This book presents a novel perspective on psychology's methodology—moving it from quantification as a given imperative to science-philosophical look at phenomena-data relationship. The idea for this volume emerged from inquiries into the history of psychology of the 18th-19th centuries where the developmental focus within German Naturphilosophie led philosophers to emphasize the dialectical nature of biological and psychological development. The nature of the natural and social worlds is curvilinear and includes knot-complexes that cannot be investigated in terms of the consensually accepted General Linear Model of the 20th century. In this the new book continues the creative search for new forms of epistemological ways of thinking that was started in 2010 in the volume Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray. General Liner Model and turned into metaphoric complexes that acquire life of their own in psychologists' thinking needs to be replaced by qualitative-structural units of thinking about how human psychological organization can be presented.

The goal of this book is to locate the birth pangs of psychology—the study of the psyche—in in the Renaissance unity of art and science. The historical period 1583-1611 in Prague was a particularly productive for all Europe in its intellectual advancements in art and science. It was facilitated by the special personality of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II who during his reign made Prague the capital of the Empire where the major artists, scientists, architects and alchemists came together in the service of the Emperor and formed a unique context of interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas that enhanced European philosophies, sciences, and arts in the following centuries. While the history of art in and astronomy in the Rudolfine era has been amply covered, the impacts of the intellectual atmosphere of the era on psychology, philosophy, social ideologies, and aesthetics has remained scarcely investigated. The volume includes analyses of history of ideas in psychology, sociology and other social sciences that received the impetus of the political situation of Rudolfine Prague with religious tolerance and decline of the political power of the Holy Roman Empire.

Ornamented Lives is a theoretical synthesis of cultural psychology, aesthetics, and philosophy of meaning construction. It is an extension of the author's theory of Semiotic Dynamics (Culture in Minds and Societies, 2007) to the field of ornaments. Ornaments are not merely "decorations" but play the important role of guiding the affective depths of the human minds. This is done by capturing the whole fields of perceivable peripheral spaces and filling them with highly recursive forms. The book concentrates on the visual ornaments of various kinds, indicating in them the tensions between basic forms-linear and curvilinear. This tension is present in human construction of environments-natural growth involves curvilinear forms while human constructions introduce linearity. The basic tension between linear and curvilinear infinities is expressed in the use of spiral forms in art and architecture. The book builds a theoretical account of human beings constantly creating sublime life occasions that give them affective charge for dramatizations of ordinary living. Episodically the sublime acquires new quality- becomes aesthetic. The coverage in this book links the aesthetic, the sublime, and the mundane into one theoretical scheme within cultural psychology.

The first volume of the Yearbook of Idiographic Science (YIS) was published on 2009. In a nutshell, the idea at the grounds of the YIS project is that idiography and nomothetic are not juxtaposed logics and that the science cannot but be both nomothetic - in the aim - and idiographic - in the modes. About thirteen years later, the sense and the direction of the YIS project envisaged in the first volume's introduction - together with the difficulties to pursue it - are still alive and valid. Thus, to both celebrate the milestone of the tenth issue and to plan the future, we asked to some colleagues, almost all contributors of previous volumes, to discuss what idiographic science means today, and what can mean tomorrow. The works they have generously provided are very instructive - each of them pictures a peculiar perspective on idiography that enables to recognize old and new challenges, thus paving the way to innovative ideas and directions.

