The goal of cultural psychology is to explain the ways in which human cultural constructions -- for example, rituals, stereotypes, and meanings -- organize and direct human acting, feeling, and thinking in different social contexts. A rapidly growing, international field of scholarship, cultural psychology is ready for an interdisciplinary, primary resource. Linking psychology, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, and history, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the quintessential volume that unites the variable perspectives from these disciplines. Comprised of over fifty contributed chapters, this book provides a necessary, comprehensive overview of contemporary cultural psychology. Bridging psychological, sociological, and anthropological perspectives, one will find in this handbook: - A concise history of psychology that includes valuable resources for innovation in psychology in general and cultural psychology in particular - Interdisciplinary chapters including insights into cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, culture and conceptions of the self, and semiotics and cultural connections - Close, conceptual links with contemporary biological sciences, especially developmental biology, and with other social sciences - A section detailing potential methodological innovations for cultural psychology By comparing cultures and the (often differing) human psychological functions occuring within them, The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology is the ideal resource for making sense of complex and varied human phenomena.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1938.

This work presents Sapir's most comprehensive statement on the concepts of culture, on method and theory in anthropology and other social sciences, on personality organization, and on the individual's place in culture and society. Extensive discussions on the role of language and other symbolic systems in culture, ethnographic method, and social interaction are also included. Ethnographic and linguistic examples are drawn from Sapir's fieldwork among native North Americans and from European and American society as well. Edward Sapir (1884-1939), one of this century's leading figures in American anthropology and linguistics, planned to publish a major theoretical state - ment on culture and psychology. He developed his ideas in a course of lectures presented at Yale University in the 1930s, which attracted a wide audience from many social science disciplines. Unfortunately, he died before the book he had contracted to publish could be realized. Like de Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Générale before it, this work has been reconstructed from student notes, in this case twentytwo sets, as well as from Sapir's manuscript materials. Judith Irvine's meticulous reconstruction makes Sapir's compelling ideas - of surprisingly contemporary resonance - available for the first time.

After over three decades of continual publication in multiple editions, the Third Edition of Rethinking Psychological Anthropology, now with coauthor Stephen Leavitt, describes the latest interests, concepts, and approaches in the field with the inclusion of four new chapters and updates to earlier topics. The premise of the previous editions remains: that all anthropology is psychological and that the interplay between anthropological methods and the psychological theories existing in different times is dialectical. Psychological anthropologists have grappled with changing trends in both disciplines, including psychoanalytic, holistic, cognitive, interpretive, and developmental approaches. It is important to appreciate these currents of thought to understand the state of the field today. This text is thus a guide to that history along with a critique that may lead to a new synthesis. It is an ideal choice for courses in psychological anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, and the history of anthropology.

Both a critical history of anthropological theory and methods and a challenging essay in the sociology of science, The Invention of Primitive Society shows how anthropologists have tried to define the original form of human society.

This book is in the field of trans-cultural psychology, and is intended for college courses in anthropology and psychology, and general readership. the book focuses on intriguing facts about primitive cultures around the world, and provides insights into living traditions and different world views. a principal theme of the book is that we can gain a better understanding of ourselves by a "detour" to other cultures. the book shows how modern ways of thinking are parallel to those of primitive cultures, and engages readers to become more aware of who they are. As shown throughout the book, there is not, after all, a very wide gulf between primitive and modern cultures. the book covers many topics including animism, shamanism, totemism, hunting and cultivation rituals, altered states of consciousness, envy and the evil eye, how people deal with conflicts, potlatches, cargo cults, how people satisfy the need for social approval, culture-bound syndromes, folk medicine, treatment of women, raising of children, nomadic peoples, treatment of the dead, and other topics.