Showing papers in "Culture and Psychology in 2011"

Irreconcilable differences in Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's approaches to the social and the individual: An educational perspective

Abstract: In Western psychology and education, up until very recently, Bakhtin has often been introduced as a scholar whose approach was compatible with and an extension of Vygotsky's cultural-historical approach. I argue that this continuity is problematic. Vygotsky's approach to the social was heavily influenced by Hegel's universalist, mono-logic, mono-logical, developmental (diachronic), activity-based philosophy. Bakhtin developed a pluralistic, essentially synchronic, dialogic, discourse- and genre-based approach to the social, involving the hybridity of co-existing competing and conflicting varieties of logic. Extrapolating Bakhtin's approach in education and psychology, I argue that from Bakhtin's dialogic framework, when a child (or any other person) is a subject of development -- as in developmental psychology, or a subject of learning -- as in education, development, its goals, and developmental values defining the teleology of the development, become (again) unknown for the participant (e.g., a developmental psychologist or parent).

Dialogism and dialogicality in the study of the self

Abstract: This article stems from the statement that dialogical approaches to a study of the self face a double challenge: that of developing a conception of the self that both avoids social reductionism and accounts for the stability of the self. In discussing this double challenge, we identify three much debated issues: (a) To what does the notion of “Alter” exactly refer? (b) How could we conceptualize the fact that Subject–Alter interactions are not only interpersonal but entail larger social entities, in particular institutions? (c)What importance should we attach to the materiality of objects? We discuss these three questions from two standpoints – that of linguistics and that of psychology – and illustrate our theoretical proposals with an analysis of an excerpt taken from a focus–group discussion. In conclusion, we argue that the dialogism of discourse provides us with some clues about the dialogicality of the mind, whereas the latter invites us to develop a theory showing the importance of interactions in ...

Historical representations and conflicts about indigenous people as national identities

Abstract: The relation between history learning processes, in and out of school, and the construction of national identities is nowadays an increasingly important topic, being studied through the appropriation of historical narratives, which are frequently based on the official history of any nation state. In this paper, college students' historical representations of their nation's origin are studied. We compared specific quantitative answers about who the first inhabitants of Argentina were with more in depth qualitative answers about their nation's political origin. In this respect, a conflict has been found in the way students present the official narrative. This conflict consists of maintaining that natives were the first national inhabitants, while most of the students think their nation was created in the 19th century. Different reactions to this are analyzed, particularly students' efforts to justify this conflict and to find coherency in historical content which has been produced by school history teaching and other sources and consumed by college students. The most common justifications include cultural tools that conceal the violence historically suffered by the natives, and at the same time an unreal conciliation between natives' rights and the interests of western founders of the national state. These tensions are considered in light of sociocultural discussions about the differences between production and consumption of historical narratives and their appropriation. We uphold that consumed historical narratives are based on an ontological and ahistorical concept of one's own nation, which prevents understanding a possible counternarrative based on natives as historical agents.

Dialogism and the psyche: Bakhtin and contemporary psychology

Abstract: The authors argue that dialogical philosophy, and particularly the work of the Bakhtin circle, offers psychology a way to conceptualize and study human experience such that the notion of psyche is preserved and enriched. The authors first introduce the work of the Bakhtin circle and then briefly outline some of the most influential theories of self and psyche. The implications of dialogism for theories of the self are then discussed, focusing on six basic principles of dialogical thought – namely, the principles of relationality, dynamism, semiotic mediation, alterity, dialogicality, and contextuality. Together, these principles imply a notion of psyche that is neither an isolated homunculus nor a disembodied discourse, but is, rather, a temporally unique, agentive enactment that is sustained within, rather than against, the tensions between individual and social, material and psychological, multiple and unified, stable and dynamic. The authors also discuss what this dialogical conception of psyche implie...

