One of the most profound insights of the dynamic systems perspective is that new structures resulting from the developmental process do not need to be planned in advance, nor is it necessary to have these structures represented in genetic or neurological templates prior to their emergence. Rather, new structures can emerge as components of the individual and the environment self-organize; that is, as they mutually constrain each other's actions, new patterns and structures may arise. This theoretical possibility brings into developmental theory the important concept of indeterminism--the possibility that developmental outcomes may not be predictable in any simple linear causal way from their antecedents.
This is the first book to take a critical and serious look at the role of indeterminism in psychological and behavioral development.
* What is the source of this indeterminism?
* What is its role in developmental change?
* Is it merely the result of incomplete observational data or error in measurement?
It reviews the concepts of indeterminism and determinism in their historical, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives--particularly in relation to dynamic systems thinking--and applies these general ideas to systems of nonverbal communication. Stressing the indeterminacy inherent to symbols and meaning making in social systems, several chapters address the issue of indeterminism from metaphorical, modeling, and narrative perspectives. Others discuss those indeterministic processes within the individual related to emotional, social, and cognitive development.

These companion volumes bring together research and theoretical work that addresses the relations between social context and the development of children. They allow for the in-depth discussion of a number of vital metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodological issues that have emerged as a result of increased investigation in these areas. For example: Which methodological and statistical procedures are appropriate and applicable to studies of social context and processes of development? Should the nature of social context be reconceptualized as something more than different levels of some social independent variable? Are theories of development that do not consider social context incomplete? Will the increasingly finer definitions of social context lead to extreme situationism and contextualism? As developmental theory and investigation continues to address relationships between social and cognitive development, it becomes increasingly important that issues concerning social context be elaborated and discussed.

Despite more than half a century of psychological research on creativity we are still far from a clear understanding of the creative process, its antecedents and consequences and, most of all, the ways in which we can effectively support creativity. This is primarily due to a narrow focus on creative individuals isolated from culture and society. Rethinking Creativity proposes a fundamental review of this position and argues that creativity is not only a psychological but a sociocultural phenomenon. This edited volume aims to relocate creativity from inside individual minds to the material, symbolic and social world of culture. It brings together eminent social and cultural psychologists who study dynamic, transformative and emergent phenomena, and invites them to conceptualise creativity in ways that depart from mainstream definitions and theoretical models existing in past and present literature on the topic. Chapters include reflections on the relationship between creativity and difference, creativity as a process of symbolic transformation, the role of apprenticeships and collaboration, the importance of considering materiality and affordances in creative work, and the power of imagination to construct individual trajectories. The diverse contributions included in this book offer readers multiple pathways into the intricate relationship between mind, culture, and creativity, and invite them to rethink these phenomena in ways that foster creative action within their own life and the lives of those around them. It will be of key interest to both social and cultural psychologists, as well as to creativity researchers and those who, as part of their personal or professional life, try to understand creativity and develop creative forms of expression.

Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue. Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner bring together contributors from the field of cultural psychology to consider how people living within social groups, regardless of how liberal, are guided by collective reality and interconnected with life circumstances. The book discusses experiences and events in the lives of people of Indian cultures covering topics including family, food, pilgrimages, social dynamics and truth, in order to expand the material on human phenomena under the broad frame of cultural psychology. The book builds upon rich cultural traditions present in India, and precisely because of this focus, the book has much larger implications and relevance to the field and aims to orient the academic reader from around the world to viewing India and Indian society as a valuable area for research. Divided into three sections, the book covers: * Social presentation in culture * Representing relations * Children and youth in culture This book includes commentaries from expert academics from outside of India, providing a bridge between academic reality and cultural discourse and throwing fresh light on the everyday events presented in the text. Cultural Realities of Being will be essential reading for those studying Cross Cultural Psychology as well as those interested in social representation and identity.

