Culture and Memory<sup>1</sup>

Cole, Michael

doi:10.1525/aa.1972.74.5.02a00030

Cited by 39 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Presented with a list of 20 familiar words, Kpelle subjects recalled 9 on the first trial and 10.8 on the fifth trial. In contrast, American college students went from 13 to 19 words (Cole & Gay, 1972, p. 1071. Free recall is so difficult for Kpelle that even when the words are carefully chosen as belonging to indigenous conceptual categorieswhich should give them an intrinsic organization and enhance recall-free recall, clustering, and improvement over trials was minimal (Cole & Gay, 1972, p. 1077.…”

Section: Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Ratner

1991

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A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. All rights reservedNo part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher This book is dedicated to my mother, to whom lowe the better part of my sociohistorical psychology PrefaceThe social character of psychological phenomena has never been easy to comprehend. Despite the fact that an intricate set of social relations forms our most intimate thoughts, feelings, and actions, we believe that psychology originates inside our body, in genes, hormones, the brain, and free will. Perhaps this asocial view stems from the alienated nature of most societies which makes individual activity appear to be estranged from social relations. One might have thought that the emergence of scientific psychology would have disclosed the social character of activity which naive experience had overlooked. Unfortunately, a century and a half of psychological science has failed to comprehend the elusive social character of psychological phenomena. Psychological science has evidently been subjugated by the mystifying ideology of society. This book aims to comprehend the social character of psychological functioning. I argue that psychological functions are quintessentially social in nature and that this social character must be comprehended if psychological knowledge and practice are to advance. The social nature of psychological phenomena consists in the fact that they are constructed by individuals in the process of social interaction, they depend upon properties of social interaction, one of their primary purposes is facilitating social interaction, and they embody the specific character of historically bound social relations.This viewpoint is known as sociohistorical psychology. It was articulated most profoundly and comprehensively by the Russian psychologists Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria during ,the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, their work has remained marginal in the Soviet Union and in the West, unable to penetrate into mainstream psychological science. The present book attempts to demonstrate that sociohistorical psyvii viii PREFACE chology is a valid view of psychological phenomena which can redirect psychological science toward fruitful future development.While psychologists occasionally touch on the ~ocial character of psychological phenomena, they fail to fully comprehend it or appreciate its centrality. One reason for this failure is that psychological phenomena are intellectually fractured into separate faculties and components. This fragmentation relegates social character to being one component of one or another faculty. Social character is thereby prevented from being central to all psychologica...

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Section: Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Ratner

1991

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“…Recall a landmark study by Cole and Gay (1972) in which Western children, as well as children from the West African Kpelle group, were asked to play the categorization game "Which one of these is not like all the others?" When asked to pick from among a display of a log, a hammer, a saw, and an ax, Western children naturally picked the log, as of course it is not a tool.…”

Section: Abstract Reasoning Among the Kpellementioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity Science: What Is It?

Mendoza‐Denton

España

2010

Psychological Inquiry

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Section: Howard]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result we were able to refine our analysis far beyond what would have been possible with either approach used alone. This same type of reverberative research strategy has been used in cross-cultural cognitive studies by Michael Cole and his associates (Cole and Gay 1972;Gay and Cole 1967; Scribner and Cole 1977).There are, of course, dozens of other examples in the ethnographic literature. The point I wish to make, however, is that the complexity of the person-in-situation perspective lends itself to a variety of research strategies, and that exploration of these possibilities by ethnographers may provide important input toward the development of an interactional approach to human behavior and a more satisfactory framework for psychocultural analysis than we have yet enjoyed.…”

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confidence: 96%

Interactional Psychology: Some Implications for Psychological Anthropology

Howard

1982

American Anthropologist

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Recent developments in psychology are bringing about a rapprochement between behaviorists, trait psychologists, and psychodynamically orzented theorists. The incipient perspective, which has been labeled "interactional psychology, "focuses on persons-insituations and raises some penetrating questions f o r psychological anthropology. Attempts by interactionists t o reconcile traditional concepts of "personality" with evidence demonstrating the power ofsituations to pattern behavior are discussed. It is proposed that the interactionist framework fits well with recent trends in anthropology that emphasize the contextualization of behavior and an interest in intracultural diversity.[psychological anthropology, personality, situation, ecology of behavior] IN THIS PAPER I EXAMINE some recent developments in psychology that have involved discussions between behaviorists, trait psychologists, and psychodynamically oriented theorists. The thrust seems to be toward a rapprochement of previously opposing viewpoints,and the incipient perspective has been labeled "interactional" psychology. Before discussing these developments, however, I will make some historical observations concerning the influence of psychological theory on psychological anthropology. PSYCHOLOGY'S INFLUENCE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGYIt is significant that the initial label for the subdiscipline was "culture and personality." These were parallel terms, both emphasizing systematic integration, on an abstract level, of behavioral patterns and/or propensities. Both were concerned with the structuring of habitual behavior, leading to a confounding of the concepts in much of the research that characterized the field. As Sapir noted during this period, "the more fully one tries to understand a culture, the more it seems to take on the characteristics of a personality organization" (1934:412). This perspective sometimes led to a rather casual use of psychological (or psychiatric) labels to describe culture configurations.The two theoretical orientations that were important to early culture and personality workers were psychoanalysis and behaviorist learning theory. The impetus toward psychoanalytic theory was facilitated by Sapir, who, in his article "Why Cultural Anthropology Needs the Psychiatrist," argued that cultural anthropology could not avoid testing ALAN its analysis of "social" and "cultural" patterns in terms of individual realities (Sapir 1938). As a dynamic theory of human functioning, psychoanalysis was congenial to anthropologists because it presented personality as an open system interacting with society (Honigmann 1976:293).Also, as Kluckhohn (1 965) pointed out, such psychoanalytic concepts as "ambivalence" helped us to understand hitherto puzzling phenomena such as death beliefs and practices; "projection" illuminated witchcraft anxieties; and similarities between compulsion neuroses and ritual activities were too unmistakable to be denied (ibid.:90). Furthermore, Kluckhohn noted, the search for meaning in the apparently chaotic and nona...

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Culture and Memory¹

Cited by 39 publications

References 19 publications

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Diversity Science: What Is It?

Interactional Psychology: Some Implications for Psychological Anthropology

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Culture and Memory1

Cited by 39 publications

References 19 publications

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Vygotsky’s Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications

Diversity Science: What Is It?

Interactional Psychology: Some Implications for Psychological Anthropology

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Culture and Memory¹