Integrating Cultural Community Psychology: Activity Settings and the Shared Meanings of Intersubjectivity

Cultural and community psychology share a common emphasis on context, yet their leading journals rarely cite each other’s articles. Greater integration of the concepts of culture and community within and across their disciplines would enrich and facilitate the viability of cultural community psychology. The contextual theory of activity settings is proposed as one means to integrate the concepts of culture and community in cultural community psychology. Through shared activities, participants develop common experiences that affect their psychological being, including their cognitions, emotions, and behavioral development. The psychological result of these experiences is intersubjectivity. Culture is defined as the shared meanings that people develop through their common historic, linguistic, social, economic, and political experiences. The shared meanings of culture arise through the intersubjectivity developed in activity settings. Cultural community psychology presents formidable epistemological challenges, but overcoming these challenges could contribute to the transformation and advancement of community psychology.     

文化混搭:研究现状与发展方向

文化混搭指"不同文化在同一时空中呈现"的现象,是全球化背景下心理学中文化研究的新热点。文化混搭研究代表了继跨文化心理学、文化心理学和多元文化心理学之后,心理学文化研究的第四个阶段——文化会聚主义心理学,并从不同方面延伸与拓展了传统的多元文化研究。已有文献从文化混搭对个体心理和行为的影响、个体对文化混搭的反应及心理机制等角度展开了实证研究。未来研究应进一步明晰文化混搭的概念定义和研究范畴、提炼和比较其不同表现形式、探究既有研究结论中的不一致性、比较文化元素的混搭与非文化元素的混搭的异同、采用多学科多层次的研究方法和手段。     

Culture in Asian American Community Psychology: Beyond the East�CWest Binary

In response to a call to better integrate culture in community psychology (O'Donnell in American Journal of Community Psychology 37:1-7 2006), we offer a cultural-community framework to facilitate a collaborative engagement between community psychologists and ethnic minority communities, focusing on Asian American communities as illustrations. Extending Hays' (Addressing cultural complexities in practice: Assessment, diagnosis, and therapy, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2008) ADDRESSING framework for considering cultural influences on a counseling relationship, the proposed framework provides a broad but systematic guidepost for considering three major cultural-ecological influences on Asian American communities: Race and Ethnicity (R), Culture (C), and Immigration and Transnational Ties (I). We provide a sequence of steps that incorporate the ADDRESSING and the RCI frameworks to facilitate the collaborative community-based research or social action.     

Ethnography in Community Psychology: Promises and Tensions

Community psychology recognizes the need for research methods that illuminate context, culture, diversity, and process. One such method, ethnography, has crossed into multiple disciplines from anthropology, and indeed, community psychologists are becoming community ethnographers. Ethnographic work stands at the intersection of bridging universal questions with the particularities of people and groups bounded in time, geographic location, and social location. Ethnography is thus historical and deeply contextual, enabling a rich, in-depth understanding of communities that is aligned with the values and goals of community psychology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the potential of ethnography for community psychology and to encourage its use within the field as a method to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities. We discuss the method of ethnography, draw connections to community psychology values and goals, and identify tensions from our experiences doing ethnography. Overall, we assert that ethnography is a method that resonates with community psychology and present this paper as a resource for those interested in using this method in their research or community activism.     

孝文化与中国人人格形成的深层机制

作为中国文化的重要特征,孝文化提供了一整套系统的文本、言说和行为准则,不仅影响到中国社会的历史面貌和现实状况等宏观领域,而且也影响到人格形成等微观领域。该文从文化的辩证角度分析了孝文化长期存在的合理性,对孝文化的内涵和消极效应进行了心理学解读,并简要分析了孝文化与中国人具体人格特征之间的关联。正是通过具体的教养方式和亲子关系,孝文化完成了其对人格的塑造作用。     

(De)colonizing Culture in Community Psychology: Reflections from Critical Social Science

Since its inception, community psychology has been interested in cultural matters relating to issues of diversity and marginalization. However, the field has tended to understand culture as static social markers or as the background for understanding group differences. In this article the authors contend that culture is inseparable from who we are and what we do as social beings. Moreover, culture is continually shaped by socio-historical and political processes intertwined within the globalized history of power. The authors propose a decolonizing standpoint grounded in critical social science to disrupt understandings of cultural matters that marginalize others. This standpoint would move the field toward deeper critical thinking, reflexivity and emancipatory action. The authors present their work to illustrate how they integrate a decolonizing standpoint to community psychology research and teaching. They conclude that community psychology must aim towards intercultural work engaging its political nature from a place of ontological/epistemological/methodological parity.     

