Jaan Valsiner

Bio: Jaan Valsiner is an academic researcher from Aalborg University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cultural psychology & Dialogical self. The author has an hindex of 55, co-authored 384 publications receiving 12659 citations. Previous affiliations of Jaan Valsiner include University of Luxembourg & University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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.

We are all migrants

Abstract: Abstract Migration is the basis for development—economic, social, and psychological. In this paper I will examine borders on migration that entail the ambivalent relating by the societal context of migration to the act of movement of the people who become migrants, and their counterparts (“counter-migrants”) who do not. My focus on the issue stems from my theory of Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics that can deal with the process of becoming, being, and feeling as “migrant” or “counter-migrant”. A societal rule system is fortified by the system of social representations of the people who—by the act of moving from one place to another—are designated to become migrants by the rule systems of the non-migrants. Cultural psychology contributes to the study of the emerging prejudices and ways of their overcoming by the non-migrant local recipients as well as to the ambivalences of the persons who move to the relating with the social role “migrant” and its overcoming. Historically speaking—we as the species of Homo sapiens are all migrants—only at differing times and circumstances.

Human Psyche Between the Mundane and the Aesthetic: The Sublime as the Arena for Semiosis

Abstract: The sublime is the locus of negotiation of the future and the past in the human constructive semiosis. Known since the eighteenth century in European aesthetic philosophy, the sublime has been recognized as the border area of the mundane and the aesthetic. Yet, as a border, its function as the connector of the ordinary and the beautiful domains has been overlooked. I posit that the constructive semiosis as universal human psychological process takes place on that border, allowing the mundane to lead to the beautiful and turning the beautiful into mundane. The result is proliferation of in-between constructions—genetic dramatisms—in the zone of the sublime.

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Abstract: Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Abstract: From the Publisher: The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.