Showing papers by "Jaan Valsiner published in 2007"

Culture in Minds and Societies: Foundations of Cultural Psychology

Abstract: Foreword S Anandalakshmy Preface Approaches to Culture: Semiotic Bases for Cultural Psychology Society and Community: Interdependence of Social Webs Making Oppositions: Dialogical Self and Dualities in Meaning Making Minimal Communities and their Organization: Kinship Groups, Families and Marriage Forms Culture Wholes on the Move: Maintenance and Crossing of Boundaries in the Semiotic Universe Thinking as a Cultural Process Semiotic Fields In Action: Affective Guiding of the Internalization/Externalization Process Methodology for Cultural Psychology: Systemic, Qualititative and Idiographic Conclusion: Culture in Minds and Societies References Index

Developmental Epistemology and Implications for Methodology

Abstract: This chapter outlines the axiomatic bases for developmental science and briefly reviews its historical origins. It sets up the criterion of consistency—if development is conceptualized as a process it has to be investigated as such—rather than relying on standard nondevelopmental outcome “measures” to govern the empirical part of the knowledge construction effort. Development is conceptualized as qualitative transformation of psychological, social, and psychological structures—that emerge and are maintained through person and environment relations. Methodological innovations that are emphasized include: systemic causality, primacy of single-case longitudinal investigations over cross-sectional aggregation of data for large samples, and the focus on qualitative transformation of structures. The chapter also outlines the implications of the Method of Double Stimulation (introduced by Lev Vygotsky) for the study of development. Developmental science is organism-centered—in the human case that entails assuming a person-centered life-course perspective. Contemporary cultural psychology leads to leaving mono-culturally relevant discourses about children far behind and moving towards constructing a general – yet context-sensitive—science of development. Keywords: culture; epigenesist; genetic logic; idiographic science; methodology

Otherness in Question: Labyrinths of the self

Abstract: Editorial Introduction. Part I: What is 'otherness'? Why 'otherness' in the research domain of semiotic-cultural constructivism?, Livia Simao, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Human development as migration towards the unknown, Jaan Valsiner, Clark University. Interview for Part I, Yoko Yamada, Kyoto University, Japan. Part II: Otherness and dialogicality within the self. Dialogism and otherness revisited, Michael Holquist, Yale Universty. Intrapersonal and interpersonal plans in otherness, Hubert Hermans, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Mick Cooper, University of Strathclyde, Scotland. The self experience in otherness: philosophical and phenomenological issues, Nelson Coelho, Jr., University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interview for Part II, Nandita Chaudhary, Lady Irwin College, Delhi, India. Part III: The striving self. Self, otherness and experienced culture, Ernst Boesch, Saarbrucken, Germany. Patients and doctors as otherness in cancer experience, Lutz Eckensberger, German Institute for International Educational Research, Germany. The tourist self: the dialogue of self and the other while trekking in the Himalayas, Alex Gillespie, University of Cambridge, UK. Ruptures and Transitions in the Self Development, Tania Zittoun, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Interview for Part III, Alexander Poddiakov, Economics University of Moscow, Russia. Part IV: The positioned self. Positioning the otherness, Rom Harre, Georgetown University. Otherness in historic situated self-experiences, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain. The language in I-other discovering, Shi-Xu, University of Ulster, N-Ireland and University of Huangzhou, China. The self facing ambivalence: constructing the next step, Emily Abbey, Clark University. Interview for Part IV, Gyuseog Han, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea, Editorial Conclusions.

