THE 99TH KUASS: KYOTO UNIVERSITY AFRICAN STUDIES SEMINAR
The Emergence of Property Concerns
Summary
All human societies care about ownership of at least some kinds of things (Brown, 1991; Hann, 1998), yet young children struggle to understand property and come only gradually to an understanding of ownership and how it may be legitimately transferred. Little is known about non-human primates understanding of property, in that they appear to have a sense of possession and will fight to protect the food that is in their physical control (Kummer & Cords, 1991; Sigg & Falett, 1985), but there is currently no evidence that they have any sense of ownership (i.e., they would respect others’ property even when they are absent) (Brosnan, 2011). In this talk I present a series of cross-cultural studies on young children (3-8) investigating their understanding of (i) under which conditions who owns what (“condition of ownership” rules), and (ii) what implications (rights, commitments entitlements, etc.) come from owning objects (“implication of ownership” rules). I will present data collected in the USA, Germany, Namibia, Kenya and Argentina and some ongoing work we are conducting in India. I will then present some novel studies on non-human primates investigating their tendency to respect other individuals’ properties and to protest when their property is violated. By comparing the results on human children and non-human primates, I will show that ownership concerns are uniquely human and develop early in ontogeny.
instructor
Dr. Federico Rossano (University of California, San Diego)Date & Venue
November 16 2021（Tuesday）
17:00~19:00 (JST)
Online (Zoom)
Language
English (no interpreter)Eligibility
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Registration
Profile
Dr. Federico Rossano (University of California, San Diego)
Research Interests:
The development of social cognition in ontogeny and phylogeny; multimodal communication and its cross-cultural variability; cognitive development; comparative psychology; language evolution; social interaction and conversation analysis; social norms, social justice and accountability; cognitive and systemic psychotherapy.
Selected Publications:
Rossano, F., Fiedler, L. & Tomasello, M. (2015). Preschoolers’ understanding of communication and cooperation in the establishment of property rights. Developmental Psychology 51(2), 176-184
Völter, C. J., Rossano, F., & Call, J. (2015). From exploitation to cooperation: Social tool-use in orangutan mother-offspring dyads. Animal Behaviour 100, 126-134
Grocke, P., Rossano, F. & Tomasello, M. (2015). Procedural justice in children’s understanding of fairness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 140, 197-210, and others.
Contact
The Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto UniversityTel：075-753-7803
caas@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
