This book articulates a bold, new, systematic theory of psychology, culture, and their interrelation. It explains how macro cultural factors -- social institutions, cultural artifacts, and cultural concepts -- are the cornerstones of society and how they form the origins and characteristics of psychological phenomena. This theory is used to explain the diversity of psychological phenomena such as emotions, self, intelligence, sexuality, memory, reasoning, perception, developmental processes, and mental illness. Ratner draws upon Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural psychology, Bronfenbrenner's ecological psychology, as well as work in sociology, anthropology, history, and geography, to explore the political implications and assumptions of psychological theories regarding social policy and reform.The theory outlined here addresses current theoretical and political issues such as agency, realism, objectivity, subjectivism, structuralism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism. In this sense, the book articulates a systematic political philosophy of mind to examine numerous approaches to psychology, including indigenous psychology, cross-cultural psychology, activity theory, discourse analysis, mainstream psychology, and evolutionary psychology.

This Brief provides an in-depth discussion of five major points of intersection between philosophy and cultural psychology. The first chapter frames central analytical and normative threads, foregrounding the focal notion of thresholds of sense. The second chapter explores the nature of contexts, situations, and backgrounds of meaning-making following the lead of John Dewey, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, and Gernot Böhme. Chapter three examines the complementary analytical power of the semiotic resources developed in the work of Peirce, Bühler, and Cassirer. Chapter four shows the heuristic fertility and psychological bearing of Susanne Langer's feeling-based aesthetic model of minding. The final chapter establishes affectivation as the inescapable consequence of human beings giving life to themselves by giving life to signs. The Brief concludes with three commentaries from leading researchers in the area. The chapters weave together interlocking themes: the nature of embodied perception, the variety of contexts and semiotic frameworks and their schematization of thresholds of meaning-making, the role of art and theories of imagination both in cultural psychology and in philosophy, and the centrality of feeling in all forms of meaning-making. Between Philosophy and Cultural Psychology will be of interest to cognitive and cultural psychologists as well as researchers and upper-graduate students in philosophy and related psychology fields.

This Brief provides an in-depth discussion of five major points of intersection between philosophy and cultural psychology. The first chapter frames central analytical and normative threads, foregrounding the focal notion of thresholds of sense. The second chapter explores the nature of contexts, situations, and backgrounds of meaning-making following the lead of John Dewey, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, and Gernot Böhme. Chapter three examines the complementary analytical power of the semiotic resources developed in the work of Peirce, Bühler, and Cassirer. Chapter four shows the heuristic fertility and psychological bearing of Susanne Langer's feeling-based aesthetic model of minding. The final chapter establishes affectivation as the inescapable consequence of human beings giving life to themselves by giving life to signs. The Brief concludes with three commentaries from leading researchers in the area. The chapters weave together interlocking themes: the nature of embodied perception, the variety of contexts and semiotic frameworks and their schematization of thresholds of meaning-making, the role of art and theories of imagination both in cultural psychology and in philosophy, and the centrality of feeling in all forms of meaning-making. Between Philosophy and Cultural Psychology will be of interest to cognitive and cultural psychologists as well as researchers and upper-graduate students in philosophy and related psychology fields.

This book advances our theoretical understanding of the human experience. By overcoming dualities such as the relationship between reflection and action, it allows a more in-depth analysis of how concepts constitute complementary parts of the complex human thinking to be developed. Presenting texts written by leading philosophers and psychologists, it provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of theoretical elaboration, which is then used to discuss the place and value of reflection in moral and epistemic scenes. These topics are accessible to experts and young scholars in the field alike, and offer scope for further reflections that could improve our understanding beyond the existing models and “-isms”. The novelty of the book is in the dialogue established between several perspectives (e.g. philosophers and psychologists; Europe, America and Asia; etc.). The contributions of philosophers and psychologists establish a fruitful dialogue, so that readers realize that disciplinary divisions are overcome through dialogue and the common object of inquiry: the way human beings reflect and act in their everyday experiences.

This book considers cultural psychology from historical, theoretical, and epistemological perspectives, building an understanding of cultural psychology as a human science and moving beyond the nature-culture dichotomy. The unique collection of chapters seeks to advance the field of cultural psychology by reviving its historical legacies and arguing for its social responsibility in future historical developments. It considers European legacies for cultural psychology as developed by leading figures such as Giambattista Vico, Wilhelm Wundt, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Ernst Cassirer in order to provide insights into a long tradition of thinking from a cultural psychology perspective. The book discusses historical pathways in the rise and repression of cultural psychology and its different historical forms, arguing for the necessity of decolonizing psychology, securing a place for culture in it, and developing an epistemology suited to humankind’s meaning-making processes in mutual shaping of psyche and culture. It provides an integrative and historical understanding of the subject and uses the diversity and heterogeneity within the field to offer critical reflections on its achievements. The thoroughly international group of contributors brings diverse analyses of self, body, emotions, culture, and society and considers the future of cultural psychology. The volume is a stimulating read for scholars and students of cultural and theoretical psychology and related areas including philosophy, anthropology, and history.

An Invitation to Cultural Psychology looks at the everyday life worlds of human beings through the lens of a new synthetic perspective in cultural psychology – that of semiotic dynamics. Based on historical work from many different fields in the social and behavioural sciences, and the humanities too, this perspective applied to cultural psychology suggests that human beings are constantly creating, maintaining and abandoning hierarchies of meanings within all cultural contexts they experience. It’s a perspective that leans heavily on the work of the great French philosopher, Henri Bergson, only now being realised as a core basis for human cultural living. Jaan Valsiner is the founding editor of the major journal in the field, Culture & Psychology, and Editor of the Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. He is the first Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University in Denmark, where he leads Europe′s first Research Centre on Cultural Psychology.

Bringing together leading authorities, this definitive handbook provides a comprehensive review of the field of cultural psychology. Major theoretical perspectives are explained, and methodological issues and challenges are discussed. The volume examines how topics fundamental to psychology?identity and social relations, the self, cognition, emotion and motivation, and development?are influenced by cultural meanings and practices. It also presents cutting-edge work on the psychological and evolutionary underpinnings of cultural stability and change. In all, more than 60 contributors have written over 30 chapters covering such diverse areas as food, love, religion, intelligence, language, attachment, narratives, and work.