Unruly difference: the politics of stigma and the space of the sacred

This essay looks at three contemporary Jewish American playwrights: Tony Kushner, Martin Sherman and Deb Margolin, whose plays ask fundamental questions about Jewish identity in its political, cultural and spiritual dimensions. Breaking from the concerns of their theatrical predecessors, most of whom ignored or disguised their Jewish roots, these playwrights draw on profoundly Jewish concepts to reconfigure narratives of redemption, obligation, ethical community, and Messianic utopianism. Their plays are characterized by a sensibility of “unruly difference.” Attracted by the politics of marginality; these writers re-imagine otherness in plays that celebrate a different understanding of faith and conjure the sublime. By carving out a more capacious definition of Judaism that embraces contradiction and contention, faith and doubt, progressive social vision and deepened spiritual commitment, they sit aslant the mainstream. They are drawn to their understanding of the spiritual power and cultural grandeur of the Jewish heritage, but question the politics of accommodation and the limitations of tradition and law. The ambivalence these writers express about Judaism adds to the complexity of their writing and to its value as a cultural indicator. Working in new idioms, they refute traditional discourses and dominant paradigms of conformity and coalescence that characterize modern Jewish-American life.     

Religion, genetics, and sexual orientation: the Jewish tradition

This paper probes the implications of a genetic basis for sexual orientation for traditional branches of Judaism, which are struggling with how accepting to be of noncelibate gays and lesbians in their communities. The paper looks at the current attitudes toward homosexuality across the different branches of Judaism; social and cultural factors that work against acceptance; attitudes toward science in Jewish culture; and the likelihood that scientific evidence that sexual orientation is at least partly genetically determined will influence Jewish scholars' and leaders' thinking on this issue.     

Monocultural and cross-cultural indigenous approaches: The royal road to the development of a balanced global psychology

Comprehensive comparison and conceptual analysis of cross-cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychologies in terms of their aims and theoretical and methodological perspectives lead to the conclusion that the first two are special cases of the third. Two basic types of indigenous psychology are distinguished on the basis of conceptual analysis: monocultural indigenous psychologies (including monocultural cultural psychologies) and cross-cultural indigenous psychologies (including both cross-cultural psychology and cross-cultural cultural psychology). Corresponding to these two types of indigenous psychology are two basic ways to conduct indigenous research, namely, the monocultural indigenous approach and the cross-cultural indigenous approach. Both approaches require achievement of the condition of indigenous compatibility, which stresses the sufficient congruity of the researcher's theory, methods, and results with the studied psychological or behavioral phenomenon and/or its sociocultural context. Finally, several ways to integrate research findings obtained by the monocultural and cross-cultural indigenous approaches are delineated and discussed with respect to their function in creating an indigenously derived global psychology.     

Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model

A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I construct an argument for the social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue (aretē) by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and unified communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justified.     

Hagiography and Monotheism in History: Doctrinal encounters between Zoroastrianism,Judaism and Christianity 1

Issues of hagiography and monotheism were central to the historical development of Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity (and subsequently Islam). Overlapping geo graphical locales and cultural heritages, especially during the rule of ancient Iranian dynasties and within Iranian territory, seem to have facilitated and reinforced common solutions that linked devotees across confessional lines through shared communal notions and doctrinal tenets. The hagiographical lives and preachings of Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster, and biblical figures from Moses to Jesus consciously came to parallel each other ex post facto and were regarded as representing different aspects of monotheism. The Zoroastrian dualistic worldview did not exclude monotheism, although it did postulate a separate source of evil. Variations notwith standing, for members of each faith, the spiritual entity venerated by their founder was believed to be God--a condition acknowledged by the other confessional groups as well. Uniting a community of believers around themselves in the veneration of a singular deity eventually transformed Zarathushtra, Moses and Jesus (and later Muhammad) into prophets. Religious founders, the historically created and cross-culturally shaped images of such founders and an intercommunally emergent notion that their words represented communion with the divinity forged and strengthened the shared links between hagiography and monotheism among Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians and, in time, Muslims.     