A volume in Advances in Cultural PsychologySeries Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University"This is a remarkable and highly original work on dialogism, dialogical theories and dialogue. With his erudite and broadly based scholarship PerLinell makes a path-breaking contribution to the study of the human mind, presenting a novel alternative to traditional monologism and exploring thedynamics of sense-making in different forms of interaction and communicative projects. Although Per Linell discusses complex dialogical concepts, the text is written with exceptional clarity, taking the reader through critique as well as appreciation of great intellectual traditions of our time."(Professor Ivana Markov, University of Stirling, U.K.)"Per Linells Rethinking Language, Mind And World Dialogically represents a landmark in the development ofa transdisciplinary dialogically basedparadigm for the human sciences. The author?'s lucid analysis and constructive rethinking ranges all the way from integrating explanations ofsignificant empirical contributions across the entire range of human sciences dealing with language, thought and communication to foundational, epistemological and ontological issues."(Professor Ragnar Rommetveit, University of Oslo, Norway)Per Linell took his degree in linguistics and is currently professor of language and culture, with a specialisation on communication and spokeninteraction, at the University of Link ping, Sweden. He has been instrumental in building up an internationally renowned interdisciplinary graduateschool in communication studies in Link ping. He has worked for many years on developing a dialogical alternative to mainstream theories inlinguistics, psychology and social sciences. His production comprises more than 100 articles on dialogue, talk-in-interaction and institutionaldiscourse. His more recent books include Approaching Dialogue (1998), The Written Language Bias in Linguistics (2005) and Dialogue in FocusGroups (2007, with I. Markov, M. Grossen and A. Salazar Orvig).

This book comes as part of a broader project the first editor is developing in collaboration with the other two, aiming critically to articulate the central philosophical issue of time and temporality with Cultural Psychology and related areas in its frontier. Similarly to the previous milestone in this effort-Otherness in Question: Labyrinths of the Self, published in this same series, the present one we also invited international cast of authors to bring their perspectives about a possible dialogue between a central philosophical issue and the core subject of their respective research domains. The book interests to researchers, scholars, professionals and students in Psychology and its areas of frontier.

This book brings pragmatic theory and praxis into dialogue with contemporary psychodynamic ideas, practitioners, and clinical issues. Generally considered as a historical footnote to psychoanalysis, the chapters in this volume demonstrate pragmatism's continued relevance for contemporary thought. Not only does pragmatism share many of the values and sensibilities of contemporary psychodynamics, its rich philosophical and theoretical emphasis on active meaning making and agentic being in the world complements and extends current thinking about the social nature of self and mind, how we occupy space in the world, non-linear development, and processes of communication.

What sparks a psychologist's interest in a certain phenomenon? Is it a symptom, a syndrome, a treatment, the usual, the exceptional, the group, the individual? An epistemologist, for example, focuses on the group and delivers group results. The clinician has to focus on the patient, although the patient may be perceived as one of a group (e.g., all patients with the same disease). The patient usually focuses on the clinician, but can take other opinions into account; especially, when the clinician is not considered to be the only authority. These dynamics - observable in therapy as well as in research - are critically reflected in this book, not only highlighting differences, but also commonalities individuals share: They all filter information and concentrate on certain aspects according to their socialization. They all have different expectations and can, yet, all deal with the same objective. Communication and building relationships seem to be vital - this book aims to support this quest by moving from the universal to the particular.

Making of the Future is the first English?language coverage of the new methodological perspective in cultural psychology-TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) that was established in 2004 as a collaboration of Japanese and American cultural psychologists. In the decade that follows it has become a guiding approach for cultural psychology all over the World. Its central feature is the reliance on irreversible time as the basis for understanding of cultural phenomena and the consideration of real and imaginary options in human life course as relevant for the construction of personal futures. The book is expected to be of interest in researchers and practitioners in education, developmental and social psychology, developmental sociology and history. It has extensions for research methodology in the focus on different sampling strategies.

This book comes as part of a broader project the editor is developing aiming critically to articulate some theoretical and methodological issues of cultural psychology with the research and practical work of psychologists with Amerindian peoples. As such, the project - of which the present book is part - concerns to a meta-theoretical reflection aiming to bring in new theoretical-methodological and ethical reflections to Cultural Psychology. From this meta-theoretical reflection we have been developing the notion of dialogical multiplication as it implies the diversification (differentiation and dedifferentiation) of semiotic trajectories in interethnic boundaries.

