Abstract
In this paper I introduce the outlines of our new type of theoretical framework named ‘Cultural psychology of Differences’ for understanding cultural others and dialogically reconstructing interactions among cultural others. In order to understand cultural others, it is necessary for us to reconstruct a new concept which enables us to analyze dynamic generation processes of culture. We propose the concept of Expanded Mediational Structure, EMS, as an elementary unit for understanding human social interactions. EMS is composed of subjects who interacts each other using objects of some kind as mediators, and a normative mediator, NM, which mediates their interactions. It is necessary to generate, share and adjust a NM to keep social interactions stable, and culture will appear when interaction malfunction is attributed to a gaps of NMs. The concept of EMS helps us to understand how culture is functionally substantialized in the plane of collective (or communal) intersubjectivity and how cultural conflicts develop and intensify. Focusing on the generation process of culture through interactions provides us with another option to understand cultural others through dialogical interactions with them.
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Notes
We can differentiate intersubjectivity into two levels. The first level is dyadic intersubjectivity composed of two subjects who are assumed to share their subjective world. We can interpret that interactions between these subjects are based on their mutual intersubjective understanding. The second one is triadic intersubjectivity which is composed of three subjects including a third party. When the two subjects interact with each other with an awareness of the third party, we can assume their interactions have social nature. The third party herein can be a person like a mother to a child, a certain rule shared by subjects, or a law in social interaction. All of these influence interacting subjects and function as the normative element for them. We name the latter collective (or communal) intersubjectivity (共同主観性 kyodoshukansei in Japanese: see also Hiromatsu, W. 1972). This kind of subjectivity is the fundamental base of human social interactions which construct human social system.
The following discussion is the summary of Yamamoto (2015) which has been elaborated as relatively independent of the traditional theories of psychology about culture. Therefore, the discussion might be able to understand more easily by taking notice of the theoretical composition itself than by seeking the backgrounds of it in other traditional psychological theories.
Besides, culture is not arbitral in the sense that no one can freely choose his/her origin and circumstances for his/ her development. For example, toddlers’ interactions over possession begin to change around the age of one and a half year (Yamamoto 1991a). The dominant patterns of possessional behaviors observed among children around the age of two differ between Japanese and Chinese children, which agrees with the difference in pattern of cultural possessional behaviors between Japanese and Chinese adults (Yamamoto 1997). Since possession is an essential component of self (cf. the notion of material me-- James 1907), these developmental facts indicate that their selves begin to be culturally organized by the age of two at least. A person’s life is oriented by the nature of his/ her self, but no one can choose it arbitrarily.
Therefore, we have to discriminate two levels of intersubjectivity as foot note 2.
This kind of relative objectivity of NM is not the objectivity of natural science which considers a physical object as being out of human subjectivity. But, in the sense that natural science itself is a part of human intellectual activity in plane of collective-intersubjectivity, it can be considered as a specific case of such objectivity. (cf. Hiromatsu 1972).
Lévi-Strauss also mentions that his structural interpretation of myths is not the only one, and it will appear differently to the others (Lévi-Strauss 1978). He also claims that the relativity of interpretation reflects the nature of culture (Lévi-Strauss 1964). Hence his objectivism seen in his criticism to Mauss doesn’t seem to be based on simple dualism of objectivity and subjectivity, and we share such kind of theoretical viewpoint with him as far as this point. In "Formation of Static Stereotypical Understanding of the Cultural Other" section, we already mentioned the ambiguity of culture based on the nature of culture generation which derives from collective intersubjectivity of the culture.
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Yamamoto, T. Cultural Psychology of Differences and EMS; a New Theoretical Framework for Understanding and Reconstructing Culture. Integr. psych. behav. 51, 345–358 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9388-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9388-4