Integrating Experiences

A volume in Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural PsychologySeries Editors Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University, Nandita Chaudhary, University of Delhiand Pernille Hviid, University of CopenhagenCultural Psychology studies how persons and social-cultural worlds mutually constitute one another. It ispremised on the idea that culture is within us-in every moment in which we live our human lives, in themeaningful worlds we have created ourselves. In this perspective, encounters with others fundamentallytransform the way we understand ourselves. With the increase of globalization and multiculturalexchanges, cultural psychology becomes the psychological science for the 21st century. No longer can weignore questions about how our cultural traditions, practices, beliefs, artifacts and other people constitutehow we approach, understand, imagine and remember the world. The Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures inCultural Psychology series aims to highlight and develop new ideas that advance our understanding of these issues.This second volume in the series features an address by Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie, which is followed by commentary chapters and theirresponse to them. In their lecture, Zittoun and Gillespie propose a model of the relation between mind and society, specifically the way in whichindividuals develop and gain agency through society. They theorise and demonstrate a two-way interaction: bodies moving through society accumulatedifferentiated experiences, which become integrated at the level of mind, enabling psychological movement between experiences, which in turnmediates how people move through society. The model is illustrated with a longitudinal analysis of diaries written by a woman leading up to andthrough the Second World War. Commentators further elaborate on the issues of (1) context and history, (2) experience, time and movement, and (3)methodologies for cultural psychology.