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Culture & Psychology
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Genital-Shrinking Panic in Ghana: A Cultural Psychological Analysis

Glenn Adams

University of Kansas, USA

Vivian Afi Dzokoto

Fayetteville State University, USA

The present article applies the theoretical framework of mutual constitution (MC)—the dialectical process by which ‘culture and psyche make each other up’—to analyze an occurrence of genital-shrinking panic (GSP). Although media reports promote interpretation of this event in terms of ignorance and superstition, the MC framework affords a less pathologizing analysis. The first part of this analysis, one that resonates with classic ethnographic perspectives, emphasizes the cultural grounding of psychological experience: how episodes of GSP make sense given local constructions of reality. However, an adequate analysis requires attention not only to cultural realities in which incidents of GSP make sense, but also to the role of psychological activity in reproducing, maintaining and extending those realities. Accordingly, the second part of this analysis emphasizes the less articulated, dynamic-construction side of the MC framework: the role of psychological activity in the reproduction of cultural worlds.

Key Words: construction of reality • genital shrinking • mutual constitution • panic • West Africa

Culture & Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 1, 83-104 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X07073651
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