Sociocultural Psychology

The present article addresses the question of ‘When can we say something is creative?’ and, in answering it, takes a critical stand towards past and present scientific definitions of creativity. It challenges an implicit assumption in much psychological theory and research that creativity exists as an ‘objective’ feature of persons or products, universally recognised and independent of social agreement and cultural systems of norms and beliefs. Focusing on everyday life creative outcomes, the article includes both theoretical accounts and empirical examples from a research exploring creativity evaluations in the context of folk art. In the end, a multi-layered perspective of creativity assessment emerges, integrating dimensions such as newness and originality, value and usefulness, subjective reception and cultural reception of creative products. Implications for how we understand and study creativity are discussed.

The practitioners of village stability operations operate nearly entirely in the spaces of communities damaged by combinations of traumatizing violence, loss, displacement, starvation, death and dismemberment. Their organization, equipping and training is focused on the most apparent physical security and developmental needs by those who fund and support their deployments and to a lesser extent on reparation of political dialogue as part of restorative justice and the reparative process. The psychological and sociological damage that these practitioners encounter however, often leads to frustration, overextension of personnel and resources and eventual failure. This paper explores the existence, nature and depth of psychological and sociological damage to communities traumatized by violent conflict. The purpose of this research is to establish a baseline of psychosocial-cultural intelligence on conflict societies that can be used to plan, prepare and execute peace operations and humanitarian missions. This psychosocial-cultural intelligence or understanding of traumatized communities provides peace operations and humanitarian missions with analysis and method to engage and influence traumatized communities to the point that they are able to provide for their self-sustainment without participation in communal violence. By exposing the pathology of sociological trauma at the family, village and tribal levels of structure, we can begin to unwind and resolve intractable conflicts in failing and failed societies despite limited time and resources of peace operations donors and practitioners.

Contents
The challenge of stabilizing villages and tribes in conflict ........................................................................... 3
Trauma and the family’s sociological structure ............................................................................................ 6
Village stability, trauma and the sociocentric family.................................................................................. 10
Internal identities and external locus of control in sociocentric families ............................................... 11
Communication and meaning in the sociocentric family ........................................................................ 14
The emotional logic of violence, shame, and trauma.................................................................................. 16
The rage of shame in sociocentric community ........................................................................................ 17
Psychological pathways to violence & suicidal terrorism ...................................................................... 21
Connecting failed states to traumatized communities ................................................................................. 22
Intractable cultural conflict: generational transmission of trauma .............................................................. 24
Crossing the trauma barrier - reestablishing meaning in traumatized communities ................................... 27
Relieving sociological trauma and rebuilding society ................................................................................ 31
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 33
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................... 35

Neuroscience has been a growing field since the 1940s and, with the advent of new tools for investigating the brain, has skyrocketed in scientific interest. However, most of what is known about human brain development may be applicable only to a restricted set of populations. This situation is problematic because we know cultural features (e.g., values, beliefs, practices) have a profound impact on cognitive, social, and emotional development, yet only recently has research documented the role culture plays in shaping the brain. Though the field of cultural neuroscience has brought promise, it can benefit from the integration of a sociodemographic and developmental lens. This chapter summarizes bodies of multidisciplinary work that integrate sociocultural (sociodemographics, cultural features, or both), developmental research designs (longitudinal, sensitive periods, cross-sectional) and neuroscience research or research that could benefit from this type of multidisciplinary integration. It also discusses the implications of this integration for future research in the new field, sociocultural developmental neuroscience, as well as the implications this integration has for global mental health. The chapter also provides initial, guiding principles, for how neuroscientists can go about engaging in this new, emerging field.

Human creativity is in high demand in the 21st century, and it has been acknowledged that unlocking the creative capacity of the whole population would have major effects. However, while several surveys demonstrate that many people consider creativity a personal and an economic asset associated with individual and societal wellbeing, simultaneously many of them doubt their own creative abilities.

Even though findings from the field of cognitive neuroscience have shown that the phenomenon is intrinsic and we all possess creative potential, it is claimed that an average person holds stereotypical or dated ideas about creativity, which may explain why the discourse on creativity has suffered from so many misconceptions.

This study presents the hypothesis that current understandings of creativity are the result of numerous variables, such as general perceptions of the social status and the role of age. Some of these variables are then selected for in-depth investigation by using critical discourse analysis.