Bakhtin’s realism and embodiment: Towards a revision of the dialogical self

Abstract: How can we understand socially constituted selfhood? H. Hermans has addressed this question with the notion of the Dialogical Self that he draws from the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. We focus on Ba...

Learning and identity construction across sites: A dialogical approach to analysing the construction of learning selves

Abstract: We introduce the notion of learning selves as a way of tracing learning across sites. Learning selves is a way of characterizing how people as learners are constituted in and between settings. Focusing on the concept of self represents an attempt to address what becomes of the person in sociocultural and dialogical theorizing. Through a discussion of central concepts in dialogical theory, we outline three analytical resources to examine and identify cultural constructions of learning selves. The first is narratives, the second categories, and the last inscriptions. By working through an episode of interaction, where a teacher and his students discuss and negotiate the use of a particular learning resource in school, we demonstrate how the analytical resources enable us to study the process through which particular versions of learning selves are put together and contrasted. Finally, we discuss the implications for educational research on learning and identity.

Being faithful: Bakhtin and a potential postmodern psychology of self

Abstract: Postmodern critique has found its way into the psychology of self largely by way of Gergen’s form of social constructionism. This view treats self as socially constructed and changeable, such that ...

(Re)writing biography: Memory, identity, and textually mediated reality in coming to terms with the past

Abstract: This paper is concerned with how biography, memory, and identity are managed and displayed in a public confession of having been an informer for the Securitate (the former Romanian Communist Secret Police). Drawing on discursive psychology, the analysis reveals how biographical details are produced by drawing upon categorizations of people, context, and events, and organizationally relevant products such as the ‘‘archive,’’ the (Securitate) ‘‘file,’’ ‘‘information notes,’’ and personal notes. It is suggested that constructions of memory and identity are legitimated through a relationship with an organizational and personal accomplishment of accountability. The question guiding the analysis asks not why, but how remembering assumes the form that it does and how, ultimately, it can connect biography, memory, and identity to the wider ideological context. It is shown that a process of (re)writing biography is located in the ‘‘textual traces’’ contained in personal and ‘‘official’’ records. Recollections, dis...

Mikhail Bakhtin’s contribution to psychotherapy research

Abstract: Vygotsky clarified the methodological foundation that, in his view, characterizes every scientific discipline by elucidating the concepts of subject matter, explanatory principle, and unit of analysis. In this article, these concepts are used to explore and organize Michael Bakhtin’s relevance for psychotherapy research. Client and therapist utterances can be regarded as the object of research. Bakhtin’s theory of utterance provides the basic abstractions that define the facts, or the subject matter, of the research area. Semiotic mediation will be considered the explanatory principle that accounts for the utterance as a tool of interaction as well as an expression of intra-psychic processes. Neither Vygotsky’s instrumental nor Bakhtin’s dialogic conception of the sign are adequate for explaining the great variety of semiotic mediation in communication, object-oriented actions, and intra-psychic processes. A revised conception that articulates the dual reference of sign meanings will be introduced. Finall...

Emergent organization in the dialogical self: Evolution of a ‘‘both’’ ethnic identity position:

Abstract: Dialogical self theory, based on principles of self-organizing systems, provides a framework within which diverse views regarding identity creation can be reconciled. The framework encompasses the relatively stable and coherent identity story as well as the more variable, contextually specific identity positionings. We illustrate how these dialogical self processes work together in the identity narration of a young woman who is second-generation Asian Indian, in particular: (a) the context (frame of reference) specificity of system emergence and constraint; (b) the use of macro organizers for both system stability and flexibility; (c) system variability surrounding emergence of a new identity position, I-as-both; (d) the abruptness of emergences; and (e) the developing organization of the new position through causal linking of previously oppositional positions.

