Jerome Bruner has recently proposed the recognition of the emerging field of Cultural Psychology. He argues that a psychology which concerns itself centrally with meaning:-

" . . inevitably becomes a cultural psychology [which] must venture beyond the conventional areas of positivist science with its ideals of reductionism, causal explanation and prediction" (Bruner, 1990; p.xiii).

Cultural Psychology, therefore, is concerned with what Bruner calls the "meaning-making process" which plays a central rôle in all human action and experience. Yet another view of Cultural Psychology is the study of the human mind through studying its cultural products. This emerging field of Cultural Psychology is concerned with the relationship between culture and mind, i.e. with such questions as:- how mind is shaped by culture, how culture is shaped by mind. Mind and culture are viewed as fundamentally interdependent, and Cultural Psychology, therefore, is concerned with some of the very basic issues about human nature. In the focus on the meaning-making process, Cultural Psychology is concerned with the meaning-exchange and the meaning-circulation process and the contexts this provides for human behaviour and experience. The purpose of this paper is to propose three major tasks that a developing Cultural Psychology must address, and establish the key rôle that culture must play in the explanation and study of all aspects of human behaviour.

Consider this quotation from the anthropologist, Clifford Geertz:-

"Undirected by cultural patterns - organized systems of significant symbols - [human] behaviour would be virtually ungovernable, a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding emotions, [our] experience virtually shapeless. Culture, the accumulated totality of such patterns, is not just an ornament of human existence but the principle basis of its specificity - an essential condition of it." (Geertz, 1973; p.46).

Culture, Geertz argues, is an essential condition for human behaviour and experience. This position recognizes that human experience and identity are culturally embedded and are constructed discursively in language, in myth, in narrative, in ritual, indeed in all cultural practices. The original view of psychology as a cultural science was vigorously debated a century ago when the new discipline emerged (Jahoda, 1992). The idea that the human mind could be studied through its cultural products originated with Wilhelm Wundt and Wilhelm Dilthey. It is easily overlooked that Wundt recognised two psychologies. The first, an experimental science was for the study of the lower mental processes, and the second, a cultural science which studied the products of the mind rather than the mind itself. Wundt recognised the limits of the experimental method. The higher mental processes cannot be studied by experimental method - but they can be studied indirectly by investigation of their products. And, the cultural products to be studied would include:- language, narratives, customs, beliefs, traditions, social institutions, indeed the totality of human culture. Wundt was not alone in his vision. Wilhelm Dilthey, the German philosopher and psychologist, who was a contemporary of Wundt, argued that the development of psychology as a natural, empirical science was quite inadequate to study the elements of consciousness. He felt that only a psychology envisaged as a cultural science could properly treat the mind as a whole. Despite these early positions, psychology as a cultural science became little more than a marginal interest to an academic psychology dominated by the positivist, empirical approach of Behaviourism. Some of the concerns of a Cultural Psychology can be traced through the seminal work of:- Edward Sapir (see especially: Sapir, 1994 [1928/39]), Lev Vygotsky, George Herbert Mead, Frederic Bartlett, Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, and more recently in the work of:- Jerome Bruner, Michael Cole, Gustav Jahoda, Richard Shweder and James Wertsch.

2.1 Cultural Psychology:- a progress report on its present status

Some recent milestones do include a new journal ("Culture & Psychology" - Vol. 1(1) first published in March '95, with stated editorial aims of addressing " . . the centrality of culture necessary for a basic understanding of the psychology of human beings: their identity, social conduct, intra- and intersubjective experiences, emotions and semiotic creativity"), and landmark contributions especially by Bruner (1986, 1990; see Appendix for a summary of Bruner’s work), Cole (1990) and Shweder (see Shweder, 1991; Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). These developments have been variously described as a Second Cognitive Revolution, or the New Cognitivism. However, in the introduction to their recently published "Culture & Psychology Reader", Goldberger & Veroff (1995) remark on " . . . how little attention psychology has given to the role of culture in human behaviour and development" (p. 4). A wide survey of research abstracts, Ph.Ds, psychology textbooks, encyclopedic dictionaries of psychology, degree course outlines, and a quick surf on the internet, (and even this conference programme), all concur on the relatively low profile of Cultural Psychology. Indeed, Cultural Psychology is hardly seen as mainstream, it is placed rather at the margins, or seen as an applied topic area. One matter that does emerge from such a survey is a continuing confusion of terminology. A crucial distinction does need to be made between:-

             (1) Cross-cultural psychology

             (2) Trans-cultural psychology

             (3) Cultural psychology.

