The Necessity of an Emic Paradigm in Psychology

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110485
Author(s):  
Linda James Myers ◽  
Tania Lodge ◽  
Suzette L. Speight ◽  
Kristee Haggins
Keyword(s):  
African Ancestry ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mental Health Needs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Wisdom Tradition ◽  
Deep Thought

This article provides an overview of developments in the field of Black/Africana/Pan African psychology over the past 50 years. It has evolved toward production of psychological knowledge grounded in an emic cultural paradigm consistent with the understandings emerging from classical African civilization and across the Diaspora. The historical context for the development of a Black/Africana cultural paradigm is discussed, including an analysis of the failure of Eurowestern psychology to effectively address the mental health needs of people of African ancestry, particularly as exemplified in the experience of Non-immigrant Africans in the Americas (NIAAs). Readers are introduced to the rise of African-centered cultural frames of reference, values, and psychological models, practices, and strategies. The development of Optimal Psychology or Optimal Conceptual Theory (OCT) is highlighted. OCT is a comprehensive theory successfully implemented, utilized, and researched for more than 40 years. The production of psychological knowledge built upon a cultural paradigm rooted in the wisdom tradition of African deep thought traceable to the birthplace of all humankind is essential to a comprehensive understanding of humanity and will be described.

Optimal Theory’s Contributions to Understanding and Surmounting Global Challenges to Humanity

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 747-771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda James Myers ◽  
Michelle Anderson ◽  
Tania Lodge ◽  
Suzette Speight ◽  
John E. Queener
Keyword(s):  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
African Ancestry ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
Global Challenges ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Wisdom Tradition ◽  
Deep Thought

In this article, we discuss challenges to and the triumphs of the production of psychological knowledge pertinent to human health and sustainable well-being, particularly as it relates to persons acknowledging African ancestry in hostile sociohistorical contexts. Primary attention will be paid to the advancement of the theory of optimal psychology, also known as optimal conceptual theory (OCT), a theory of human development culturally grounded in the wisdom tradition of African deep thought, identifiable from ancient civilization to contemporary times. The intention is to accomplish four aims: (a) present an overview based on one theoretical framework and practice of progress achieved in fulfillment of the Association of Black Psychologists mission, (b) provide an example of great successes employing OCT and belief systems analysis in a clinical practice for over 20 years, (c) share a small sampling of areas in the psychological and broader literature illustrating how OCT has been utilized, and (d) highlight areas of advancement in OCT and its expansion in the understanding of human functioning and development.

Moving Figures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sixth Generation ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Raymond Williams

This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.

scholarly journals A Research Pathway for Experimental Psychopathology: The Role of External Validity Criteria

2017 ◽  
Vol a4 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham C L Davey
Keyword(s):  
External Validity ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Experimental Psychopathology ◽  
Clinical Disorders ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
Validity Criteria ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Healthy Participants

This paper outlines a putative pathway for experimental psychopathology research developing psychological models of clinical disorders. The pathway uses established external validity criteria to define the pathway and clarifies the important role that research conducted on healthy participants can play in our understanding of clinical disorders. Defining a research pathway for experimental psychopathology in this way has a number of benefits It would (1) make explicit the need to address the external validity of developed models, (2) provide a clear set of criteria that would be required to extend research on healthy individuals to diagnostic populations, and (3) recommend using general psychological knowledge when developing models of psychopathology.

The Structure of Emotional Response: 1984 Presidential Candidates

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 737-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Negative Emotionality ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Emotional Appraisal ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
Dimensional Models ◽  
Feeling Thermometer

Over the past two decades psychological models of affect have changed from valence (one-dimensional) models to multiple-dimensional models. The most recent models, circumplex models, are two-dimensional. Feeling thermometer measures, which derive their theoretical logic from earlier (valence) models of emotional appraisal, are shown to be confounded. Underlying the variation obtained using feeling thermometer measures are two dimensions of emotional response, mastery (positive emotionality) and threat (negative emotionality). Analysis of the 1984 NES survey suggests that positive emotional response is twice as influential as negative emotional response in predicting presidential candidate vote disposition to the presidential candidates. Reliance on emotional response is shown to be uniformly influential across various strata of the electorate.Policy considerations have little direct influence on vote disposition, though policy considerations are indirectly related to vote disposition through the influence of issues on the degree of feelings of threat evoked by the candidates.

scholarly journals The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (33) ◽  
pp. 10089-10092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Pearson ◽  
Stephen M. Kosslyn
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Imagery Debate ◽  
Propositional Language

The possible ways that information can be represented mentally have been discussed often over the past thousand years. However, this issue could not be addressed rigorously until late in the 20th century. Initial empirical findings spurred a debate about the heterogeneity of mental representation: Is all information stored in propositional, language-like, symbolic internal representations, or can humans use at least two different types of representations (and possibly many more)? Here, in historical context, we describe recent evidence that humans do not always rely on propositional internal representations but, instead, can also rely on at least one other format: depictive representation. We propose that the debate should now move on to characterizing all of the different forms of human mental representation.

scholarly journals The Post-Literary Era, Leonardo’s Paradigm From Comparative Cultural Studies to Post-literary Study. Gilles Deleuze and Central-European Thought. Post-literature.

