Striving for the new: Cultural psychology as a developmental science

Mission and themes

Culture & Psychology is 20 years old and it is at height of its youthful vigor, but it was born already “mature” having a clear editorial focus and a well defined starting-point which has been set up in the second page of the first editorial:

how can science conceptualize the role of culture in the reality of psychological functioning of human beings, in the context of their social lives, and in the development of their personal life course? (Valsiner, 1995, p. 6)

This is the mission of the journal, and it contains in nuce two axes that are also the investigative core in cultural psychology perspective: the topic of culture in human development and the dynamic of social discourses of ordinary people in their culturally organized contexts.

Cultural psychology as developmental and interdisciplinary in its core

Cultural psychology is a developmental science in its nature because it assumes that all the human beings (as well as groups, social institutions, communities) are developing dynamic systems constantly striving for the new. The focus of investigation is, thus, the circumstances under which novel organizational forms emerge.

Any attempt to focus on a complex issue like culture in psychology requires an interdisciplinary integration between social sciences and a general historical orientation (that is, de facto, developmental) on culture. This is one of the three journal’s editorial guidelines. Culture & Psychology placed itself in the polyphony of the research’ supermarket (Tateo, 2014) clearly stated that it is not another collection of empirical contributions of any sort, but what is required to the authors is to make an effort in arguing the functioning of culture in the psychological processes. Culture is not a dependent nor a independent variable (Anandalakshmy, 1974), but “a label that denotes the systemic organization of the semiotic and historical nature of human psychological processes in their wide-ranging manifestation” (Valsiner, 1995, p. 7).

From the outset, Culture & Psycology has promoted linkages between theory and empirical work. For exploring the complex role of the culture in psychology, mere demonstrations of the effect of the culture on a variable do not produce any theoretical advancement, but neither does pure theoretical speculation. It is only by looking for both the theoretical and empirical elaboration (as a unity) that a breakthrough in the intellectual machinery of a given science is possible. The journal’s identity is of “an international meeting-place of minds” (Valsiner, 1995, p. 9) providing an interdisciplinary forum for scholarly interchange. The journal’s name—Culture & Psychology (and not Cultural Psychology)—carries the idea of a plurality of perspectives. This is because the epistemic field of social sciences is characterized by a heterogeneity in linking culture and psychological functioning. These plural and polyphonic features are essential for keeping alive the debate and avoiding any lethal dogmatism. But the final aim is to arrive to a synthesis of new ideas rather than a mixture of a nominal balance of different disciplines (Valsiner, 2001).

Culture & Psychology: First developmental stages and emerging criticisms

After the first six years of Culture & Psychology and then three years later, Valsiner wrote two editorials (Valsiner, 2001, 2004) far beyond the simple summaries of what has happened in the first journal’s developmental stages. He provided the readers with an overview of the historical roots of the contemporary attempt to reintroduce the notion of culture into the psychological realm. “No science can develop without reflection upon its history.” (Valsiner, 2004, p. 23), thus, he traced back the first two efforts: the Wundt’s, Steinthal’s and Lazarus’ versions of Völkerpsychologie at the end of the 19th century and the Culture and Personality School of the 1950s. Both failed in creating a new synthetic science: the former because it was “parallel to” instead of “jointed with” the experimental psychology and the latter because was crushed between the behaviorism’s fortress and the incoming rampant cognitive revolution. Nobody knows if this actual third effort, which runs under the alluring label of Cultural Psychology, will have a different fortune. What is different from the past (and maybe the only “saving factor” from another possible failure) is the awareness of some criticisms and weak points in our contemporary system of knowledge construction which have been recurrently pointed out by Jaan Valsiner in his editorials over the 20 years of the journal’s existence.

Psychology, over its history, has shown the difficulty of dealing with the complexity of psychological phenomena. The study of the higher psychological functions (willful, goals-oriented conduct, etc.) has been replaced by their lower counterpart. As a consequence the wholeness of the object of investigation has been fragmented in a constellation of epiphenomena, the general theory which guided the empirical data in a plethora of “research literatures” and the processes in their outcomes. In all that, the epistemic role of the culture in the systemic organization of human psychological functioning is lost (Valsiner, 2001).

What we need is consistency between theory, methods and empirical phenomena. Thus, the question is what kinds of scientific concepts and methodology are adequate for creating theories of dynamic and meaningful phenomena.