In search of cultural diversity: recent literature in cross-cultural and ethnic minority psychology

The purpose of this study was to identify where the most work on cross-cultural and ethnic minority psychology is being published and who the most productive authors are. The journals that published the most articles on cross-cultural and ethnic minority issues from 1993 to 1999 and the most prolific authors on these issues were identified by PsycINFO. Cross-cultural research is cross-national, whereas ethnic minority research involves groups of color within the United States. The citation impact of these journals and authors was determined from the 1997 Social Sciences Citation Index. The results suggest that there is very limited overlap between the literatures in cross-cultural and ethnic minority psychology. Most of the research in these areas is published in specialty journals, and there is a paucity of this research in prestigious journals. Perceived or actual barriers to publication in prestigious journals may cause some to seek specialty journals as outlets for research on cultural diversity. The top scholars in cross-cultural psychology are primarily men of European ancestry, whereas most of the top scholars in ethnic minority psychology are ethnic minority men and women. Strategies to increase the prominence of cultural diversity in the psychology literature include combining cross-cultural and ethnic minority psychology, increasing the number of editorial board members of prestigious journals having expertise in cultural diversity, and increasing the quality of specialty journals. Psychology will remain ill-equipped to face the challenges of the new millennium without increased attention to cultural diversity.     

The cultural mind: environmental decision making and cultural modeling within and across populations

This article describes cross-cultural research on the relation between how people conceptualize nature and how they act in it. Mental models of nature differ dramatically among populations living in the same area and engaged in similar activities. This has novel implications for environmental decision making and management, including common problems. The research offers a distinct perspective on cultural modeling and a unified approach to studies of culture and cognition. The authors argue that cultural transmission and formation consist primarily not in shared rules or norms but in complex distributions of causally connected representations across minds interacting with the environment. The cultural stability and diversity of these representations often derive from rich, biologically prepared mental mechanisms that limit variation to readily transmissible psychological forms. This framework addresses several methodological issues, such as limitations on conceiving culture to be a well-defined system, bounded entity, independent variable, or an internalized component of minds.     

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS ON PSYCHOSEMANTICS OF ICONS AND GRAPHICS

This study is to report a cross-cultural comparison on perceptions of icons and graphics and their relationships. Data were ratings of 10 icons and 10 graphics against 21 bipolar semantic differential scales from 325 college students in three countries, Mexico, Columbia, and Japan. Cross-cultural factor analyses resulted in the identification of four semantic (three affective and one denotative) features, three icon factors, and three graphic factors. Indigenous cultural means of these iconic and graphic factors were computed and used to probe cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceptions. Psychosemantics of icon factors were further predicted by graphic factors through canonical correlation. This study concludes the importance of implicit cultural meanings of nonverbal figures in intercultural communications. The implications of this study are also discussed.     

Engaging with the unknown: How Judaism enabled Freud's psychological discoveries

A large literature has formed around the question of how Freud's Jewishness and/or Judaism influenced his psychological discoveries and development of psychoanalytic theory and methods. The article organizes the literature into several core theses but brings new clarity and insight by applying two essential criteria to demonstrate an impact of Judaism on Freud's thinking: direct content and historical timing. First, there should be evidence that Freud incorporated actual content from Jewish sources, and second, this incorporation must have occurred during the most crucial period of Freud's early discovery, conceptualization, and development of psychoanalysis, roughly 1893–1910. Thus, for example, Bakan's well-known theory that Freud studied Kabbala is completely negated by the absence of any evidence in the required time period. Part I reviews the literature on the influence of Freud's ethnic/cultural Jewish identity. Part II introduces the Judaic sacred literature, explores Freud's education in Judaism and Hebrew, and presents evidence that Freud had the motive, means, and resources to discover and draw from the “Dream Segment” of the Talmud—along with the traditional Judaic methods and techniques of textual exegesis. Freud then applied these same Judaic word-centered interpretive methods—used for revealing an invisible God—to revealing an invisible Unconscious in four successive books in 1900, 1901, and 1905.     

