The Discourse of Cultural Psychology: Transforming the Discourses of Self,Memory,Narrative and Culture

Abstract

The new discipline ‘cultural psychology’ has identified the dominant psychology, including its universalistic ‘ crosscultural’ version, as derived from a particular historical and cultural discourse. What receives only short shrift is that cultural psychology itself is also a body of texts and contexts linked with particular cultural and historical traditions. As examples of cultural psychology, Brockmeier and Wang’s papers (Brockmeier, 2002; Wang & Brockmeier, 2002) are critically examined with special regard to the tendencies of perpetuating the Western discourse, reifying analytical notions, and ethnocentric comparison and contrast. Further, it is argued that, in order for cultural psychology to become more ‘cultural’ than it has been hitherto, a rethinking about ‘culture’, especially along the lines of cultural studies, is required and that such a re-conceptualization calls for not less but more intercultural disciplinary dialogue and critique on ‘psychology’. In this perspective, transforming existing discourses of mind, self and other can, and should, become an important task of cultural psychology.

Keywords

cultural psychology cultural studies discourse ethnocentrism

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