Cross-cultural psychology is simply concerned with cultural differences, i.e comparisons between cultures. Whereas, Trans-cultural psychology relates to the discipline of psychology as a whole, and is concerned with ensuring that psychological theories and findings have trans-cultural application, and not the naive transference from one culture to another irrespective of context. It is important to note that Cultural Psychology both highlights the study of cultural differences, and embraces the pursuit of a truly trans-cultural psychology. But what Cultural Psychology recognizes as its primary major task is in addressing the processes that underlie the rôle that culture plays in all psychological phenomenon. In this respect, Cultural Psychology is not to be taken simply as an applied branch of psychology, it can and must be seen to occupy a central position in the discipline, concerned with theories of the rôle that culture plays in the meaning-making process, and all aspects of human behaviour and experience.

2.2 The Narrative Mode

Cultural Psychology goes much further than simply asserting the importance of culture to the study of human psychology. Examination of the cultural products of the mind reveals patterns of human thinking that challenge the pre-eminence given to rational thought. The intrapersonal "will to meaning", the interpersonal exchange of meanings, and the cultural transmission of knowledge all use another very powerful form of human thinking - The Narrative Mode (Bruner, 1986). Individual human action can only be understood within the context of the available plausible accounts that are circulating at a personal, discursive and cultural level. In addition, every human culture lays out constructions of reality which offer an ordering of that reality into us/them, right/wrong, good/bad, etc, etc. An important theoretical insight is that these accounts and constructions can be modeled as narratives (see Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986). Narrative is a fundamental feature of human cognitive processes - a basic property of the human mind. Narrative is the pre-eminent organizing structure of human experience. This is no better expressed than by Miller Mair, a psychotherapist:-

" . . we live in and are shaped and constituted by the stories of our culture [ . . ] stories of past ages live through us and make us aware, blind, competent, and incompetent within the limits they define" (Mair, 1989; p. 9).

For a more detailed example of the importance of a discursive/cultural approach, see Hiles (1996), which reviews the discursive/cultural study of recovered memory.

Any serious study of the meaning-making process must develop a model of "context". Harré & Gillett (1994) have argued that an individual's behaviour can only be understood when we grasp the meanings that are informing that person's activity. Furthermore, the new cognitivism rejects the notion of a context-free central processor (see Shweder 1991; p. 77-84). Context is central to the notion of meaning, and it is notable that narrative is proposed as a major tool in the modelling of context (Sarbin, 1986).

3. RECOGNITION OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CULTURAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES - TASK (2)

A two-way relationship does need to be established between psychology and the other cultural and human sciences. One aspect of this is for Cultural Psychology to recognize the considerable progress that has been made in the cultural sciences. Indeed, it is possibly the lack of an adequate method for the study of culture that held back Wundt's vision. The tools now exist for the study of culture as a set of social and signifying practices. These clearly play a central rôle in human behaviour and experience. The basic processes of communication and thinking are in essence sign processes, and therefore the relevance of a semiotic approach to psychology needs to be addressed (Hiles, 1994). Furthermore, whereas major contributions to the cultural sciences have been made by linguistics, anthropology, media and cultural studies, and the humanities as a whole, the discipline of psychology has contributed very little. Indeed, it was Wilhelm Dilthey who originally proposed psychology as a foundational science to these disciplines, just as mathematics is to the natural sciences. But, while psychology was dominated by an empirical experimental approach, this was never really a serious possibility. It remains to be seen whether a mental calculus can ever be offered to the humanities from psychology.

While anthropology has made significant contributions to the resurgence of interest in Cultural Psychology, it is also in the recent study of popular culture that recognition of the impact of cultural texts on human thinking is being made. The mind's construction of reality is not seen as simply a consequence of direct contact and interaction with objective reality, but is seen also as a function of the continual stream of interpretations of reality received through the media, human language, indeed all cultural practices. These cultural practices invariably offer a realism that although a product of human interpretation, nevertheless, can and invariably is confused for reality itself (see Fiske, 1987). Inevitably, culture acts as a "lens" through which the external world is "viewed". A lens without which we would be unable to "see", or to know. Such an emphasis does recognise the postmodern "turn" that is happening in contemporary social theory, which challenges many of the assumptions of modernist science. This is beginning to have an impact on psychology (see Kvale, 1992), which has been slow to wake up to the "paradigm shift" occurring in the sciences. Put simply, the world is not knowable, or, at least not knowable directly (i.e. the phenomenological premise), there is no simple objective truth, we are imprisoned in our language, in our culture. This has radical implications for the science of psychology, and clearly places the highest priority on a systematic study of the relation between mind and culture. At the same time, the social and signifying practices of mediated communication incorporate an implicit theory of the human mind. The practice of montage and editing in film and television texts is a particularly good example from the field of visual communication. The study of such cultural texts, codes and communicative practices, when treated as products of the mind (and products for the mind), potentially can reveal much about the mental processes involved, and in turn can offer further hermeneutic perspectives on human cognition to complement the traditional experimental approaches. Nevertheless, it is to be regretted that the growth of the cultural and human sciences, over the past fifty years or so, has proceeded with only cursory input from psychology. What is now needed is cross-fertilization, and joint consolidation of theoretical principles and analytical research tools from the interpretive disciplines of the human sciences for Cultural Psychology to be well founded.