“I,Me, Mine” or “Us,We, Ours?”: The Influence of Cultural Psychology on Web-Based Customization

A profusion of recent research on consumer responses to individualized messages points to an enduring interest in the psychology of web-based customization. Across disciplines, the consensus is that highly individualized messages will generate more favorable outcomes than less individualized ones because they match message recipients' need for unique self-identity. We challenge this popular notion by arguing that highly individualized messages will not be as effective in collectivistic cultures that discourage unique self-identity. We test this proposition in a 2 × 3 experiment by randomly assigning participants (N = 120) representing either an individualistic or collectivistic culture (American, Chinese, respectively) to one of two levels of a customized message (highly individualized vs. less highly individualized) or a noncustomized, generic message (control condition). The experimental findings suggest a significant mediated moderation effect: Culture moderates the relationship between message type and attitude such that American participants report a more favorable attitude toward highly individualized messages and Chinese participants report a more favorable attitude toward less highly individualized messages, and this moderation is mediated by a psychological sense of community. Besides theoretical implications, we also highlight an original methodological procedure for manipulating customized messages in online environments.     

Is culture a problem for social psychology?

Culture has been regarded as an anathema to psychology as an empiricist research tradition. Despite the explosive growth of research on culture and psychology over the last decade of the 20th century and its importance in Asian social psychology, the ontological and epistemological tension between psychology as a science and psychology as a cultural/historical discipline introduced in the writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment still lingers on in the contemporary discourse of psychology. Clifford Geertz once ominously suggested that cultural psychology may have chewed more than it can. In the present paper, the interpretive turn in social science as exemplified by writings of Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur is reviewed and how it may impinge on the practice of Asian social psychology as an empirical science in methodological, epistemological, and ontological respects is discussed. It is argued here that the current practice of Asian social psychology is largely, though not entirely, free of the challenges mounted by these theorists, and that Asian social psychology has an advantage of not being encumbered by this traditional tension due to a monist ontology that is prevalent in Asia.     

Power and Action in Critical Theory Across Disciplines: Implications for Critical Community Psychology

Although critical scholarship and community psychology share similar aspirations, the links between them remain unexplored and under-theorized. In this article we explore the implications of critical scholarship in various specialties for the field of community psychology. To understand the contributions of critical scholarship to a theory of power and action for social change, we conducted a systematic analysis of a ten-year period of publications in seven journals associated with the critical scholarship tradition. We created precise criteria for the concepts of power and action and applied them to the publications. Results indicate an interesting paradox at play. Whereas community psychology is more action oriented than critical scholarship, its actions fall short of challenging institutionalized power structures and the status quo; and whereas critical scholarship is more challenging of the status quo than community psychology in theory, it has failed to produce viable actions that challenge the status quo. We discuss the implications of this state of affairs for the development of a more critical community psychology.     

基于文化的心理复原力研究

随着对个体心理复原力研究不断深入,文化作为影响个体心理复原力的重要因素日益受到关注,研究者在厘清文化与复原力之间的关系后,尝试以积极心理学的视角,将中国传统文化中"天人合一"、"以人为本"、"自强不息"、"厚德载物"等文化精神引入到个体心理复原力发展的过程中,为个体心理复原力的研究贡献价值。     

Interdisciplinary Linkage of Community Psychology and Cross-Cultural Psychology: History, Values, and an Illustrative Research and Action Project on Intimate Partner Violence

An analysis of the respective organizational histories, missions, and scholarly activity of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology and the Society for Community Research and Action was conducted in order to inform the development of interdisciplinary linkages between members of the two organizations. The analysis revealed many points of shared values and actions, as well as some important differences. Both scholarly organizations developed out of a similar historical and cultural zeitgeist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The missions emphasize the role of culture/diversity in psychological phenomena, adopting an interdisciplinary orientation, the value of collaboration, the importance of research method and ethics, and the value of action research. However, community psychology generally lacks an adequate treatment of cultural phenomena while cross-cultural psychology often fails to draw on community and participatory methods useful for understanding culture in context. These common roots and differences are examined. Finally, we describe a community based, participatory research and intervention project to address intimate partner violence among Latinos and European-Americans living in Oregon. Analysis of the research process and on some of our initial findings illustrates challenges and potential benefits of an interdisciplinary, cultural community psychology.     

文化模式及其对心理与行为的影响

文化可分为集体主义文化和个体主义文化两种模式。集体主义文化培育出集体中心的人格倾向,个体主义文化培育出个体中心的人格倾向。这两种人格倾向具有不同的自我概念,并进而对认知、学习、情绪和动机等产生影响。由此得出的结论是：心理学的研究成果具有文化的局限性,没有所谓的“放之四海而皆准”的心理和行为定律。     

Social Change: Toward an Informed and Critical Understanding of Social Justice and the Capabilities Approach in Community Psychology

Community psychology has long been concerned with social justice. However, deployments of this term are often vague and undertheorized. To address this weakness in the field's knowledge body we explored John Rawls's theory of social justice and Amartya Sen's economic theory of the capabilities approach and evaluated each for its applicability to community psychology theory, research, and action. Our unpacking of the philosophical and political underpinnings of Rawlsian theory of social justice resulted in identifying characteristics that limit the theory's utility in community psychology, particularly in its implications for action. Our analysis of the capability approach proposed by Amartya Sen revealed a framework that operationalizes social justice in both research and action, and we elaborate on this point. Going beyond benefits to community psychology in adopting the capabilities approach, we posit a bi‐directional relationship and discuss how community psychology might also contribute to the capabilities approach. We conclude by suggesting that community psychology could benefit from a manifesto or proclamation that provides a historical background of social justice and critiques the focus on the economic, sociological, and philosophical theories that inform present‐day conceptualizations (and lack thereof) of social justice for community psychology.     

