Epilogue: On the Organization of Diversity

Wallace first reviews the issues in cultural anthropology that originally prompted him to direct attention to the importance of individual diversity and the limitations of cognitive sharing. Anthropologists have continued to work with the methodological problems of measuring the extent of sharing and diversity. Meanwhile the word diversity itself has become a buzzword, as concerns over globalization and climate change have mounted. The symposium's papers focus on the compromises between diverse individualities and normative expectations in the course of child development. Wallace welcomes the recognition that broad cultural categories like race, age, gender, and ethnicity fail to mold life choices as forcefully as do the particularities of intimate developmental experiences in family and neighborhood, complementing and extending his original formulations. [culture theory, cognition, diversity, sharing, organization of diversity]