Cultural Training Based on a Theory of Relational Ideology

This article describes the development of a theory-based cross-cultural training intervention, named relational ideology training, and reports a field experiment testing its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural collaborations. The intervention was based on our Protestant relational ideology (PRI) theory and cross-cultural research derived from this theory. An experiment compared the effectiveness of this novel intervention with the well established cultural assimilator training. Results show that compared to cultural assimilator training, relational ideology training is more effective in improving managers' task performance and affective adjustment in cross-cultural ventures. Important practical and theoretical benefits can be gained from integrating theoretical advances in cultural psychology into cross-cultural training. We discuss the implications of RI training as an empirically validated intervention for Americans living locally yet working globally.     

Culture-gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality

Diverse lines of theoretical and empirical research are converging on the notion that human evolution has been substantially influenced by the interaction of our cultural and genetic inheritance systems. The application of this culture-gene coevolutionary approach to understanding human social psychology has generated novel insights into the cognitive and affective foundations of large-scale cooperation, social norms and ethnicity. This approach hypothesizes a norm-psychology: a suite of psychological adaptations for inferring, encoding in memory, adhering to, enforcing and redressing violations of the shared behavioral standards of one's community. After reviewing the substantial body of formal theory underpinning these predictions, we outline how this account organizes diverse empirical findings in the cognitive sciences and related disciplines. Norm-psychology offers explanatory traction on the evolved psychological mechanisms that underlie cultural evolution, cross-cultural differences and the emergence of norms.     

Deconstructing ‘Western esotericism’: on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This paper discusses a number of consequences that – although not always intended by the author – can be drawn from the radically historicist approach adopted by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in his monograph Esotericism and the Academy. These consequences are the atomization of ‘esotericism’ into a disparate range of ideas, practices, and currents with few if any shared elements; a better approximation to contemporary anthropological views of culture and cultural innovation; a focus on polemical strategies rather than substantive contents and a concomitant possibility of cross-cultural comparison; a reluctance to engage with theories of broader scope; and a vacillation between seeing ‘esotericism’ as merely a waste-basket category and attempting nonetheless to salvage a minimal substantive definition.     

Cultural Meanings of Money in Medieval Ashkenaz: On Gift,Profit, and Value in Medieval Judaism and Christianity

This article explores the cultural history of money in medieval Judaism and Christianity. In doing so, it reassesses a historical narrative describing the emergence of a “new money economy” in the High Middle Ages. In the prevailing narrative, money is positioned as a causal agent: it is said to effect and symbolize the “profit motive,” becoming a locus for anxiety about the new money economy. But a close reading of moral literature suggests that money per se was not a locus of anxiety. Moralists had a sophisticated understanding of economic value and its relation to moral economy. Anxiety among Jewish and Christian moralists focused on the possible disjuncture between moral and economic values, not on economic value per se. Through close readings of medieval exempla, this article demonstrates that moralists regarded the economic act of acquisition as creating a moral value. When “bad” moral value adhered to coins, they sought to devise means for redeeming that value through penitential acts. This ideology, which was shared by Jewish and Christian authors, suggests that cultural assumptions about money were more sophisticated than a straightforward fear of the profit economy and profit motive and that the narrative of European economic development as a shift from gift economy to profit economy ought to be problematized. Binary oppositions between gift and profit and between an altruistic Christianity (linked to a gift economy) and a modernizing Judaism (linked to a profit economy) ought to be broken down.     

Cross-cultural generalizability of the Personality and Role Identity Structural Model (PRISM): Implications for trait and cultural psychology

The cross-cultural generalizability of the Personality and Role Identity Structural Model (PRISM; Wood & Roberts, 2006) was tested in the United States, Mexico, Malaysia, China, and Japan. Participants rated their general and role identities, as defined by the PRISM, using Big Five trait adjectives, then rated their personality states (i.e., role experiences) in various roles in multiple daily interactions for 14 days. Structural predictions based on the PRISM were supported in all five cultures. Cultural differences were limited and did not reflect cultural differences in individualism–collectivism, dialecticism, or cultural tightness. The results supported the cross-cultural generalizability of the PRISM and the merits of contextualized trait measures in the prediction of role experiences. Implications for trait and cultural psychology are discussed.     