The results of this analysis suggest that a multitude of conceptions on creativity will remain until the science of creativity is established. Moreover, creativity is an ambiguous, socioculturally dependent and evolving phenomenon. Furthermore, miscommunication between different social groups can influence the public’s views more than the myths or misconceptions about the phenomenon per se. The implications of the results and future research directions are presented here within.

Alongside of the research, an experimental concept of Metacognitive Process in Creative Self-Confidence was developed to explore the possible causalities of ambiguous creativity complex, current sociocultural environment, and individualistic perception on one’s own creative self.

For an artist whose known surviving paintings number less than fifty, the complexity and diversity of the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569) is breathtaking.  These works range from biblical narratives and “moralizing” allegories of epic proportions to panoramic landscapes and rustic celebrations animated with peasants.  They have fascinated many art historians who have bestowed on Bruegel many labels:  for instance, Bruegel le drôle, Peasant Bruegel, Bruegel le philosophe, or Bruegel the pictorial novelist.  This paper examines yet another side of Bruegel: that of the realist.  Could Bruegel be considered a Realist of similar persuasion as painters who represent 19th-century French Realism, an art movement that blossomed 300 years later?  How much of Bruegel’s artwork anticipated the tendencies of this art movement?

Imagination allows individuals and groups to think beyond the here-and-now, to envisage alternatives, to create parallel worlds, and to mentally travel through time. Imagination is both extremely personal (for example, people imagine unique futures for themselves) and deeply social, as our imagination is fed with media and other shared representations.

As a result, imagination occupies a central position within the life of mind and society. Expanding the boundaries of disciplinary approaches, the Handbook of Imagination and Culture expertly illustrates this core role of imagination in the development of children, adolescents, adults, and older persons today.

Bringing together leading scholars in sociocultural psychology and neighboring disciplines from around the world, this edited volume guides readers towards a much deeper understanding of the conditions of imagining, its resources, its constraints, and the consequences it has on different groups of people in different domains of society. Summarily, this Handbook places imagination at the center, and offers readers new ways to examine old questions regarding the possibility of change, development, and innovation in modern society.

Aquí expongo históricamente la incorporación en la psicología del desarrollo de los métodos interpretativos y etnográficos. Éstos se rescataron para aportar luz a un debate no resuelto: el rol que el ambiente versus la herencia juega en el desarrollo humano. Esta incorporación ha tenido lugar junto con una serie de cambios en la forma de concebir dicho debate y, dentro de éste, en lo que se entiende por ambiente. En el proceso de incorporación he identificado tres fases diferenciadas por la forma de concebir el ambiente; primero entendido como un conjunto de factores externos, después como la ‘cultura’ entendida como un factor estático, y finalmente como la ‘cultura’ entendida como algo dinámico, heterogéneo, inestable, cambiante y describible sólo en términos locales y mediante métodos interpretativos y cualitativos. En la segunda parte de este trabajo, destaco las aportaciones epistemológicas, ontológicas y metodológicas que la etnografía ha hecho a la disciplina. Finalmente, en las conclusiones propongo la utilidad de clasificar la disciplina no sólo atendiendo a los objetos de estudio o a los marcos teóricos sino también a la forma de aproximarse a la génesis del conocimiento científico. Esto puede contribuir a que algunos de los puntos clave de la historia de la psicología sean identificados más claramente.
Palabras clave: Psicología cultural, etnografía, desarrollo humano, ciencias interpretativas.

The aim of this paper is to discuss different approaches to creativity and underline the cultural nature of its genesis. Biological genius (the “He-paradigm”) and psychological-individualistic (the “I-paradigm”) standpoints are contrasted with social and cross-cultural ones (the “We-paradigm”) and the cultural psychology of creativity is introduced and positioned. This emerging paradigm, drawing from both social accounts of creativity and the latest developments in cultural psychology and the theory of social representations, emphasises the contextual and generative nature of creative acts and employs a person (creator) – other (community) – object (artefacts) model. Creativity is conceptualized as a complex process that leads to the generation of new artefacts by working with “culturally-impregnated” materials within a representational space. This particular viewpoint highlights the meaning-oriented nature of creativity, its link to personal and group identities, and also calls for ecological research and situational interventions. One of the central issues addressed by the cultural psychology of creativity is the problem of “genesis” or how creativity is developed and manifested within cultural settings. The pioneer in this field is undoubtedly D.W. Winnicott who asserted at the beginning of the 70’s that creativity and cultural experience are twin-born. Children experiment culture creatively and they do so in the “third” or “potential” space, one that we can identify today with the social world of representations. In his view of ontogenesis the origins of creativity are found in the first forms of playing and are shaped by the nature of the mother – child relationship. The final part of the paper will develop further this account and show how creativity emerges from early childhood within a symbolic space where children “play” with artefactual resources, a space of dialogue between self and significant others, constantly alimented by social and collective systems of beliefs and practices, life experiences and communication.

