359 research outputs found
Where is Identity?:Reflections on Identity Conceptualizations, Dimensions, and Implications
No full textSocial Constructionist Psychology
Full text linkThis interview is a slightly modified transcript from the third Psyche Talk, hosted at the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, November 08, 2024. Psyche Talks are hosted as biannual events, where prominent psychological researchers are invited to discuss fundamental questions about the nature and subject matter of psychology through an interview-based format. The focus of this interview is on Social Constructionist Psychology and its development over the past decades. In this interview, Kenneth J. Gergen (emeritus Professor in Psychology at Swarthmore College) is interviewed by Carolin Demuth (Associate Professor of Cultural and Developmental Psychology, Aalborg University)
The mind of a persistent innovator
No full textJaan Valsiner (2010) once described developmental theorist James Mark Baldwin as “a persistent innovator,” a motto that can equally be applied to himself. In Jaan’s publications, lectures, and discussions with students and colleagues, he has always emphasized the need to push ideas forward beyond what has already been established. Building on an impressive depth and breadth of ideas, his writings are attempts to chart a new course for psychology, bringing novel theoretical and methodological approaches into the discipline. Unlike most academics, Jaan does not repeat his lectures (despite giving many) but pushes himself to add something new each time. He also often gives spontaneous and improvised lectures – a skill he learned as a young lecturer in Estonia (Valsiner, this volume). His pedagogical style has a carnivalesque quality that encourages breaking down formal hierarchies and playing with ideas (Murakami, this volume). At the same time, the young students he supervises experience someone who takes their ideas seriously as producers rather than simply consumers of knowledge (the first author owes his early formation to Jaan’s guidance according to this principle). He frequently highlights that innovations in science come from the young, which he actively promotes with his persistent question of what is new in the research under discussion and what can we do to take it forward
Identity – with or without you?
No full textThe conception of this handbook goes way back, taking us more than five years until completion. It all began with an early plan to organize a symposium for the 31st International Congress of Psychology (ICP) for July 2016 in Yokohama, Japan. The intention was to bring together a group of international identity researchers, from within psychology and from neighboring disciplines, to see whether there were any new developments in identity theory and empirical research, and whether they had a common center or were drifting pieces moving in all kinds of directions (cf., for example, Nochi, 2016, or Watzlawik, 2016). This was the original idea. So, in the summer of 2015 we started contacting researchers we knew (and whom we did not know up to that moment), asking whether they would be interested in joining us for the symposium. Preparing the symposium was as stimulating as the actual gathering that took place on the afternoon of July 28 one year later under the header Identity and Identity Research in Psychology and Neighboring Disciplines. Janka Romero, the Commissioning Editor for Psychology at Cambridge University Press, had contacted us beforehand with the offer to talk about the potential to turn this into a book project, and we, the symposium participants, started following up the same night over dinner – not knowing that this would keep us busy for the next five years. We went through the usual editorial routines: developing a proposal, revising the proposal, and contacting old and new colleagues in the field, up to the point of delivering the full set of manuscripts in January 2021
Social Constructionist Psychology
No full textThis interview is a slightly modified transcript from the third Psyche Talk, hosted at the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, November 08, 2024. Psyche Talks are hosted as biannual events, where prominent psychological researchers are invited to discuss fundamental questions about the nature and subject matter of psychology through an interview-based format. The focus of this interview is on Social Constructionist Psychology and its development over the past decades. In this interview, Kenneth J. Gergen (emeritus Professor in Psychology at Swarthmore College) is interviewed by Carolin Demuth (Associate Professor of Cultural and Developmental Psychology, Aalborg University)
Innovation in qualitative psychological research: Tackling methodological and societal challenges
No full textThis chapter provides an introduction to and overview of the Handbook while also delineating its scope and aims. Contemporary world-wide challenges, like pandemic health threats, economic crisis and cross-border migration and the digitalization of social life, set the scene for a landscape of fluidity and diversity in respect of qualitative psychological research. Featuring selected contributions from the 1st Conference of the Association of European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology (EQuiP), which illustrate promising trends across a variety of European countries, the Handbook aims to set the stage for cutting edge debates on the conceptualization of innovative qualitative psychological research but also on its potential for tackling contemporary challenges. The chapter includes a brief outline of the Handbook’s context, background and aims, a sketch of current debates regarding innovation in qualitative psychological research, as well as a reflexive overview of the Handbook’s structure and contents. Innovation is depicted with regard to methodological insight but also with regard to proposals tackling contemporary societal challenges, like participant-centered mental health and health projects, community-focused projects and projects addressing societal issues, such as inequalit
