For a long time psychology′s main concern was to become another natural science, from where it borrowed concepts, ideas, and methods. It evolved its theoretical structures based on models used in the Western world of science, and the laboratory became the best site for the study of a variety of micro-level phenomena with little concern for problems requiring global or macro-level treatment - such as the role of social, cultural and economic variables.
With the development of cross-cultural psychology in the 1960s - through the efforts of Durganand Sinha, Gustav Jahoda, Jan Deregowski and John Dawson - culture came to be regarded as the context or system, and human behaviour as adaptive to this context. This collection of essays pursues this line of thought admirably. Consisting of an introduction and thirteen articles by eminent scholars, the book deals with the following issues:
· new lines of thinking about cognition, emotion, personality, and mental health;
· the language and practice of the "real people" in real or concrete interactional or transactional situations;
· the shift in methodology from experimentation to the use of observational and ethnographic methods;
· the movement from mainstream psychology to applied social psychology;
· the recent concern in development psychology with quality of life (QOL).
An important collection that demonstrates how a culturally appropriate psychology can only be developed and practised on the basis of a cultural understanding of individuals or groups.
Ramesh C. Mishra (DPhil, University of Allahabad) is Professor Emeritus of psychology at Banaras Hindu University, India. He has been a post Doctoral research fellow and Shastri Research Fellow at Queen’s University, Canada, and a visiting professor at the Universities of Konstanz (Germany) and Geneva (Switzerland). He has also been a Fellow-in-Residence of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar (The Netherlands) and a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Wittenberg University, Springfield (USA). He is the Past President and Fellow of the National Academy of Psychology (India). His research is focused on understanding ecological and cultural influences on human development. He is the co-author of Ecology, Acculturation and Psychological Adaptation: A Study of Adivasis in Bihar (SAGE) and Development of Geocentric Spatial Language and Cognition: An Ecocultural Perspective and co-editor of Psychology in Human and Social Development: Lessons from Diverse Cultures (SAGE).
R.C. Tripathi (Rama Charan Tripathi) is a National Fellow of the Indian Council for Social Science Research, India. He was formerly Director of G.B.Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad and headed the Center for Advanced Studies in Psychology at the University of Allahabad. Professor Tripathi has served on important bodies of higher education in the country. He has been a member of the University Grants Commission, Indian Council for Social Science Research and the Indian National Commission of Cooperation with UNESCO. He has served as the President of the National Academy of Psychology, India and also as a Regional President of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology. He was Secretary General of the section of “Psychology and National Development of the International Union of Psychological Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of more than half a dozen national and international journals. Among his books are: Environment and Structure of Organizations; Deprivation: Its Social and Psychological Roots; Norm Violation and Intergroup Relations; Psychology in Human and Social Development; Understanding Academic Underachievement; Expanding horizons of the mind sciences; Psychology, development and social policy in India. His research has focused on Social and Cultural values; Inter-group Relations; Social change and Development; Organizational Influence processes and Organizational Change.