Key-words: creativity paradigms, the cultural psychology of creativity, representational space, genetic account, culture, artefacts, play

Acest articol îşi propune să introducă problematica complexă a psihologiei culturale, o disciplină relativ nou constituită şi care continuă moştenirea mai veche a psihologiei „popoarelor” (Völkerpsychologiei) lui W. Wundt. După o scurtă abordare istorică, psihologia culturală este prezentată ca studiu al interdependenţei dintre persoană sau grup şi contextul socio-cultural al acestora. În scopul delimitării ariei sale de interes, sunt realizate diferenţieri în raport cu alte discipline psihologice, în special cu psihologia cross-culturală. Direcţiilor teoretice din cadrul psihologiei culturale le este dedicată o secţiune aparte în care sunt menţionate construcţii teoretice influente precum cea a şcolii cultural-istorice reprezentate de Lev Vygotsky, ca şi conceptul de „lume intenţională” al lui Richard Shweder. Articolul continuă cu discutarea noţiunii de „cultură” şi prezentarea a trei abordari distincte ale acesteia: cea cultural-istorică, cea epidemiologică şi cea a reprezentărilor sociale. În final, sunt descrise câteva studii care adoptă principiile psihologiei culturale şi este evaluată pe scurt situaţia actuală din cadrul disciplinei.

Cuvinte-cheie: psihologie culturală, cultură, artefact, mediere simbolică, activitate, reprezentare.

Vygotsky’s project needs to be grasped as a yet unnamed type of an approach which, in continuing the revolutionary spirit of Marxism, moved beyond the old divide between theory and practice and instead, embodied their unity in a peculiar blend with distinct philosophical, theoretical and ethical/ideological underpinnings. The goal of creating
new psychology for a society that itself needed to be created on principles of social justice and equality guided this approach and turned it into a critical-practical project of social transformation and change. The main argument advanced in this paper is that at the core of Vygotsky’s method is the novel transformative onto-epistemology, coupled with the socio-political ethos of equality and justice, which challenge ideology of adaptation and control. I discuss this set of issues in light of a transformative activist stance that puts premium on researchers’ commitments and value orientations.

The core argument in this paper is that all research schools and theoretical frameworks carry with them – and, importantly, also within them, as their inherent dimensions – particular ethical orientations (systems of values and ethical endpoints) tailored to and derivative from socio-political and ultimately, practical projects in which research uniquely gains its concreteness and meaning. These projects can be differentiated along the axis either of supporting (explicitly or implicitly) the status quo by taking it for granted and not challenging its reigning assumptions or, alternatively, aiming at transcending it through resistance and social transformation. These systems of values and orientations, or a sociopolitical ethos, indelibly color all other elements and dimensions of inquiries such as their ontologies and epistemologies, forming a unified ethico-onto-epistemology. Cultural-historical theory, under certain expansions and upgrades, is a paradigmatic case for advancing this position, with Hedegaard's works seen as sharing Vygotsky's broadly defined sociopolitical ethos which sheds light on her approach's significance and promise. To establish the centrality of ethico-onto-epistemology, a revision of the constitutional framework that could enable it, away from assumptions of passivity, accommodation, and adaptation, is required. A Transformative Activist Stance paves the way to understand knowledge production as always embedded within activist pursuits of broad social projects beyond the narrow confines of academia while embracing transformative agency grounded in political imagination and commitment to resistance and radical social transformation.
available at:  https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/science/article/pii/S2210656118300953

This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency.

In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination.

