This book articulates a bold, new, systematic theory of psychology, culture, and their interrelation. It explains how macro cultural factors -- social institutions, cultural artifacts, and cultural concepts -- are the cornerstones of society and how they form the origins and characteristics of psychological phenomena. This theory is used to explain the diversity of psychological phenomena such as emotions, self, intelligence, sexuality, memory, reasoning, perception, developmental processe...

Carl Ratner's new book deepens our understanding of psychology by emphasizing the role that cultural factors, such as social institutions, artifacts, and cultural concepts play in psychological functioning. The author demonstrates the impact of culture on stimulating and structuring emotion, personality, perception, cognition, memory, sexuality, and mental illness. Examples from interdisciplinary social science research illuminate a sophisticated dialectical relationship between cultural f...

This book articulates how psychologists can use their theory, research, and intervention to generate insights into emancipatory social change that is necessary to solve social and psychological problems. These include racism, sexism, civil rights, poverty, militarism, education, and politics.Psychology was not developed to directly address social issues. It must therefore be reconceptualised to fulfil this aim. In this book Carl Ratner makes use of Vygotsky’s psychological approach...

This book utilizes cultural psychology as a cultural theory and psychological theory capable of explaining and improving social issues. In particular Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology, and Ratner’s macro-cultural psychology are invoked to explain racism and mitigate it. This explanation of, and solution to, racism are utilized as a framework for analyzing and refining contemporary movements for racial justice.Among the topics discussed:Macro cultural psycholog...

Qualitative methodologies in cultural psychology often lack the objective and verifiable character of quantitative analysis. Author Carl Ratner corrects this shortcoming by rigorously systematizing qualitative methods. The book discusses, for example, means of systematizing such subjective reports as interviews, letters, and diaries, which often yield valuable data that is not easily quantified. Ratner argues that "complex psychological phenomena are expressed through extended responses" a...

The 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 emergenc...

This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the cultural aspects of human psychology. These are aspects of psychology that originate in, are formed by, reflect, perpetuate, and modify social processes and factors outside the individual mind. My motivation in pursuing cultural psychol ogy is both scientific and political. I believe that construing psychology as a cultural phenomenon is the scientifically correct way to understand psychology; a cultural analysis of psychology can also pro...

This provocative monograph defines the elusive concept of neoliberal psychology, focusing on its form, content, and cultural contexts and establishing it as a core feature of modern society. Its cross-cultural analysis examines the reality of neoliberal psychology in the globalized world, asserting that neoliberalism influences individuals’ sense of self, identity, and—regardless of country of origin—concept of nationality. Macro cultural psychological theory opens out neoliberal psycholog...

Globalization pressures have made cooperation on a global scale both necessary and possible. But cooperation is not easy in a world dominated by individual, cultural, and national selfish interests. The opposition to cooperation means that cooperation is not natural, but must be instituted through an intellectual and social struggle against countervailing forces. This book discusses issues that are necessary to describe the nature of cooperation and how it can be promoted as a social and e...

Can genes determine which fifty-year-old will succumb to Alzheimer’s, which citizen will turn out on voting day, and which child will be marked for a life of crime? Yes, according to the Internet, a few scientific studies, and some in the biotechnology industry who should know better. Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber gather a team of genetic experts to argue that treating genes as the holy grail of our physical being is a patently unscientific endeavor. Genetic Explanations urges...

This book considers cultural psychology from historical, theoretical, and epistemological perspectives, building an understanding of cultural psychology as a human science and moving beyond the nature-culture dichotomy. The unique collection of chapters seeks to advance the field of cultural psychology by reviving its historical legacies and arguing for its social responsibility in future historical developments.It considers European legacies for cultural psychology as developed by...

This important book fills two interrelated gaps in the field of psychology, first by developing a Marxist orientation to psychology and second by explaining how psychological pioneer Lev Vygotsky contributed greatly to this trend. Through outlining core principles in Marxist psychology, the book offers a framework for continuing Vygotsky’s Marxist legacy in new areas of the field.This book first documents the neglect in Vygotskyian studies of his deep use of Marxist concepts, and t...