Culture as Embodiment The Social Tuning of Behavior

Culture as Embodiment utilizes recent insights in psychology, cognitive, and affective science to reveal the cultural patterning of behavior in group-related practices.

• Applies the best of the behavioural sciences to contemporary issues of behavioural cross-fertilization in global exchange
• Presents an original theory to be used in the gender and integration debates, about what the acceptance of newcomers from different cultural backgrounds really entails
• Presents a theory that is also applicable to youth culture and the split in modern society between underclass, modal class, and the elite
• Contains an original approach to the persistence of religion, and relates religious thought to the cognitive capacity of generic belief

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xii

Part One Towards a New Psychology of Culture 1

1 Understanding Culture 3

2 Inventing Culture Theory 27

3 A Psychological Perspective on Culture 70

Part Two Sex, Status, Age, Ethnicity, and Faith 109

4 Sex: The Shaping of Sex and Gender 113

5 Status: The Body of Class and Organized Compliance 141

6 Age: The Optimal Balance of Love and Challenge 160

7 Ethnicity: Cultural Arrests and Bicultural Competence 188

8 Faith: Religion as a Man-made Order 211

Part Three Psychology and Globalization 243

9 A Psychology of Globalization 245

10 Epilogue 287

Bibliographical Essay 292

Index 319

Paul Voestermans is Emeritus Associate Professor in Cultural Psychology at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He also taught at the Bogaziçi University in Istanbul. He has contributed articles on culture and behaviour in Theory & Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology, and has written several books in the field.

Theo Verheggen is Associate Professor in Cultural Psychology and History of Psychology at the Open Universiteit Nederland. He has published several articles on the development of an enactive perspective for cultural psychology in various books and journals.