Traditionally, developmental psychology has its focus on individuals. Developmentalists aim to describe regularities in individuals' change and development across time, to explain the processes and mechanisms that are involved in producing change and regularity, and eventually, to design strategies for optimization and modification of developmental pathways. Although the role of contexts has always been of central concern for these purposes, it is nevertheless quite surprising to note that compared to the effort devoted to individuals, relatively little attention has been paid to the study of the nature and organization of their contexts. This volume is an exploration of the idea that how we describe and explain human development will be closely tied to our understanding of what contexts are, how individuals and contexts become influential for one another, what contexts do to and with individuals, and how contexts and their influences change themselves across time. A major theme is whether the traditional dichotomy between individuals and their contexts may be artificial, perhaps culturally biased, and after psychologists have adhered to it for about a century, may have become an impediment to increasing our understanding of developmental processes. With this volume, the editors contribute a serious consideration of development and systematic change to emerging models of person-context relations, and provide suggestions about how it may be possible to incorporate these notions in developmental research and theorizing.

Despite more than half a century of psychological research on creativity we are still far from a clear understanding of the creative process, its antecedents and consequences and, most of all, the ways in which we can effectively support creativity. This is primarily due to a narrow focus on creative individuals isolated from culture and society. "Rethinking Creativity" proposes a fundamental review of this position and argues that creativity is not only a psychological but a sociocultural phenomenon.

This edited volume aims to relocate creativity from inside individual minds to the material, symbolic and social world of culture. It brings together eminent social and cultural psychologists who study dynamic, transformative and emergent phenomena, and invites them to conceptualise creativity in ways that depart from mainstream definitions and theoretical models existing in past and present literature on the topic. Chapters include reflections on the relationship between creativity and difference, creativity as a process of symbolic transformation, the role of apprenticeships and collaboration, the importance of considering materiality and affordances in creative work, and the power of imagination to construct individual trajectories.

The diverse contributions included in this book offer readers multiple pathways into the intricate relationship between mind, culture, and creativity, and invite them to rethink these phenomena in ways that foster creative action within their own life and the lives of those around them. It will be of key interest to both social and cultural psychologists, as well as to creativity researchers and those who, as part of their personal or professional life, try to understand creativity and develop creative forms of expression.

That sciences are guided by explicit and implicit ties to their surrounding social world is not new. Jaan Valsiner fills in the wide background of scholarship on the history of science, the recent focus on social studies of sciences, and the cultural and cognitive analyses of knowledge making. The theoretical scheme that he uses to explain the phenomena of social guidance of science comes from his thinking about processes of development in general--his theory of bounded indeterminacy--and on the relations of human beings with their culturally organized environments.

Valsiner examines reasons for the slow and nonlinear progress of ideas in psychology as a science at the border of natural and social sciences. Why is that intellectual progress occurs in different countries at different times? Most responses are self-serving blinders for presenting science as a given rather than understanding it as a deeply human experience. For Valsiner, scientific knowledge is cultural at its core.

Major changes have occurred in contemporary sciences--collective authorship, fragmentation of knowledge into small, quickly published (and equally quickly retractable) journal articles, and the counting of numbers of such articles by institutions as if that is a measure of "scientific productivity." Scientists are inherently ambivalent about the benefit of these changes for the actual development of knowledge. There is a gradual "takeover" of the domain of scientific knowledge creation by other social institutions with vested interests in defending and promoting knowledge that serves their social interests. Sciences are entering into a new form of social servitude.

That sciences are guided by explicit and implicit ties to their surrounding social world is not new. Jaan Valsiner fills in the wide background of scholarship on the history of science, the recent focus on social studies of sciences, and the cultural and cognitive analyses of knowledge making. The theoretical scheme that he uses to explain the phenomena of social guidance of science comes from his thinking about processes of development in general--his theory of bounded indeterminacy--and on the relations of human beings with their culturally organized environments.

Valsiner examines reasons for the slow and nonlinear progress of ideas in psychology as a science at the border of natural and social sciences. Why is that intellectual progress occurs in different countries at different times? Most responses are self-serving blinders for presenting science as a given rather than understanding it as a deeply human experience. For Valsiner, scientific knowledge is cultural at its core.

