The Psychology of Cultural Experience

New research in psychological anthropology, including person-centred ethnography, activity theory, and cultural schema theory.

The essays in this volume focus upon the relationship of individual experience to culture, and chart a new research agenda for psychological anthropology in the twenty-first century. Drawing upon fieldwork in diverse cultural settings, the authors use a range of contemporary perspectives in the field, including person-centred ethnography, activity theory, attachment theory and cultural schema theory, to describe the ways in which people think, feel, remember, and solve problems. Fascinating insights emerge from these fine-grained accounts of personal experience. The research demonstrates that it is possible to identify cross-cultural universals in psychological development and mental states, and that individual psychology is not determined solely by unique cultural patterns.

Introduction: The Psychology of Cultural Experience Holly F. Mathews and Carmella C. Moore
Part I. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Experience: 1. Beyond the binary opposition in psychological anthropology: integrating contemporary psychoanalysis and cognitive science Drew Westen
2. Developments in person-centered ethnography Douglas Hollan
3. Activity theory and cultural psychology Carl Ratner
Part II. Acquiring, Modifying, and Transmitting Culture: 4. The infant's acquisition of culture: early attachment re-examined in anthropological perspective Robert A. LeVine and Karin Norman
5. The remembered past in a culturally meaningful life: remembering as cultural, social, and cognitive process Linda C. Garro
Part III. Continuity and Change in Cultural Experience: 6. The psychology of consensus in a Papua New Guinea Christian revival movement Stephen C. Leavitt
7. God and self: the shaping and sharing of experience in a cooperative, religious community Susan Love Brown
Part IV. A Reinvigorated Comparative Perspective: 8. Cross-cultural studies in language and thought: is there a metalanguage? Eve Danziger
9. Comparative approaches to psychological anthropology Robert L. Munroe and Ruth H. Munroe.