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.

Human Development in the Life Course: Melodies of Living

Abstract: Preface: from dispute to collaboration Introduction: melodies of living Part I. Time for Development: 1. Solidity of science and fullness of living: a theoretical expose 2. Imagination and the life course 3. Moving through time: imagination and memory as semiotic processes 4. Models of time for the life course Part II. Spaces for Development: 5. Social framing of lives: from phenomena to theories 6. Stability and innovation in adults narrating their lives: insights from psychotherapy research 7. Paradoxes of learning Part III. Beyond Time and Space: Imagination: 8. We are migrants! 9. Playing while being serious: the lifelong game of development - and its tools 10. Playing under the influence: activity contexts in their social functions 11. 'Old age' as living forward 12. Epilogue: the course of life as a melody.

Discerning the Dialogical Self: A Theoretical and Methodological Examination of a Nepali Adolescent's Narrative

Abstract: Mikhail BAKHTINs theoretische Konzepte – Heteroglossie, Stimme und Dialogizitat – sind von einer herausragenden Bedeutung fur die Untersuchung personlicher und sozialer Komponenten der menschlichen Entwicklung, und zwar im besonderen fur die Untersuchung der Identitatsentwicklung innerhalb (unterschiedlicher) kultureller Welten. Bisher sind methodologische und analytische Verfahren zur Rekonstruktion von "Stimmen" in individuellen Selbstdarstellungen noch vergleichsweise unerforscht. In unserem Beitrag werden wir zu zeigen versuchen, wie BAKHTINs Konzepte in einem narrationsanalytischen Ansatz verwandt werden konnen, der die Untersuchung kulturbezogener Identitatsbildung und Positionierung zum Ziel hat. Wir verdeutlichen dies am Beispiel der selbstbezogenen Narrationen eines nepalesischen Jugendlichen, die im Rahmen einer grosen ethnographischen Studie in einer landlichen Gemeinschaft in Nepal erhoben wurden. Es soll – in einem engen Nebeneinander von Theorie und Methode – gezeigt werden, wie Personen ihnen verfugbare kulturelle und soziale "Stimmen" verwenden zur Kreation ihres Selbstbildes und zur Antizipation ihrer kunftigen sozialen Position in ihrer Kultur. Unsere Studie der jugendlichen Narrationen legt nahe, dass soziale "Stimmen" gewahlt und transformiert werden zur (Re-) Konstruktion vergangener, gegenwartiger und zukunftiger Selbstbilder und kultureller Bedeutungsgehalte. Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrages steht die Bemuhung, Forschende auf theoretische Konzepte und auf methodische Verfahren aufmerksam zu machen, die wesentlich dazu beitragen konnen, diese "Stimmen" und ihre Inszenierung wahrzunehmen und zu verstehen. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0103187

Emergence of Meanings Through Ambivalence

Abstract: Ambivalenz ist ein Schlusselbegriff, der in den meisten grundlegenden Feldern der Psychologie – so z.B. in der Wahrnehmungs-, Personlichkeits-, Kommunikations- und Kognitionsforschung – verwendet wird. Dabei wurde aber meist die Relevanz von Ambivalenz fur Prozesse der Bedeutungs- und Sinnkonstruktion ubersehen. Alle Bedeutungen werden in der Gegenwart geschaffen (wobei vergangene Erfahrungen in diesem Prozess integriert werden) in ihrem Bezug auf eine Zukunft, die aber niemals vollstandig durch die Gegenwart determiniert werden kann. In dem von uns skizzierten Entwicklungsmodell zeigen wir, wie Bedeutungen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Gegenwart und Zukunft entstehen. Hierzu werden drei Verlaufe unterschieden: Erstens erreicht der Prozess der Bedeutungskonstruktion und -zuschreibung im Falle des Fehlens von Ambivalenz einen gewissen Status quo und fallt danach ab. Zweitens fuhrt schwache Ambivalenz zu sprunghaften Start- und Stoppbewegungen im Prozess der Bedeutungsgenese entlang von auslosenden Zeichen. Solche Zeichen "kontrollieren" Bedeutungen in der Gegenwart nur probeweise und vorlaufig, ohne dabei mogliche zukunftig zu erschliesende Bedeutungen grundsatzlich einzuschranken. Drittens fuhrt hohe Ambivalenz zum Aufkommen "starker" Zeichen, die zur Aufgabe haben, Ungewissheit bezuglich der Gegenwart werdenden Zukunft einzuschranken. Zur Veranschaulichung des Modells werden empirische Daten aus einer mikrogenetischen Studie zur Konstruktionsprozessen von Bedeutung/Sinn in der Entwicklung junger Erwachsener verwendet. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0501231

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

Symbolic universes between present and future of Europe. First results of the map of European societies' cultural milieu.

Abstract: This paper reports the framework, method and main findings of an analysis of cultural milieus in 4 European countries (Estonia, Greece, Italy, and UK). The analysis is based on a questionnaire applied to a sample built through a two-step procedure of post-hoc random selection from a broader dataset based on an online survey. Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis-a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. We identified 5 symbolic universes, that correspond to basic, embodied, affect-laden, generalized worldviews. People in this study see the world as either a) an ordered universe; b) a matter of interpersonal bond; c) a caring society; d) consisting of a niche of belongingness; e) a hostile place (others' world). These symbolic universes were also interpreted as semiotic capital: they reflect the capacity of a place to foster social and civic development. Moreover, the distribution of the symbolic universes, and therefore social and civic engagement, is demonstrated to be variable across the 4 countries in the analysis. Finally, we develop a retrospective reconstruction of the distribution of symbolic universes as well as the interplay between their current state and past, present and future socio-institutional scenarios.

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.