Prof Sandra Jovchelovitch

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology. This course is not available as an outside option.

PB401 covers theory, research and applied issues in the field of social and cultural psychology. It critically reviews the interface mind-society-culture, the socio-cultural development of mind and the cultural transmission of social order and institutions, critically examining what distinguishes homo sapiens from its closest relative pan paniscus. Through a comparative approach, students are introduced to concepts and debates addressing 1) the relationship individual-society-culture and 2) culture as a universal condition underpinning human behaviour and the cross-cultural, as a particular context for human behaviour. Students explore current approaches and critiques of selected topics in the field, including the development of human behaviour (ontogenesis, phylogenesis and sociogenesis); intersubjectivity, perspectivity; thought and language; action and joint intentionality; mediation and artefacts; selfhood, community and culture in the 21st century, social identities, intergroup relations and power, political cultures, social representations and collective memory.. Examples are drawn from both Majority world and Western contexts covering theory and research relevant to different fields of application such as communication, conflict and dialogue, racism and discrimination, social exclusion and disadvantage, selfhood, identity, peace and conflict, mental health, and societal beliefs. Topics are explored at different levels of analysis of social and cultural psychology: ontogenetic (individual self); sociogenetic (social interaction, inter-group relations); phylogenetic (evolutionary history of homo sapiens).

Central to the syllabus is to sensitise and train students to reflexively consider the challenge of cultural and societal variation in the study of human behaviour and critically evaluate the theoretical and methodological corpus of social and cultural psychology.

20 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the AT.

Students are also expected to attend a Lecture series focusing on marginalised voices in psychological and behavioural science (total of 15 hours taking place in AT and WT). 

Students are expected to produce one essay plan (750 words) and one annotated bibliography (500 words) in the AT.

M Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, CUP, 1987.

M Cole, Cultural Psychology: A once and future discipline. Harvard University Press, 1996.

R M Farr, The Roots of Modern Social Psychology, Blackwell, 1996.

U. Flick, The Psychology of the Social. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

B Franks, Cognition and Culture: Evolutionary Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

J Israel & H Tajfel, The Context of Social Psychology, Academic Press, 1972.

S Jovchelovitch, Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community and Culture. Routledge, 2019 (Classics Edition).

S Moscovici, Social Representations: Exploration in Social Psychology. Polity Press, 2000.

I Marková, The Dialogical Mind: Common Sense and Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Power, S. A., Zittoun, T.... & Gillespie, A. Social psychology of and for world-making. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2023.

G Semin & G Echterhoff, Grounding Sociality: Neurons, Mind and Culture. Psychology Press, 2010.

R Schweder. Why Men Barbecue: Recipes for cultural psychology. Harvard University Press, 2003.

H Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories; Studies in Social Psychology, CUP, 1981.

M Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press, 1999.

J Valsiner and A Rosa (Eds), Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

L Vygotsky, Mind in Society. Harvard University Press, 1978.

J. Wertsch (ed.) Culture, Communication and Cognition. Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Detailed reading lists are distributed at the beginning of the course.

Essay (70%, 4000 words) in the WT.
Annotated bibliography (20%) and group presentation (10%) in the AT.