The construction of ethnic boundaries in classroom interaction through social space

Abstract: This article adds a social-spatial dimension to ethnicity construction while acknowledging the production of ethnicity as constructed through a relation of the ‘‘here and now’’ and an imagined (common) past. Empirically, social-spatial analysis is elaborated by looking at how social difference is produced in multi-ethnic schools through classroom interaction both in the USA and in the Netherlands. In our analysis, we are concerned with how ‘‘school’’ becomes evoked or produced in student discourse while ethnic positions are established. At the same time we show how spaces such as migrant neighborhoods and homelands are evoked and related to school spaces. The results show that more general mechanisms can be distinguished of how students use these spaces in their constructions of otherness across the data sets, but that the quality and complexity of these mechanisms are specific and can be related to the more general (migration) histories of the ethnic groups.

Defining 'the humanities'

Abstract: The division of knowledge into ‘science,’ ‘social science,’ and ‘the humanities’ is deeply entrenched in ways of thinking prevailing in the English-speaking world and is reflected in many institutional structures. The English word science, which excludes not only ‘the humanities’ but also logic and mathematics, does not have exact equivalents in other European languages. It is a conceptual artefact of modern English and is saturated, so to speak, with British empiricism. There is a pressure on speakers of English to regard ‘natural sciences’ as a paradigm of all knowledge, or at least all knowledge that modern societies should value and pursue. The semantic changes that the English word science has undergone in the last two centuries or so make empirically-based knowledge of the external world seem central to all human knowledge. This paper shows why ‘the humanities’ constitute a field of inquiry that is fundamentally different from ‘science’ (and from ‘social sciences’ modelled on ‘science’) and yet esse...

Moving between frames: The basis of the stable and dialogical self

Abstract: Research on the dialogical self has tended to emphasize instability over stability. Grossen and Salazar Orvig (2011) show how norms, values, material objects, and institutions feed into the stability of the self. We expand upon this contribution by introducing Goffman's (1974) concept of "frames" to theorize both stability and instability. Social interactions do not begin with individuals but with socially given and pre-existing cultural-historical frames which people are called upon to inhabit. Frames comprise historical, institutional, material, and cultural aspects. The key point is that action within a frame tends to stabilize the self, while being caught between frames tends to destabilize the self. The concept of frames can thus provide a clear link between the structure of the social world and the structure of the dialogical self. We use the concept of frames to distinguish the stability produced by one set of expectations, within one frame, from the peculiar instability and dialogical tensions which result from being embedded in discrepant or contradictory frames.

Beyond the archival model of memory and the affordances and constraints of narratives

Abstract: In his ‘After the Archive’ article, Brockmeier outlines limitations of the ‘archival model’ of memory, taking into account several dimensions of the burgeoning field of memory studies. In responding to the weaknesses he cites, he introduces ideas about narrative and its role in shaping human thought and memory. While narrative brings important assets to Brockmeier’s effort, it also carries conceptual baggage that is examined here. In particular, the prospects and problems of what philosophers have labeled ‘narrative memory’ are outlined, and narrative tools are presented as having both empowering affordances as well as limiting constraints.

Amerindian anthropology and cultural psychology: Crossing boundaries and meeting otherness’ worlds

Abstract: Addressing integrative possibilities between psychology and anthropology, this paper aims to design conceptual linkages between semiotic-cultural constructivist psychology and the anthropological theory of Amerindian perspectivism. From the psychological view, it is the interdependence between the structural and processual dimensions of the personal culture that makes parallels with Amerindian perspectivism fruitful. This anthropological frame proposes an experiment with native conceptions, which I argue similar to what Baldwin (1906) called sembling. Hence, it can be considered an active imitation of otherness’ viewpoint in order to approach indigenous worlds. It is supposed that this procedure leads to the emergence of new symbolic elements configuring the cultural action field of each agency in interaction. It is proposed that ‘‘making-believe’’ the Amerindian is convergent with the dialogic-hermeneutic approach of semiotic-cultural constructivism. As a result of the present integrative effort, is desi...