This volume is the firstborn of the Annals of Cultural Psychology - a yearly edited book series in the field of Cultural Psychology. It came into being as there is a need for reflection on "where and what" the discipline needs to further develop, in such a way, the current frontiers and to foster the elaboration of new fruitful ideas. The topic chosen for the first volume is perhaps the most fundamental of all- motherhood. We are all here because at some unspecifiable time in the past, different women labored hard to bring each of us into this World. These women were not thinking of culture, but were just giving birth. Yet by their reproductive success-and years of worry about our growing up-we are now, thankfully to them, in a position to discuss the general notion of motherhood from the angle of cultural psychology. Each person who is born needs a mother-first the real one, and then possibly a myriad of symbolic ones-from "my mother" to "mother superior" to "my motherland". Thus, it is not by coincidence if the first volume of the series is about motherhood. We the editors feel it is the topic that links our existence with one of the universals of human survival as a species. In very general terms what this book aims to do is to question the ontology of Motherhood in favor of an ontogenetic approach to Life's Course, where having a child represents a big transition in a woman's trajectory and where becoming (or not becoming) mother is heuristically more interesting than being a mother. We here present a reticulated work that digs into a cultural phenomenon giving to the readers the clear idea of making motherhood (and not taking for granted motherhood). By looking at absences, shadows and ruptures rather than the normativeness of motherhood, cultural psychology can provide a theoretical model in explaining the cultural multifaceted nature of human activity.

Reflexivity is a category that is too appealing not to arouse interest. It is a concept largely diffused in several psychological domains, as well as associated with epistemological, theoretical, methodological and practical discussions. At the same time, it is a very polysemic notion, understood and used in many different ways. If one approaches the notion and tries to identify the semantic boundaries of its usage, the seeming solidity of the term fades away, and a rather liquid semantic field emerges - a field where several interpretations coexist, being contingent to the context of the discussion in which they are implemented. This is the reason that makes the notion of reflexivity a prototypical example of the difficulties encountered by Psychology - and more in general social sciences -in the effort to define their own language. The term "reflexivity" ? like many others the language of Psychology is full of - is used in daily life and thus its semantics is shaped by the pragmatic, contingent functions it serves in such communicational circumstances. The apparent - from afar ? clearness of the concept does not concern its conceptual, epistemic status, but the capacity of the sign to contribute efficaciously to mediate and regulate the exchange. The theoretical elaboration of the notion of reflexivity can be seen as one of the ways of performing the challenging task of developing an intentional language for Psychology. By working on such a notion one can realize that common sense lies at the core of psychological science and what it means to separate the former from the latter, so as to pursue the foundational task of developing Psychology as a theory?driven science.

In this volume, gender and schooling in the early years addresses a broad range of issues including, but not limited, to gender equity in education. We explore, for example, the complex world of play in Fromberg's chapter and are reminded that for young children, play involves issues of power and hierarchy in ways that parallel the role of gender in society. Miletta's study of preschool children in northern Italy, at Reggio Emilia, reveals a story of classroom interactions where gender differences are not part of the equation for the youngsters. Her chapter begs the question, ""How does this environment empower all children, regardless of gender?"" Two chapters provide a lens to the Montessori setting for young children. Wilgus studies the gendered patterns of young women teaching at a Montessori school, while Irby, Rodriguez, and Lara-Alecio explore the intersections of culture and gender at a bilingual Montessori public school. Further examining the preschool years, Plaster and Schiller address the current brain research and examine the ways in which the adults that staff early child care programs, and the environments that they offer, play an important role in the development of our children.

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University The dynamics of trust and distrust are central to understanding modern society. These dynamics are evident at all levels of society, from the child's relation to caregivers to the individual's relation to the state, and they span from taken for granted trusting relationships to highly reflective and negotiated contractual interactions. The collection of papers in this book questions the diverse ways in which the concept of trust has been previously used, and advances a coherent theorisation of the socio-cultural dynamics of trust and distrust. In this volume, trust and distrust are analysed in relation to lay knowledge and situated in historical, cultural and interactional contexts.The contexts analysed include witch-hunting during the Reformation, China before and after the move to capitalism, building close personal relationships in South Korea, the representation of political corruption in Brazil, tourists bargaining for souvenirs in the Himalaya, disclosing being HIV+ in India, the historical shaping of trust in Portugal, and the role of trust and distrust in the economic development of the Baltic States. Throughout these analyses, and in associated commentaries and theoretical chapters, the focus is upon the cultural and social constitution of trust and distrust.

