ALERT: COVID-19 INFORMATION, EBOOK AND ONLINE RESOURCES

Biographical Ruptures and Their Repair

Cultural Transitions in Development

By:
Amrei C. Joerchel, Sigmund Freud Privatuniversität
Gerhard Benetka, Sigmund Freud Privatuniversität

A volume in the series: Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development. Editor(s): Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University.

Published 2014

Biographical ruptures and their repairs: Cultural transitions in development represents the efforts of bridging theoretical, methodological, and practice oriented issues revolving around the notion of biographical ruptures and their repairs. The aim is to bring novel understandings from cultural psychological perspectives to the debate of what it means to be a developing human being in an ever changing world.

Contrary to mainstream psychology ruptures and repairs are here not necessarily understood as a personal experience, which must be overcome through various coping strategies. Rather, ruptures are understood as experiences, which necessarily emerge out of the complex interrelatedness of intra-psychological, inter-personal, and societal processes. Moving along these different levels of analysis, each of the 13 chapters of this book contributes to the general cultural psychological understanding of ruptures from their own particular standpoint. The notion of ruptures and their repairs are discussed from such differing standpoints such as classical developmental psychological theories and challenges to such developmental approaches. They are discussed in relation to racial interpellations using the documentary method and social representations theory. On the object level ruptures are pointed out within popular music videos and from a Ganzheitspsychological approach and others.

The current book thus does not only represent a conglomerate of various theoretical, methodological, or practice oriented approaches to ruptures and their repairs, each adding with their own expertise to a better understand of the phenomenon in its whole. It also demonstrated a lively debate between leading specialists and practitioners from different disciplines and countries. Theoretical and methodological issues, as well as ethical and moral ones, are each discussed from their own cultural psychological viewpoint. This book will interest practitioners, scientists and students or anyone who is interested in biographical rupture and their repairs from a cultural psychological, developmental, social psychological or psychotherapeutic viewpoint.

CONTENTS
Preface: Strategic Authenticity of Repairing Ruptures, Jaan Valsiner. Editors’ Introduction, Amrei C. Joerchel and Gerhard Benetka. PART I: BIOGRAPHICAL RUPTURES AND DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXTS. Adolescence and Transitions in Developmental Psychology, Amrei C. Joerchel and Eva Dreher. Understanding Biographical Ruptures and Transitions: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Life-Course Development, Omar Carlo Gioacchino Gelo. Ruptures and Repairs in the Course of Living: Challenges to Developmental Psychology, Pernille Hviid and Jakob Waag Villadsen. The Crisis of Basic Concepts: Use and Danger of the Implication of Fundamental-Ontological Considerations in the Formation of Psychological Theories, Stephan Dietrich. Disruptions and Obstacles in the Lives of Emerging Adults, Agnes Dodds, Sarity Dodson, Hannah Gitsham, Chau-Hai Nguyen, and Jeanette Lawrence. Managing Culture: On the Political Ambivalence of Culture in Organizations, Markus Wrbouschek. Transitions in the Life Course: Learning From Alfred Schütz, Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie. PART II: BIOGRAPHICAL RUPTURES AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS. Education and Racism: On the Inscriptions of Racist and Ethnicizing Interpellations in the Education Biographies of Austrian-Turkish Women, Katharina Hametner. Social Representations and Biographical Narratives of Migrationsandere: Toward an Integration of Social Representations Research and Biographical Narrative Research in Racialized Experiences of Migrants in School, Babette Gekeler and Caroline Howarth. Comparing a Music Video and Its Remake: Video Interpretation According to the Documentary Method, Stefan Hampl. Ruptures as a Matter of Perspectives: The Case of Music-Video Analysis, Rainer Diriwächter. PART III: BIOGRAPHICAL RUPTURES AND ETHICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES. Bodies, Sacredness, and Moral Debates: Abortion, Ruptures, and Matters of Life and Death, Rosa Traversa. About the Authors.

REVIEWS
"Overall, Biographical Ruptures and Their Repair adequately introduces the cultural psychology approach to those who are unfamiliar with its tenets and demonstrates how it can be applied to understand the challenges faced by adolescents as they transition to adulthood. As with any introduction to a new framework, there remain many unanswered questions about how this particular framework addresses multiple changes. It provides direction for researchers, clinicians, teachers, and other professionals who provide specific services and resources to address some intended and unintended ruptures. However, it provides a perspective that could address changes that occur in the individual and his or her environment and the interconnectedness between the two. The authors call for further research and broader application of the framework will hopefully guide future work to understand this period of great transformation in an adolescent’s life." Colleen A. Thoma, Lauren Puglia, Holly Whittenburg, Gabrielle Pickover & Whitney Ham in Teachers College Record (Read full review)

PREVIEW
MORE INFORMATION