article argues that a comparative anthropology of mind requires the recognition that ontogeny is a genuinely historical process. But this recognition itself requires the dissolution of the established dichotomies between biology and culture, and individual and society, that are fundamental to theories of mind in the social sciences. A discussion of four ethnographic cases where meanings made by children are direct inversions of those made by adults suggests that a systematic study of how children constitute their knowledge of the world is crucial for any analysis of collective relations. The article argues that cognition is a biologically microhistorical process; it shows how an image of the child as 'other', derived from the biology-culture distinction, has bedevilled theories of child development in psychology and anthropology; and suggests that an understanding of humans as at once products and producers of history makes the study of children central to the anthropological project.