human development

Comparative Human Development

The  Comparative Human Development is an interdisciplinary and  critical edge of thought and researche in the social sciences. We believe that social life is too complex and too exciting to be left within any single discipline. Consequently, we bring together anthropologists, biologists, linguists, psychologists, sociologists and methodologists whose methods and theories cross individual social science disciplines. 

Faculty and students' research examines issues of central concern to socio-cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, comparative education, behavioral biology, language and thought, cultural psychology. In addressing those issues, we highlight shifting categories such as gender, race, class, age, sexuality, and ability.

Comparative Human Development is the oldest genuinely interdisciplinary social science graduate program in the United States. The Department's name signals our long-standing commitment to exploring a wide range of issues across multiple levels of analysis:
 

Comparative: To understand is to compare. 'Comparative' means attention to likeness and difference. Work in the Department looks at how practices, ideologies, capabilities, and behaviors vary across time, between cultures, and between species.
 

Human: What makes us human? Research explores the socio-cultural, psychological and biological processes that humans share with, and that distinguish them from, each other and from non-human animals.

Development: This complex and vexed term highlights change over time. It raises debates about cultural values and provokes disagreement about desired states. Work in the Department critically examines understandings about development in relation to both societies and individuals, and it analyzes practices and policies that may promote or prevent it.

The Department of Comparative Human Development (University in Chicago) offers programs that lead to BA and PhD degrees. Students in the Department have pursued innovative and successful careers in anthropology, biology, education, human development, psychology and sociology.

Comparative Human Development provides an excellent preparation for students interested in advanced postgraduate study at the frontiers of several social science disciplines, or in careers and professions that require a broad and integrated understanding of human experience and behavior—e.g., mental health, education, social work, health care, or human resource and organizational work in community or corporate settings.