The cultural psychology of Palestinian youth: A narrative approach

Abstract

Contemporary Palestinian youth engage with a tragic master narrative of loss and dispossession supported by the social structure of ongoing intractable conflict and Israeli military occupation. This article illustrates a narrative and idiographic approach to research in cultural psychology, interrogating the relationship between constructions of personal identity and the master narrative of Palestinian history and collective identity among contemporary youth. Narratives of youth reveal points of both convergence and divergence with the master narrative of Palestinian identity, the most notable of which are the reproduction of tragic stories of loss and dispossession and the current ideological divisions within Palestinian society between secular and religious nationalism. Implications for theory and methodological practice in cultural psychology are discussed.