Innovative qualitative psychological research in light of future methodological, societal and health challenges – looking ahead
No full textThe chapter provides a concluding discussion of the innovative qualitative research presented in this handbook and how it addresses pressing methodological, societal and health challenges. It portrays how innovation is approached in a variety of ways in the various contributions, i.e., by developing existing methodological approaches further, combining approaches from different research traditions in new ways, linking qualitative research in psychology to other fields, addressing pressing societal issues in innovative ways, or by revising the root metaphors of how we understand human meaning making in psychology. The chapter also asks what we need innovation in qualitative psychology for and reminds us that innovation needs to have a purpose – i.e., it needs to be able to contribute to advancing the field by adding new knowledge to the existing body of literature and fresh insights to phenomena under study. The chapter concludes by giving an outlook on further developments in the field: pressing societal challenges that need to be addressed by qualitative researchers in psychology, methodological potentials and perils through recent developments, e.g., rapidly evolving information and communication technologies, open science, decolonizing psychology, and pressures of academic life under an increasingly neoliberal regime
The future of Cultural Psychology:An Interview with Jaan Valsiner
Full text linkJaan Valsiner ( JV) has been the foremost cultural psychologist in the world for the last 30 years. In 2021 professor Valsiner turned seventy, and he agreed to do an interview with colleagues and students on his understanding of cultural psychology, its potential for innovation and its connection to his many interesting experiences from around the world. The interview was conducted by the three directors of the Center for Cultural Psychology in Aalborg Denmark: Carolin Demuth (CD), Brady Wagoner (BW), and Bo Allesøe Christensen (BA). For an extensive discussion of the different sides of Valsiner work, readers can consult the recently published Festschrift (Wagoner, B., Christensen, B., & Demuth, C. [Eds.]. [2021]. Culture as process: A tribute to Jaan Valsiner. Springer.).</p
Comparative qualitative research in cultural psychology: challenges and potentials
Full text link"The present paper aims to provide an approach
that allows to study the interplay of
culture and psychological human functioning
in comparative study designs. Starting
out with a brief overview of how qualitative,
cultural, and comparative research is
addressed in the field of psychology we will
take a Cultural Psychology approach to
suggest that the unit of analysis for comparative
research needs to be situated social
interaction. We will then suggest an
integrative approach that allows us to
study social interaction both on a microand
on a macro-level by combining discourse
analysis of situated social interaction
with ethnographic procedures that
address the sociocultural embeddedness of
these interactional practices. We illustrate
this approach by examining analyses
drawn on a comparative study program
conducted on middle class families in Los
Angeles and Rome. Finally, we will discuss
some criteria of validity that particularly
apply to the field of comparative research
in Cultural Psychology." (author's abstract)"Dieser Beitrag stellt ein methodisches Vorgehen vor, das auf die Untersuchung des Zusammenspiels von Kultur und menschlicher Psyche in einem komparativen Design abzielt. Wir geben zunächst einem kurzen Überblick darüber, wie Qualitative Forschung, Kultur und hier insbesondere vergleichende Studien in der Psychologie diskutiert werden und argumentieren, dass eine vergleichende kulturpsychologische Forschung möglich ist, wenn die zu untersuchende Forschungseinheit soziale Interaktion darstellt. Wir werden dann wir für einen integrativen Ansatz plädieren, der es erlaubt, soziale Interaktion sowohl mikro- als auch makroanalytisch zu untersuchen, indem eine diskursanalytische Analyse situierter sozialer Interaktion mit ethnographischen Verfahren kombiniert wird, die es erlauben, deren soziokulturelle Einbettung systematisch in die Analyse miteinzubeziehen. Um einen solchen Ansatz zu veranschaulichen, stellen wir beispielhaft eine komparative Studie mit Mittelschichtsfamilien in Rom und Los Angeles vor. Abschließend werden Gütekriterien, die spezifisch in der vergleichenden Kulturpsychologie von Relevanz sind." (Autorenreferat
The Future of Qualitative Research in Psychology:A Discussion with Svend Brinkmann, Günter Mey, Luca Tateo, and Anete Strand
Full text linkIn May 2014, a workshop on ”The future of qualitative research in psychology” took place at Aalborg University, Department of Communication & Psychology organized by Carolin Demuth. Participants from Aalborg University engaged in a lively exchange with the two invited discussants Svend Brinkmann (Aalborg University) and Günter Mey (Stendal University of Applied Science). The discussion started out by addressing the specifics of qualitative research in the field of psychology, its historical development and the perils of recent trends of standardization and neo-positivistic orientations. In light of the discrepancy of what could be potentially achieved with qualitative methods for psychological research and how they are actually currently applied, the need was stressed to return to an understanding of qualitative methods as a craft skill and to take into account the subjectivity of the researcher in the process of scientific knowledge production. Finally, a re-focus on experience as the genuine object of research in psychology as well as a transdisciplinary understanding of human psychological functioning within a socially co-constructed, biological, as well as material world was discussed
- …
