Cultural Psychology Of Recursive Processes

Cultural Psychology of Recursivity illustrates how recursivity, often neglected in the social sciences, can be an important concept for illuminating meaning-making processes. Recusrivity is a fascinating though abstract concept with a wide array of often incompatible definitions. Rooted in mathematics and linguistics, this book brings recursion and recursive processes to the foreground of psychological processes. One unifying claim among the diverse chapters in this book is that recursion and recursive processes are at the core of complex social and psychological processes. Recursion is bound up with the notion of re-turning, re-examining, re-flecting and circling back, and these processes allow for human beings to simultaneously distance themselves from the here-and-now settings (by imaging the past and future) while being immersed in them. The objective of this book is not simply to celebrate the complexity of human living, but to extend the notion of recursion, recursivity and recursive processes into the realm of social and psychological processes beyond the arenas in which these ideas have currently thrived. Cultural Psychology of Recursivity shows that in spite of the difficulty in defining recursivity, self-referencing (looping), transformation (generativity), complexity, and holism constitute its core characteristics and provide the basis for which authors in this book explore and elaborate this concept. Still, each contribution has its own unique take on recursivity and how it is applied to their phenomenon of investigation. Chapters in this book examine how recursive processes are related to and basic aspects of play and ritual, imitation, identity exploration, managing stigma, and commemorative practices. This book is intended for psychologists, sociologists, and mathematicians. Use of the book in post-graduate and graduate level of university teaching is expected in seminar format teaching occasions.

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.

Putting subjectivity back in psychology and in social sciences is the aim of this volume. Subjectivity is a core psychological dimension but frequently forgotten. Without a full understanding of the uniqueness of each human life our understanding of psychological life fails to reach its aim. This book explores precisely the field of subjectivity, offering the reader different and innovative views on this challenging theme. This book is an asset for all those interested in understanding how the mind operates as a subjectifying process and how this subjectifying mind is simultaneously the product and the content of feeling an unique and unrepeatable subjective life. By bringing together renowned and emergent experts in the field, it provides a fresh new look on the human mind. The reader will find thought?provoking and challenging contributions of 26 different scholars, from 10 countries. It covers a wide range of perspectives and approaches, such as dialogical perspectives, cultural psychology approaches, developmental psychology, feminist perspectives, semiotics, and anthropology. This volume will be very much recommended for all sorts of scholars and students in social and human sciences interested in the human mind and in subjectivity. It will be adequate for different levels of teaching, from undergraduate to master courses. It also meant to be understood for all readers interested in the topic.

This volume aims at further articulating and developing the cultural psychological interest in community. It focuses on the processes through which individuals constitute communities and the processes that restrain or enable moving forward with others. This interest is necessary especially now that the world is on the move. Economic crises, political crises and ecological crises have led to reinforced migration patterns, a rise in authoritarianism and xenophobia, and have become a threat to the survival of the world as we know it, particularly to minorities and indigenous communities. At the same time, we are witnessing the birth of new networks, dialogues and actions, generated by people within, between and among communities. Therefore, this volume collects interdisciplinary theoretical, empirical and applied contributions enabling engagement with communities in cultural psychology. This involves both reflections on meaning-making processes and projections on how they feed into social transformation, in exchange with community psychology, anthropology and sociology. People vitally depend on community to effectively negotiate or resist in complex intercultural or intergroup settings. In the wake of human rights violations or to prevent further damage to the environment a community is needed to undertake action. From feminist movements and disability activism to the otherwise marginalized: how do people constitute communities? How do they resist as a community? How can cultural psychology contribute not only to understand meaning-making processes, but also connect them to processes of social transformation? Migration, moving through and connecting to different communities can affect meaning making in significant ways. People consider themselves as members of one or another community, but they also increasingly enter into new settings of social practice with new means for action. How might creative meaning-making build bridges between communities? How might new community arise in between or with others? How can cultural psychology deal with intercultural processes without reifying different cultures? These are the central questions that the, mostly emerging, scholars from many corners of the world address in this book. Their research addresses different institutional settings that are resisted and transformed from within, in dialogue with others. From social work, NGOs and municipal activity to university talent mobility and art projects for youth. Other settings are newly inhabited, from the public square and the social media to a foreign city and neighborhood church. Thus, more communities appear on the map of cultural psychology.

This book brings pragmatic theory and praxis into dialogue with contemporary psychodynamic ideas, practitioners, and clinical issues. Generally considered as a historical footnote to psychoanalysis, the chapters in this volume demonstrate pragmatism’s continued relevance for contemporary thought. Not only does pragmatism share many of the values and sensibilities of contemporary psychodynamics, its rich philosophical and theoretical emphasis on active meaning making and agentic being in the world complements and extends current thinking about the social nature of self and mind, how we occupy space in the world, non-linear development, and processes of communication.

