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As field change is often explained by recourse to agentic efforts of a few or revolutionary turbulence of many, this paper provides a complementary explanation of change grounded in the quotidian dynamics of physical objects and settings. Using the culinary and mountaineering fields, we demonstrate how attending to the materiality of objects and settings offers analytical leverage into the ways fields conflict and change. More specifically, we argue field instability is normal because, at the level of social action, mass and energy are inherently finite. As a result, actors responding to effects from distal fields may nevertheless collide over the objects and settings in which they are compelled to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine what it means for culture, in both its personal and public forms, to be implicit. I begin by considering a recent attempt to develop a descriptive taxonomy of other people's views of practices developed by Stephen Turner. A key result is that a specific combination of claims about the properties of practices yields an ontologically problematic category, which is a candidate for elimination. Following Turner's lead, I provide my own refurbished taxonomy of practical culture that does not contain ontologically problematic members. Another key result of the initial analysis is that implicitness is a relational property presupposing at least one agent with awareness (or unawareness) of the cultural element in question. This epistemic dependence implies that only personal culture internalized by people can be coherently thought of as 'implicit' (to them). Finally, I conclude that using mentalistic versions of implicitness to characterize public culture, such as texts, language, monuments, tools, and classifications on paper, yields the same ontologically incoherent category eliminated in the first step. Following from this, I argue that it is desirable to conceptualize 'implicit' in a way that makes sense for public culture without stirring up the ghosts of collective minds and related conundrums. I propose one such (weak) version of implicitness when speaking of public culture that does not run afoul of this issue. I then return to personal culture, considering whether 'implicitness' is a unitary property of this kind, answering in the negative. This conclusion requires us to develop a principled taxonomy of the distinct ways personal culture can be ‘implicit,’ yielding personal culture that is implicit because it acquired 'automatic' status, versus personal culture that is implicit because it lacks (access) consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to introduce the mimetic theory of René Girard to explore the connection between culture and religious violence to deal with some critical problems in international affairs. It challenges the narrow conceptualization of the issue of religion and violence as an issue of religious violence. As often as the issue of religion and violence is structured in such a manner, allegedly to pick religion seriously without considering politics or culture seriously. The conception is limited because, as an idea, religion is always contested, negotiated, and developed socially, culturally, or politically. It is a biased interpretation of a world actuality, which under certain conditions grounds violence. Furthermore, this narrow definition of religion suits what critical scholars describe as a problem‐solving strategy to theory. This study demonstrates mimetic theory challenges and reconfigures the conventional interpretation of the issue of religious violence and critically analyse the causes of the hidden, exposed violence as well as the scapegoat mechanism that functions in both domestic cultures as well as in international affairs, maintaining political and cultural order of any society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Affect Theory of Social Exchange (ATSE) research program has produced cumulative insights on how instrumental exchanges lead to the development of affectual attachments. With its focus on task responsibilities, ATSE leaves space to interrogate how factors not related to task execution are at play in the production of interpersonal bonds. In this paper, we integrate insights from social psychology, cultural sociology and organizational research to develop a theoretical framework suggesting (a) why and how cultural tastes contribute to social cohesion and (b) the conditions under which cultural tastes remain a source of strategic advantage or, worse, symbolic exclusion. Our theory rests on the basic proposition that shared cultural tastes increase the likelihood of experiencing positive emotions, which in turn are key in the development and maintenance of affectual attachments. Variations to this proposition are subsequently introduced, considering culture in declarative and nondeclarative forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings the thought of philosopher and world‐class chemist Michael Polanyi to bear on psychologists' study of honor cultures. After reviewing some fundamentals of Polanyi's outlook on science and persons, the paper develops a heuristic involving two dimensions to the process of knowing others—one that is integrative, another that is affective—in which seeing with honor cultures only characterizes one side of the intersection between these dimensions. This leads on to consideration of the Honor Ideology for Manhood scale (Barnes, Brown, & Osterman, 2012), an operationalization of honor in the southern U.S. that misses understanding because of impairments it naturally suffers as an instrument of detachment. The possibility follows that understanding as seeing with another culture most readily succeeds when that culture's way of life is personally indwelt so that the psychologist directly encounters what its members can speak of and only convey by showing. The distinction Polanyi makes between explicit and tacit knowledge informs this proposal, and his vision of apprenticing—such as occurs between masters and pupils in the training of a science or an art—is presented as an exemplary form of such encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visualization of social theory is an important part of the development and communication of our theoretical ideas. While most theorists use figures of some kind, few if any have formal training, or guiding rules or principles for the representation of theory. This has often led to poor visualization efforts, and the visual culture of sociology continues to lag behind the natural sciences. The intent of this paper is to serve as a practical and empirically aided guide for social theorists, by providing insights surrounding the cognitive and perceptual properties of certain elements and figures. Through these properties we identify four major problems in theory visualization: vagueness, reduction, unwanted spatial inferences and unwanted metaphorical inferences. We offer solutions to these problems, and to improving theory visualization more generally. Our hope is that this paper will serve as a resource for more thoughtful and informed visualization for practicing social theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses cultural psychology and psychological training in football (soccer). Self‐Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1980) has shown to be pragmatically successful in sport and suggests that being regulated by autonomous forms of motivation leads to better psychological outcomes. Cultural psychologists would be tempted to dismiss SDT because it is predicated on an a‐cultural approach to mind. It is possible to nurture a stronger and more effective team culture by reframing SDT in a cultural direction. As such, this paper outlines a cultural approach that reconceptualizes SDT in a way that retains the latter's pragmatic value while not approaching mind in a self‐contained individualist manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphogenetic approach as powered by analytical dualism offers an appealing account of the processes whereby people – through their reflexivities – reflect back on structures and cultures during the double and triple morphogenesis of agency. However, in order to further specify an account of social change, this paper argues that it would be helpful to provide an account of what occurs in the other direction as well: from the direction of structures and cultures, between each other and towards people, also at the points of double and triple morphogenesis of agency. This article is therefore a theoretical piece that proposes a reading of the morphogenetic model imbued with an enlightened understanding of immanent causality, driven by the Spinozian doctrine of parallelism and operationalized by his understanding of the two expressive roles of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family obligation, which has an exceptionally high salience in traditional Chinese society, continues to be significant in contemporary China. In family relations in particular sentiments and practices morphologically similar to those associated with xiao (filial piety) remains intact in so far as an enduring set of expectations concerning age-based obligation continues to structure behavior toward others. Researchers pursuing the theme of 'individualization' in Chinese society, on the other hand, argue that family obligations and filial sentiments have substantially weakened. The present paper will show that under conditions of cultural and social change in China filial behavior through family obligation continues to play an important role even though the conventions associated with the relevant expectations, attitudes and emotions have undergone significant change. The paper argues that the culture-system develops not merely through an internal dynamic and that family obligation must be understood in terms of the social and material context in which it operates and the nature of the motivations and imagery of the people that practice it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dualism of emic and etic plays a crucial role in the emergence of three culturally informed approaches of psychology: cross-cultural psychology ( CCP), cultural psychology ( CP) and indigenous psychologies ( IPs), a distinction largely accepted nowadays. Similarities and/or differences between these positions are usually discussed either on the level of phenomena (data) or theory. In this paper, however, the discussion takes place on a meta-theoretical or epistemological level, which is also emerging elsewhere. In following several earlier papers of the author, first, four perspectives are distinguished that underlie present day psychology. Second, these are used as a framework for linking them to the three 'camps'. This analysis will show that these perspectives are characterized by different underlying worldviews, interests as well as methodical preferences. Third, it is claimed that this level of discussion is quite fruitful for the ongoing discourse on the three camps, but also helps one to understand, why the duality between emic and etic approaches is-implicitly or explicitly-at the core of these discussions, because their relevance turns out to differ in the three camps. In that sense, the emic/etic duality is used here as a 'litmus test' to exemplify these deeper differences between the camps, thereby highlighting them. Fourth, in order to overcome not only the dilemma between the unique and general in psychology, but also to clarify the relation between the individual and culture it is proposed that psychology should take human action as its unit of analysis, thereby connecting historically to the early beginnings of psychology at the end of the 19th century. It will be argued that a culture inclusive action theory may overcome this tension and may help to integrate western and other indigenous psychologies, and hence it could be advantageous to integrate CP and IPs as well. This is possible because the proposed theory hopefully provides a universal framework for psychological concepts, yet allows for their culture specific expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does 'discursive consciousness' play in decision-making? How does it interact with 'practical consciousness?' These two questions constitute two important gaps in strong practice theory that extend from Pierre Bourdieu's habitus to Stephen Vaisey's sociological dual-process model and beyond. The goal of this paper is to provide an empirical framework that expands the sociological dual-process model in order to fill these gaps using models from cognitive neuroscience. In particular, I use models of memory and moral judgment that highlight the importance of executive functions and semantic memory. I outline each model as it pertains to the aforementioned gaps in strong practice theory. I then use the models from cognitive neuroscience to create an expanded dual-process model that addresses how and when conscious mental systems override and interact with subconscious mental systems in the use of cultural ends for decision-making. Finally, using this expanded model I address the sociological debate over the use of interview and survey data. My analysis reveals that surveys and interviews both elicit information encoded in declarative memory and differ primarily in the process of information retrieval that is required of respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accepting Cole's the premise that, 'cultural-inclusive psychology has been ... an elusive goal' (1996, pp. 7-8) but one worth striving to attain, I first set out to identify my domain of interest and competence as an intellectual. Deciding it to be social interaction between individuals, I then searched out theoretical approaches to this domain that encompassed as many approaches to this trans-historical concern that have emerged from cultural traditions bequeathing us their legacies. Doing this search comprehensively required me to move outside my Judeo- Christian, Greco- Roman, Renaissance heritage and its international diffusion via the European Empires since the 1500's, embodied most recently the American dominance of intellectual discourse since the Second World War. In my case, this journey has taken me in to Chinese culture and psychology where I have worked towards integrating the Chinese worldview and its psychological measures into the discipline of social psychology. Striving for a more inclusive culture-view, I am now using multi-cultural data bases to transcend this two-cultural focus and incorporate wider measures of cultural variation into our theorizing and empirical validation of universal models for social interaction. This paper describes my current procedures for such culture-mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the 'trajectory' can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some widespread but often not fully articulated views concerning the possible roles of biology and evolution in the social sciences. Such views cluster around a set of intuitions that suggest that evolution's role is 'ballistic': it constitutes a starting point for mind that has been, and is, superseded by the role of culture and social construction. An implication is that evolved and the socially constructed aspects of mind are separable and independent, with the latter being the primary driver of mind. I outline four variants of the ballistic view. I then show how current findings and arguments in evolutionary thinking as related to mind contradict those ballistic views. The contrary view-that evolutionary and social factors are interdependent in the generation of social psychological capacities-is proposed as a consequence. This view is able to respect some insights of theories that make ballistic assumptions, whilst avoiding those assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]