Culture And Self

This volume brings together the primary challenges for 21st century cognitive sciences and cultural neuroscience in responding to the nature of human identity, self, and evolution of life itself. Through chapters devoted to intricate but focused models, empirical findings, theories, and experiential data, the contributors reflect upon the most exciting possibilities, and debate upon the fundamental aspects of consciousness and self in the context of cultural, philosophical, and multidisciplinary divergences and convergences. Such an understanding and the ensuing insights lie in the cusp of philosophy, neurosciences, psychiatry, and medical humanities. In this volume, the editors and contributors explore the foundations of human thinking and being and discuss both evolutionary/cultural embeddedness, and the self-orientation, of consciousness, keeping in mind questions that bring in the interdisciplinary complexity of issues such as the emergence of consciousness, relation between healing and agency, models of altered self, how cognition impacts the social self, experiential primacy as the hallmark of consciousness, and alternate epistemologies to understand these interdisciplinary puzzles.

How do I live a good life, one that is deeply personal and sensitive to others? John T. Lysaker suggests that those who take this question seriously need to reexamine the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In philosophical reflections on topics such as genius, divinity, friendship, and reform, Lysaker explores "self-culture" or the attempt to remain true to one's deepest commitments. He argues that being true to ourselves requires recognition of our thoroughly dependent and relational nature. Lysaker guides readers from simple self-absorption toward a more fulfilling and responsive engagement with the world.

Across sociology and cultural studies in particular, the concept of authenticity has begun to occupy a central role, yet in spite of its popularity as an ideal and philosophical value authenticity notably suffers from a certain vagueness, with work in this area tending to borrow ideas from outside of sociology, whilst failing to present empirical studies which centre on the concept itself. Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society addresses the problems surrounding this concept, offering a sociological analysis of it for the first time in order to provide readers in the social and cultural sciences with a clear conceptualization of authenticity and with a survey of original empirical studies focused on its experience, negotiation, and social relevance at the levels of self, culture and specific social settings.

Traditional scholars of philosophy and religion, both East and West, often place a major emphasis on analyzing the nature of "the self." In recent decades, there has been a renewed interest in analyzing self, but most scholars have not claimed knowledge of an ahistorical, objective, essential self free from all cultural determinants. The contributors of this volume recognize the need to contextualize specific views of self and to analyze such views in terms of the dynamic, dialectical relations between self and culture. An unusual feature of this book is that all of the chapters not only focus on traditions and individuals, East and West, but include as primary emphases comparative philosophy, religion, and culture, reinforcing individual and cultural creativity. Each chapter brings specific Eastern and Western perspectives into a dynamic, comparative relation. This comparative orientation emphasizes our growing sense of interrelatedness and interdependency.

This book examines the role of symbols and meaning in the development of mind, self, and emotion in culture.

In this highly informative and interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between culture and psyche, de Munck provides a substantive introduction to pertinent issues, theory, and empirical studies that lie at the junction of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. This engagingly written text reviews various approaches to such questions as: Where is culture locatedinside or outside the head? What is the selfis there a single, unified self or do many selves inhabit the body? Do institutional structures form to meet our needsor are our everyday lives simply a result of institutional structures? What is meaning and how do we study it? de Muncks examination of these different approaches illuminates the importance of the topic, expands readers understanding of human life, and points to psychological anthropologys relevance in affecting public policies.

This book explores the 'self-concept', its cultural, psychopathological and philosophical implications.

Aimed at business executives and students of business managerial and organizational courses, this volume focuses on how managerial practices influence work behaviour, and how these practices relate to the components of culture and self-identity.

Bringing together philosophy and psychology, this work offers an exploration of the self and its function. Benson investigates the way we orient ourselves in the world and the language we use to describe our position, whether it may be in space or time.

Human beings are inherently cultural beings, growing up in an environment that is steeped in culture and developing our self-construal accordingly. A new psychology book series - Self in Culture in Mind (SICIM) - by Aalborg University Press gathers current research perspectives on this issue. The first volume, Development of Self in Culture, sets the stage by examining the unfolding of self from a broad range of developmental perspectives. Each chapter suggests a specific theoretical approach and provides original research that document culturally-mediated development at different stages of life and in different cultural settings, as observed by appropriate scientific methods. [Series: Self in Culture in Mind (SICIM) - Vol. 1]