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11877 results in Cambridge Handbooks

Page 571 of 594

  • Chapter 17 - Perpetual Uncertainty of Cultural Life

  • from Part IV - Symbolic resources for the constitution of experience
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 362-372

  • Summary

    The best method to fight myths and legends about biological and cultural evolution of primate species is through interdisciplinary studies and discussions. One of the myths the author can find in archaeology and paleoanthropology manuals is the one related to the Homo faber concept. It would be strange that, facing similar ecological conditions, forest hominids had renounced the advantages of the instrumental behavior only because of being pre-humans. This instrumental behavior could have been even more frequent than in the case of chimpanzees, given the advantages of bipedalism (in the forest as in savannah) for manipulating and transporting tools. He thinks that the generalization about the first lithic industries as being a consequence of a higher intelligence in the human genus should be qualified and contrasted with the paleoecological conditions of East Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene. This chapter talks about when hominids started making camps at ground level.

  • Chapter 19 - “Myself, the Project”

  • from Part IV - Symbolic resources for the constitution of experience
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 404-420

  • Summary

    Psychology seemed to be condemned to be always searching for an object. This chapter devotes to the presentation of a résumé of Peirce's semiotic logic. The psychological status of the interpretant is dependent of the semiosis to which it belongs. The experience examined in the chapter is an enactive experience, it is the experience that presents the world, it is the experience that results from alive movement that produces the development of an agent and its change into actor. At the same time that the environment becomes intelligible, changes into a meaningful Umwelt where the organism learns what to do, so that its behavior follows a rationale. It is the kind of experience that exist before communication and language comes to the scenery. The chapter dwells on how movement turns in action, and the latter into actuations, so that meaningful objects, situations and the lived Umwelt can appear.

  • Chapter 26 - Culture and Social Representations

  • from Part VI - From social culture to personal culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 543-559

  • Summary

    A person using a symbolic resource is a person using a novel, a film, a picture, a song, or a ritual, to address an unfamiliar situation in her everyday life. This chapter sketches the historical background of the notion of symbolic resource, and highlights its potential for socio-cultural psychology. It gives a model for the analysis of uses of symbolic resources. The chapter shows how symbolic resources participate to psychological development because of their mediation of three basic psychological processes: intentionality, inscription in time, and distancing. It explains that the symbolic systems and artefacts have as major property the fact that they encapsulate human meaning and experience; people are constantly striving for meaning, especially in moments of change. However, it appears that social sciences are still unable to account for how cultural tools participate in people's personal meaning making, and emotional elaboration as part of psychic transformation.

  • Chapter 24 - Money as a Cultural Tool Mediating Personal Relationships

  • from Part V - From society to the person through culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 508-523

  • Summary

    This chapter disentangles experience, beliefs, consciousness, and the real by producing a narrative essay about the natural history of their evolution. It examines how communication in hierarchically organized groups offers the possibility for the production of conventional symbols, and so opens the path for humanization. The chapter then explores how conventional symbols come to appear, so that a subjective representation of situations can be taken to be real. The chapter describes the examination of how beliefs develop from dramatic actuations within a social Umwelt. Actuations are a product of the combination of actions that have a semiotic structure, and so produce understanding. The teleonomic character of action-semiosis, actuations and scripts for performing, makes the actor to accumulate resources (scripts) to face new situations. The chapter shows that reality makes itself apparent in consciousness through experiences, and these are as much a result of these encounters as to how psyche works.

  • Chapter 7 - Comparative Development of Communication

  • from Part II - From nature to culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 140-163

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the concept of communication traditionally and currently used in the field of ethology. It describes a few landmarks in the evolution of communication in the different species, paying particular on the mechanisms that regulate these features since this is where the levels of progressive complexity of processing are found. The different modalities of communication have evolved to serve the general function of regulating the (social) behavior of each species within its own ecological niche. The emergence of birds and mammals was accompanied by a reorganization of perceptive systems, which were for the first-time centralized in the brain. The chapter focuses on communication in primates, and in particular the anthropoids, since these animals make use of forms of communication very close to those of humans. Finally, the chapter focuses on describes the sign created by the hominid mind in order to facilitate communication between minds.

