Culture and the Individual

Abstract

In this paper, I want to suggest a framework for the study of action that does notturn ‘culture’ and ‘psychological phenomena’ into two sides ofa dichotomy, but which is sensitive to the context of action. This is called for in view of what seem to be genuinely interesting developments in our thinking about ourselves: for example,theoretical and empirical attempts to re-unite brain, body, words and world in such a way thatit is no longer interesting to speculate merely about what is ‘in’, and opposed towhat is ‘outside’, the individual. Briefly, I propose a definition of culture thatseems to offer productive empirical possibilities. After this I suggest an empirical focus on task, participant(s) and situation, by way of explicating the resources and constraints operating during action-in-context.