What do young people do with the novels they read, the films they see, the music they hear and sing? How do these cultural products act as 'symbolic resources' in the process of development? And what can we, as researchers, learn by studying people's uses of fiction? This monograph approaches development through the study of transitions and the processes of exploration that follow ruptures in people's lives. Specifically, it examines young people's symbolic responsibility as they have to choose among the wide range of cultural products societies exposes them to. The book thus examines the...

What do young people do with the novels they read, the films they see, the music they hear and sing? How do these cultural products act as 'symbolic resources' in the process of development? And what can we, as researchers, learn by studying people's uses of fiction? This monograph approaches development through the study of transitions and the processes of exploration that follow ruptures in people's lives. Specifically, it examines young people's symbolic responsibility as they have to choose among the wide range of cultural products societies exposes them to. The book thus examines the...

This book presents a rigorous empirical exploration of the ideas of George Herbert Mead. While Mead's work has been highly influential, there are few empirical studies that instantiate his conception of mind, self and society. Beginning with a novel interpretation of Mead's theory, the book argues that Mead's core problematic is the explanation of self-reflection. What is interesting about the theory is that it provides a precise account of how self-reflection is rooted in institutionalised patterns of social interaction. The empirical part of the book utilises Mead's theory to conceptualise...

This book presents a rigorous empirical exploration of the ideas of George Herbert Mead. While Mead's work has been highly influential, there are few empirical studies that instantiate his conception of mind, self and society. Beginning with a novel interpretation of Mead's theory, the book argues that Mead's core problematic is the explanation of self-reflection. What is interesting about the theory is that it provides a precise account of how self-reflection is rooted in institutionalised patterns of social interaction. The empirical part of the book utilises Mead's theory to conceptualise...

This book is a landmark in contemporary cultural psychology. Ernest Boesch's synthesis of ideas is the first comprehensive theory of culture in psychology since Wilhelm Wundt's Volkerpsychologie of the first decades of the twentieth century. Cultural psychology of today is an attempt to advance the program of research that was charted out by Wundt-yet at times we are carefully avoiding direct recognition of such continuity. While Wundt's experimental psychology has been hailed as the root for contemporary scientific psychology, the other side of his contribution- ethnographic analysis of folk...

This book is a landmark in contemporary cultural psychology. Ernest Boesch's synthesis of ideas is the first comprehensive theory of culture in psychology since Wilhelm Wundt's Volkerpsychologie of the first decades of the twentieth century. Cultural psychology of today is an attempt to advance the program of research that was charted out by Wundt-yet at times we are carefully avoiding direct recognition of such continuity. While Wundt's experimental psychology has been hailed as the root for contemporary scientific psychology, the other side of his contribution- ethnographic analysis of folk...

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...

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...

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series 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 Per Linell makes a path-breaking contribution to the study of the human mind, presenting a novel alternative to traditional monologism and exploring the dynamics 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...