Cultural Psychology Of Intervention In The Globalized World

The interventions have ranged between benevolent exchanges to powerful influences as well as military domination. Although interpersonal and group influence has been an important domain of study in Social Psychology, we propose to take a fresh look at these phenomena from the specific orientations provided by the discipline of Cultural Psychology. In this perspective, meaning making processes becomes a key for understanding the everyday experiences of the receivers and agents of intervention. In this volume, we see how attending to meaning-making processes becomes crucial when researching or intervening within cultural encounters and global everyday life. It is through listening to the foreign other, to attend to their immediate experiences, as well as exploring how meaning may be mediated and co-constructed by them in everyday life through organizational structures, informal peer network, traditional rituals or symbols, that collaboration can be created and sustained.

Publisher description

This book promotes constructive and nuanced transdisciplinary understandings of some of the critical problems that we face on a global scale today by thinking with and from the Global South. It is engaged in transmodernising, pluriversalising, decolonising, queering, and/or posthumanising thinking and practice. The book aims to contribute to and challenge current debates regarding knowledge, diversity, and change. This is achieved through the application of transdisciplinary and indisciplined perspectives to the Himalayan Anthropocene; transport services in Mexico City; the EU-Turkey border regimes and policy; egoism and the decolonisation of whiteness; the Witch and the decolonisation of the gender binary; Nepalese students in Denmark; and the decolonisation of global health promotion. The book thereby provides the reader a multiplicity of pathways of knowledges and practices that address current problems co-produced by the dominant Western colonial onto-epistemic outset, giving way to ‘other’ knowledge-practices, towards a pluriversal approach. This book will be of interest to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in disciplines such as human geography, development studies, politics, international relations, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, planning, and philosophy. It is also relevant to researchers, development workers and human rights/environmental activists, and other intellectual practitioners.

Cultural competence is more than an admirable goal: it is an essential skill set for mental health professionals working in a diverse global society marked by crisis and trauma. It is essential for clinicians to understand the intricate mix of history and self-concept, identity and tradition that are central not only for ameliorating psychological problems but to foster psychological health and well-being. As the definition of culture takes on broader meanings-at once embracing multiple identities and increasing globalization- Cultural Competency Training in a Global Society brings a vital perspective and practical understanding to clinical, counseling, and school psychologists, as well as to graduate students entering these fields. By describing a comprehensive training model for professional education and practice in the United States with ethnic minority groups, indigenous populations, immigrants, and refugees, this book has relevance for other multicultural societies because the implications are multidisciplinary in focus and potentially international in scope. The existing and emergent global multicultural populations described in this book represent the neglected human faces of economic globalization. Among the topics covered: Requirements for professional training in cultural competency. Research basis for cultural competency training. International resources and their usage in training and practice. Multicultural assessment in the service of intervention. Evaluating cultural competency training.

This edited volume brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the fields of theoretical, critical, and political psychology to examine crisis phenomena. The book investigates the role of psychology as a science in times of crisis, discusses how socio-political change affects the discipline and profession, and renders psychological interventions as forms of political action. The authors examine how notions of crisis and the interpretation of crisis scenarios are heavily intertwined with governmental and state interests. Seeking to disentangle individual subjectivity, subjectification, and science as forms of politics, the volume works toward an explicit goal to decolonize psychology. The chapters elaborate on the importance of the psychological sciences in times of crisis and the role of psychologists as practitioners. Ultimately, the diverse contributions underline the connection of scientific theory, practice, and politics. Interdisciplinary in scope and wide-ranging in its perspectives, this timely work will appeal to students and scholars of theoretical and political psychology, critical psychology, and cultural studies.

Jaan Valsiner has made numerous contributions to the development of psychology over the last 40 years. He is internationally recognized as a leader and innovator within both developmental psychology and cultural psychology, and has received numerous prizes for his work: the Alexander von Humboldt prize, the Hans Killian prize, and the Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association. Having taught at Universities in Europe, Asia and north and south America, he is currently Niels Bohr professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. This book is the first to discuss in detail the different sides of Valsiner’s thought, including developmental science, semiotic mediation, cultural transmission, aesthetics, globalization of science, epistemology, methodology and the history of ideas. The book provides an overview, evaluation and extension of Valsiner’s key ideas for the construction of a dynamic cultural psychology, written by his former students and colleagues from around the world.

Foundations of the Psychological Intervention presents a new General Theory for Psychological Intervention (GTPI), delving into how its methodology can be applied across diverse psychological contexts. Rooted in semiotic cultural psychology and guided by the GTPI framework, this book offers a cohesive perspective of psychology, addressing the prevailing fragmentation evident in various domains of psychology such as health, sports, forensic, organisational, and clinical psychology. The framework establishes a foundation of methods and techniques that render psychological interventions applicable across various domains, substantiated by concrete examples from different areas. With chapters revolving around theories of action, change and the client dynamics, this groundbreaking work provides both a conceptual and methodological structure to underpin domain-specific theories and methodologies, thereby strengthening the conceptual links among distinct domains of psychology. As one of the first works to develop a theory and method of intervention across multiple psychological domains, this book will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers specialising in cultural psychology, clinical psychology, health psychology, and the philosophy of psychology. Moreover, it serves as a useful reading for practising psychologists and psychology professionals.

Liminality has become a key concept within the social sciences, with a growing number of publications devoted to it in recent years. The concept is needed to address those aspects of human experience and social life that fall outside of ordered structures. In contrast to the clearly defined roles and routines that define so much of industrial work and economic life, it highlights spaces of transition, indefiniteness, ambiguity, play and creativity. Thus, it is an indispensable concept and a necessary counterweight to the overemphasis on structural influences on human behavior. This book aims to use the concept of liminality to develop a culturally and experientially sensitive psychology. This is accomplished by first setting out an original theoretical framework focused on understanding the ‘liminal sources of cultural experience,’ and second an application of concept to a number of different domains, such as tourism, pilgrimage, aesthetics, children’s play, art therapy, and medical diagnosis. Finally, all these domains are then brought together in a concluding commentary chapter that puts them in relation to an overarching theoretical framework. This book will be useful for graduate students and researchers in cultural psychology, critical psychology, psychosocial psychology, developmental psychology, health psychology, anthropology and the social sciences, cultural studies among others.