Enactivism and the Experiential Reality of Culture: Rethinking the Epistemological Basis of Cultural Psychology

Abstract

The key problem of cultural psychology comprises a paradox: while people believe they act on the basis of their own authentic experience, cultural psychologists observe their behavior to be socially patterned. It is argued that, in order to account for those patterns, cultural psychology should take human experience as its analytical starting point. Nevertheless, there is a tendency within cultural psychology to either neglect human experience, by focusing exclusively on discourse, or to consider the structure of this experience to originate in an already produced cultural order. For an alternative approach, we turn to the enactive view of cognition developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Their theory of autonomy can provide the epistemological basis for a cultural psychology that explains how experience can become socially patterned in the first place. Cultural life forms are then considered as consensually coordinated, embodied practices.

Rethinking emotions and educational leadership

“…An underlying assumption of this research agenda is the dichotomy between seeing educational organizations as 'constructed realities as opposed to systems or structures that operate independently of the individuals in them' (Foster and St Hilaire 2004: 356). As Baerveldt and Verheggen (1999) aptly observed, 'the reality… in which we find ourselves… is… neither a world that exists independently from us, nor a socially shared way of representing such a pregiven world, but a world itself brought forth by our ways of communicating and our joint action' (p. 185) (emphasis added).…”

Learning and organizations: towards cross-metaphor conversations

“…Maturana and Varela propose that ''autopoiesis'' is a property of complex dynamic systems. An autopoietic system is formally defined as a system that specifies itself by continuously producing its own components and regenerating its own organization (Baerveldt and Verheggen 1999).…”

Individualism and Collectivism in the Personal Meaning System of Elderly Adults

“…Culture and self are mutually constitutive: Culture is only realized through individuals, and individuals can lead meaningful lives only through acculturation (Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). In this view, even if the self is seen as the most personal and authentic dimension of experience, it is at the same time culturally construed (Baerveldt & Verheggen, 1999).…”