Charlotte Højholt - Subjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Life

This bookSubjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Lifeis an important milestone in the theoretical advancement of the social sciences in our twenty-first century. Its editorsCharlotte Hjholt and Ernst Schraubehave brought together a critical mass of scholars who collectively bring the need to consider the focus on generalization remain central for science and social practices. The volume leads to cardinal rethinking generalization in psychological theory, methodology, and research practice. The very core of the psychological science is open to new questions.

The questions are many. How to get in touch and explore general connections between various areas of knowledge on the basis of the situated, partial, and contextual character of psychological phenomena? What is the role of critique in the processes of generalization? How to develop analytical concepts and strategies which help us to conceive psychological phenomena as processes and movements, and how does the development of psychological knowledge involve transformations of everyday practice? We create new solutionsin technology, in our ways of living in the environment, and in our thinking of it allall the time. Technological innovations become not only helpfulforliving but turn into essentialsofour human living. Anybody who has forgotten to take ones cellular phone along leaving home and feels that ones self is denied access to the latest Facebook news can testify about the paradoxical takeover of the humanpsycheby a small technological devicealbeit through the meaning construction processes of the proud owner of that trivial communication aid.

At the same time as generalization possibilities are being sought after in the book, the authors operate with the credo that science needs to explain the complex phenomena of our everyday lives and contribute to its betterment. Everyday living is uniquedeeply subjective in its multitude of variations. Human beingslivethrough their encounters with theirUmweltsand living through equalsfeelingthrough. We feel into our environments and by doing that develop ourselves for further encounters with the world. Social practices carried out by human beings are affective practicesa simple truth that can be understood when one observes football fans performing their support acts on a stadium, or a gambler in a casino, or a mother trying to cope with her toddlers temper tantrum in front of the supermarket audience. All of the participants in these dramatic events view these as meaningfulour teammustwin, Iwantto win, and my childshouldobey are the parallel reflections of subjective kinds to support the publicly visible actions. All these (and other) reflections are local particularsyet the subjectiveaffectivated(Cornejo et al. 2018) meanings are a form of single-instance generalizations of desires and normativity. Human beings are intentional actors who strive towards goals beyond each and every local everyday life situationyet the pathways towards these goals are worked out in each here-and-now situation.

The present volume continues the path of inquiry into new directions in psychology that was outlined in the Yokohama Manifesto of 2016. In that collective work (Valsiner et al. 2016) the interdisciplinary foundations for the science of a specifically human kind of psychology which starts from the axiomatic bases of an open-systemic look at the psychological functioning of a species where higher psychological functions play a primary role in our relating with our environments. Psychological phenomena are unique among those of other sciences by being organized through normative constraints (Christensen 2019) and are inherently social in their origins (Joerchel and Benetka 2018). Psychological science is therefore necessarily in need to develop new conceptualizations of its approaches as normativity is not part of the phenomena of any other natural science. For that reason, borrowing theoretical systems from psychologys usual reference points in the natural sciencesphysics, chemistry, or even biologywould not lead to adequate epistemological solutions. Our contemporary fascination with the neurosciences is an intellectual