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Constantin Severin
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Temporary Organizations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
European Thought ◽  
Comparative Cultural Studies

Abstract The idea to write this essay came after I studied, almost in the same period, the works of two major contemporary philosophers: the US-American Michael Heim, known as the best theorist of virtual reality, and the French Gilles Deleuze. At the beginning of the new millennium, I have noticed many challenging transformations in art and literature, influenced by the emerging of the new technologies and the self-transformation that it is currently undergoing. This was the major reason I tried to launch a new concept, post-literarure, in order to describe the complex forms of art in the contemporary culture. The concept of post-literature defines metamorphoses and tensions in the world of contemporary creativity, the co-existence, even merging of fields with autonomous profiles in the past. In my opinion the changes are so radical and quick that we can already talk about a new cultural paradigm in this post-literary epoch, with so many amazing projects imagined by kinetic and temporary organizations, focused on interdisciplinary work and hybridization, on substitution of confrontation between interfering disciplines by dialogue and cohabitation among them, on interchangeability and virtual textualism.

scholarly journals "We Never Knew":  The Differences between Museum History and  Academic History Explored through an  Exhibition of the New Zealand Wars

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elspeth Hocking
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Past ◽  
Presentation Modes ◽  
Academic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Museum History ◽  
Conducting Research

<p>Public history and academic history have been viewed both as opposites, two practices related only by their concern with sharing the past, as well as conceptualised as similar fields with close connections to each other. Museum history exhibitions are an obvious example of public history in action. However, is the history that exhibitions present all that different from what is produced in the academy, or is this history academia in another form? Initially this dissertation aimed to explore the relationships between academic and public histories as discipline and practice, assuming a relationship rather than divide between the two fields as suggested in some of the literature. However, the eventual results of the research were different than expected, and suggested that in fact public histories manifest very differently to academic histories within a museum context. Using an adapted ethnographic research methodology, this dissertation traces the development of a single history exhibition, "Te Ahi Kā Roa, Te Ahi Kātoro Taranaki War 1860–2010: Our Legacy – Our Challenge", from its concept development to opening day and onwards to public programmes. This exhibition opened at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth in March 2010, and was a provocative display not only of the history of the wars themselves, but of the legacy of warfare in the Taranaki community. Other methods include partially structured interviews which were conducted with ten people involved in creating this exhibition, who outlined their roles in its production and provided their views on its development, and also a brief analysis of the broader social and historical context in which the exhibition was staged. Through tracing the creation of this history, the findings suggested that the history produced at Puke Ariki is a history in its own right, with noticeable differences from academic histories. The strongest correlation between public and academic history in this instance was the shared aspiration to be rigorous in conducting research and, as far as possible, to create an accurate portrayal of the past. Otherwise the history created by Puke Ariki through the exhibition proved to be different in that it was deliberately designed to be very accessible, and it utilised a number of presentation modes, including objects, text, audiovisual and sound. It was interactive, and had a clear aim of enabling the audience to participate in a discussion about the history being presented. Finally, it was a highly politicised history, in that decision making had to be negotiated with source communities in a collaborative fashion, and issues of censorship worked through with the council, a major funding source. The dissertation concludes that producing history in a museum context is a dynamic and flexible process, and one that can be successful despite not necessarily following theoretical models of exhibition development.</p>

scholarly journals AKOMODASI PESANTREN PADA KESENIAN RAKYAT DI CANGKRINGAN, SLEMAN, YOGYAKARTA

