Meaning in Action: Constructions, Narratives, and Representations

✍ Scribed by Toshio Sugiman (ed.), Kenneth J. Gergen (ed.), Wolfgang Wagner (ed.), Yoko Yamada (ed.)

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 349
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Traditional psychology has long been concerned with cognition, motivation, emotion, and the mind in general?the mind being held responsible for individual behavior in society?and scholars of social and cultural psychology have worked in relative isolation. Meaning in Action is a bold departure as it places culture at the center of human functioning and posits that it is not the independent mind that gives rise to human action but participation in a world of socially created meanings. Each chapter illuminates the socially grounded view of the individual. Investigations into the power of shared meanings, norms, and moralities in everyday life, as well as individual and social narratives, point to their pivotal significance in human relationships. Among other topics, it provides new insights into forgiveness, infant adoption, trauma, supranational identity, and prejudice. The book offers an alternative to the widely dominant vision of psychological functioning and draws on a wide variety of current movements to present a deeply challenging and globally integrative view of human behavior.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Meaning in Action: Constructions, Narratives, and Representations......Page 2
Copyright......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
The Social Turn in the Science of Human Action......Page 8
Part I The Power of Meaning......Page 28
1 Reflections on the Diversity of Knowledge: Power and Dialogue in Representational Fields......Page 29
2 Discourse and Representation in the Construction of Witchcraft......Page 43
3 Culture, Psychotherapy, and the Diasporic Self as Transitoric Identity: A Reply to Social Constructionist and Postmodern Concepts of Narrative Psychotherapy......Page 55
4 Generative Inquiry in Therapy: From Problems to Creativity......Page 79
5 Constructing Trauma and Its Treatment: Knowledge, Power and Resistance......Page 102
Part II Constructing Meaning in Everyday Life......Page 117
6 Moralities We Live by: Moral Focusing in the Context of Technological Change......Page 118
7 A Theory of Construction of Norm and Meaning: Osawa’s Theory of Body......Page 138
8 The Transcendental Nature of Norms: Infants in Residential Nurseries and Child Adoption......Page 152
9 Using Social Knowledge: A Case Study of a Diarist’s Meaning Making During World War II......Page 166
Part III Narrative and Dialogue......Page 183
10 Twice-Told-Tales: Small Story Analysis and the Process of Identity Formation......Page 184
11 Human/Nature Narratives and Popular Films: Big, Bad, Bold, Beneficent, Bountiful, Beautiful and Bereft......Page 206
12 Opposite and Coexistent Dialogues: Repeated Voices and the Side-by-Side Position of Self and Other......Page 223
13 Narrative Mode of Thought in Disaster Damage Reduction: A Crossroad for Narrative and Gaming Approaches......Page 240
14 A Dialogical Perspective of Social Representations of Responsibility......Page 252
Part IV Action......Page 270
15 The Social and the Cultural: Where do They Meet?......Page 271
16 Moral Responsibility and Social Fiction......Page 286
17 Social Psychology and Literature: Toward Possible Correspondence......Page 299
18 Historical Conflict and Resolution between Japan and China: Developing and Applying a Narrative Theory of History and Identity......Page 322
Subject Index......Page 340