Mind, Culture, Person: Elements in a Cultural Psychology

Abstract

From the 1960s to the present, four distinct cultural psychologies have evolved. The ‘mind <i>and </i>culture’ account, typifying research until the 1970s, treated culture and cognition as separable. Mind was regarded as a set of logical-scientific, abstract cognitive abilities, and the effect of cultural variables such as schooling on these abilities was examined. Subsequent cultural psychologies came to treat mind and culture as inseparable. The ‘mind <i>in </i>culture’ account, evidenced in the cultural practice/activity view, redefines culture as practices. Cognition and culture interact in practices. However, traditional cognitive abilities still represent the analytic units, and the relation between these abilities and cultural practices is examined. According to a third, ‘culture <i>in </i>mind’ account, evidenced in the study of narrative thinking, a cultural category – narrative – is intrinsic to mind. Narrative becomes a new analytic unit. Finally in ‘person-based’ cultural psychology, the intentional agent is incorporated into cultural and cognitive functioning. Persons interpret, and hence construct, culture through deploying <i>stances –</i> meaningful frames by which persons construe reality. These stances become the analytic units, providing a multiplicity of meaningful cognitive categories. The core developmental issue becomes the emergence of person.