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June 8, 2003
EXCERPTS: Idea of culture
Girishwar Misra points out that it has been difficult to define culture and even more difficult to make psychologists interested in the development of culture per se
Although the concept of culture has a very long tradition in the human sciences, yet there is a lack of consensus on its characterization. It appears to be a fuzzy, yet a relevant concept.
Nevertheless, some understanding has been achieved and the available theoretical perspectives suggest that culture may be viewed as a collective product constituted by values, beliefs, perceptions, symbols, and other humanly created artifacts which are transmitted across generations through language and other mediums. In a way, culture reflects the value-seeking process of human beings and implicates a world-view or design for living.
In the ultimate analysis, cultures emerge to be meaning system which define, inform, and constitute the range of one’s understanding and intelligibility. The effort after interpreting behaviours makes sense only by taking into account the constraints and enablements contained in a given culture.
Scholars usually differentiate between culture (i.e., human construction) and nature (i.e., structures and processes that exist and occur independent of human action) since the domains constituting culture are acquired and not genetically given. However, being traditions, cultures are also “given” in a concrete form as symbols and signs.
Not only this, once the cultural process is set in motion, cultural evolution also begins and informs the development of human nature. A moment’s reflection on the contents of culture suggests that it is inescapably psychological in its composition. Perhaps, the two are intertwined in such a manner that it is not possible to think of human nature independently of culture.
The difference between the two is only of the level of analysis and abstraction; one focuses on individual level processes and the modifications, while the other goes further and attempts to uncover tile pattern or structure at a global level.
In this dialogue, biology and ecology also play an important role. Human beings are biological organisms too and have many genetically programmed dispositions which are expressed in behaviour in a specific ecological-environmental context... This medium has co-evolved with the biological “constitution of our species”. In this way, culture becomes a co-determiner of behaviour with nature. Culture and behaviour, thus, are reciprocally related and the dichotomy is false, created only for analytical convenience and disciplinary priorities...
The interest of psychologists in culture has focused on its instrumental role in the emergence and development of behavioural competence, rather than on understanding the phenomenon of culture per se. In contrast, anthropologists have been preoccupied with studying culture as a supra-individual level reality and used individual level data toward the construction of structure and pattern.
“What constitutes culture?” cannot be adequately answered without understanding “What culture does? And vice versa. The complimentarity of the perspectives of psychology and anthropology has yet to be realized.
The project of experimental psychology which was institutionalized and constituted the practice of mainstream psychology found Wundt’s initial concerns with culture quite uncomfortable and incommensurate with the pursuit of its scientific goals. Deriving its academic aspirations for a positive science of behaviour from the tradition of natural sciences, it deliberately opted for the laboratory as the site for investigations and experimental observation under controlled and artificial conditions as the most cherished method.
Human nature was believed to be the same everywhere and for all times. Against this background, a vigorous search for a generalizable and reapplicable body of psychological knowledge fabrication played a pivotal role in shaping the growth of the discipline’s texture.
The prime concern of a psychologist was to make psychology a “science” and science was identified with objectivity and experimentation, pregnant with the ideology of modern self. The consequent commitment to positivist-empiricist metatheory, reductionism, and operationalism led to the emergence of a decontextualized science of behaviour of the other. The adoption of this orientation dictated the terms and conditions for not only the mode of inquiry, but also the objects of inquiry.
The historical construction of psychological research reveals that the selection and choice of research problems were guided by methodological and several extrascientific considerations. The prescriptions pertaining to the form of knowledge products were socially determined. The pursuit of academic activities was also related to market forces.
This led to two related consequences: (a) those problems that were not within the scope of experimentation were diagnosed as non-problems, and (b) the available methods were not only overused but often misused. The main focus of this endeavour was on tapping transcendental reality by using the strategy of goal directed hypothesis testing.
Also, this provided a model of human beings which was necessarily reactive in nature and projected them as atemporal and ageless organisms disembedded from their contexts. Like machines or physical objects, they were assumed to respond to the incoming stimuli administered by the experimenter. Also, it was assumed that the variables maintained their identity irrespective of the context.
Excerpted with permission from
Psychology in Human and Social Development: Lessons from Diverse Cultures
Edited by John W. Berry, R.C. Mishra and R.C. Tripathi
Sage Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave, Post Box 4109, New Delhi-110017, India. Tel: 91-11-2649 1290-7
Email: marketing@indiasage.com
Website: www.indiasage.com
ISBN 0-7619-9535-8
310pp. Indian Rs295
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