The book deals with current issues, pertinent every healthcare relationship. Changes in medicine as well as some constant aspects over time arise within a cultural ground and generate new questions and issues that are not only purely medical, but also bioethical, social, political, economic and psychological of course. On the one hand, changes in medicine generate new questions for society, on the other hand, the society poses new questions to the medicine, new challenges, and in some cases they can conflict with consolidated models and practices. Never the progress of Western medicine and its therapeutic practices have been as significant as in the last decades but the increase of specific competence and effectiveness of medical treatments are not linearly translated into an increase of consensus, dialogue and alliance between medicine and society. How does psychology take on a position of interlocutor towards medicine and its transformations? How does Cultural Psychology, Health Psychology, Clinical Psychology confront themselves with the processes of meaning making generated by medicine? The interest of the book is aimed to grasp the construction of processes of cultural, relational and subjective meaning in the dialogical encounter between medicine and society, between doctor and patient. The book intends to focus in particular on two specific plans: on the one hand, to present a reflection and analysis on contemporary medicine and its on?going transformations of the healthcare relationship; on the other hand, to present and discuss experiences of intervention and possible models of intervention addressed to healthcare and doctor?patient relationships during its crucial steps (consultation, formulation and communication of diagnosis, therapy, conclusion). The book’s purposes are aimed to discuss crucial and current issues on the borders between medicine and psychology: consensus and sharing, decision?making and autonomy, subjectivity and narration, emotions and affectivity, medical semeiotics and cultural semiotics, training of physicians, and epistemological, theoretical and methodological issues.

This book is long awaited within the contemporarily creative field of cultural psychologies. It is a theoretical synthesis that is at the level of innovations that Sigmund Freud, James Mark Baldwin, William Stern, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Jan Smedslund have brought into psychology over the past century. Here we can observe a creative solution to integrating cultural psychology with the rich traditions of psychodynamic perspectives, without repeating the conceptual impasses in which many psychoanalytic perspectives have become caught.

