Children and Money

Cultural Developmental Psychology of Pocket Money

Edited by:
Takahashi Noboru, Osaka Kyoiku University
Yamamoto Toshiya, Developmental Research Support Center

A volume in the series: Perspectives on Human Development. Editor(s): Isabelle Albert, University of Luxembourg. Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University. Koji Komatsu, Osaka Kyoiku University.

Published 2020

In the “Pocket Money Project,” researchers from four countries, Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam collaborated and studied how children in those four countries were involved with money, combining various research methods and approaches. What our project tries to present throughout this book is that money is not only just a tool of exchange in the context of the market economy; but, it also serves as a tool to mediate human relationships in individual cultures; and the tool is used and mediated by norms. The structure of the norms differs among cultures, and the same action has different meanings; thus, when the structure of norms in a culture is identified, the meaning of an action in the culture becomes clear.

The research practice of “the Cultural Psychology of Differences” does not aim to create inventories of static differences. When a researcher, who is also a member of a specific culture, witnesses common behavior (cultural practices) among the others belonging to a different culture, the researcher is surprised, and, at the same time, reflects on his or her own common behavior (cultural practices); by doing so, mutual understanding and empathy are deepened, and this is exactly what “the Cultural Psychology of Differences” aims to do. Culture of the others appears dynamically, swaying ourselves; theorizing such a process is the task of our “Cultural Psychology of Differences”.

We believe this practice of understanding different cultures will provide a practical prescription for mutual understanding through tensions and surprise not only for psychology but also for members of the countries that historically and constantly have had strained relationships. "Cultural Psychology of Differences” is the ideal that cultural psychology to study the relationships between mind and culture should be pursued in the future.

CONTENTS
Why Do We Compare Cultures? What Does Money Mean to Children? Takahashi Noboru. Children Living in Consumer Society, Pian Chengnan. Children’s Meanings of Growing up and the Structures of Parent-Child Relationships, Takeo Kazuko. Structure of Peer Relationships Mediated by Money, Oh Sun Ah. Korean Children’s Lifeworld Revolving Around Money, Choi Soonja and Kim Soonja. Chinese Children in Urban Cities and Their Financial Intelligence, Zhou Nianli. Children and Pocket Money in Vietnam, Phan Thi Mai Huong and Nguyen Thi Hoa. Money for Children in Japan: From an Ecological Perspective of Child Development, Takahashi Noboru. Ambivalence of Parent-Child Relationships Found in Beliefs Underlying Pocket Money, Pian Chengnan. Birth of Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA) and the Pocket Money Project: Effort to Theorize the Flow of Time, Sato Tatsuya. When Difference Appears, and How to Overcome the Difference, Oh Sun Ah. “The Pocket Money Project” and “the Cultural Psychology of Differences”, Yamamoto Toshiya. Supplementary Chapter: Outline of the Project, Summary of the Results, and a Support Runner’s Suggestions for a New Dialogue, Watanabe Tadaharu. Appendix: Tables.