This article aims to illustrate the role of culture for individual development throughout the life span. First, theoretical approaches how culture affects the ontogenesis is presented, starting from early anthropological to recent eco-cultural and culture-informed approaches. Then, culture-specific conceptualizations of development over the life span are discussed, focusing on development in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Finally, we concentrate on selected areas of social development and report on recent studies on subjective theories, transmissions of values, and intergenerational relations. These studies are discussed as aspects of a more extended interpersonal relations approach to development within culture. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol6/iss2/1

background

/pdf/the-role-of-culture-in-social-development-over-the-life-span-k7b6m850rv.pdf

Human Development in the Life Course

The Role of Culture in Social Development Over the Life Span : An Interpersonal Relations Approach

background or methods

/pdf/what-is-absent-in-drug-engagements-imagination-and-the-114u9tn5fr.pdf

What is "absent" in drug engagements?: imagination and the digital everyday living of young people with active drug use

People and societies are guided by what they imagine to lie beyond the present, by what can and should be the case in the future. Yet people do not always agree about the form, content or path to realisation of a given imagined future. As a result, conflicts can arise over something that does not exist yet. In this paper, I propose to integrate theories of social and alternative representations with a sociocultural psychological interpretation of imagination, in order to explore the addressivity of futures and to call for more studies that explicitly take into account the future’s role in the present. I draw on a dialogical case study that was carried out on the Faroe Islands, more precisely on the island of Suðuroy. Whereas the Faroe Islands are experiencing a rapid acceleration in growth, Suðuroy has failed to keep pace and has witnessed decades of emigration and a worsening of its population’s relative socio-economic situation. Islanders liken the current situation to standing at a crossroads, while being unable to agree on which path must be taken in order to reinvigorate a shrinking future. By analysing how one of the two major social representations constructs the other – its alternative representation – I suggest that the absence of transformative dialogue results from incompatible futures. Furthermore, in line with a sociocultural psychological perspective, I also attempt to move beyond the homogenising force inherent in social representation theory by introducing Ingolf and Karin, whose stories illustrate how social and alternative representations are not uniformly shared and enacted, but take different forms in light of unique life experiences.

“We were at this crossroads”: When imagined futures make or break transformative dialogue between social representations

Master Internship as an Opportunity for Personal Transitions: Analysing the First Experience with Psychological Practice of 3 Master Students

The Life of the Mind (1978) opens with a reflection of thinking. By thinking, Hannah Arendt means our capacity to withdraw from the world so as to reflect about the meaning of things. Thinking is an activity with no results in itself: searching for meaning, it cannot reach a goal, as any meaning hence produced can only be questioned again. Thinking is made possible through imagination, and demands the use of language and metaphors. It also has to be part of a form of inner dialogue – a moment in which we become two-in-one. Hence, Arendt seems to define thinking as a dynamic, mediated dialogical process of meaning making. In this paper, I first situate Arendt’s reflection on thinking within her life work. I then present her main propositions: that thinking is not knowing; that it demands a form of withdrawal; that it implies imagination; that it is mediated by language and metaphors; that it is a form of inner dialogue; and that it escapes time. Finally, I examine some of the implications of this approach to thinking for contemporary cultural psychology. 

Human Development in the Life Course

Citations

The Role of Culture in Social Development Over the Life Span : An Interpersonal Relations Approach

What is "absent" in drug engagements?: imagination and the digital everyday living of young people with active drug use

“We were at this crossroads”: When imagined futures make or break transformative dialogue between social representations

Master Internship as an Opportunity for Personal Transitions: Analysing the First Experience with Psychological Practice of 3 Master Students

The wind of thinking

Related Papers (5)

Life Course Health Development

Life, of Course

The Course of life

The Life Course

The Evolution of the Human Life Course