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University Book Summary: Jakob von Uexkull founded Umwelt research with a clear idea - that humans are not qualitatively different than other species. Umwelt, literally "outer-world," is the study of the organism in relation to the world around it, as well as the meaning that the world holds for that organism. Thus the world is a truly subjective place. While von Uexkull's theory has entered into the social sciences via semiotics, and biology via ethology, the authors of these chapters go between and beyond these disciplines to examine everything from cells to spiders to humans and culture. The authors adopt the framework of Umwelt theory to examine unique aspects of the natural world by relating the inner world of the subject and the objects to which that organism attends.

This book brings to social scientists a new look at how human beings are striving towards understanding others-- and through that effort-- making sense of themselves. It brings together researchers from all over the World who have suggested a set of new approaches to the basic research issue of how human beings are social beings, while being unique in their personal ways of being. Issues of social representation, communication, dialogical self, and human subjectivity are represented in this book. The book contributes to the contemporary epistemological and ethical debate about the question of otherness, and would be of interest to educationalists, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists. It is an invitation to the wide readership to join in this collective effort towards the construction of new conceptions about myselfothers relationships that allow for innovative understanding of various social practices and problem solving in society.

YIS has been thought as an annual series of volumes collecting contributes aimed at developing the integration of idiographic and nomothetic approaches in psychological and more in general social science. At the beginning, 3 years ago, we got an agreement with an Italian publisher (FGP - Firera Publishing Group) interested in the scientific project and therefore willing to help the start up of this scientific enterprise. After publishing the first volume (YIS 2008- yet published in 2009 - the Volume is freely available on the FPG's website) we have had many positive feedbacks and signals of interests, as well as several submissions, from many parts of the world . This has provided an acceleration of the following issues - Above all, this led us to realize that it was time to give an editorial collocation to YIS that can be more consistent with the interest it has raised and that can ulteriorly raise. FPG does not put constraint on this perspective, being aware and agreed of the necessity of a worldwide context for the YIS's development. Moreover, there are no constraints in the possibility of going on in using the label "YIS," starting from Volume 4 The Series addresses a quite large potential public - students and researchers interested to theoretical and methodological development of psychology and, more in general, social science. Persons engaged with qualitative, dynamic informed models of analysis will find YIS a precious tool as well as a context enabling to develop a worlwide network of practices and cultures of research. The first three volumes' TOC witness how large and constantly increasing is the interest around the scientific project.

The book provides conceptual and theoretical elaborations on human values from a cultural psychological approach. The authors illustrate their original contributions with empirical data, allowing for productive discussion on the topic of ontogenesis of values from a historical-cultural perspective.

Cultural Psychology of Recursivity illustrates how recursivity, often neglected in the social sciences, can be an important concept for illuminating meaning-making processes. Recusrivity is a fascinating though abstract concept with a wide array of often incompatible definitions. Rooted in mathematics and linguistics, this book brings recursion and recursive processes to the foreground of psychological processes. One unifying claim among the diverse chapters in this book is that recursion and recursive processes are at the core of complex social and psychological processes. Recursion is bound up with the notion of re-turning, re-examining, reflecting and circling back, and these processes allow for human beings to simultaneously distance themselves from the here-and-now settings (by imaging the past and future) while being immersed in them. The objective of this book is not simply to celebrate the complexity of human living, but to extend the notion of recursion, recursivity and recursive processes into the realm of social and psychological processes beyond the arenas in which these ideas have currently thrived. Cultural Psychology of Recursivity shows that in spite of the difficulty in defining recursivity, self-referencing (looping), transformation (generativity), complexity, and holism constitute its core characteristics and provide the basis for which authors in this book explore and elaborate this concept. Still, each contribution has its own unique take on recursivity and how it is applied to their phenomenon of investigation. Chapters in this book examine how recursive processes are related to and basic aspects of play and ritual, imitation, identity exploration, managing stigma, and commemorative practices. This book is intended for psychologists, sociologists, and mathematicians. Use of the book in post-graduate and graduate level of university teaching is expected in seminar format teaching occasions.