Growing up with some concerns

The problem of how to innovate the methodology for capturing the complex human making meaning system and the need for generalizing theories able to account for the holistic nature of cultural phenomena have started to be very present in the “first six” and “nine years” editorial (Valsiner, 2001, 2004) occupying, then, an increasingly central role in the following editorials (2009, 2014a, 2014b) which were, almost entirely, devoted to these themes and run in parallel with other topical publications (see also Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Toomela & Valsiner, 2010, Valsiner & Rudolph, 2012). Cultural psychology has both the opportunity and the challenge to restore the focus on what is psychologically relevant for a human being. This implies rethinking “methodology in a new key” (Valsiner, 2014a) based on a methodology cycle that allows a systemic look to the elements in place (basic assumptions, phenomena, theory, method construction) and their mutual relationship (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). The focus on methodology as a cycle, rather than a “toolbox,” means a mutually interdependent process for a productive theoretical build up. Thus, the structure of the process and the relations between the process within the structure is the issue at stake here (Valsiner, 2004).

As Vygotsky (1999) pointed out:

Psychology, as it desires to study complex wholes … needs to change the methods of analysis into elements by analytic method that reveals the parts of the unit [literally: break the whole into linked units-metod … analiza, … razcheleniayushego na edinitsy]. It has to find the further undividable, surviving feature that are characteristic at the given whole as a unity-units within which mutually opposing ways these features are represented [Russian: edinitsy, v kotorykn v protivoplozhnom vide predstavleny eti svoistval]. (p. 13)

In cultural psychology, the level of complexity of the unity of analysis depends on the research question. However, as Valsiner clarified, the minimal unit should have this systemic nature: “Whole Unit = {parts A, B, and relation A-R-B}” (2004, p. 16).

Hence, the nature of the relations needs to be investigated. It could be not always harmonious, but instead the locus of tension creating, from psychological point of view, an intriguing dynamic of opposition/contradiction between subparts of the units. How it would be possible to handle the inherent tension and ambiguity in the opposites? (Abbey, 2012; Marsico, 2011; Tateo & Marsico, 2013).

Relation as border

In order to lead cultural psychology into new theoretical breakthroughs, we need to keep the processual focus into the theoretical formalism (Valsiner, 2014d). This is at the basis of the recent attempt of defining the basic rules of a developmental mereotopology which combines mereotopology (a part of contemporary philosophy that provides tools for an ontological analysis of formal structures of parts and whole, see Smith, 1997; Smith and Varzi, 2000; Varzi, 1997, 1998) with a developmental perspective in cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2008; Marsico 2013, 2015a).

As a general science of transforming forms, developmental mereotopology should provide conceptual tools able to explain the role of the borders in their dynamic movements toward a teleological direction in irreversible time (Marsico & Varzi, 2016). This research program is interested exactly in understanding the nature of the relation (A-R-B) of part to whole and of part to part within a whole. Suffice is to think how borders create discontinuity and connection between two related fields that acquire their signification through their relationships. The notion of borders that gains a special role in the cultural psychology realm in the contemporary globalized world (Marsico, 2015b, Marsico, Cabell, Valsiner, & Kharlamov, 2013; Marsico, Dazzani, Ristum, & Bastos, 2015). It shows all the intricacy of what is meant by the investigation of the relation in the systemic nature of minimal unit of analysis.

Pathway for a synthesis and some methodological implications

The internal structure of the unit is intrinsically dialectic. Valsiner in the 2009s editorial states: “Together with charting out the pathways to synthesis, inherent in that unit is the constraining of options- the structure of the unit rules out some possible courses for emergence” (p. 12). Hence, developmental transformations take place thank to the dialectic tension of the parts and their borders within the whole. The adoption of a multilevel hierarchically ordered processes (the parts belong to the whole and operate at submissive level while the whole is not reducible to its parts) shows here all its heuristic power for any theoretical elaboration in cultural psychology. The crucial question is the generalization and specification of these units under different circumstances or, in other words, the hierarchical integration and disintegration through a basic differentiation processes which allows the transformation of flexible forms (Valsiner & Rudolph, 2012). This is the quintessential feature of cultural psychology as a developmental science. Assuming that psychological phenomena are axiomatically based on a minimum contradictory Gestalt (unit of opposites) entails some methodological implications. First, the definitive overcoming of the illusion of understanding the integrated wholes of our human experiences through their measurable components. Thus, the “empire of the quantitative methods” commonly used in the present-day psychology, dramatically fails in understanding the higher psychological functioning.