Individual responsibilities and moral inclusion in an age of rights

Abstract: In reference to Western cultures, some scholars (see Finkel & Moghaddam, 2005) have pointed out that we live in an ''age of rights.'' That is, people attach priority to their individual rights within a narrow-minded, individualistic worldview and de-emphasize duties. Such self-centred individualism focuses on the rights of individuals, forgetting to consider that rights can be effective only in relation to corresponding duties. In this article, a psychosocial theory on psychological boundaries for fairness, norms, and moral rules--namely moral inclusion/exclusion theory--will be used as a useful theoretical framework to resolve the apparent antinomy of rights versus duties. In particular, the use of this theory is relevant in understanding that the issues of claiming and protecting human rights and the balance between each individual's rights should be based on the concept of responsibility. In this sense, universality of human rights ought to deal with the universal recognition of other individuals and cultures and can be achieved only by means of intercultural dialogue.

Joe Sixpack: Normality, deviance, and the disease model of alcoholism

Abstract: The advantages of the disease model of alcoholism are well known, but the disadvantages have received little attention. The model's dominance has forestalled consideration of alternative and potentially valuable theories. It reinforces the value of normality even as it marks alcoholics as deviant. It suggests problem drinkers can diagnose themselves. These disadvantages are traceable to narrowly constructed scientific discourses: science-as-positivism, alcoholism-as-disease, and the individual-as-scientist. As a result, problem drinkers pondering a diagnosis of alcoholism emphasize the positivist concepts of central tendency, objectivity, and prediction/control. Positivism reinforces the value of normality even as a disease diagnosis threatens to mark the personal identity as deviant. In this circumstance, continuing to drink while manipulating drinking variables is rational. Alcoholism theory would benefit if researchers extended conceptualizations beyond the disease model. Alcoholism treatment would benefit if treatment professionals challenged social norms, emphasized subjectivity, and determined the parameters of the drinker's self-control.

Musical creativity in the mirror of Glaveanu’s five principles of cultural psychology

Abstract: Musical creativity can be found in several domains of music-making (composing, improvisation, performing) as well music perception and analysis. Musical creativity cannot be approached without being aware of the wide range of pluralistic analysis methods, their implementation in creative processes and their inherent creative nature. This commentary enlarges Glaveanu’s (2010) five principles of creativity of cultural psychology; alongside a short theoretical overview of artistic and scientific creativity in the domain of music I have hierarchized Glaveanu’s five principles. Contextual understanding emerges as the meta-principle, while the ecological nature of creativity opens the question of research methodology having an impact both on creativity giving birth to an artwork through composing, improvising, and performing, and the way in which we understand artworks through listening, historically and analytically. Tension design as an analytical tool has the potential to fit the condition of the ecological ...

The tension between dialogicality and interobjectivity in cooperative activities

Abstract: The context of a vocational e-learning project is used to explore the relation between dialogicality, intersubjectivity, and interobjectivity. By means of narrative analysis, we show that human mediation is sometimes directed outwards (interobjectivity) and sometimes directed inwards (intersubjectivity). Some interactions are closer to the intersubjectivity polarity because participants focus on a shared understanding of the world, whereas others are oriented to the interobjectivity polarity because subjects direct their efforts to what is shared ‘‘out there in the world.’’ We claim that this positioning between the two polarities influences the type of interaction occurring between the subjects. Whenever subjects engage in dialogical interactions, where the other’s collaboration is sought to redefine a shared understanding of the present state of the activity, the intersubjective polarity is put in place. In contrast, when the other’s position takes on an instrumental function, the interobjectivity polar...

The self-control ethos and the ‘chav’: Unpacking cultural representations of the white working class:

Abstract: This paper applies Joffe and Staerkle’s self-control ethos to cultural representations of the white working class. We initially follow their identification of three aspects of the self-control ethos — mind, body, and destiny — to show the explanatory value of the concept, before considering four possible avenues through which the self-control ethos may be developed: the extent to which it is the interrelationship between the separate aspects of the self-control ethos which lends them their visceral, emotional, and symbolic power; that gender differentiation is an important element in the specific content of stereotypes; that some stereotype content relates to issues of containment; and that a tighter contextualization is afforded to the self-control ethos by considering self and other relations in the terms of a consumer culture. These are offered as possible directions for the future development of a social representational approach sensitive to the contemporary cultural context.

