scholarly journals Cultural-Historical Psychology as a Theory of Subjectivity in the Works of F. González Rey

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-77
Author(s):  
N.P. Busygina ◽  
S.V. Yaroshevskaya

Theory of subjectivity developed by Brazilian psychologist F. González Rey is considered as a result of rethinking some of Vygotsky’s ideas in the context of modern critical psychology based on the works of M. Foucault, L. Althusser, feminist and postcolonial theories etc. In critical psychology subjectivity is conceptualized as produced by the forces of social regulation, so it appears oversocialized and reduced to discursive constructions. It is argued that the theory of subjectivity in the framework of cultural-historical psychology developed by F. González Rey makes it possible to overcome social reductionism of critical approaches without falling into the pre-critical concept of subject. On the base of Vygotsky’s ideas about the unity of affect and intellect, sense and perezhivanie as psychic units, González Rey developed a new ontology of psychological science that allows to overcome the dominant representation of ‘psyche as a container’ of cognitive processes, emotions, personal traits etc. and to rethink the relationship between individual and social. In the light of theory of subjectivity, the importance of qualitative methodology for cultural-historical psychology is discussed.

Author(s):  
Thomas Teo

Critical psychology comprises a broad range of international approaches centered around theories and practices of critique, power, resistance, and alternatives of practice. Although critical psychology had an axial age in and around the 1970s, many sources can be found decades and even centuries earlier. Critical psychology is not only about the critique of psychology, which is a broader historical and theoretical field, but about doing justice in and through theory, justice with and to groups of people, and justice to the reality of society, history, and culture as they powerfully constitute subjectivity, as well as the discipline and profession of psychology. Doing justice in and through psychological theory has a strong basis in Western critical approaches, representing a privileged position of reflection in Euro-American research institutions. Critical psychologists argue that traditional psychology is missing its subject matter and hence is not doing justice in methodology, and its practices of control and adjustment are not doing justice to the emancipatory possibilities of human agency or human science. Critical psychologists who are attempting to do justice with and to human beings are not neglecting the onto-epistemic-ethical domain, but are instead focusing on people, often marginalized or oppressed groups. Critical psychologists who want to do justice in history, culture, and society have argued that traditional psychological practice means adaption and adjustment. This means that not only subjectivity, but also the discipline and profession of psychology need to be connected with contexts. Psychologists have attempted to conceptualize the relationship between society and the individual, as well as the ability of humans not only to adapt to an environment but to change their living conditions and transform the status quo. This conceptualization also means providing concrete analyses of how current society, based in neoliberal capitalism, not only impacts individuals but also the discipline of psychology. Despite the complexities of critical psychology around the world, critical psychologists emphasize the importance of reflexivity and praxis when it comes to changing the conditions of social reality that create mental life. Given that subjectivity cannot be limited to intra-psychological processes, critical psychologists attend to relational and structural societal realities, requiring inter- and transdisciplinarity in the discipline and profession.


Author(s):  
Shigehiro Oishi ◽  
Samantha J. Heintzleman

This chapter highlights the contributions that have been made by personality and social psychology, respectively and together, to the science of well-being. Since its humble beginning in the 1930s, the science of well-being has grown to become one of the most vibrant research topics in psychological science today. The personality tradition of well-being research has shown that it is possible to measure well-being reliably, that self-reported well-being predicts important life outcomes, and that well-being has nontrivial genetic origins. The social psychology tradition has illuminated that there are various cultural meanings of well-being, that responses to well-being questions involve multiple cognitive processes, that happiness is experienced often in relationship contexts, and that it is possible to improve one’s well-being. Finally, there are recent methodological integrations of the personality and social psychology perspectives that delineate person–situation interactions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5056
Author(s):  
Barbara Pick ◽  
Delphine Marie-Vivien

This paper explores the issues of representativeness and participation in the collective processes involved in the elaboration of the geographical indications (GI) specifications and the governance of the GI initiatives. The objective is to understand the relationship among collective dynamics, representativeness of relevant stakeholders, and the legal frameworks for the protection of GIs. Using a qualitative methodology based on an analysis of six case studies in France and Vietnam, we show the role of the law in shaping the different ways of understanding and implementing the concept of representativeness in the French producer-led and the Vietnamese state-driven approaches to GI protection. In France, the GI specifications result from negotiations among all legitimate stakeholders, which may prove long, complex, and lead to standards that can continue to be challenged after the GI registration. We also argue that the rules for the representation of all GI users in the decision-making processes do not necessarily lead to fairness. In Vietnam, local stakeholders usually have a consultative role under the authority of the State, resulting in their little understanding and low use of the GI. Their empowerment is further hindered by the involvement of state authorities in the management of the producers’ associations. We conclude by discussing in-between solutions to promote the producers’ representation and participation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Kristina C. Backer ◽  
Heather Bortfeld