Major changes have occurred in contemporary sciences--collective authorship, fragmentation of knowledge into small, quickly published (and equally quickly retractable) journal articles, and the counting of numbers of such articles by institutions as if that is a measure of "scientific productivity." Scientists are inherently ambivalent about the benefit of these changes for the actual development of knowledge. There is a gradual "takeover" of the domain of scientific knowledge creation by other social institutions with vested interests in defending and promoting knowledge that serves their social interests. Sciences are entering into a new form of social servitude.

James Mark Baldwin left a legacy that has yet to be fully examined, one with profound implications for science and the humanities. In some sense it paralleled that of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, whose semiotics became understood only a century later. Baldwin was trying to make sense of complex biological and social processes which only now have come into the limelight as biological sciences, and slowly but surely, have re-emerged in psychology.

Baldwin's focus on development, based on the observation of his own children and extrapolated to his general theoretical scheme, is fully in line with where our contemporary biological sciences are heading. This is exemplified by the bounded flexibility of the work of the genetic system. The general principle of persistent exploration of the environment with the result of creating novelty, which was the core of Baldwin's theoretical system, has since the 1960s become the guiding idea in genetics. Contemporary developmental science is rooted in Baldwin's thinking.

In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner shows that Baldwin's Genetic Theory of Reality demonstrates how human beings are in their nature social beings, establishes an alternative conceptualization of evolutionary theory, and formulates a system of developmental logic, all of which serve as the foundation for developmental psychology as a whole. This is a work of social science rediscovery long overdue.

This book explores the development of ideas in psychology's past. It is the initial volume in a series intended to shape such ideas into a valuable resource for the discipline's future. Scientists, in general, are known to ignore their own history, considering it to be a graveyard of failures. In Thinking in Psychological Science, selected ideas of key figures in the cognitive, comparative, and developmental sides of psychology Karl Duncker, Karl Biihler, Tamara Dembo, Zing-Young Kuo, C. Lloyd Morgan, Alexander Chamberlain, and Arnold Gesell are traced, and the social contexts of their ideas are given a collective analysis, focusing on the potential of these ideas for the present state of psychology. Representing the scientist as "hero" has become a necessary component when applying for research monies from governmentally controlled funding agencies. Yet the reality is just the opposite: Science is not just the product of "heroes"; it is the product of many individuals who often search for solutions to basic problems throughout their lifetimes while only a few arrive at breakthroughs. Still, familiarity with the flow of thought in the efforts to solve the basic problems of humankind is necessary for any understanding of creativity. This book analyzes the processes involved in the search for solutions to major theoretical problems of development (Kuo, Gesell), action and cognition (Biihler, Bunker, Dembo), and methodology (Morgan). Ultimately, this is an exciting volume that reveals real science in the making. Thinking in Psychological Science will be of interest to students of the social sciences and intellectual history. It is ideal for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in psychology, the sociology of science, and cognitive science.

This unusual collection explores the development of ideas in psychology's past, and shapes them into a valuable resource for ideas in the discipline's future, with particular emphasis on holistic traditions in psychology. Diriwochter and Valsiner focus on developmental holistic psychology as advocated by the second school of Leipzig in Germany. Although largely neglected, this school of thought has provided some of the fundamental ideas necessary for a truly holistic approach in psychology. This volume includes Leibniz's dynamic holism and Ehrenfels' discussion about Gestalt qualities, which has generally been acknowledged as a major milestone in the formation of Gestalt psychology. Each chapter looks at the possible future of holistic psychology. Striving for the Whole contains several well-though out discussions on possible elaborations of holistic psychology by contrasting it with Ernst Boesch's cultural psychology, Pierre Janet's theory on emotions, and Jan Smuts holistic approach to personality theory. Discussions of holistic approaches in biology and evolutionary psychology, as well as a renewed look at Lloyd Morgan's comparative methodology, complete the volume. Striving for the Whole has been written by an international group of authors and will be of interest to students of the social sciences and intellectual history, and anyone who wants to dive deeper into holistic approaches that maintain their ties with empirical methodology. It is ideal for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in psychology.