  • Chapter 14 - Dramaturgical Actuations and Symbolic Communication

  • from Part IV - Symbolic resources for the constitution of experience
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 293-317

  • Summary

    Socio-cultural psychology is widely known as a theory and research field that stresses the determinant role of social interaction and culture in the development of the higher psychological functions. This chapter presents a view of the human subject that avoided dualism (mind-body, individual-social, physical-symbolic) and was capable of bridging the gap between the basic psychological processes and the higher processes involving consciousness and meaning. It describes the reorganization of dynamic systems as a key concept for the description and explanation of perception and movement. The main claim is that the kind of explanation including self-organization and temporal dynamics applied to the development of perception and action may be useful for the explanation of how socialization and enculturation processes develop. The chapter explores the concept of re-mediation, and the practices from it derived, which are one of the privileged arenas where basic psychological processes and socio-cultural phenomena have historically intersected.

  • Chapter 22 - “Culture Has No Internal Territory”

  • from Part V - From society to the person through culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 460-483

  • Summary

    This chapter introduces the Network of Meanings, a theoretical methodological perspective, which is being constructed for the investigation and understanding of the complex processes of human development. Initially, the Network of Meanings perspective was elaborated for the study of the insertion of babies into day care. This perspective proposes development as occurring throughout life span, as time irreversible co-constructions of active persons, in the course of the multiple interactions and relations established, within culturally and socially organized environments. The interactive processes established among persons within specific contexts are considered as embedded in and traversed by a socio-historical matrix, which is conceived as being composed by social, economical, historical, political, and cultural elements. Multiple developmental trajectories are possible to be conceived based on the adopted assumptions, especially on the notion of constraint, which at each moment and situation sets some limits and possibilities for the person's development.

  • Chapter 20 - Apprenticeship in Conversation and Culture

  • from Part V - From society to the person through culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 423-443

  • Summary

    This chapter proposes a new way to approach the ontogenesis of symbol formation: the analysis of movement and its relation to the development of action. First, it highlights some of the essential traits of movement, both during the early adult-child dyad as well as in temporal arts. The chapter discusses the capacity that movement has to express vital affections and modes of temporal organization of movements: alternation, synchrony, and the repetition-variation form. It then suggests that the variations in the quality of movement, the attunements, and the repetition-variation forms that constitute the social circular reactions are elaborations, in the Dissanayake sense, which have the virtue to drive an ongoing flow of the vitality affects. Finally, the chapter proposes that the elaborations that compose the social circular reactions undergo a gradual externalization process beyond the dyad.

  • Chapter 34 - The Social Basis of Self-Reflection

  • from Part VII - Making sense of the past for the future: memory and self-reflection
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 678-691

  • Summary

    This chapter summarizes theory and research descended from Vygotsky and his followers that takes seriously the idea that practice is essential for testing and improving "cultural-historical activity theory" (CH/AT). It reviews some theoretical principles used in CH/AT-inspired intervention research. As applied to the domain of mathematics, the Elkonin-Davydov curriculum is designed to provide students with the clearest possible understanding of the concept of real number. Davydov's work was initially a key inspiration for the Finnish group of activity theorists who have expanded the use of the theory to the world of work. The work led to an intervention toolkit based on the principle of double stimulation. The chapter also discusses the 5th Dimension idiocultures, which routinely create an institutionalized version of a zone of proximal development for participants. Like the Change Laboratories, those who would use the 5th Dimension to challenge CH/AT theories turn to "real life" measures of effectiveness.

