Discovering Cultural Psychology

This book is a landmark in contemporary cultural psychology. ErnestBoesch's synthesis of ideas is the first comprehensive theory of culture inpsychology since Wilhelm Wundt's Völkerpsychologie of the first decades ofthe twentieth century. Cultural psychology of today is an attempt toadvance the program of research that was charted out by Wundt-yet attimes we are carefully avoiding direct recognition of such continuity.While Wundt's experimental psychology has been hailed as the root forcontemporary scientific psychology the other side of his contribution-ethnographic analysis of folk traditions and higher psychological functions-has been largely discredited as something disconnected from thescientific realm. As an example of soft science-lacking the hardnessof experimentation-it has been considered to be an esoteric hobby of thefounding father of contemporary psychology. Of course that focus is profoundlywrong-the opposition soft versus hard just does not fit as ametalevel organizer of any science. Yet the rhetoric discounting thedescriptive side of Wundt's psychology is merely an act of social guidanceof what psychologists do-not a way of creating knowledge.