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Scientists from six countries, well known for their work in the field of identity research, explain and comment on methodological approaches used to research identity. This book concentrates on qualitative methods, such as narrative identity analysis or semi-structured interviewing techniques to determine identity status, as well as the quantitative method of using questionnaires. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these methods and their future integration. The reader will learn about qualitative and quantitative research and discover the similarities and differences between the methods of researching identity, depending on research with methodological roots in one field,...
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 renown...
This book presents an integrative perspective on home or Heimat showing that it is much more than the place we were born or where we live. This book brings fresh theoretical and empirical perspectives on what home is and can be from different viewpoints. The chapters invite the reader to face challenging questions of what we learn about Heimat, when it is taken from us, threatened, left on purpose or when we set out on the journey to find one. The chapters are written by psychologists throughout, but are expanded in perspective by comments from the groups of people featured in the chapters, who are thus given their own voice. The book concludes with a suggestion on how to unite all the diffe...
What sparks a psychologist’s interest in a certain phenomenon? Is it a symptom, a syndrome, a treatment, the usual, the exceptional, the group, the individual? An epistemologist, for example, focuses on the group and delivers group results. The clinician has to focus on the patient, although the patient may be perceived as one of a group (e.g., all patients with the same disease). The patient usually focuses on the clinician, but can take other opinions into account; especially, when the clinician is not considered to be the only authority. These dynamics – observable in therapy as well as in research – are critically reflected in this book, not only highlighting differences, but also commonalities individuals share: They all filter information and concentrate on certain aspects according to their socialization. They all have different expectations and can, yet, all deal with the same objective. Communication and building relationships seem to be vital – this book aims to support this quest by moving from the universal to the particular.
This volume attempts to delineate the construction of the self in institutional settings of the contemporary world, with the topics ranging from young children to adults and from the micro level to the macro level of human development. The chapters focus on the activities or practices that characterize institutional settings, stressing their dialogical nature that enables understanding human development and the self as what emerge from the dialectic tension of these eventsthat is, conflicts or contradictions. Discussions included in this volume are different from the principal ways of evaluating institutions in the modern worldi.e., quantitative reports of achievements or meritsbut strongly promote further dialogue among researchers and practitioners. This volume offers a new perspective to anyone who are interested in how we psychologically and socially develop in contemporary society, including teachers or practitioners who actually work with children and youths.
That sciences are guided by explicit and implicit ties to their surrounding social world is not new. Jaan Valsiner fills in the wide background of scholarship on the history of science, the recent focus on social studies of sciences, and the cultural and cognitive analyses of knowledge making. The theoretical scheme that he uses to explain the phenomena of social guidance of science comes from his thinking about processes of development in general--his theory of bounded indeterminacy--and on the relations of human beings with their culturally organized environments. Valsiner examines reasons for the slow and nonlinear progress of ideas in psychology as a science at the border of natural and ...
Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue. Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner bring together contributors from the field of cultural psychology to consider how people living within social groups, regardless of how liberal, are guided by collective reality and interconnected with life circumstances. The book discusses experiences and events i...
This book is not only a direct study of gardens, but also an exploration of the relationship between personal and collective culture, an important component of cultural psychology. This perspective leads to the strange but fascinating question: "How does gardening relate to human development?" Exploring the meaning of “garden” for a human being offers profound insights on the relationship between personal and collective culture. In the process of constructing of a garden, nature becomes the object, on which various liminal, aesthetic, and symbolic activities are directly performed. The term “garden” encompasses a multitude of meanings. It is a place for recreation as well as a symbol...
This volume presents fascinating new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the life-span development of talent. It shows how talents are the result of the acquisition of a sequence of skills and how the acquisition of these skills is facilitated by changes in the individual's environment. It explores to what degree the development of high intelligence or achievement is similar to the development of specific domains such as personality, morality, painting, musical performance, or professional skills. It questions whether the development of talent observed for specific groups is similar to individual cases and how the different numbers of highly talented women and men in several domains are to be explained.
This book which has been created in the framework of the EU-funded COST Action INTERFASOL brings together researchers from 22 INTERFASOL countries, who frame intergenerational family solidarity in the specific historical, cultural, social and economic context of their own country. Integrating different perspectives from social and political sciences, economics, communication, health and psychology, the book offers country-specific knowledge and new insights into family relations, family values and family policies across Europe. Praise for Families and Family Values in Society and Culture: "This comprehensive study of families in Europe reveals the strength and variation in family solidarity ...