Analysing trajectories of professional learning in changing workplaces

Abstract: In order to study the mutual shaping of action and institutional setting there is a need for a method of analysing data which provides a window on the contingent and sequential emergence of new ways of thinking and speaking in specific institutional contexts. This paper addresses this challenge through a consideration of the developments that were made during a 4-year study of professional learning in settings which were subject to new legal requirements for multiagency working in children’s services in England.

A hermeneutic perspective on dialogical psychology

Abstract: Leiman is surely right that Bakhtin's dialogism is of immense importance for psychotherapy research and psychology in general. Here I argue that Bakhtin's ideas represent an attractive third altern...

From Bakhtinian theory to a dialogical psychology

Abstract: The analysis of the different articles in this special issue gives a rather promising but complex image of a dialogical approach to psychology. Mikael Leiman proposed utterances as the object of study for psychotherapy research, semiotic mediation as the explanatory principle, and semiotic position as the unit of analysis. Frank Richardson cautioned us about how dialogical proposals can become entrapped by the extreme decentering tendency of social constructionism. James Cresswell, in his turn, claimed that Bakhtin's work is precisely a way of avoiding the unbalanced account of personal vacuity and freedom found in many constructionist accounts: it is precisely because we are bound to social ties that we become ethically involved with others and, indeed, with ourselves. Michele Grossen and Anne Salazar Orvig claimed that otherness and the institutional, transpersonal dimensions are also present in every dialogical act, something that tends to be overlooked. Moore et al., following this suggestion, pointed...

Encountering being, identity, and otherness: Reconsidering Guimarães’s ‘‘Amerindian anthropology and cultural psychology’’ and Amerindian perspectivism, with insights from anthropology of religion, African humanities, and collaborative ethnography

Abstract: Images of self and other are best understood not as static categories, but as fluid and dynamic negotiations in cultural encounters and transformations. In numerous cultural expressive contexts, such as animism, totemism, cosmology/philosophy, myth, and symbol, motifs represent what it means to exist, of ‘‘being’’ in this world, in likeness and difference, and encounters with other worlds: for example, human/animal relationships, time and space travel, and shape-shifting. How do anthropologists and local residents find epistemological and ontological common ground for mutual understanding? The challenge is to elicit local intellectual perspectives without imposing the researcher’s own categories. This commentary introduces comparative ethnographic findings in humanistic anthropology, with a special focus on African humanities, to open up perspectives on Amerindian perspectivism, the topic of Guimaraes’s (2011) essay.

The semiosis of family conflict: A case study of home-based psychotherapy

Abstract: This is a case study of a blended family undergoing home-based psychotherapy. The study uses sociocultural theory (Vygotsky) and semiotic cultural psychology (Valsiner) in order to understand the a...

Where are we going beyond the archive metaphor

Abstract: Brockmeier integrates perspectives of several fields and shows that the use of the archive metaphor is reaching its expiration date. What he offers as an alternative to the metaphor is a new model ...

Storytelling scholars and the mythic child: Rhetorical aesthetics in two case studies:

Abstract: Rhetorical and literary deconstruction of psychologists’ texts is an established line of postmodern critique, but the aesthetic-affective register of reader—text interactions has received little attention. The issue overlaps inquiries about embodied aspects of subjectivity. Drawing partly on Bakhtin’s dialogism, this study explores two themes concerning the interplay between textual and readerly dynamics through a close-up on two texts containing case studies of children. The textual dynamics of the ‘‘Anna’’ study presented by Jung in 1909, and republished with Supplementary material in 1946 (Jung, 1946/1991), illustrates dialogical tensions arising from ambivalence about whether the epistemic mode is ‘‘paradigmatic’’ (logico-scientific) or ‘‘narrative.’’ An analysis of the Bulger murder, as offered by Nightingale and Cromby in a 2002 article, exemplifies the rhetorical function of the ‘‘child’’ image through its emotional impact on the reader, notably a dissonance between a notion of childhood innocence and the case of children who commit murder. The conclusion reflects on theorizing about embodied subjectivity as applicable to the two target texts.

