Critical Cultural Awareness Contributions to a Globalizing Psychology

• Published in: The American psychologist Vol. 69; no. 7; pp. 645 - 655
• Main Authors: Christopher, John Chambers, Wendt, Dennis C., Marecek, Jeanne, Goodman, David M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01-10-2014
• Subjects: American culture; Consciousness; Cross Cultural Psychology; Cultural Competency - psychology; Cultural factors; Cultural Sensitivity; Ethnopsychology - standards; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Folk Psychology; Globalization; Hermeneutics; Human; Humans; Indigenous Populations; International Psychology; Internationality; Knowledge; Natural disasters; Perceptions; Psychologists; Psychology; U.S.A; United States > US; folk psychology; international psychology; hermeneutics; indigenous psychology; cultural psychology
• ISSN: 0003-066X; 1935-990X
• DOI: 10.1037/a0036851

The number of psychologists whose work crosses cultural boundaries is increasing. Without a critical awareness of their own cultural grounding, they risk imposing the assumptions, concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology on societies where they do not fit, as a brief example from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shows. Hermeneutic thinkers offer theoretical resources for gaining cultural awareness. Culture, in the hermeneutic view, is the constellation of meanings that constitutes a way of life. Such cultural meanings-especially in the form of folk psychologies and moral visions-inevitably shape every psychology, including U.S. psychology. The insights of hermeneutics, as well as its conceptual resources and research approaches, open the way for psychological knowledge and practice that are more culturally situated.