Book•
Imagination in Human and Cultural Development
16 Jul 2015-
TL;DR: The Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan as discussed by the authors, and the authors take into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination and the outcomes of imagination.
Abstract: This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest
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TL;DR: It is argued that a better understanding of the possible can help us cultivate it in both mind and society.
Abstract: In this editorial I introduce the possible as an emerging field of inquiry in psychology and related disciplines Over the past decades, significant advances have been made in connected areas – counterfactual thinking, anticipation, prospection, imagination and creativity, etc – and several calls have been formulated in the social sciences to study human beings and societies as systems that are open to possibility and to the future However, engaging with the possible, in the sense of both becoming aware of it and actively exploring it, represents a subject in need of further theoretical elaboration In this paper, I review several existing approaches to the possible before briefly outlining a new, sociocultural account While the former are focused on cognitive processes and uphold the old dichotomy between the possible and the actual or real, the latter grows out of a social ontology grounded in notions of difference, positions, perspectives, reflexivity, and dialogue In the end, I argue that a better understanding of the possible can help us cultivate it in both mind and society
56 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the debate and introduced the recent concepts of position exchange and symbolic resources, focusing on the societal side of culture, on the way in which social situations shape people's experiences.
Abstract: Internalization, the process by which culture becomes mind, is a core concept in cultural psychology. However, since the 1990s it has also been the source of debate. Critiques have focused on the underlying metaphor of internal-external as problematic. It has been proposed that appropriation provides a better conceptualization, a term that focuses attention more on behavior and less on psychological processes. The present article reviews the debate and introduces the recent concepts of position exchange and symbolic resources. Position exchange focuses on the societal side of culture, on the way in which social situations shape people’s experiences. Symbolic resources focus on culture in terms of specific elements, such as books, films, and so on, which also shape people’s experiences. The key idea common to both position exchange and symbolic resources is that people move through culture, both physically and psychologically. Moving through culture shapes a series of experiences across the lifecourse, and...
56 citations
Cites background from "Imagination in Human and Cultural D..."
...Also, we have retraced the mutual development of these dynamics in a developmental, recursive model elsewhere (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016)....
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Book•
16 Feb 2017
TL;DR: The Constructive Mind as mentioned in this paper is an integrative study of the psychologist Frederic Bartlett's life, work and legacy, where Wagoner contextualises the development of key ideas in relation to his predecessors and contemporaries.
Abstract: The Constructive Mind is an integrative study of the psychologist Frederic Bartlett's (1886–1969) life, work and legacy. Bartlett is most famous for the idea that remembering is constructive and for the concept of schema; for him, 'constructive' meant that human beings are future-oriented and flexibly adaptive to new circumstances. This book shows how his notion of construction is also central to understanding social psychology and cultural dynamics, as well as other psychological processes such as perceiving, imagining and thinking. Wagoner contextualises the development of Bartlett's key ideas in relation to his predecessors and contemporaries. Furthermore, he applies Bartlett's constructive analysis of cultural transmission in order to chart how his ideas were appropriated and transformed by others that followed. As such this book can also be read as a case study in the continuous reconstruction of ideas in science.
55 citations
TL;DR: Two possible implications of the paper are highlighted, one concerning the process of theoretical reasoning, the other, the fact that sociocultural psychology could itself be seen as an institution in-the-making.
Abstract: The value of case studies for theory building is still doubted in psychology. The paper argues for the importance of case studies and the possibility of generalizing from these for a specific sociocultural understanding of human development. The paper first clarifies the notion of abduction within case studies, drawing on pragmatists James and Peirce and expanding it with the work of Lewin, and argues that it is the core mechanism that allows generalization from case studies. The second section presents the possibility of generalizing from individual single case studies, for which not only the subjective perspective, but also the dynamics by which the social and cultural environment guide and enable the person’s development, have to be accounted for. The third section elaborates the question of institutional case studies, where the challenge is to account both for institutional dynamics, and for persons’ trajectories within; this is exemplified with an ongoing study on the process of obtaining citizenship in Switzerland. The paper briefly concludes by highlighting two possible implications of the paper, one concerning the process of theoretical reasoning, the other, the fact that sociocultural psychology could itself be seen as an institution in-the-making.
50 citations
TL;DR: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract: Europe's Journal of Psychology, 2015, Vol. 11(4), 557–564, doi:10.5964/ejop.v11i4.1085 Published (VoR): 2015-11-27. *Corresponding author at: Department of Communication & Psychology, Aalborg University, Kroghstræde 3, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark. E-mail: vlad@hum.aau.dk This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
26 citations
Cites background from "Imagination in Human and Cultural D..."
...…draws on existing cultural resources, as well as past experience, in ways that enrich our here and now (bringing in the general, the possible, the impossible) and open it to new temporal dimensions (such as the future, the past we have not experienced, etc.) (see Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015)....
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