Cultural Psychology

1. Cultural Psychology Elena Stevens, School of Psychology Elena.Stevens@vuw.ac.nz

2. Origins of Cultural Psychology • Anthropological heritage (concept of culture; theory and methods) • Psychological heritage (object of study; goals – to explain rather than describe) • Social constructionism + cultural relativism

3. Cultural vs. cross-cultural psychology • No assumption of an ‘intrinsic psychic unity’ of humankind • Processes of psychological functioning may be local to the systems of representation and social organisation in which they are embedded and upon which they depend (Stigler, Shweder & Herdt, 1990)

4. The three systems of cultural psychology (Much, 1995) • Person, with a distinctive biological make-up and a unique history of experience • Society, more precisely, the local social structures of a society or culture • Culture in its symbolic sense, as a representational system

5. Interaction between these systems • Dialectical co-construction (Stigler et al., 1990) • Mutual constitution • Reflexivity (Mehan & Wood, 1975) • Dialogical relationship (Shotter, 1995)

6. Cultural Relativism • ‘There is no single truth, there are multiple truths’ • ‘Truth’ is socially constructed within every culture (Burr, 1990) • Examples: • ‘Who sleeps by whom?’ (Shweder, 2003) • ‘terrorists’ versus ‘freedom fighters’ • ‘First you save yourself, then you save the world’

7. Role of cultural psychologists • “…understanding, reading, and interpreting cultural actions…” (Misra, 1996) • “the culturally marginal person; these are people who have had important socializing experiences in more than one culture” (Greenfield, 2000)

8. Identity Construction • Mainstream view (realist – positivist paradigm) • People are active agents and creators of their own identity • They hold ownership of their identity and can exercise freedom of choice

9. Social Construction of Identity • Gergen: Identity is socially constructed by, and through, numerous connections and relationships with others in wider society • Sampson: Community constitutes identity and holds ownership over it; we only share this ownership

10. Culture of Origin • Taken-for-granted knowledge of our own culture of origin with its systems of meanings, social norms and values, cultural traditions • Children are born “into a specific culture” and socialised into shared systems of meanings • Western tradition of liberalism, freedom of choice and agency

11. Migrant Identity • New systems of meanings, norms and values provide different resources for identity construction • Loss of previous identity as it is not validated by new socio-cultural environment • Necessity to build new identity/re-construct the old one with the help of new social and cultural resources

12. Case-study of an immigrant woman in NZ • Semi-structured interview in Russian • Recorded, transcribed and translated into English • Translation verified by: 1) a native speaker of English; 2) a bilingual (Russian-English) assistant • Method of double interpretation: “The participants are trying to make sense of their world; the researcher is trying to make sense of the participants trying to make sense of their world” (Smith & Osborn, 2003, p. 51).

13. First migration:from Russia to Israel • “…all went very easily in the beginning, because there is a huge mass of Russian-speaking people in Israel… • …there is no language barrier because in all services there is a mass of Russian-speakers, therefore, I did not feel that I… went through… that I had moved to a different country… Well, maybe, like to a different region [in Russia]…”

14. Russian Jewish Identity • “…I say that I am a Russian-born Jew. “I was born in Russia but I am Jewish”. And I feel myself Jewish. Israeli. I don’t know why it happened this way… Because when I came to Israel, I felt myself at home. It is not possible to explain, I don’t know why. This is my people, at this point in time, it’s my country, my people…”

15. Culture of origin (Russia) • “…In Russia… There, I felt myself as a Jew, of course, there they would simply not let me forget about it. There I felt Jewish in a completely different way, it was inside, hidden… and there it was like some sort of guilt… some burden, I don’t know how. It was there, but it was all… in secret, in my soul, inside…”

16. Identity Construction in Israel • “…And in Israel we became Russians straight away… Because Israelis – they are Israelis, if you have come from Ethiopia – you are Ethiopian, if you have come from Russia – you are Russian! You’ve hardly come out of the airplane – and you straight away turn into a Russian. Well, of course, not in your passport, just simply, in the understanding of others. But you suddenly become Russian… There nobody says, “a Russian Jew, a Moroccan Jew, an Ethiopian Jew” – there they say “Russians, Moroccans, Ethiopians”…”

17. “…And all the Jews that have come from the former [Soviet] Union, they are all called Russians. They don’t call themselves that – they are trying to correct others all the time, and I tried, I would say: “Excuse me, please, I am not a Russian, I am a Jew who has come from Russia”. But they would not care!..”

18. Cultural-linguistic marker • Q: Did that bother you? • A: No! Not at all! Maybe, in the beginning. Maybe, on some occasions. Maybe, depending on the situation…If some Moroccan Jew would tell you, as if in reproach, “how are saying this, how are you pronouncing that”… • …if you ask any Israeli about something, you would be straight away laughed at, criticised, then they would say, “Ah! Russian! What can you expect from her?..”

19. “…I started feeling myself as Jewish in Israel. It’s not on the level of religion, it’s something deep inside. I, for some reason, suddenly in Israel felt myself as Jewish, and, by the way, here, in New Zealand, this feeling has strengthened that… that I am indeed a Jew. Well, it’s not that horrible, and doesn’t change much in life…”

20. “…My husband, then, he is a true Jew but most of his life he lived in Russia. And when he came to Israel, no matter how long he had been living there, he felt Russian all the way. He never felt Jewish. And having come here, he remained Russian too. And he specifically felt himself as Russian. In any country…”

21. Second migration:from Israel to New Zealand • Q: (In Israel you identified with a group of Russian-speaking people, what about here?) • A: Well, with the group of immigrants, probably, who else can I identify myself with? Of course, with the group of immigrants…

22. Conclusions • In NZ ethnic or cultural markers of Jewishness or Russianness are not recognised by wider community • Her previous identities from Russia and Israel are not validated by others and become redundant due to the lack of relevant resources • Loss of a specific cultural identity is necessary to fit in the group of “other Europeans”

23. Identity is not constructed by an individual. In case of migration to a new socio-cultural environment, the previous identity becomes ‘null and void’ outside the habitual system of meanings and values and has to be re-constructed with the help of available cultural resources.

24. References • Burr, V. (1995). An introduction to social constructionism. London: Routledge. • Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas in identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. • Greenfield, P. M. (2000). Three approaches to the psychology of culture: Where do they come from? Where can they go? Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 3, 223-240. • Mehan, H., & Wood, H. (1975). The reality of ethnomethodology. New York: John Wiley & Sons. • Much, N. (1995). Cultural psychology. In Smith, J. A., Harre, R., & Langenhove, L. Van (Eds.), Rethinking psychology. London: Thousand Oaks. • Sampson, E. E. (1989). The challenge of social change for psychology: Globalization and psychology’s theory of the person. American Psychologist, 44, 914-921. • Shotter, J. (1995). Dialogical psychology. In Smith, J. A., Harre, R., & Langenhove, L. Van (Eds.), Rethinking psychology. London: Thousand Oaks. • Shweder, R. A. (2003). Why do men barbecue? Recipes for cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. • Smith, J. A., & Osborn, M. (2003). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In Smith, J. A. (Ed.), Qualitative psychology. London: Sage. • Stigler, J. W., Shweder, R. A., & Herdt, G. (1990). Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.