Cultural psychology has nothing to do with the “discrete elements of a phenomena” or “a portion of a behavior” inductively measured with a high degree of precision. It, instead, deals with the goal-oriented and meaningful human conduct which is hardly modeled by real numbers. Qualitative mathematics would provide a deductive formal system for supporting the “qualitative turn” in psychology. The recent attempt in reintroducing topology into psychology (Mammen, 1993, 2002; Valsiner & Rudolph, 2012) after Lewin’ s first, but not totally successful effort (1936), represents the future methodological challenge in cultural psychology for understanding the transformation of qualitative forms in human psychological lives. Second, the Gestalt qualities are not an “ontological given,” rather they are always open-ended depending on the relationship of the psyche with the world constantly striving towards the uncertainty of the future (Valsiner & Rudolph, 2012). It adamantly calls for renewed attention to the ever-increasing complexity of the human psyche in its social context. In his editorial analysis, Valsiner (2004, 2009) pointed out how cultural psychology, while emphasizing the context-dependency of its phenomena, fails to contextualize the object of investigation. Despite the notion of context has been assumed as the core of cultural psychology, the open-systemic interplay of person and context has been narrowed down in favor of a “here and now” version of context. Humans (as any biological organism), operate under conditions of constant production of heterogeneity that is adaptive to the variability of the contextual situation. The new constructive trajectories in the realm of cultural psychology should bring the mutuality of person and context as an axiomatically stance and look at the way in which human beings not only adapt themselves to the context, but how, through their purposeful actions, modify the context which is then transformed in a meaning constructed place becoming, in such a way, a further resource for the human experiences. In addition, people are in constant movement (i.e. between different social space) and “our psychological functions operates while we move” (Valsiner, 2014a, p. 19). From the methodological point of view, it implies the construction of methods of movements which should take into the account the primacy of the person-on-the-move, her specific goal-orientation, the eventual blocking or resisting conditions (the Gegenstand) (Meinong, 1902/1910; Valsiner, 2014c) and the human counteractions. The conflict situation between the goal orientation and Gegenstand would illuminate the microgenetic process of adaptation/modification/overcoming of the situation that entails borders tension and borders crossing (Marsico, 2013).

Finally, once it assumes that psychological phenomena are conceivable as contradictory minimal Gestalts, the problem becomes how to reconstruct the generalized whole. Valsiner has repeatedly claimed in Culture & Psycholgy's pages (Valsiner, 2009, 2014a, 2014b) the need of generalized theories. Since cultural psychology is necessarily of unique event, it puts the idiographic perspective (Salvatore & Valsiner 2010) at the very core of the psychological investigation. In a 2014 editorial Valsiner wrote:

The focus of any theoretical generalization in psychology is that of a single case and—even more dramatically—of a single episode in the flow of experience of the person who is treated as “single case.” (Valsiner, 2014b, p. 153)

Further elaborations in the same vein have shown that generalizations are possible and theoretically valid even on the basis of a systemic analyse of a single utterance (Nedergaard, Valsiner, & Marsico, 2015). This strongly put in question the mythology of the “large sample” and the supremacy of the quantification on one side and the cross-cultural comparative method on the other side.

Culture & Psychology keeps striving for the new

Psyche is an open system of higher level psychological functions and cultural psychology has the chance to readjust the methods-to-theories relationship in order to explain the centrality of culture within psychological processes. The three topical aspects mentioned above are the main challenges for the next future. It is through generalized abstract knowledge that psychology can be applicable to the highly variable complex phenomena that exist and also those that do not exist yet but could come into being (Valsiner, 2014b). This issue becomes tremendously relevant if we assume the future-oriented nature of our life-course organization.

As Valsiner pointed out:

Bringing the focus on future to bear on psychological events unfolding in the present introduces the relevance of phenomena that do not exist—yet are important in the realities of the present. (Valsiner, 2014c, p. 287)

We, as humans, can even talk about things that do not exist or, in Meinong’s words (1902/1910), the non-existing objects. Our concrete actions in the real word (AS-IS) are fed by the non-existing world of AS-IF. Thus, cultural psychology as a developmental science needs to include into its theoretical reflection not only what exists here-and-now and can be detected and observed but also what is to come (does not yet exist but is expected to emerge) and the conditions of future-oriented adaptation. Any assumption about what might happen in the future is the basis for emergence of the new present (Valsiner, 2014c, p. 297). Bringing together real and possible “psychological worlds” is the frontier for fostering the discipline further.

Cultural psychology is a science of human complexities (Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato & Dazzani, 2016) and in its effort of promoting an holistic approach to the cultural way of becoming human, Culture & Psychology will keep striving for the new. It remains an intellectually potent mean for innovation while continuing its role of supporting the theoretical elaboration and methodological advancement.