  • Chapter 8 - The Material Practices of Ape Language Research

  • from Part II - From nature to culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 164-186

  • Summary

    Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, took into account both profiles of Psyche: the biological and individual, and the collective and social-cultural historical. It is easy to see how easily the primary focus of a science may shift from phenomena-centered activities to social group organizational activities. History of psychology gives us ample evidence of how originally intellectually productive theories became fixated upon their own role, entered into various social disputes with others, and became fossilized. There are two implicit functions of theories in psychology: (a) theories are tools for taking a new look at the phenomena; and (b) theories set mental (and socio-ideological) positions. Obviously it is only the first of these two functions that has relevance for Wissenschaft. The latter is the function of theories that has undoubtedly central relevance for a science's relations with the socioideological texture of the given society at the time.

  • Chapter 1 - The Myth, and Beyond

  • from Part I - Theoretical and methodological issues
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 23-39

  • Summary

    Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, took into account both profiles of Psyche: the biological and individual, and the collective and social-cultural historical. It is easy to see how easily the primary focus of a science may shift from phenomena-centered activities to social group organizational activities. History of psychology gives us ample evidence of how originally intellectually productive theories became fixated upon their own role, entered into various social disputes with others, and became fossilized. There are two implicit functions of theories in psychology: (a) theories are tools for taking a new look at the phenomena; and (b) theories set mental (and socio-ideological) positions. Obviously it is only the first of these two functions that has relevance for Wissenschaft. The latter is the function of theories that has undoubtedly central relevance for a science's relations with the socioideological texture of the given society at the time.

  • Chapter 9 - The End of Myths and Legends About the Biological and Cultural Evolution

  • from Part II - From nature to culture
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 187-202

  • Summary

    This chapter addresses how do language, cognition, and subjectivity relate each other. Language is constitutive of the speaking animal's being-in-the world, or in less philosophical terms, language is constitutive of humans' position or situation in the world. Since the early 20th century, cultural differences between languages have been a major topic of scientific debate in linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. The chapter explains some of the theoretical and methodical domains, which currently set much of social and cultural psychology's agenda. It focuses on the relation between language and culture with respect to discourse analysis, theory of social representations, and metaphor analysis. The chapter provides suggestions for cultural psychology's core research aims and research practice. It argues that cultural psychology, needs to clearly dissociate from an objectivistic-naturalistic, a historical understanding of its objects and of itself in order to value the originality of human creations.

  • Chapter 13 - Network of Meanings

  • from Part III - From orientation to meaning
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 277-290

  • Summary

    Mediationism extends across two contrasting approaches to theory in psychology, namely, the dominant tradition of individualistic, cognitive theory, and the too loyal "opposition" consisting of various alternative approaches. Within cognitive psychology, mediationism has primarily taken the form of representationalism: the appeal to internal rules and representations as a necessary and sufficient basis for explanation within human psychology. The dualisms of matter and mind and of biology and culture are institutionalized in the very structure of modern academic disciplines. Some of the most influential current approaches within social psychology are frank extensions of individualistic cognitive theory to the interpersonal realm, and so it is hardly surprising that representationalism figures centrally in both. The curious thing about the windowless room of mediationism is that there are so many ways of getting into it. Taking note of those different ways is an important first step towards getting over mediationism.

  • Chapter 33 - Issues in the Socio-Cultural Study of Memory

  • from Part VII - Making sense of the past for the future: memory and self-reflection
  • Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Clark University, Massachusetts, Alberto Rosa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 June 2007, pp 661-677

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the problems with essentialist approaches to culture and explores an alternative, dialogic, approach to the problem of "cultural mismatch". There are at least two different types of approaches to the notion of "culture" that are used in educational research and practices. The chapter argues that the essentialist type of approaches to culture, although useful at times, can lead to unilateral pedagogies while the dialogic approach to culture promotes collaboration and dialogue among the teacher and the students. The proponents of adult-run unilateralism argue that the students from non-mainstream and often economically and politically disadvantaged communities need to learn how to successfully navigate and operate in mainstream institutions that White middle-class teachers represent. The chapter describes that successful teachers often develop creole communities in their classrooms in response to perceived interactional and communicational breakdowns instead of using an essentialist perspective of pre-existing cultures.

Page 571 of 594