Cross-cultural meta-analysis

Abstract: Introduction The impact of culture on psychological functioning has received increasing attention over the past decades. Scrutiny of the PsycInfo database (May 2006) shows that the percentage of studies addressing culture, ethnicity, or race has been steadily increasing from 4.6% of all published psychological studies between 1960 and 1970 to 9.3% between 1990 and 2000. There is a clear need for accumulating and systematizing knowledge from this vast amount of cross-cultural studies and for developing models that deal with cross-cultural differences in psychology. Approaches to explaining cross-cultural differences and similarities seem to be dependent on research domain; for example, studies involving cross-cultural cognitive research generally regard cultural differences as evidence for a cultural bias in their measurement (Faucheux, 1976). Cross-cultural psychology would benefit from a valid representation of magnitude and sources of cross-cultural variation across all research domains. Meta-analysis can provide such representation by summarizing a great range of results from many single-culture and cross-cultural studies and estimating the actual size of cross-cultural differences using effect sizes that are corrected for artifacts. A meta-analysis reanalyzes results from studies that report on a specific relationship to reach an overall conclusion on this research question, thereby accumulating research and fostering theory building (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990). In addition, meta-analysis can address questions not originally considered in the primary studies by taking into account characteristics of studies that can explain variance in the effect size. Meta-analytic techniques help reviewers avoid problems common to traditional reviews such as subjectivity of study selection, inability to quantify the effect size, and difficulties in accounting for methodological differences between studies. Further, meta-analysis can examine models of explanatory factors in cross-cultural differences using moderator variables. This asset of meta-analysis is particularly useful in view of the peculiarities of different research domains in psychology with respect to the preferred type of explanation for cross-cultural differences and similarities. Therefore, meta-analysis is a powerful tool for advancing cross-cultural theorizing and an exceptionally valuable contribution to cross-cultural research methods.

The pervasiveness of memory

Abstract: The article by Jens Brockmeier (2010) provides a multifaceted, well-written, and thought-provoking synopsis of challenges faced by the study of memory. There are several critical issues and unwarranted conclusions associated with key claims of the article. First of all, the author’s criticism of the archival notion of memory is well made but falls short of taking into account long-standing debates and conceptual developments in the psychology of memory. Second, contrary to the author’s claim, memory for past events and experiences, however accurate or biased, serves important psychological functions. Third, ignoring fundamental differences between types or systems of memory poses the risk of overgeneralized and eventually unwarranted claims about memory. Differentiation can be an important step in research progress, if it goes along with an adequate level of integration. Fourth, I argue that something like ‘memory’ must exist that produces learning behavior, which is ubiquitous in humans and animals. I co...

How emotion shapes religious cultures: A synthesis of cognitive theories of religion and emotion theory

Abstract: This paper proposes that the transmission of common religious concepts—such as witches, hostile spirits, benevolent gods, and ancestors—is facilitated by the trajectory of the human emotional response. Because these religious concepts become associated with existentially relevant components of emotional themes they are likely to be internalized, recalled, transmitted, and institutionalized. Emotion is here treated as an evolved, and universally inherited, social heuristic that modulates interpersonal perception and action. Benevolent and malevolent religious entities and associated practices are posited as supernatural extensions of an imagined social world that is partially predicated on, and made meaningful by, the interpretive and motivational functions of emotion. While cultural psychology tends to focus on how culture shapes psychology, this paper begins to construct a theoretical framework that views culture and psychology as mutually constitutive.