Culture & Psychology current issue

Cultural Psychology and Qualitative Methodology: Scientific and Political Considerations

Ratner, C. — 2008-08-06

An important feature of cultural psychology is its embrace of qualitative methodology. This methodology distinguishes cultural psychology from cross-cultural psychology, which embraces positivistic methodology. It is important to assess the use of qualitative methodology by cultural psychologists. However, cultural psychology consists of diverse theoretical perspectives which utilize qualitative methods differently. This article articulates a typology of qualitative research methodologies that have been used in conjunction with cultural-psychological approaches. The typology compares macro and micro theories of cultural psychology, and the ways in which they utilize formal and informal qualitative methodology. Examples of research illustrate each approach. Social science approaches are grounded in political assumptions and have political implications. I shall elucidate the politics of cultural-psychological theories and methodologies in order to enrich their description and explanation.

Commentary: Activity Theory is a Dead End for Methodological Thinking in Cultural Psychology Too

Toomela, A. — 2008-08-06

Reworking cultural psychology's methodology is of utmost importance if the discipline is to progress. This paper explores discussion of micro- and macro-cultural formal and informal methodologies of cultural psychology by Carl Ratner. It is concluded that the activity-theoretical approach to research methodology, applied in the target article, is fundamentally limited and cannot suggest appropriate methodologies that would lead to progress in cultural psychology. Instead, it is suggested that future discussions on methodological thinking should take into account that: (1) methodology is part of a scientific theory, and therefore what is studied must be defined in order to find appropriate methods for studies; (2) qualitative methodology should become the focus of methodology in cultural psychology; (3) the history of psychology contains forgotten but theoretically very rich ideas; and (4) activity theory has fundamental problems which make it inappropriate for showing direction for the development of methodology.

The Development of British Military Masculinities through Symbolic Resources

Hale, H. C. — 2008-08-06

Within military culture there is a protected version of masculinity. The theory of symbolic resources (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie, Ivinson, & Psaltis, 2003) recognizes that people are positioned within different symbolic streams in the socio-cultural world, in which they can be displaced or can relocate themselves (Benson, 2001; Duveen, 2001). So an individual entering the military is relocating him- or herself from a civilian socio-cultural world to a military one. Twenty-nine semi-structured individual interviews and three focus groups (each comprising two or three individuals) were conducted with male and female British military personnel. Participants included Royal Marine, Army and Royal Air Force personnel and were of a variety of ranks. In accordance with the theory of symbolic resources, the unit of analysis for psychological development is the unit rupture—irruption of certainty—transition. This implies a process that leads to a new form of stability. This is the process which military personnel undertake in order for that which is uncertain and unfamiliar when they begin their training to become certain and familiar. By focusing on the rupture that takes place during the training phase within an individual's military career, one can explore how through symbolic resources, military masculinities develop.

Culture and Empirically Supported Treatments: On the Road to a Collision?

La Roche, M., Christopher, M. S. — 2008-08-06

The dual influence of culturally sensitive therapies (CSTs) and empirically supported treatments (ESTs) on clinical practitioners has grown quickly in the United States. While CST advocates have been driven by the need to provide culturally diverse populations with services that are consistent with their cultural characteristics, practitioners of ESTs have striven to empirically demonstrate the benefits of psychotherapy. However, as EST's influence grows, it may increasingly threaten CST's advances. Some assumptions underlying the development of ESTs are not culturally sensitive and can be detrimental to the well-being of culturally diverse patients. This article highlights these assumptions in four interrelated areas and provides suggestions to overcome these shortcomings. Cultural assumptions and methodological implications of ESTs are presented, as well as some suggestions on how to broaden their cultural understandings. To conclude, some general recommendations on how to start bridging the gap between ESTs and CSTs are proposed.

Commentary: Culturally Sensitive Treatments: Need for an Organizing Framework

Cardemil, E. V. — 2008-08-06

To date, descriptions of culturally sensitive therapies have insufficiently acknowledged the heterogeneity of perspectives on the role of culture in therapy. The generally homogeneous manner in which advocates of culturally sensitive therapies have described this work has likely contributed to the mainstream's slow acceptance of the importance of culture. In this article, I propose an organizing framework that may help recognize the diversity of viewpoints regarding what constitutes culturally sensitive therapy. It is my hope that this framework, along with critical self-evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the various perspectives, will lead to more rapid incorporation of culture across treatments.

`So I Can Be Like a Whiteman': The Cultural Psychology of Space and Place in American Indian Mental Health

Gone, J. P. — 2008-08-06

Careful analysis of a single ethnographic interview demonstrates that profound cultural divergences in Western professional and American Indian therapeutic traditions may well emanate from easily overlooked sources of ethnopsychological orientation and intelligibility, namely distinctive cultural psychologies of space and place. Interview responses from a middle-aged Native American Traditionalist on the Fort Belknap Indian reservation revealed that robust `mental health' was seen to result from participation in indigenous ritual spaces enacted or performed in designated sacred places on or near the reservation. In contrast, this respondent observed that consultation by community members with `White psychiatrists' in the local Indian Health Service clinic was an open invitation to `brainwash me forever so I can be like a Whiteman'. For those American Indians who share the respondent's cultural standpoint, reservation-based mental health clinics, despite their intentional designation as therapeutic spaces, may be seen to function as sites of colonial incursion and Native resistance in cultural—and especially ethnopsychological—terms. This article explores the implications of this distinctive cultural psychology of space and place with regard to the interdisciplinary investigation of therapeutic landscapes and the promise of `culturally competent' mental health services.