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

The present article aims to distinguish between a sociocognitive and a sociocultural approach to forms of ‘collective’ creativity. While the first is well-illustrated in studies of group or team creativity the second has generally supported investigations of collaborative creativity, most of them performed in the last few decades. The comparison between these two fields takes different levels into account, from the epistemological position adopted to issues concerning the theories and methods used. Special attention is given to reviewing models of creativity from each perspective. While the literature on group creativity contains several cognitive models, there is little work yet towards building a model for collaborative creativity. This is why a secondary aim of this material is to introduce and discuss a sociocultural framework: the Shared Representational Resources Model. In the end the similarities and differences between the two paradigms are examined with reference to both theory and research and arguments are given for why it would be beneficial for sociocognitivists and socioculturalists to engage in a more consistent dialogue.

Key-words: group creativity, social psychology, social cognition.

To establish an ontologically and epistemologically justified and conceptually warranted connection between sciences and activism, no less than the worldview-level assumptions about science, knowledge, and teaching-learning need to be revised and re-construed. In view of this goal, a transformative activist stance is premised on onto-epistemology that centrally integrates human agency and activism as inherent properties of human becoming in its interrelated facets of being-knowing-doing. From this perspective, science education is always already a site of political contestation and activism even when it appears to be confined within the classroom walls. At the level of practical implications, this approach suggests that science education needs to be about arranging for students and teachers to agentively contribute to investigative projects of science as an open-ended human endeavor, in coordinated pursuits of self- and world-realization as the pathways to transcending the status quo in sciences and beyond. This approach highlights a broad meaning of activism as each learner’s right and ability to take a stand, stake a claim, and know for oneself within unique, authentic and authorial, as well as ever-emerging and shifting, quests to contribute to and make a difference in the world shared with others and its communal practices such as science.

ABSTRACT In most cultures, play seems to matter a great deal to young children. This is evidenced by the vast amount of time children spent playing and the combination of often unsurpassed passion, imagination, and energy which they invest in this activity. This paper explores why play matters through the lens of Bakhtin’s dialogic approach combined with Vygotsky’s developmental theory. In expanding upon their insights into a framework termed “the transformative activist stance,” we suggest that play offers unique opportunities for children to develop and exercise their agency, identity, and voice. While playing, according to this perspective, children discover how to be agentive actors—that is, unique persons who have an irreplaceable role in co-authoring social interactions, communal practices, and the world itself. In this complex endeavor, children sort out the difficult challenge of becoming unique, self-determined, and free persons within the communal world shared and co-created with others. Examples from video recordings of children’s interactive play in a naturalistic setting illustrate how play paves the way for children to collaboratively create and transform the world from their unique stances and positions. This approach suggests that play is serious work for children as they develop capacities for agency. Therefore, it is critically important that early education allocates ample time for this activity.

The present article aims to explore the social representations of creativity in a Western cultural context. In doing so it starts by addressing the theoretical bases for such an investigation and especially the more developed literature on implicit theories of creativity. Contributions of the social representations approach are discussed, in particular the mechanisms of anchoring and objectification and processes of thematisation. The empirical research was based on an on-line survey and the analysis included 106 responses, mainly from participants living in the US and the UK. The questionnaire employed both closed and open-ended questions concerning: a) common creativity symbols; b) existing dichotomies about the nature of creativity, and c) self-evaluations of creativity. Participants were first asked to think of what would be the best creativity symbol for them and to rate and comment on eight symbols emerging out of a pre-study of Google Images. Findings indicate that current representations of creativity are complex and multifaceted and the strongest association present was between creativity and the arts (especially symbols like paintbrush and colour, children’s drawings, etc.). This has several important practical implications for how creativity is understood, recognised and legitimated in everyday contexts.

Keywords: creativity, social representations, implicit theories, symbols, art

Cet ouvrage contribue aux travaux qui définissent la pensée humaine de manière dialogique, en psychologie et en éducation. Sans chercher à unifier un champ de recherche extrêmement vivant, il rend compte des enjeux d'une approche dialogique qui interroge les frontières habituellement admises entre Soi et l'autre et entre les disciplines des sciences humaines et sociales.