Human Nature and Culture: An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective

Personality psychology is the broadest of all psychological subdisciplines in that it seeks a conceptually integrated understanding of both human nature and important individual differences. Cultural differences pose a unique set of problems for any comprehensive theory of personality—how can they be reconciled with universals of human nature on the one hand and within‐cultural variation on the other? Evolutionary psychology provides one set of conceptual tools by which this conceptual integration can be made. It requires jettisoning the false but still‐pervasive dichotomy of culture versus biology, acknowledging a universal human nature, and recognizing that the human mind contains many complex psychological mechanisms that are selectively activated, depending on cultural contexts. Culture rests on a foundation of evolved psychological mechanisms and cannot be understood without those mechanisms.     

Value-based praxis in community psychology: moving toward social justice and social action

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a rationale for value-based praxis in community psychology. Although values need to promote personal, collective, and relational wellness at the same time, it is argued that community psychologists pay more attention to personal and relational wellness than to collective wellness. In order to address this imbalance it is important to promote the value of social justice. While praxis requires that we engage in a cycle of reflection, research, and social action, community psychologists devote more resources to the first two phases of praxis than to the last one. This paper offers a framework for deciding what values and what praxis considerations we should attend to and how we may advance social justice and social action in community psychology.     

Community psychology in Thailand

Conclusion It appears that, though the medical model will predominate in the health field for a long time to come, community psychology is slowly taking shape and laying down its foundation in Thailand. Increasing numbers of health professionals are becoming aware of the paradigm shift and the limitations of the conventional approach.With gradually accumulated experiences and more formal training, which Thai psychologists will be able to avail themselves of in the future, the results should be a better quality of community programs, with more systematic evaluation, and better research. The goal would be to develop innovations utilizing existing resources within the unique Thai culture and environment. With such progress, Thai community psychologists will be able to improve their status from the present auxiliary role to equal partnership and move into much better positions to make significant contributions in the field of community psychology.     

Complicating Narratives: Defining and Deconstructing Ethical Challenges in Community Psychology

In this concluding essay, we review the case studies presented in this Special Issue and examine whether community psychology has a distinctive approach to defining and resolving the core ethical canons of the Belmont Report (1979): Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. For two of these Principles—Respect for Persons and Beneficence—community psychologists elaborate upon and extend their definitions to consider their meaning in community‐based, social justice‐oriented research. The field's approach to Respect for Persons is multilevel in nature; in addition to respecting individuals and their diverse identities, we also have obligations to respect our community partnerships, the communities with whom we work, and the populations and cultures represented in our work. Similarly, for community psychologists, Beneficence is a multilevel construct that considers risks and benefits at the group, community, and cultural levels of analysis. With respect to Justice, community psychologists’ views of our ethical responsibilities are qualitatively different in meaning from the original Belmont Report and from disciplinary‐specific interpretations of this principle in ethical guidance documents from psychology, sociology, and evaluation. Our valuing of social change demands that we contribute to individual and group empowerment and liberation, and in so doing, that we avoid collusion with oppressive systems. Thus, we define our ethical responsibilities for promoting Justice as more action‐oriented than do other disciplines. The essay closes with an exploration of future directions for developing a comprehensive ethical framework for community psychology.     

Community treatment for the seriously mentally ill: Is this community psychology?

Community treatment for seriously mentally ill individuals fits well into the philosophy of community psychology. Community psychologists have skills and experiences with other populations that represent assets in improving the ACT service model and producing richer and more useful research results for the future. Maybe we should ask ourselves why community psychologists have obviously avoided this intervention area and the population of seriously mentally ill individuals. Does this represent an adolescent reaction to the parent discipline — clinical psychology? Is the label “mentally ill” as stigmatizing to community psychologists as it is to the general population? Are these individuals written off as not worthy of or capable of benefiting from preventive interventions? Advocates for the seriously mentally ill are mounting a backlash against prevention services. We would be well advised at this time to become involved in community treatment and demonstrate that community psychology is forall vulnerable and at-risk population groups. If the truth of the matter is that “community psychology is not doing much of a job of empowering people” (Berkowitz, 1990), maybe the truth of the matter is also that we need to reach out to more disenfranchised populations with research to show that community psychologycan do the job of empowering some.