"How can psychology professors in the USA and other nations make their courses more international?" This question is addressed in this indispensable new sourcebook, co-authored by 73 contributors and editors from 21 countries. In recent decades psychology has evolved from an American-dominated discipline to a much more global discipline. Preliminary estimates by Zoma and Gielen (2015) suggest that approximately 76%-78% of the world’s one million or so psychologists reside outside the U.S. However, most textbooks in the field continue to rely predominantly on research conducted in North America and Europe. Our book is intended to introduce psychology instructors to a variety of broad perspectives as well as specific suggestions that can support their efforts to internationalize their course offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In this way they can prepare their students to become more culturally sensitive and function more effectively as citizens and psychologists in the evolving globalized world. To achieve these ambitious goals the editors have assembled an international group of 73 distinguished contributors who, taken together, have taught and conducted research in all regions of the world. The chapters in the book include both core areas of psychology and subdisciplines that represent rapidly expanding and internationally important areas such as cross-cultural psychology and the psychology of gender. The chapters cover key topics and areas included in the course offerings of psychology departments both in the United States and in other countries. In addition to a discussion of international perspectives relevant to a given area, all chapters include an annotated bibliography of pertinent books, articles, web-related materials, films, videos, and so on. Based on this information, both highly experienced and less experienced psychology instructors can add globally and culturally oriented dimensions to their respective courses. This is important because universities, departments, and accrediting agencies increasingly put pressure on instructors to broaden and internationalize their courses. "As a long-time international psychologist myself, I see this bold new volume as a great leap forward for international psychology. The 73 distinguished contributors and editors from 21 countries have carefully crafted a handbook that will be the go-to resource on the topic for years to come. For psychology to continue to be relevant in the 21st century it must become more international; I am grateful this book will help us accomplish this challenging but rewarding goal." ~ Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph.D Past-President American Psychological Association "What could be more important than understanding human behavior and the thoughts and emotions that underlie it? By teaching psychology to the world, we offer the possibility of using our discipline to create a better future for all of us. The chapters in this excellent book help teachers of psychology move from an ethnocentric perspective to a global way of thinking about and telling about a truly international psychology." ~ Diane F. Halpern, Ph.D Past-President of the American Psychological Association and Professor of Psychology "This is a brilliant, unprecedented collection of international scholarship that every psychology professor and student should read. The 21st century in the teaching of psychology has truly arrived with this book, creating a thoroughly needed international focus for our pedagogy." ~ Frank Farley, Ph.D, L. H. Carnell Professor, Temple University; Former President, American Psychological Association (APA), International Council of Psychologists, American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Society for International Psychology (Division 52 of APA) "Internationalizing Teaching of Psychology contains chapters authored by eminent psychologists of diverse cultural background, inclusive of different cultural perspectives on range of topics of contemporary importance. Thus, the volume integrates research emanating from varied cultural contexts facilitating development of a truly universal psychological science. The volume is a major resource for teaching courses on Cultural/Cross-cultural /Global psychology and in enhancing internationalization of psychology." ~ Prof. Janak Pandey, University of Allahabad, India, Editor, Psychology in India: The State-of-the-Art "All involved in the training of psychologists will want to recommend this book, which thoroughly presents an international perspective on the teaching of psychology. Rich, Gielen and Takooshian consider the basic nature of psychology, at the same time emphasizing cultural differences and relating it all to real life. As expert, cross-cultural researchers, the contributors provide a much needed resource and up-to-date reference for psychologists and students, as well as for any scholar interested in our discipline around the globe." ~ Laura Hernández-Guzmán, Ph. D. Professor of Psychology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Past-President of the Mexican Psychological Society "Since the mid-twentieth century the world has become an increasingly smaller place, at least in the figurative sense. And yet, Western psychology has been slow to grasp the culturally limited scope of much of our science. Although the movement toward a more culturally inclusive psychology had its roots at least as early as the 1960s, more recent meta-analyses have shown that a large percentage of the psychological literature has represented a small percentage of the world’s population. In Internationalizing the Teaching of Psychology, Grant Rich, Uwe Gielen, and Harold Takooshian are making a noteworthy effort to inform and support teachers who would move the field toward a psychology of all people. From advice about getting involved in international psychology, to stand-alone international psychology courses, to the problems of culture-bound specialized courses, these well-traveled and experienced editors have assembled a resource that psychology teachers will find both interesting and valuable." ~ Kenneth D. Keith, President, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, University of San Diego "This volume is a positive contribution to the internationalization of the psychology curriculum. Given the very large numbers of psychology undergraduate and graduate students across the world, such internationalization has significant potential to provide learners with opportunities to better understand the similarities and differences in the behavior of humans in different local, national and international contexts. Such understanding can lead to a greater appreciation of, and perhaps respect for and celebration of, these similarities and differences, thus potentially leading to actions that reduce global human suffering. This volume should become an indispensable tool for psychology educators interested in such outcomes." ~ Jacquelyn Cranney, Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Australia "This book is a necessity, given the increasing mobility of psychologists, use of technology in psychology practice, and need to regulate the psychology profession globally. The content in this book will go a long way to improve psychological literacy in our East and Central Africa region. I chaired the first ever East and Central African Regional Psychology Conference in Uganda in 2013 and am on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Applied Psychologists (IAAP), so am keenly aware that the internationalization of scientific psychology knowledge and skills is an imperative." ~ James Kagaari, Ph.D, President, Uganda Council of Psychologists "Teaching psychology in your own country—especially when it is a country as vast and diverse as the United States, where fewer than half its citizens hold a passport—makes it all too easy to give courses in which students come away with the impression that what psychological scientists have learned about behavior and mental processes at home applies equally in the rest of the world. That is not always the case, of course, and the chapters in this valuable volume serve not only to remind us of that fact, but to stimulate us to consider adjusting the content of our courses to make them, as they should be, more international in scope." ~ Douglas Bernstein, Courtesy Professor of Psychology, University of South Florida USA "Bravo to this all-star cast of international contributors for showing us how to help students appreciate both our cultural diversity and our human kinship—and for providing us with accessible articles, books, media, and online materials for teaching every area of psychology from a more international perspective." ~ David G. Myers, Hope College, co-author, Psychology 12th Edition and Social Psychology, 12th Edition "Imagine that you convened an invitation-only panel of 73 experts from around the world and asked that they guide the profession in internationalizing the teaching of psychology. This book would be the impressive result! Here’s the definitive, how-to guide on adding global and cross-cultural perspectives to courses throughout the psychology curricula." ~ John C. Norcross, Ph.D, ABPP, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at University of Scranton, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University "In today’s increasingly interconnected world, the ever-emerging importance and impact of integrating psychology into education is powerfully presented in this book. The editors – themselves outstanding experts in the field – have assembled an exceptionally impressive collection of 28 chapters by 73 expert contributors covering varied aspects of teaching psychology from an international and multicultural perspective. Educators, students, psychologists, as well as stakeholders in related disciplines will find the theories and practical guides as essential and useful resources." ~ Judy Kuriansky, PhD, United Nations NGO representative, the International Association of Applied Psychology; Department of Psychology, Columbia University Teachers College