The present article addresses the question of ‘When can we say something is creative?’ and, in answering it, takes a critical stand towards past and present scientific definitions of creativity. It challenges an implicit assumption in much psychological theory and research that creativity exists as an ‘objective’ feature of persons or products, universally recognised and independent of social agreement and cultural systems of norms and beliefs. Focusing on everyday life creative outcomes, the article includes both theoretical accounts and empirical examples from a research exploring creativity evaluations in the context of folk art. In the end, a multi-layered perspective of creativity assessment emerges, integrating dimensions such as newness and originality, value and usefulness, subjective reception and cultural reception of creative products. Implications for how we understand and study creativity are discussed.

The aim of this qualitative case study is to investigate how learning in “democratic participation” is constituted by the social interaction and conversation pattern in school democratic meetings in a Swedish primary school. According to the findings, a pupil control discourse and the Initiation-Response-Evaluation pattern dominates the conversations. The teacher initiates by asking a question, the pupils respond by answering the question, and then the teacher evaluates that response. The findings show no discursive shift from traditional classroom talk to democratic deliberative talk. Instead there is an emphasis on the “right answers” and subordinating authorities rather than deliberative dialogue and democratic participation, which influences pupils to adopt a naïve or a cynical attitude to democracy.

Abstract. The idea that language mediates our thoughts and enables abstract cognition has been a key idea in socio-cultural psychology. However, it is not clear what mechanisms support this process of abstraction. Peirce argued that one mechanism by which language enables abstract thought is hypostatic abstraction, the process through which a predicate (e.g., dark) turns into an object (e.g., darkness). By using novel computational tools we tested Peirce’s idea. Analysis of the data provides empirical support for Peirce's mechanism and evidence of the way the use of signs enables abstraction. These conclusions are supported by the in-depth analysis of two case studies concerning the abstraction of sweet and dark. The paper concludes by discussing the findings from a broad and integrative theoretical perspective and by pointing to computational cultural psychology as a promising perspective for addressing long-lasting questions of the field.

Research on disrupting inequality in education can benefit from situating it within the debates on varying and often conflicting meanings of equality and its perils and promises. Especially in the wake of achievement testing and resurgent biological determinism, researchers continue to equivocate between commitment to the idea that all humans are equal in their core capacities versus the tendency to attribute developmental outcomes to differences in " natural " inborn talents and endowments. This chapter examines contemporary research and theorizing to address the tenet of fundamental equality to counter biological determinism laden with mythic racial, gender, and other types of unproven assumptions and biases. Drawing on a wide range of emerging positions and evidence across neurosciences, epigenetics, developmental systems perspective, and cultural-historical framework, the core argument is that all persons have infinite potential—incalculable in advance, unlimited, and not predefined in terms of any putatively inborn " endowments. " This potential is realized in the course of activity-dependent generation of open-ended, dynamic, and situated developmental processes that are critically reliant upon sociocultural supports, tools, mediations, and access to requisite resources, especially through education. An educational policy along these lines would be centrally premised on the imperative to remedy the effects of discrimination and marginalization.

""This is a timely and important collection of work discussing various aspects of symbolic transformation.  It brings together a variety of authors from different disciplines, including semiotics, anthropology, social, cultural and developmental psychology.  As a result of this, readers will find a depth and diversity in the chapters that both challenges and enriches their existing ideas about symbols and their importance and functions in our lives, our development and our identities.  Wagoner’s introductions, and commentaries by other authors provide a helpful synthesis that does not shy away from the inevitable differences and distinctions between the perspectives in this collection, but rather uses them as a way to further discussion about these highly important issues."   

-- Juliet Foster, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge

"Contributors to this book present original and scholarly perspectives inviting readers to engage their thoughts with symbols and their manifold transformations throughout life, in daily experience and identities. Fascinating and provocative in discussing complex topics, this volume offers a wide-ranging and integrative set of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the dynamics of mind and culture through symbols and their vicissitudes."

-- Ivana Markova, University of Stirling.

This book brings together scholars from around the world to address the question how culture and mind are related through symbols: it is through the mediation of symbols that we think, act, imagine, feel, dream and remember.  Thus, to understand the structure, function and development of symbols is to understand what it means to be human.

