Transcript Forbløffende praksisser (C.Hasse 2004)

Culture, Memory and Self-hood: an
interdisciplinary field
Cultural psychology – psychological
anthropology
"We realized that if we could go and study
carefully the diverse ways of different
groups of human beings, like us in body
and brain, strangely unlike us in all of their
learned behaviour, we could add
enormously to our knowledge of human
potentialities."(Margaret Mead 1956, pg. 11, The Culture and
Personality School)
Culture and Personality School
Social anthropologists today
would have us view the life of
an individual within a society as
a series of social transactions,
and many believe that a great
part of that individual's self
image is formed by the quality
of thes transactions. (Benedict, 1934, Patterns
of Culture 258).
CHAT
`every function in the child’s cultural
development appears twice: First on the
social level, and later on the psychological
level; first, between people
(interpsychological), and then inside the
child (intrapsychological). This applies
equally to voluntary attention, to logical
memory, and to the formation of
concepts. All higher functions originate as
actual relations between human
individuals` (Vygotsky 1978: 57).
Enduring questions and disputes
 1.
Where is culture – the level
discussion (How is culture
defined? Are we cultural
dopes?)
 2. How do we study culture?
(Why is it so difficult to keep
culture in mind? Cultural
universality/specificity Cole 1996)
Methodology
Why is it so difficult to keep culture in mind?
(Cole 1996)
Where is culture in the scientific mind?
Wundt's ethnopsychology or
Volkerpsychologie:
(The second psychology)
Setting: Not the lab, but natural and
sociocultural surroundings
Method: Not experimental, but participant
observational, in-debt-interviews,
questionnaires etc.
Answers: Not universal laws, but practical
applications

From cross-cultural psychology to the
second psychology
Thus, the topic becomes not reaction times
and errors in the laboratory, but actions
mediated by artifacts.
The new, genetic method includes multiple
time scales of history, ontogenesis, and
microgenesis. The setting involves
everyday activities and laws get replaced
by practical applications.
In this new science, mind emerges in joint
mediated activity-social practices
internalized by active agents.
Michael Cole 1996 Cultural Psychology
Positioneret deltager-observation
(C.Hasse 2000)
The levels – the researchers decisions
Where is culture? What are the limits
of what scientists call culture?
1.
The
individual/subject level
2. The culture level
Claude Levi-Strauss' (1963)
definition: "What is called
'culture' is a fragment of
humanity which, from the
point of view of the research
at hand . . . presents
significant discontinuities in
relation to the rest of
humanity.”(p.295 , Bruner/Cole op cit. 1972).
Can culture get under peoples skin?


Make implicit cultural organisations of
knowledge, building on assumptions, tacit
beliefs and connections explicit
(D’Andrade & Strauss 1992).
The cultural models are formed in
practices and “doings”, while they on their
part give directive force to certain
motivations, without making persons
‘cultural dopes’ (Holland & Quinn 1987,
Strauss 1992).
Psyche cannot be
separated from the
historically changing and
culturally different
intentional worlds in
which it plays a
constitutive part”
“The
R.A. Shweder Cultural
Psychology (1990)
“..often
transparent to
those who use it. Once
learned, it becomes
what one sees with,
but seldom what one
sees”
(Hutchins, E (1980) Culture and Inference. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. P. 12)
Questions to the papers
In proplongation Ole Michael Spaten's discussion of
Bruner (children construct identity without stable core
self, without continuity?) vs Mead (children construct
their identity – as suggest – through social interaction)?
1. Is there a contradiction?
Astrid Kleis, Lisa Schröder & Heidi Keller argue there is a
cultural diversity in ‚autonomous vs. related‘ in motherchild reminiscing connected to different cultural models
of the self
2. How can we find cultural diversity as researchers if our
subject matter is itself without continuity?
Questions to the papers
In Manuel L. De la Mata Benítez et al. it is argued that self and
autobiographical memory construct each other through
narratives and that we can evidence cultural as well as gender
differences.
3. To what extent are the results scientific constructions
of cultural diversity taking the nationstate as ‘culture’ and
how are accounts of internal complexities within the
groups of Mexicans, Spain and Denmark included (and the
same for gender).
Tia Hansen has explicitly taken up the problem of levels.
4. When we find diversity across generations can culture
be defined by nation states ( ‘Danish’ culture vs. ‘North
American’) or is culture connected to collective activity?
How does history – as culture – get ‘under peoples skin’?