Culture Cultivating Culture: The Four Products of the Meaning-Made World

Culture, in a semiotic cultural psychology, is defined from the viewpoint of cultivation—the meaning making processes that give meaning to the world (Valsiner 2000, 2007a). However, the individual is not simply a process-machine in an empty world—there are both the external outcomes of meaning making (individual and group based) as well as the collective influence on the cultivation process. I argue to examine the cultivation process more completely, one must look at these external influences that catalyze future cultivation processes. By examining the power of the external (environmental Umwelten) and group-internal (myths, morals), a much greater understanding of the behavior of individuals can be accomplished beyond examining the individual’s process of meaning making. Further work into examining the objects that affectively activate the individual as well as group action and meaning making is called for and examples of such studies are given.