Part I of the book constructs a theoretical foundation in semiotics for thinking about symbols and analyzes their place in speech, images, affect and evolution. Part II explores how our experience is transformed through symbols: why we are moved by a movie or political speech, how bread and wine can taste like Christ’s body and blood, and why our memories are forever changing. Part III focuses on symbols in the human life-course, particularly in connection with play, language and art. And lastly, Part IV explores how identities, such as being a sex-worker or HIV-positive, are constituted in social relationships through society’s symbols.

This broad interdisciplinary synthesis on the problem of symbols is an essential resource for anyone studying culture in mind, including advanced students in psychology, semiotics, anthropology, communications and philosophy."

It is difficult, if not impossible, to discuss the comparative development of commu- nication except from a phylogenetic standpoint. In this sense, the title ofthis chapter is redundant. Moreover, the comparative task is highly complicated. Is there any basis for comparison between the forms of communication used by arthropods, anurans, birds, or aquatic mammals, or between human or non-human primates7 And if there is, what is it? In an attempt to encompass the great diversity ofthe forms of communication that exist in the animal world, the definitions that have been proposed inevitably fall back upon generalities, making use of concepts like "transmission of information", "probability of response to a signal", "sharing elements of behavior", or "the means of achieving coordinated action". We are immediately confronted by a further difficulty: each species has evolved forms of communication that make use of the particular properties of its physical environment. Some species use a single dimension: visual, sonorous, olfactory, electrical, or echolocation. Others (the higher species) make simultaneous use of various dimensions. The type of communication found among organisms with simple nervous systems does not - and cannot - have the same properties and complexity as communication produced by central nervous systems. The immense diversity of communicative "forms" makes it impossible to define even minimally acceptable comparative criteria.

Greek translation of:
Ageliki Nicolopoulou (1997). Children and narratives: Toward an interpretive and sociocultural approach. In M. Bamberg (Ed.), Narrative Development: Six Approaches (pp. 179-215). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

In:
Μάριος Α. Πουρκός & Μανόλης Δαφέρμος, Εισαγωγή – Επιμέλεια (2010), ΠΟΙΟΤΙΚΗ ΕΡΕΥΝΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΨΥΧΟΛΟΓΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΗ: ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΟΛΟΓΙΚΑ, ΜΕΘΟΔΟΛΟΓΙΚΑ ΚΑΙ ΗΘΙΚΑ ΖΗΤΗΜΑΤΑ

Abstract. The cultural-psychological approach views creativity as a process of artefact generation. Five broad principles for a cultural psychology of creativity are presented. In clarifying the nature of creativity a special consideration is given to the relationship between individuals, creativity, and culture. In the end, the role of the community in fostering and assessing creativity is suggested as a more realistic solution to the individual-society debate.

Key-words: creativity, context, culture, ecological research, community

Children and Narratives: Toward an Interpretive and Sociocultural Approach Ageliki Nicolopoulou Lehigh University This chapter offers a critical overview of current theoretical and empirical work in the area of children and narratives and a proposal for a more interpretive and ...

Cross-border mobility among students is a key instrument in favoring peace between European countries and fosters European identity among the Erasmus participants, who complete a short-term internship in another European country. While international student mobility (ISM) is a perfect opportunity for the students to gain work experience, the host companies are not always well prepared for the arising problems of the interns, such as culture shock or intercultural communication difficulties. This study aimed to determine if there a relationship between the socio-cultural adaptation of students who participate in the Erasmus internship program at the hotels of the Mediterranean and to explore the student's perceptions of institutional support at their workplace. A three-phased, mixed method was used to study the interns from Hungary, such as preliminary discussion groups followed by a questionnaire that was adapted from the Sociocultural Adaptation Scale (SCAS) and follow-up focus groups. Implications for the tourism industry and suggestions for future studies are offered.

Reflexió sobre l'aplicació dels recursos digitals en benefici dels estudis i mètodes que comporta la historiografia, així com un breu assaig sobre l'ús de les tecnologies digitals per part de la societat actual en base a un text que trovareu tant en la presentació d'aquest treball com en la bibliografia.