Representing Development presents the different social representations that have formed the idea of development in Western thinking over the past three centuries. Offering an acute perspective on the current state of developmental science and providing constructive insights into future pathways, the book draws together twelve contributors with a variety of multidisciplinary and international perspectives to focus upon development in fields including biology, psychology and sociology. Chapters and commentaries in this volume present a variety of perspectives surrounding social representation and development, addressing their contemporary enactments and reflecting on future theoretical and empirical directions. The first section of the book provides an historical account of early representations of development that, having come from life science, has shaped the way in which developmental science has approached development. Section two focuses upon the contemporary issues of developmental psychology, neuroscience and developmental science at large. The final section offers a series of commentaries pointing to the questions opened by the previous chapters, looking to outline the future lines of developmental thinking. This book will be of particular interest to child psychologists, educational psychologists and sociologists or historians of science, as well as academics and students interested in developmental and life sciences.

James Mark Baldwin left a legacy that has yet to be fully examined, one with profound implications for science and the humanities. In some sense it paralleled that of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, whose semiotics became understood only a century later. Baldwin was trying to make sense of complex biological and social processes that only now have come into the limelight as biological sciences have re-emerged in psychology. Baldwin's focus on development, based on the observation of his own children and extrapolated to his general theoretical scheme, is fully in line with where contemporary biological sciences are heading. This is exemplified by the bounded flexibility of the work of the genetic system. The general principle of persistent exploration of the environment with the result of creating novelty, which was the core of Baldwin's theoretical system, has since the 1960s become the guiding idea in genetics. Contemporary developmental science is rooted in Baldwin's thinking. In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner shows that Baldwin's Genetic Theory of Reality demonstrates how human beings are in their nature social beings, establishes an alternative conceptualization of evolutionary theory, and formulates a system of developmental logic, all of which serve as the foundation for developmental psychology as a whole. This is a work of social science rediscovery long overdue.

One of the most profound insights of the dynamic systems perspective is that new structures resulting from the developmental process do not need to be planned in advance, nor is it necessary to have these structures represented in genetic or neurological templates prior to their emergence. Rather, new structures can emerge as components of the individual and the environment self-organize; that is, as they mutually constrain each other's actions, new patterns and structures may arise. This theoretical possibility brings into developmental theory the important concept of indeterminism--the possibility that developmental outcomes may not be predictable in any simple linear causal way from their antecedents.
This is the first book to take a critical and serious look at the role of indeterminism in psychological and behavioral development.
* What is the source of this indeterminism?
* What is its role in developmental change?
* Is it merely the result of incomplete observational data or error in measurement?
It reviews the concepts of indeterminism and determinism in their historical, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives--particularly in relation to dynamic systems thinking--and applies these general ideas to systems of nonverbal communication. Stressing the indeterminacy inherent to symbols and meaning making in social systems, several chapters address the issue of indeterminism from metaphorical, modeling, and narrative perspectives. Others discuss those indeterministic processes within the individual related to emotional, social, and cognitive development.

Traditionally, developmental psychology has its focus on individuals. Developmentalists aim to describe regularities in individuals' change and development across time, to explain the processes and mechanisms that are involved in producing change and regularity, and eventually, to design strategies for optimization and modification of developmental pathways. Although the role of contexts has always been of central concern for these purposes, it is nevertheless quite surprising to note that compared to the effort devoted to individuals, relatively little attention has been paid to the study of the nature and organization of their contexts.
This volume is an exploration of the idea that how we describe and explain human development will be closely tied to our understanding of what contexts are, how individuals and contexts become influential for one another, what contexts do to and with individuals, and how contexts and their influences change themselves across time. A major theme is whether the traditional dichotomy between individuals and their contexts may be artificial, perhaps culturally biased, and after psychologists have adhered to it for about a century, may have become an impediment to increasing our understanding of developmental processes.
With this volume, the editors contribute a serious consideration of development and systematic change to emerging models of person-context relations, and provide suggestions about how it may be possible to incorporate these notions in developmental research and theorizing.

