Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Pérez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years. At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own
experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades.
In Destiny and Development, Barbara Rogoff illuminates how individuals worldwide build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the
same time create new ways of living. Throughout Chona's lifetime, her Guatemalan town has continued to use longstanding Mayan cultural practices, such as including children in a range of community activities and encouraging them to learn by observing and contributing. But the town has also
transformed dramatically since the days of Chona's own childhood. For instance, although Chona's upbringing included no formal schooling, some of her grandchildren have gone on to attend university and earn scholarly degrees. The lives of Chona and her town provide extraordinary examples of how
cultural practices are preserved even as they are adapted and modified.
Destiny and Development is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human
development. With extensive photographs and accounts of Mayan family life, medical practices, birth, child development, and learning, Rogoff adeptly shows that we can better understand the role of culture in our lives by examining how people participate in cultural practices. This landmark book
brings theory alive with fascinating ethnographic findings that advance our understanding of childhood, culture, and change.
1. Beginnings: Stability and change
2. Living culture, across generations
3. Meeting Chona and San Pedro
4. Paper with a mouth, recounting the destiny and development of an Iyoom and her community
5. Born to a spiritual calling, across generations: Cultural heritage and
resistance
6. Childhood and where babies come from
7. A becoming young woman
8. Changing memories in changing practices
9. Entry and prominence in a sacred profession
10. Ripples across generations and nations in Mayan pregnancy and childbirth
11. Ripples across generations
and nations in birth destinies and postnatal care
12. Ways of learning across times and places
Traditions and transformations
References
Endnotes
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Barbara Rogoff is UCSC Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Kellogg Fellow, and Editor of Human Development. Her books Apprenticeship in
Thinking (OUP, 1990), Learning Together (OUP, 2001), and The Cultural Nature of Human Development (OUP, 2003) have received awards from the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. Her current book, Destiny and Development, deepens the ideas presented in
her previous books, building on her three decades of research on human development in a Mayan community in Guatemala.