This book is long awaited within the contemporarily creative field of cultural psychologies. It is a theoretical synthesis that is at the level of innovations that Sigmund Freud, James Mark Baldwin, William Stern, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Jan Smedslund have brought into psychology over the past century. Here we can observe a creative solution to integrating cultural psychology with the rich traditions of psychodynamic perspectives, without repeating the conceptual impasses in which many psychoanalytic perspectives have become caught. CONTENTS Series Editor's Preface. New Synthesis: A dynamic theory of Sense-Making Introduction. Psychology as the science of the explanandum PART I - MICRO-PHYSICS OF SENSEMAKING Chapter 1. The meaning of our discontent. Chapter 2. The Semio-Dynamic Model of Sensemaking (SDMS). Chapter 3. Micro-dynamic of sensemaking. Chapter 4. The semiotic Big Bang. PART II. THEORETICAL EXPLORATIONS Chapter 5. The contextuality of mind. Chapter 6. Beyond subject and object. Chapter 7. Affect and desire as semiotic processes. Chapter 8. Exercises of semiotic reframing. PART III. A NEW METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH Chapter 9. Field dependency and abduction. Chapter 10. The modelling of sensemaking. Chapter 11. Models and strategies of empirical investigation. Chapter 12. Studies of sensemaking. Epilogue. References.

The volume represents the continuing of the Yearbook of Idiographic Science project, born in 2009 and developed through an annual series of volumes collecting contributes aimed at developing the integration of idiographic and nomothetic approaches in psychology and more in general social science. This year's YIS project received many positive feedbacks and signals of interest, as well as several submissions, from many parts of the world. This fifth volume directs attention to relevant and actual psycho-social phenomena as the development of identity in terms of self identity, social identity and local identity. The volume is directed to students, researchers and clinicians, interested in deepening theoretical and methodological issues and improve clinical practices and research cultures.

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.

The concept of intimacy puts forth important challenges to contemporary cultural psychology. Intimacy refers to a felt experience of interiority that although is intuitively comprehensible, does not have rigorously defined limits. Intimacy can refer to a content, an object, a person, ownership, or even a part of one's own body. A potentially problematic issue for cultural psychology is that acknowledging intimacy seems to bound the Self to areas disjointed from the social sphere. In a globalized world, we witness a developmental process where social life becomes sectioned, where people are involved in an identity search by foregrounding certain social roles. With this backdrop in mind, people redefine and rebuild their intimacy spaces and the ways they roam from these to the public and collective realm. Exploring the current historical situation leads us to consider intimacy as culture in the making; certainly, in the way it manifests itself, but particularly in how we approach and understand it. The lived (experienced) dimension of intimacy becomes truly important, since it casts new light on what we mean by intimacy in different spheres of the self's life, as well as life with others.

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University Cultural psychology is currently in a phase of rapid growth. Innovating Genesis is an example of how the most central aspect of any science-its methodology-undergoes revolutionary transformation. Yet in this book we see careful continuity with the past of the discipline. The orientation to study processes of emergence was well prepared by the Ganzheitspsychologie tradition in early twentieth century. If we all have learned something about the world since then it is the inevitable quality of the whole that transcends its parts. Scientists have tried to grasp the general notion of such wholes-yet recurrently regressing to the easy illusion that one can reduce the complexities of the in vivo events to the scrutinizes in vitro. By looking to the history of how holistic ideas might help our present investigations, this book demonstrates how contemporary science has something to learn from its own history.The editors of this volume have managed to bring together a creative international team of scholars whom they have guided to be on target of the content matter of the book-innovating the genesis of the methods for the study of psychological emergence.