Becoming Integrative in Science: Re-building Contemporary Psychology through Interdisciplinary and International Collaboration

Abstract: Our Journal enters into a new stage of its development with this issue. It is marked by a small change in its name—from Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science (IPBS) to the present new focus on psychology. That name change goes along with the development of the behavioral sciences. The behavioral science of the twentieth century was characterized by a narrow focus on relationships of behavior with their physiological bases. Of course there were some notable exceptions—such as Vladimir Bekhterev’s efforts to build general theory of associative reflexes (Bekhterev 2001), but the main focus in the study of behavioral phenomena has remained narrow in both its theoretical and empirical realms. We face now a more elaborate set of tasks in understanding the complexity of relationships within which behavioral phenomena are embedded in the twenty-first century. These include both behavior’s “downward” ties with the physiological, neuronal, and genetic levels, and its “upward” ties with social units of organization of life—be it in groups of animals, or with communities, identities, and consumer fashions in human society. Human culture is solidly based on its biological foundations—but not explainable solely by those. We can see how in phylogeny new levels of organization of the ways of living emerge—language and other semiotic systems dramatically change the ways human beings—and some talking apes such as Kanzi—make sense of their own (and others’) behavior. All these levels are mutually related—yet how these relations work is not yet known. Contemporary sciences—both biological and social—have paid lip service to the notion of integration, while in reality they have continued along the lines of their specific ways of creating knowledge within their disciplinary confines. Much important work has emerged in the different areas of inquiry—in a way, the fragmentation and segregation has its positive facet for our knowledge. The Journal’s past provides a good example—in its past has been characterized by high quality experimental work in the best laboratory traditions of the heritage of Ivan P. Pavlov

Looking Across Cultural Gender Boundaries

Abstract: This Special Issue on gender brings the issues of feelings about gender role boundaries to the forefront of our inquiries. Boundaries are the domains where psychological processes act- they function as membranes (in the biological sense). The use of boundary notion in psychological theorizing may take the discipline beyond its current projection of essentialist causal agents into the human psyche.

Developmental Science Meets Culture: Cultural Developmental Psychology in the Making

Abstract: Both the polyvalent notions of culture and development have been central for building psychological theories. In the present paper, both notions are discussed within the framework of general developmental science and thus from a necessarily systemic perspective. Development is surely culturally informed, yet the process of cultivation is largely unknown until today. One reason for this is the fact that a vast amount of empirical work is conducted quite independently from the construction of adequate theoretical models. The present paper aims at working out the basis of a theoretical model of culture-inclusive development. Cultivation takes mainly place in the semiotic sphere of personal sign construction and reconstruction under cultural guidance. Sign construction is dynamically organized and canalized on different related levels of organization: micro-, mesoand ontogenesis. The radical methodological implications for investigating cultural developmental phenomena on the basis of this model are outlined.

Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis: probabilities and realities in development.

Abstract: Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis is a fertile ground for further theoretical construction in developmental science. It fills in the gap in the domineering empiricism and honoring of inductive generalization that dominates psychology in the beginning of the 21st century, by offering a basic deductive framework for guiding the efforts of developmental science. It was based on a program of careful experimental investigations of the early avian ontogenies -- later to be generalized to the developmental processes as a generic phenomenon. Further development of his theory takes the form of (a) explicating the different meanings of probabilism in his model, and (b) extending his multi-level system to include psychological and social levels of organization. Gottlieb's contribution allows for a new synthesis of contemporary epigenetics and developmental science, and sets up major challenges for the methodology of research on development.

Semiotic rotations : modes of meanings in cultural worlds

Abstract: Introduction. PART I: Imaging Self and Otherness The Spatial Representation of Cultural Otherness, Winfried Noth. Mothers, Fathers, and Parents, Nandita Chaudhary. Monstrosities/Deformations - Structuralist Metamorphoses in Film Analysis, Bettina Papenburg. PART II: Boundaries and Frames. When the Cat's Away, the Mice Will Play, Jorgen Dines Johansen. Hooded Performance = Un/Masking of Hoodlum Politics? Klaus-Peter Kopping. Posthuman Culture, Lucia Santaella. PART III: Beyond Linearity. Dimensions of an Aesthetic Encounter, Robert E. Innis. From September 11 to the Iraqi War, Annamaria Silvana de Rosa. Transforming Genres in Marie de France's Eliduc, SunHee Kim Gertz. Conclusions, Jaan Valsiner and SunHee Kim Gertz. About the Contributors. Index.