Representing Development presents the different social representations that have formed the idea of development in Western thinking over the past three centuries. Offering an acute perspective on the current state of developmental science and providing constructive insights into future pathways, the book draws together twelve contributors with a variety of multidisciplinary and international perspectives to focus upon development in fields including biology, psychology and sociology. Chapters and commentaries in this volume present a variety of perspectives surrounding social representation and development, addressing their contemporary enactments and reflecting on future theoretical and empirical directions. The first section of the book provides an historical account of early representations of development that, having come from life science, has shaped the way in which developmental science has approached development. Section two focuses upon the contemporary issues of developmental psychology, neuroscience and developmental science at large. The final section offers a series of commentaries pointing to the questions opened by the previous chapters, looking to outline the future lines of developmental thinking. This book will be of particular interest to child psychologists, educational psychologists and sociologists or historians of science, as well as academics and students interested in developmental and life sciences.

In this book Lee Rudolph brings together international contributors who combine psychological and mathematical perspectives to analyse how qualitative mathematics can be used to create models of social and psychological processes. Bridging the gap between the fields with an imaginative and stimulating collection of contributed chapters, the volume updates the current research on the subject, which until now has been rather limited, focussing largely on the use of statistics.

Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences contains a variety of useful illustrative figures, introducing readers from the social sciences to the rich contribution that modern mathematics has made to our knowledge of logic, structures, and dynamic systems. A beguiling array of conceptual systems, topological models and fractals are discussed which transcend the application of statistics, and bring a fresh perspective to the study of social representations.

The wide selection of qualitative mathematical methodologies discussed in this volume will be hugely valuable to higher-level undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology, sociology and mathematics. It will also be useful for researchers, academics and professionals from the social sciences who want a firmer grasp on the use of qualitative mathematics.

In this book Lee Rudolph brings together international contributors who combine psychological and mathematical perspectives to analyse how qualitative mathematics can be used to create models of social and psychological processes. Bridging the gap between the fields with an imaginative and stimulating collection of contributed chapters, the volume updates the current research on the subject, which until now has been rather limited, focussing largely on the use of statistics. Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences contains a variety of useful illustrative figures, introducing readers from the social sciences to the rich contribution that modern mathematics has made to our knowledge of logic, structures, and dynamic systems. A beguiling array of conceptual systems, topological models and fractals are discussed which transcend the application of statistics, and bring a fresh perspective to the study of social representations. The wide selection of qualitative mathematical methodologies discussed in this volume will be hugely valuable to higher-level undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology, sociology and mathematics. It will also be useful for researchers, academics and professionals from the social sciences who want a firmer grasp on the use of qualitative mathematics.

This unusual collection explores the development of ideas in psychology's past, and shapes them into a valuable resource for ideas in the discipline's future, with particular emphasis on holistic traditions in psychology. Diriwochter and Valsiner focus on developmental holistic psychology as advocated by the second school of Leipzig in Germany. Although largely neglected, this school of thought has provided some of the fundamental ideas necessary for a truly holistic approach in psychology.

This volume includes Leibniz's dynamic holism and Ehrenfels' discussion about Gestalt qualities, which has generally been acknowledged as a major milestone in the formation of Gestalt psychology. Each chapter looks at the possible future of holistic psychology. Striving for the Whole contains several well-though out discussions on possible elaborations of holistic psychology by contrasting it with Ernst Boesch's cultural psychology, Pierre Janet's theory on emotions, and Jan Smuts holistic approach to personality theory. Discussions of holistic approaches in biology and evolutionary psychology, as well as a renewed look at Lloyd Morgan's comparative methodology, complete the volume.

Striving for the Whole has been written by an international group of authors and will be of interest to students of the social sciences and intellectual history, and anyone who wants to dive deeper into holistic approaches that maintain their ties with empirical methodology. It is ideal for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in psychology.

