Cultural psychology and the problem of exchange between individual and environment: Is there a common concept?

Journal/Book: Cult Psychol. 1997; 3: 6 Bonhill Street, London, England EC2A 4PU. Sage Publications Ltd. 405-422.

Abstract: The holistic perspective on the person-context exchange conception present in so many current culture-oriented developmental theories has different roots in the history of European psychology. Here, one school assumed to have contributed to the widening of our understanding of the cultural or environmental influence on individual development is presented in some detail. This school of thinking is compared to another European conceptualization of an integrated view on person-culture exchange (discussed in this issue). Biological, cultural-philosophical and psychological aspects were linked together in a school established at the newly founded university at Hamburg, Germany, during the 1920s and early 1930s. Cooperation by three scientists from different disciplines pushed forward the idea of a holistic concept describing the process of development within context. William Stern, the psychologist, Ernst Cassirer, the cultural philosopher, and Jakob Johannes von Uexkull, the biologist, worked together and successfully developed an integrated perspective on the exchange between the individual and his or her environment. Although never manifest as a 'school' in its own right, it is maintained that the three scientists' interdisciplinary efforts to grasp a holistic explanation of the subject-environment relationship is found in many components remaining in contemporary theories exploring links between individual and environment.

Note: Article Kreppner K, Max Planck Inst Bildungsforsch, Lentzeallee 94, D-14195 Berlin, GERMANY

Keyword(s): aspects of culture; history of theory development; holistic perspective on development; interdisciplinary concepts; person-context exchange; ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY; MUCHOW,MARTHA

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