Commentary posted by visitors to online news articles shows evidence of their attitudes and prejudices. A qualitative study was undertaken on commentary made by anonymous users on articles relating to Minister Blade Nzimande's statements on the introduction of African language courses in higher education and the introduction of a compulsory isiZulu course at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The tertiary language context in South Africa shows a distinct move from bilingual instruction to monolingual, English-based instruction. Despite the fact that sufficient policy frameworks and infrastructure exist in terms of multilingualism and the promotion of African languages, in reality more has to be done if policy provisions are to be realised. The news article commentaries show contradicting views regarding the teaching and use of African languages and languages more generally at tertiary level. The importance of English was also clear from the commentaries. Furthermore, negative and even erroneous perceptions apparently exist regarding African languages as learning targets. These perceptions lead to negativity, anger and even outright rejection of African languages. It is clear that a lot has to be done to counter ignorance of the social and educational value of these languages. A number of possible practical problems were identified that have to be taken into account by universities. In conclusion, it is clear that negative attitudes have to be addressed by means of language attitude planning and that existing resources at universities should be developed.

For an artist whose known surviving paintings number less than fifty, the complexity and diversity of the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569) is breathtaking. These works range from biblical narratives and “moralizing” allegories of epic proportions to panoramic landscapes and rustic celebrations animated with peasants. They have fascinated many art historians who have bestowed on Bruegel many labels: for instance, Bruegel le drôle, Peasant Bruegel, Bruegel le philosophe, or Bruegel the pictorial novelist. This paper examines yet another side of Bruegel: that of the realist. Could Bruegel be considered a Realist of similar persuasion as painters who represent 19th-century French Realism, an art movement that blossomed 300 years later? How much of Bruegel’s artwork anticipated the tendencies of this art movement?

The cultural psychology perspective emphasizes the role of communication and social interaction in the construction of representations and evaluations concerning creativity. In terms of creativity assessment, this approach leads to the use of a multiple feedback methodology selecting several groups of evaluators with dissimilar backgrounds in order to understand how creativity practices and evaluations are rooted in particular contexts. Due to its constructionist nature, the multiple feedback aims to capture the multiplicity of viewpoints characteristic for real life settings and can be particularly useful for investigating the social and cultural dynamics of creativity.

Keywords: multiple feedback, creativity, assessment, cultural psychology, social representations

The present article addresses the question of ‘When can we say something is creative?’ and, in answering it, takes a critical stand towards past and present scientific definitions of creativity. It challenges an implicit assumption in much psychological theory and research that creativity exists as an ‘objective’ feature of persons or products, universally recognised and independent of social agreement and cultural systems of norms and beliefs. Focusing on everyday life creative outcomes, the article includes both theoretical accounts and empirical examples from a research exploring creativity evaluations in the context of folk art. In the end, a multi-layered perspective of creativity assessment emerges, integrating dimensions such as newness and originality, value and usefulness, subjective reception and cultural reception of creative products. Implications for how we understand and study creativity are discussed.

"The present article explores the nature of creativity in craft and does so with the help of a case study of traditional Easter egg decoration. It starts by positioning the domain of folk art in relation to fine art and within a larger category of everyday life forms of creative expression. Then a cultural psychology approach to creativity is introduced and its framework used to unpack the actors and processes involved in craftwork. Analysing what is characteristic for folk art uses these particular lenses and requires paying attention to externalisation, integration, internalisation, and social interaction aspects. Findings reveal fundamental features of craft such as its materiality, the presence of a strong traditional background, the importance of continuous learning, and the role of family and community relations. Towards the end connections are made with the existing literature and final reflections offered on whether the characteristics above say something about creativity more generally, beyond the context of craft.

Key words: folk art, Easter eggs, everyday life, cultural psychology."

The present article discusses creativity as a simultaneously individual and socio-cultural process and argues for a social and systemic understanding of this phenomenon. Relying on a vision of the individual mind as social and of human culture as an open and dynamic system, this perspective emphasises the fact that the creator - audience - creation triad can only exist and function in a socio-cultural setting described by social relations and accumulated cultural artefacts. Each facet of this complex relationship is analysed in detail: a) creative externalisations as examples of cultural expression, b) socialisation or integration of the new artefact in existing cultural systems, c) internalisation as a form of enculturation, and d) the explicit and implicit connections between “creator” and “audience” in every creative act. In light of these, both the generation and reception of creative new artefacts is conceptualised as an important form of cultural participation. In the end conclusions are drawn about the vital role cultural resources play for all forms of creative activity and creativity, in its turn, plays for the existence and transformation of human culture.

Key words: creativity; culture; creator; audience; externalisation; internalisation; systemic model