Cultural Psychology and Qualitative Methodology: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations

269 Pages·1997·5.718 MB·English

by  Carl Ratner (auth.)

CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
AND QUALITATIVE
METHODOLOGY
THEORETICAL AND
EMPIRICAL CoNSIDERATIONs
PATH IN PSYCHOLOGY
Published in Cooperation with Publications for the
Advancement of Theory and History in Psychology (PA1H)
Series Editors:
David Bakan, York University
John Broughton, Teachers College, Columbia University
Robert W. Rieber, john jay College, CUNY, and Columbia University
Howard Gruber, University of Geneva
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY: A Case Study of
Understanding
David Leiser and Christiane Gillieron
A CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY: Interpretation of the Personal World
Edmund V. Sullivan
CRITICAL THEORIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
Edited by John M. Broughton
CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY AND QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY:
Theoretical and Empirical Considerations
Carl Ratner
DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES TO THE SELF
Edited by Benjamin Lee and Gil G. Noam
FRANTZ FANON AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPPRESSION
Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY: Concepts and Criticisms
Edited by Joseph R. Royce and Leendert P. Mos
MANUFACTURING SOCIAL DISTRESS: Psychopathy in Everyday Life
Robert W. Rieber
THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF ETHNONATIONALISM
Dusan Kecmanovic
PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORIES OF THE SELF
Edited by Be~amin Lee
THEORETICAL PSYCHOLOGY: The Meeting of East and West
A. C. Para~pe
WILHELM WUNDT AND THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY
Edited by R. W. Rieber
CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
AND QUALITATIVE
METHODOLOGY
THEORETICAL AND
EMPIRICAL CONSIDERATIONS
CARL RATNER
Humboldt State University
Arcata, California
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
On file
ISBN 978-1-4419-3261-7 ISBN 978-1-4757-2681-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-2681-7
© 1997 Springer Science+ Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
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All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
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To Jenny
With love and pride
Methodology is currently in a state of deep crisis .... If this
crisis goes unresolved, then radical developments in the
field ... will encounter the greatest obstable of all, that is, its
practical insignificance, the limited utility of its results. But if
a way out of the crisis is to be found, then the methodology
... must confront the enormous historical meaning of its
tasks.
VYGOTSKY, 1931/1991, p. 241
PREFACE
This book is part of a project to understand the cultural aspects of human
psychology. The academic discipline devoted to this subject is called cul
tural psychology. The field of cultural psychology draws together research
from cross-cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, history, soci
ology, and economics.
To become a scientific discipline, cultural psychology requires a sound
theoretical perspective and a rigorous methodology. In a previous work I
explained a conceptual foundation for cultural psychology. I used Vy
gotsky's sociohistorical psychology as the core of this conceptual founda
tion. Entitled Vygotsky's Sociohistorical Psychology and Its Contemporary Ap
plications, the book presented contemporary research in psychology, an
thropology, history, sociology, and biology that substantiated Vygotsky's
sociohistorical conception of human psychology.
In the course of reviewing this research, I found that certain kinds of
studies illuminated psychology's cultural character more than others. Ex
tensive descriptions of complex behaviors in meaningful situations were
more informative than studies that employed standardized, quantiative
measures of simple, overt responses. At the same time, the reader of
"qualitative" studies cannot help asking "How did they arrive at their
interesting conclusions about cultural psychology? How can I know if
these conclusions are valid?" Little information is provided about the
methodology that was used; independent verification is generally lacking;
and the reader has no way to evaluate the trustworthiness of the data and
conclusions.
It became obvious to me that qualitative methods need to be system
atized in order to be useful to cultural psychology. The present book
attempts to meet this need.
Certain humanistic psychologists and philosophers, humanistically
oriented sociologists, and researchers in education have devised principles
and procedures for analyzing the psychological significance of subjective
ix
X PREFACE
reports (interviews, letters, diaries). While these methods are useful as far
as they go, they remain rudimentary. Moreover, humanistic researchers
have primarily used qualitative methods to study personal experience ("I
felt such and such" or "I intended such and such"). They have generally
ignored the manner in which emotions, self-concept, perception, and psy
chological dysfunction embody cultural values.
If these qualitative methods could be developed and reoriented to
ward elucidating cultural aspects of psychology, the result would be a very
useful qualitative cultural psychological methodology.
Developing qualitative cultural psychological methodology is the task
of this book. It involves reviewing existing qualitative methods, system
atizing them around core epistemological and ontological principles,
informing them with a theory of cultural psychology that will guide them
to elucidate cultural aspects of psychology, and enhancing their scientific
status-i.e., their comprehensiveness, objectivity, validity, and ability to
detect general tendencies and causal relationships.
In writing this book I have benefited from the advice of several
individuals. I would like to express my appreciation to Bud Andersen, D.
C. Phillips, Ray McDermott, Anand Paranjpe, Paul Voestermans, Edith
Gold, Lumei Hui, Susan Frances, Bud Ratner, Josh Weinstein, Gus Bagakis,
Mike Mangan, Jack Nichols, Don Bowlus, Bonnie Nardi, Tom Langehaug,
and Bob Rieber. Several ideas in this book were refined while I was in the
Netherlands in 1995 courtesy of grant B56-416 from the Dutch NWO.
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Shortcomings of Positivistic Methodology for Researching Cultural
Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Fragmentation (Atomism) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Fragmented Stimuli and Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Quantification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Reducing Qualitative Differences to Quantitative
Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Quantifying Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Statistical Calculations and Tests of Significance . . . . . . . . . 34
Operational Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Attitude Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Content Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Positivistic Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2. Principles of Qualitative Methodology for Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
The Nature of Psychological Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Psychological Phenomena Are Complex Configurations of
Multiple Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Complex Psychological Phenomena Are Expressed
through Extended Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Psychological Phenomena Are Mental and Have No
Fixed Behavioral Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Xl
xii CONTENTS
Methodological Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Interpret Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Interpret Verbal Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Identify Situations in Which Phenomena Occur and Do
Not Occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Ascertain the Quality of a Psychological Phenomenon
through Its Relationships with Other Phenomena . . . . . 77
Employ All Qualitative Research Principles in Concert . . . 78
Subordinate Positivistic Methods to Qualitative Methods 84
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3. The Cultural Character of Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
The Importance of Practical Social Activity for
Psychological Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
The Concrete Social Character of Psychological Phenomena 108
The Dialectical Relationship between Activity and
Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4. Qualitative Methodology for Describing the Cultural Character of
Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
General Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Reorient Qualitative Methods to Consider Culture . . . . . . . . . 129
Interpret Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Compare Diverse Modes of Responding.................. 142
Identify Situations in Which Phenomena Occur and Do Not
Occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Develop Social Relationships That Are Conducive to
Psychological Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Ascertain the Cultural Quality of Each Psychological
Phenomenon through Its Interrelationships with Other
Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Utilize Qualitative Cultural Psychological Methodology
before Quantifying Psychological Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Ascertain the Cultural Character of Psychological
Phenomena by Employing the Foregoing Principles in
Concert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160