Perceptions of Organizational Culture and Women's Advancement in Organizations: A Cross-Cultural Examination

This study is a cross-cultural examination of the relationship between organizational culture and women's advancement to management in organizations. The source of data for this study was the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Project, a cross-cultural study of societal culture, organizational culture, and leadership. The results of this study indicate that aspects of organizational culture typically associated with women are related to women's progress. In organizations in which organization members reported shared values of high humane orientation and high gender equity, organization members also reported high percentages of women in management relative to other organizations in their society. In addition, organizational cultural practices that emphasized high humane orientation, high gender equity, high performance orientation, and low power distance were also related to reports of high percentages of women in management relative to societal norms. Results of regression analysis predicting the percentage of women in management from the dimensions of organizational culture indicated that gender equity practices and values emphasizing humane orientation contributed significantly to the prediction of the percentage of women in management. Organizational cultural practices related to gender equity were found to be the most important predictor of the percentage of women in management. This study adds to the literature on women's progress in organizations by further extending the focus from individual and structural characteristics to characteristics of organizational culture. The findings suggest that change agents focused on increasing opportunities for women in management should attend to organizational culture, particularly aspects of culture related to gender equity practices.     

Test Anxiety: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

The present paper examines test anxiety from a cross-cultural perspective with specific reference to the Indian and American cultures. The construct of test anxiety has been examined in many cultures all over the world. In this review, the importance of understanding and incorporating contextual factors in cross-cultural research is emphasized. Moreover, some of the methodological issues related to investigating culture-behavior relationship are discussed. Specifically, the derived-etic approach for conducting cross-cultural research is espoused. Then, research findings from western, cross-cultural, and Indian studies on test anxiety are reviewed. Consistent with the individualistic orientation of the western society, much of the research in the western world has adopted a de-contextualized approach. Inasmuch as many of the cross-cultural and Indian studies on test anxiety have their roots in western research, they have ignored the cultural context as well. To address this void, contextual variables relevant to test anxiety in the Indian setting are examined and hypotheses regarding the nature of test anxiety in Indian children are proposed. Finally, a research agenda is presented to examine these hypotheses using a derived-etic approach.     

谋事在人，成事在天——新生代农民工的适应策略及可协商命运观的影响

以珠海及宁波两地439名新生代农民工为对象,使用问卷法考察了他们的适应策略、生活结果（社会文化适应状况和主观幸福感）及命运观对适应策略选择的影响。结果发现：（1）整合策略是被调查者主要使用的适应策略,可协商命运观是被调查者主要持有的命运观;（2）持有可协商命运观的个体更多选择整合策略;（3）使用整合策略的个体具有更积极的社会文化适应状况和更高的主观幸福感;（4）可协商命运观对生活结果的积极影响可通过更多使用整合策略、更少使用分离和边缘化策略完全中介。     

Perceived and observed parenting behavior in American and Italian first-time mothers across the first 3 months

This short-term longitudinal study investigated cross-cultural universality (similarities) and cultural specificity (differences) in American and Italian first-time mothers’ perceived parenting efficacy and observed parenting behavior in early infancy. Thirty-two mother–infant dyads from the United States (n = 16) and Italy (n = 16) participated in this study at 1 and 3 months across the first developmental transition. Maternal self-efficacy in parenting was assessed by self-reports. Mothers’ parenting behavior was observed and videotaped in a feeding situation. Both micro- (15-s time sampling) and macro-analytic (global ratings) strategies were employed to measure maternal and infant behaviors. Results revealed both cross-cultural similarities and differences in American and Italian mothers’ perceived parenting efficacy and observed parenting behavior. Both American and Italian mothers perceived themselves as becoming more efficacious in their parental role from 1 to 3 months and demonstrated significant stability in their individual differences over time. Compared to American mothers, Italian mothers displayed greater social/affective and handling/holding behavior. Whereas American mothers showed more synchronous responses to their infants when they were resting, Italian mothers spent significantly more time in synchronous dyadic social exchanges with their infants. The findings are discussed from the perspective of cultural organization of parenting, which suggests that parents structure everyday activity for their infants in accordance with cultural values and expectations.