This book explores the development of ideas in psychology's past. It is the initial volume in a series intended to shape such ideas into a valuable resource for the discipline's future. Scientists, in general, are known to ignore their own history, considering it to be a graveyard of failures. In Thinking in Psychological Science, selected ideas of key figures in the cognitive, comparative, and developmental sides of psychology--Karl Duncker, Karl Biihler, Tamara Dembo, Zing-Young Kuo, C. Lloyd Morgan, Alexander Chamberlain, and Arnold Gesell--are traced, and the social contexts of their ideas are given a collective analysis, focusing on the potential of these ideas for the present state of psychology.

Representing the scientist as "hero" has become a necessary component when applying for research monies from governmentally controlled funding agencies. Yet the reality is just the opposite: Science is not just the product of "heroes"; it is the product of many individuals who often search for solutions to basic problems throughout their lifetimes-- while only a few arrive at breakthroughs. Still, familiarity with the flow of thought in the efforts to solve the basic problems of humankind is necessary for any understanding of creativity. This book analyzes the processes involved in the search for solutions to major theoretical problems--of development (Kuo, Gesell), action and cognition (Biihler, Bunker, Dembo), and methodology (Morgan). Ultimately, this is an exciting volume that reveals real science in the making.

Thinking in Psychological Science will be of interest to students of the social sciences and intellectual history. It is ideal for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in psychology, the sociology of science, and cognitive science.

Sociocultural psychology is a discipline located at the crossroads between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. This international overview of the field provides an antireductionist and comprehensive account of how experience and behaviour arise from human action with cultural materials in social practices. The outcome is a vision of the dynamics of sociocultural and personal life in which time and developmental constructive transformations are crucial. This second edition provides expanded coverage of how particular cultural artefacts and social practices shape experience and behaviour in the realms of art and aesthetics, economics, history, religion and politics. Special attention is also paid to the development of identity, the self and personhood throughout the lifespan, while retaining the emphasis on experience and development as key features of sociocultural psychology.

This book explores and provides an overview of the Norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund's life work on Psycho-logic. His contributions to science have been radical not only in challenging the empirical foundation of psychology, but also in seeking to develop a viable alternative. This book brings together various reflections on his key contributions from the 1960s to the present day. The volume features three chapters by Jan Smedslund, offering his updated views on psychological science and psychotherapy. It also features contributions from several scholars that critically evaluates his legacy. His seminal ideas are discussed, revised and expanded upon and the questions raised are put in relevant historical and interdisciplinary context. Respect for Thought is a valuable resource for psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, theoretical psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.

This book explores and provides an overview of the Norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund's life work on Psycho-logic. His contributions to science have been radical not only in challenging the empirical foundation of psychology, but also in seeking to develop a viable alternative. This book brings together various reflections on his key contributions from the 1960s to the present day. The volume features three chapters by Jan Smedslund, offering his updated views on psychological science and psychotherapy. It also features contributions from several scholars that critically evaluates his legacy. His seminal ideas are discussed, revised and expanded upon and the questions raised are put in relevant historical and interdisciplinary context. Respect for Thought is a valuable resource for psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, theoretical psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.

Sociocultural psychology is a discipline located at the crossroads between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. This international overview of the field provides an antireductionist and comprehensive account of how experience and behaviour arise from human action with cultural materials in social practices. The outcome is a vision of the dynamics of sociocultural and personal life in which time and developmental constructive transformations are crucial. This second edition provides expanded coverage of how particular cultural artefacts and social practices shape experience and behaviour in the realms of art and aesthetics, economics, history, religion and politics. Special attention is also paid to the development of identity, the self and personhood throughout the lifespan, while retaining the emphasis on experience and development as key features of sociocultural psychology.

This book investigates whether, how and where the cultural milieu of European societies has changed as a result of the socio-economics crisis. To do so, it adopts a psycho-cultural approach, which views the cultural milieu as a set of meanings, placing the generalized image social actors have of themselves, the world, events and their relationships in the context of the socio-political and institutional environment, including policies. By analyzing the changes in cultural milieu and social identity, the book develops strategic and methodological guidelines for the design of post-crisis policies, providing a concept of how the cultural dynamics are associated with certain individual characteristics and specific socio-economic phenomena.