A debate over the past decade has focused on the so-called bilingual advantage—the idea that bilingual and multilingual individuals have enhanced domain-general executive functions, relative to monolinguals, due to competition-induced monitoring of both processing and representation from the task-irrelevant language(s). In this commentary, we consider a recent study by Pot, Keijzer, and de Bot (2018), which focused on the relationship between individual differences in language usage and performance on an executive function task among multilingual older adults. We discuss their approach and findings in light of a more general movement towards embracing complexity in this domain of research, including individuals’ sociocultural context and position in the lifespan. The field increasingly considers interactions between bilingualism/multilingualism and cognition, employing measures of language use well beyond the early dichotomous perspectives on language background. Moreover, new measures of bilingualism and analytical approaches are helping researchers interrogate the complexities of specific processing issues. Indeed, our review of the bilingualism/multilingualism literature confirms the increased appreciation researchers have for the range of factors—beyond whether someone speaks one, two, or more languages—that impact specific cognitive processes. Here, we highlight some of the most salient of these, and incorporate suggestions for a way forward that likewise encompasses neural perspectives on the topic.


1984 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Snyder

In this paper I discuss some aspects of the relationship of African customary law to the economy. Such a vast topic potentially embraces at least three different themes: the economic context in which African customary law has developed and operates today; the economic consequences and implications of different African customary laws; and the relationship between customary law and the economic aspect of society. These three themes inevitably overlap, but while recognising their interconnections I shall concentrate primarily on the third. My principal aim is to identify some of the linkages between customary law and economic relations, especially those linkages which become manifest during broad social changes.An examination of the relationship between customary law and the economy in Africa almost ineluctably requires an historical perspective. This is so, first, because, as I suggest later, customary law is historically specific: it developed in particular historical circumstances and in close conjunction with the formation of the colonial state. Thus, the foundations of customary law in Africa lie partly in the development of capitalism and its expansion from Europe during the colonial era. These interrelated processes have decisively moulded and subtly shaped the law, legal institutions and legal professions of contemporary Africa.More generally, however, it is essential today to envisage the possibility of new, alternative forms of development and social regulation. The particular forms of legal pluralism which characterise third world countries indicate, in many cases, that the subsumption of African economies within capitalist relations of production and exchange has thus far been merely partial and formal.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
YASUHIRO OZURU ◽  
DAVID BOWIE ◽  
GIULIA KAUFMAN

abstractThree quasi-experimental studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between the evaluative (i.e., agree/true) and the meta-cognitive (i.e., understand) response, and to determine which type of response people are more likely to provide when responding to one-sentence assertive statements. In Studies 1 and 2, participants performed two separate tasks in which they were asked to indicate the levels of: (i) understanding and (ii) agreement / perceived truthfulness of 126 one-sentence statements. The results indicated that participants were likely to provide a negative evaluative response (i.e., disagree/false) to a statement that they did not understand. In Study 3, participants were asked to evaluate the same 126 statements and choose between four response options: agree, disagree, understand, do not understand. The results indicated that people are more likely provide an evaluative response regardless of the understandability of a statement. The results of these studies are discussed in relation to (i) pragmatic perspective of how people infer speakers’ meaning, and (ii) cognitive processes underlying evaluative and meta-cognitive response.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Daase ◽  
Nicole Deitelhoff

Rule is commonly conceptualized with reference to the compliance it invokes. In this article, we propose a conception of rule via the practice of resistance instead. In contrast to liberal approaches, we stress the possibility of illegitimate rule, and, as opposed to critical approaches, the possibility of legitimate authority. In the international realm, forms of rule and the changes they undergo can thus be reconstructed in terms of the resistance they provoke. To this end, we distinguish between two types of resistance—opposition and dissidence—in order to demonstrate how resistance and rule imply each other. We draw on two case studies of resistance in and to international institutions to illustrate the relationship between rule and resistance and close with a discussion of the normative implications of such a conceptualization.


Author(s):  
J. M. Taylor ◽  
V. Raskin

This paper deals with a contribution of computational analysis of verbal humor to natural language cognition. After a brief introduction to the growing area of computational humor and of its roots in humor theories, it describes and compares the results of a human-subject and computer experiment. The specific interest is to compare how well the computer, equipped with the resources and methodologies of the Ontological Semantic Technology, a comprehensive meaning access approach to natural language processing, can model several aspects of the cognitive behaviors of humans processing jokes from the Internet. The paper, sharing several important premises with cognitive informatics, is meant as a direct contribution to this rapidly developing transdisciplinary field, and as such, it bears on cognitive computing as well, especially at the level of implementation of computational humor in non-toy systems and the relationship to human cognitive processes of understanding and producing humor.


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