This volume identifies an emerging synthesis in psychological anthropology and presents the new research agenda taking shape as the discipline moves beyond the postmodernist critique. United by a desire to better understand the relationship of individual experience to culture the individual authors use a range of contemporary approaches in the field including person-centered ethnography activity theory attachment and object relations theory and cultural schema theory. Taken together these chapters demonstrate the importance of basing comparative studies on categories derived from fine-grained accounts of personal experience.