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-296
Author(s):  
Kholid Mawardi
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Art Community ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigated the construction of thoughts by KH. Ahmad Masrur and al-Qodir Islamic Boarding School to accomodate folk art; to reveal the relationship among KH. Ahmad Masrur, al-Qodir Islamic Boarding School, and folk art communities in Wukirsari village; and to find out the approaches of accommodation implemented in the folk art Village. The findings of this study led to some conclusions. First, on the one hand, Mr. Masrur (an Islamic expert) wanted to send the goodness and the beauty of Islam not only to be achieved by Moslems but also by other religious community. On the other hand, the folk art community wanted to maintain their existence in the diverse society. Therefore, those two intentions are linked to each other in order to accomplish those goals. Second, the relationship among Mr. Masrur, al-Qodir Islamic Boarding School, and Wukirsari village folk art community; in terms of historical context, it was the repetition of the relationship pattern in the past time that occured during the Islamisation process in Java. It was carried out by placing the locality as the basis of Islam. Mr. Masrur, al-Qodir Islamic Boarding School put themselves as the exponents of folk art; Mr. Masrur had the role as the patron and the community folk art had the role as the clients, and the overall relationship was accomplished based on mutually beneficial relationship. Third, the forms of accommodation  roposed by Mr. Masrur towards folk art in Wukirsari village were through compromise and tolerance. The form of the compromise was visible through the willingness of both parties to feel and understand the circumstances of one to each other party. As for the form of tolerance, it was implemented by Mr. Masrur and al-Qodir Islamic Boarding School deliberately to avoid various disputes and conflicts.

Zoning the Past: Brokers, Babbitts, and the Memory Work of Commercial Real Estate

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-311
Author(s):  
JAMES S. MILLER
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Commercial Real Estate ◽  
American Business ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Modern Business

From the moment of its publication in 1922, Sinclair Lewis's novel Babbitt was widely hailed as a text that harnessed the tactics of literary realism to the ambitions of social science. Over the years, in fact, critics have consistently linked Lewis's dissection of a crass, puerile, and materialistic white-collar culture to a conception of the novel as barely fictionalized ethnography – a conceit that has scripted the author as the twentieth century's foremost “cartographer” of American business life. Taking this fact as its starting point, this essay shows how Lewis's efforts to create an ethnographic record of modern business life ultimately encoded an even deeper commentary on the peculiar role that industrial–commercial development played in shaping the ways white-collar Americans thought about, valued, and pursued traces of their putative “heritage.” Rather than simply depict industrial–commercial society's destruction of the past, I argue, Babbitt instead labored to create a necessary genealogy for this regime: one that provided the nation's new, forward-lurching order with the kind of temporal coherence and historical context that its own ascendance seemed most directly to expunge. In making such an argument, this essay seeks to query a long-standing presumption within public memory studies that for years has construed the idea(l)s of historical recovery and the operations of commercial capitalism as fundamentally, if not inherently, incompatible. Balefully derided for mass-producing and mass-marketing a commodified pastness, dismissed as tools for replacing authentic history with ersatz heritage, modern development practices have stood for the vast majority of critics as proof of Americans' fundamental disconnection from their common and authentic history. Seeking to complicate this view, this essay shows instead how Babbitt can be read as a powerful counterexample to such logic – one that casts modernization less as an adversary than as an adjunct to prevailing modes of public recollection.

About the "supertask" ("sverhzadacha") of K. S. Stanislavsky... (about the history of the word supertask (sverhzadacha) in the Russian language)

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
I. I. Krivonosov
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Method Acting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Initial Term ◽  
History Of ◽  
Structural Methods ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Terminology System ◽  
National Corpus

The article is devoted to the history of the appearance and functioning of the word supertask (sverhzadacha) in the Russian language. Two lines of the lexeme functioning were distinguished: the first is associated with the etymology of the word, the second – with its use by K. S. Stanislavsky in the terminology system and the further entry of the unit into general use on the basis of determinologization. It is interesting that the second meaning has acquired the most widespread use. Only in the past two decades, the word has begun to lose its connection with the process of artistic creation. The purpose of the study was to briefly review the history of the word: from its first fixation in the Russian language and application by K. S. Stanislavsky (to designate one of the key concepts of Method Acting) up to modern contexts of use. The entry of the lexeme into the language was investigated using structural methods. The methods of contextual and distributive analysis were used to analyse both the contexts in which Stanislavsky used this word and the process of its fixation in the National Corpus of the Russian language. Statistical analysis was used to trace the dynamics of integration of the lexeme into the Russian language and its fixation in various spheres. The methods of component and comparative analysis were used to describe the formation mechanism of the initial term in the historical context. Borrowings of the term supertask (sverhzadacha) were found in other languages, indicating the spread of Stanislavsky’s system. The conclusion is drawn that the word supertask (sverhzadacha) functions in the Russian language mainly as a term from Stanislavsky’s system, gradually becoming determinologized and returning to the meaning conveying the logical sum of its constituent components.

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