This book, first published in 2007, is an international overview of the state of our knowledge in sociocultural psychology - as a discipline located at the crossroads between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. Since the 1980s, the field of psychology has encountered the growth of a new discipline - cultural psychology - that has built new connections between psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and semiotics. The handbook integrates contributions of sociocultural specialists from fifteen countries, all tied together by the unifying focus on the role of sign systems in human relations with the environment. It emphasizes theoretical and methodological discussions on the cultural nature of human psychological phenomena, moving on to show how meaning is a natural feature of action and how it eventually produces conventional symbols for communication. Such symbols shape individual experiences and create the conditions for consciousness and the self to emerge; turn social norms into ethics; and set history into motion.

This Handbook provides the requisite theoretical and methodological guidelines for undertaking social research addressing relevant contemporary social issues.

In recent years the topic of acculturation has evolved from a relatively minor research area to one of the most researched subjects in the field of cross-cultural psychology. This edited handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. A collection of the world's leading experts in the field review the various contexts for acculturation, the central theories, the groups and individuals undergoing acculturation (immigrants, refugees, indigenous people, expatriates, students and tourists) and discuss how current knowledge can be applied to make both the process and its outcome more manageable and profitable. Building on the theoretical and methodological framework of cross-cultural psychology, the authors focus specifically on the issues that arise when people from one culture move to another culture and the reciprocal adjustments, tensions and benefits involved.

This concise student edition of The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice includes new pedagogical features and instructor resources.

Written by psychologists, historians, and lawyers, this handbook demonstrates the central role psychological science plays in addressing some of the world's most pressing problems. Over 100 experts from around the world work together to supply an integrated history of human rights and psychological science using a rights and strengths-based perspective. It highlights what psychologists have done to promote human rights and what continues to be done at the United Nations. With emerging visions for the future uses of psychological theory, education, evidence-based research, and best practices, the chapters offer advice on how to advance the 2030 Global Agenda on Sustainable Development. Challenging the view that human rights are best understood through a political lens, this scholarly collection of essays shows how psychological science may hold the key to nurturing humanitarian values and respect for human dignity.

The field of cultural-historical psychology originated in the work of Lev Vygotsky and the Vygotsky Circle in the Soviet Union more than eighty years ago, and has now established a powerful research tradition in Russia and the West. The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology is the first volume to systematically present cultural-historical psychology as an integrative/holistic developmental science of mind, brain, and culture. Its main focus is the inseparable unity of the historically evolving human mind, brain, and culture, and the ways to understand it. The contributors are major international experts in the field, and include authors of major works on Lev Vygotsky, direct collaborators and associates of Alexander Luria, and renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks. The Handbook will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of psychology, education, humanities and neuroscience.

The twentieth century witnessed not only the devastation of war, conflict, and injustice on a massive scale, but it also saw the emergence of social psychology as a discipline committed to addressing these and other social problems. In the 21st century, however, the promise of social psychology remains incomplete. We have witnessed the reprise of authoritarianism and the endurance of institutionalized forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, and heterosexism across the globe. Edited by Phillip L. Hammack, The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice reorients social psychology toward the study of social injustice in real-world settings. The volume's contributing authors effectively span the borders between cultures and disciplines to better highlight new and emerging critical paradigms that interrogate the very real consequences of social injustice. United in their belief in the possibility of liberation from oppression, with this Handbook, Hammack and his contributors offer a stirring blueprint for a new, important kind of social psychology today.