Cultural Psychology and Its Future : Complementarity in a New Key

A volume in Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural PsychologySeries Editors Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University, Nandita Chaudhary, University of Delhiand Pernille Hviid, University of CopenhagenCultural Psychology is a radical new look in psychology that studies how persons and social-culturalworlds mutually constitute one another. With the increase of globalization and multicultural exchanges,cultural psychology becomes the psychological science for the 21st century. Encounters with othersfundamentally transform the way we understand ourselves. No longer can we ignore questions about howour cultural traditions, practices, beliefs, artifacts and other people constitute how we approach,understand, imagine and remember the world. The Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in CulturalPsychology series aims to highlight and develop new ideas that advance our understanding of these issues.This first volume in the series features an address by Prof. Jaan Valsiner, which is followed by ten commentary chapters and his response to them. Inhis lecture, Valsiner explores what Niels Bohr’s revolutionary principle of ’complementarity’ can contribute to the development of a culturalpsychology that takes time, semiotics, and human feeling seriously. Commentators further discuss how complementarity can act as an epistemologyfor psychology; a number of new methodological strategies for incorporating culture and time into investigations; and what cultural psychology cancontribute to our understanding of imagination, art, language and self-other relations.