Process-Product Dynamics: The Role of Otherness in Cultural Cultivation

Carriere (2013) presents a stimulating perspective on the cultural phenomena aiming to recover the role of the external products of culture to imbalance the currently popular emphasis on subject’s process of cultivation highlighted by semiotic developmental cultural psychology. The excessive focus on subject’s internal processes dismissing a better consideration of products of culture and the compelling objective realities of other dimensions of culture are pointed out. By this way the author’s proposes a better dialogue with others perspectives on (cross)cultural psychology. These arguments are analyzed through a closer consideration of I-Other perennial movement. A dialogical view of process-product dynamics is then proposed. The role of Otherness—the one that (partially)shares and the one as witness, approving or disapproving subject’s products of cultivation—is discussed through the analysis of a concrete episode of the cultivation of the subject. It is concluded that a semiotic developmental cultural psychology and (cross) cultural psychology have different objects of knowledge comprising distinct interests and research fields.