This article investigates how material objects fit into societal discourses of remembering; the authors focus on how the spatial and material composition of objects can affect subjects, thus suggesting particular meanings and engagements. In particular, they investigate war memorials as cultural objects and products of social discourses, but emphasize that the memorials are not reducible to these discourses. Rather, the materials used in the creation of war memorials as well as their holistic organization constitute vital aspects of the memorial site and its ability to engage individuals and groups in socially desirable and personally meaningful processes. The authors analyze the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial, taking into account the holistic material organization, hyper-generalization of signs, symbolic functions, and social suggestions that the memorial provides for visitors passing through. They argue that, partially through its very materiality, the memorial guides the direction of viewers' affective response, leading to particular interpretations and reactions.Much of human life revolves around objects that are, at first glance, intrinsically non-significant, but which become highly valued as a result of cultural processes (Valsiner, 2007). The process by which these meanings are created has long been studied in sociological, cultural, and theological domains, but psychology has only recently begun a serious study of how meaning is constructed on an individual level. Further, the relationship between material artifacts and human subjects has constituted a new and Journal of Material Culture 16(2) 193-213
Movement entails both local/short-term and distant/long-term journeys to unfamiliar lands. Psychology has traditionally neglected human-beings-on-the-move to concentrate on fixed structures. Overcoming this oversight, acculturation studies shed light on human beings crossing boundaries, and the authors of these articles bring up the positive side of acculturation (without leaving out the ambivalence). I want to elaborate on these insights in the context of pilgrimages and tourism. Particularly, there are numerous tensions that are constitutive of acculturative experiences and travel in general, including the interplay between the longing for the far away and the longing for the near and familiar, structure and agency, and encapsulation and decapsulation. Liminality in travel is not static or a given, but rather is dynamic and negotiated by various social actors. Thus I also wish to briefly examine, based on pilgrimage experiences, how the sense of the extraordinary (sacred) is generated through the above dynamic processes and then relate this to the notion of catalysis in the psychological domain. Bringing in the notion of catalysts from chemistry offers an alternative conceptual tool to investigate complex, systemic, and dynamic phenomena.Human beings are constantly on the move-both in our local environments and across long distances. Indeed, movement is interwoven in all of our experiences and flavors the everyday texture of our lives. We take pleasant strolls through the park, rush to catch a train, or gracefully maneuver through a crowded room. We also travel between school, home, work, the grocery store, areas of recreation, and other activity settings with seeming ease. Even when challenges of adapting to new contexts within our community occur (e.g., adjusting to a new school), we generally recover with support from social others. For instance, Tartakovsky's (2010, p. 3) guilt at his 'betrayal' of his heritage
Religion is a fascinating, complex, and relatively neglected topic in the field of psychology. It is a topic that is challenging for psychologists, who have historically tended to be less religious than the world's population on average, and the wider public to feel neutral about. The resurgence of interest in religion in the field of psychology not coincidently matches the interest of religion and spirituality in wider society, especially in the United States and even in secular Europe. Yet in spite of the need to study religious phenomena because of their relevance to the wider population and its centrality to human experience, the study of religion has been hampered and remains a tricky enterprise for many reasons. Scardigno, Manuti, and Mininni offer a rich cultural psychological approach for examining how the elderly make sense and give voice to their religious experiences and how they articulate and construct their stories of commitment and conversion. Yet cultural psychology must also understand the nondiscursive and difficult-to-articulate facets of religious experience and belief. Following Jacob Belzen (1999), this commentary argues for a plurality of approaches and one that synthesizes both discursive and nondiscursive approaches and examines rituals and, in particular, the phenomenon of pilgrimage to elucidate this argument.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.