4. THE UNIFYING RÔLE THAT CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY OFFERS TO THE
     DISCIPLINE - TASK (3)

With the emphasis on the study of the meaning-making process, it is proposed that Cultural Psychology places emphasis on psychology as:- an Empirical science, a Human science, and a Cultural science. Cultural Psychology can embrace without any contradiction:- the phenomenological premise (Giorgi, 1970); a social constructionist perspective (Gergen, 1985); and a discursive psychology perspective (Edwards and Potter, 1992); as well as the positivist empirical approach to science. Moreover, meaning provides a unifying theme for the discipline. Consider the three major forces in psychology:- Cognitive/Behavioural, Psychodynamic, and Humanistic/Existential. The Cognitive/Behavioural approach to psychology obviously has a continuing interest in meaning-making processes, even though this is not always very explicit, the attempt to model a context-free central processor is flawed, and the issue of "meaning" is often fudged. A similar concern with "meaning" also is central to much theoretical work in Humanistic/Existential psychology. For example, the work of Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Victor Frankl all emphasise the rôle of personal meaning and effective communication for individual growth. Admittedly, the approach to understanding how meaning is created in human lived experience is here a little different from the cognitive/behavioural approach. Also, the issue of "meaning" is central to the concerns of Psychodynamic or Depth psychology, following after Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others. With the emphasis on interpretation, and unconscious determinants of meaning, psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies have made significant and important contributions to the understanding of the cultural contexts of human behaviour and experience.

It is then an interest in the "meaning-making process", and the rôle that culture plays in this, that is in effect a central issue for these three major approaches to psychology. The contention that is made here is that, by marginalizing the issue of meaning, psychology has become a seriously fragmented discipline. Human action is not a simple expression of unconscious instincts, nor a simple response to stimulus conditions, but is an active, multi-determined, culturally-channelled expression carrying meaning and significance. It is this latter view that holds the most promise for a properly integrated discipline of Psychology.

5. CONCLUSIONS

Cultural Psychology has a serious claim to playing a central rôle in all approaches of the discipline, indeed, in any scientific study of mind and behaviour. Cultural Psychology is to be placed, not at the margins, but crucially occupying part of the central ground of the discipline of psychology. Wider discussion of the disciplinary, teaching and research issues that this raises is needed.

REFERENCES

Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press.

Cole, M. (1990) "Cultural Psychology: A once and future discipline?" In J.J. Barman (ed.), Cross-cultural Perspectives, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1989. Univ. of Nebraska Press.

Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992) Discursive Psychology. Sage.

Fiske, J. (1987) Television Culture. Routledge.

Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.

Gergen, K. (1985) "The social constructionist movement in modern psychology." American Psychologist, 40, 266-75.

Giorgi, A. (1970) Psychology as a Human Science. Harper & Row.

Goldberger, N.R. & Veroff, J.B. (eds) (1995) The Culture and Psychology Reader. New York University Press.

Harré, R. & Gillett, G. (1994) The Discursive Mind. Sage.

Jahoda, G. (1992) Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and change in theories of human nature. Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Kvale, S. (Ed.) (1992) Psychology and Postmodernism. Sage.

Mair, M. (1989) "Psychology as a discipline of discourse." BPS Psychotherapy Section Newsletter, No. 7.

Polkinghorne, D.E. (1988) Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. SUNY Press.

Sapir, E. (1994 [1928/39]) The Psychology of Culture. (Edited and reconstructed by J.T. Irvine). Mouton de Gruyter.

Sarbin, T.R. (1986) "Narrative as a root metaphor in psychology." In T.R. Sarbin (Ed.) Narrative Psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. Praeger.

Shweder, R.A. (1991) Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology. Harvard University Press.

Shweder, R.A. & Sullivan, M.A. (1993) "Cultural Psychology: Who needs it?" Annual Review of Psychology. 44, 497-523

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"Without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very longtime, one doesn't discover new lands."
  André Gide.