The Psychology of Cultural Experience

This volume, first published in 2001, presents research in psychological anthropology, including person-centred ethnography, activity theory, and cultural schema theory.

This volume, first published in 2001, represents an emerging synthesis in psychological anthropology, outlining a research agenda as the discipline moves beyond postmodernist critique. United by a common interest in how culture shapes experience, the individual chapters cover contemporary approaches in the field, including person-centred ethnography, activity theory, and cultural schema theory.The essays in this volume, first published in 2001, focus upon the relationship of individual experience to culture, and chart a research agenda for psychological anthropology in the twenty-first century. Drawing upon fieldwork in diverse cultural settings, the authors use a range of contemporary perspectives in the field, including person-centred ethnography, activity theory, attachment theory and cultural schema theory, to describe the ways in which people think, feel, remember, and solve problems. Fascinating insights emerge from these fine-grained accounts of personal experience. The research demonstrates that it is possible to identify cross-cultural universals in psychological development and mental states, and that individual psychology is not determined solely by unique cultural patterns.