SpringerBriefs in Psychology SpringerBriefs in Psychology and Cultural Developmental Science
Series Editors
Giuseppina Marsico
DISUFF, University of Salerno; Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Salerno, Salerno, Italy
Jaan Valsiner
Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, the series covers a range of content from professional to academic. Typical topics might include:
A timely report of state-of-the-art analytical techniques
A bridge between new research results as published in journal articles and a contextual literature review
A snapshot of a hot or emerging topic
An in-depth case study or clinical example
A presentation of core concepts that readers must understand to make independent contributions
SpringerBriefs in Psychology showcase emerging theory, empirical research, and practical application in a wide variety of topics in psychology and related fields. Briefs are characterized by fast, global electronic dissemination, standard publishing contracts, standardized manuscript preparation and formatting guidelines, and expedited production schedules.
SpringerBriefs in Psychology and Cultural Developmental Scienceis an extension and topical completion toIPBS: Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science Journal(Springer, chief editor: Jaan Vasiner) expanding some relevant topics in the form of single (or multiple) authored book. The Series will have a clearly defined international and interdisciplinary focus hosting works on the interconnection between Cultural Psychology and other Developmental Sciences (biology, sociology, anthropology, etc). The Series aims at integrating knowledge from many fields in a synthesis of general science of Cultural Psychology as a new science of the human being.
The Series will include books that offer a perspective on the current state of developmental science, addressing contemporary enactments and reflecting on theoretical and empirical directions and providing, also, constructive insights into future pathways.
Featuring compact volumes of 100 to 115 pages, each Brief in the Series is meant to provide a clear, visible, and multi-sided recognition of the theoretical efforts of scholars around the world.
Both solicited and unsolicited proposals are considered for publication in this series. All proposals will be subject to peer review by external referees.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10143
Tania Zittoun
Sociocultural Psychology on the Regional Scale
A Case Study of a Hill
Tania Zittoun
Institute of Psychology and Education, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Neuchtel, Neuchtel, Switzerland
ISSN 2192-8363 e-ISSN 2192-8371
SpringerBriefs in Psychology
ISSN 2626-6741 e-ISSN 2626-675X
SpringerBriefs in Psychology and Cultural Developmental Science
ISBN 978-3-030-33065-1 e-ISBN 978-3-030-33066-8
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33066-8
The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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Mariana Alasseur, p 2010. (Courtesy of the artist. Source: www.galerieroudnice.cz )
To all my real and imaginary grandmothers: Rachel, Pia, Savta Sura, Helenka, and Tonika.
Preface of the Series Editors
Symbolic Places: Cultural Psychology of Human Life Course
This book reveals the intricacies of how human lives are interwoven with symbolic places created out of natural environments. Its author is on the forefront of our contemporary cultural psychologies movementbuilding new science of specificallyhumanpsychology (Yokohama ManifestoValsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato & Dazzani, 2016). In this new trans-disciplinary work, artificial borders between various sciencespsychology, geography, sociology, anthropology, history, and folklorevanish. Instead we have an image of a unique texture of human beings living in their self-constructed life-worlds embedded in community, society, andlast but not leastthe geological textures of their given natural environments. Wetemporary inhabitants of Denmarkhave often wondered about where these nice wide open fields end, desiring to see at least a glimpse of a mountain somewhere on the horizon. There is noneone needs to cross over to Sweden or Norway to feel at home with some granite formations rising up from the sea. In a similar wayour Danish friends visiting Switzerland have reported feeling ill at ease about being surrounded by mountains on all sides. Yet there is no way to escapethe mountains are there, and they stay. The human beings build meanings with the landscapes and seascapes of ones natural habitats.
As Tania Zittoun eloquently demonstrates in this book, p is not just a mountainand even not only a symbolic mountain for the Czech peoplebut it is also the real meaningful world for persons who live on and around it. It is the silent observer of life dramas brought by societal turmoils of politics during war and peace. Taking a perspective on the whole of human life courses naturally involves the study of life stories of older-age people whose wisdom in coping with all the complexities of the past would otherwise be lost. Most of psychology, driven by the social institutional prediction and control imperatives, has attempted to do what fortune tellers have been doing: predicting the future happiness of the now younger generation