In recent years constitutive sociocultural perspectives have become increasingly visible and influential within psychology. Such per- spectives envision psychological processes, such as the mind and the self, as phenomena that are socioculturally constituted—that is, actually made up within, as opposed to merely facilitated by, culture and society. These constitutive approaches to psychology understand cognition, emotion, memory, identity, personality, and other psychological constructs as rela- tional entities that emerge out of interactions with others within a socio- cultural context. Moreover, the perspectives included under this rubric all have a cultural-historical aspect that moves consideration of the sociocul- tural beyond the immediate interpersonal and social situation.

Constitutive sociocultural approaches have been articulated over the past several decades by a diverse group of psychologists and social research- ers whose work has emphasized, in various ways, the inseparability of the psychological and sociocultural realms. These researchers include Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979), Jerome Bruner (1990), Roy D’Andrade (1990), Pierre Dasen (1977), Yrjö Engeström (1990), Jacqueline Goodnow (Good- now, Miller, and Kessel 1995), Patricia Greenfield (1984), Sara Harkness (Harkness and Super 1992), Edward Hutchins (1991), Vera John-Steiner (1985), Shinobu Kitayama (Markus and Kitayama 1991), Jean Lave (1988),

The Sociocultural Turn in Psychology

An Introduction and an Invitation

Suzanne R. Kirschner and Jack Martin

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2———t h e s o c io c ul t ur a l t ur n i n p s y c hol o g y

Hazel Markus (Markus and Kitayama 1991), Carl Ratner (2002), Barbara Rogoff (2003), Geoffrey Saxe (1991), Sylvia Scribner (Scribner and Cole 1981), Robert Serpell (1976), Richard Shweder (1990), James Stigler (Sti- gler, Lee, and Stevenson 1990), Charles Super (1981), Michael Tomasello (1999), Jaan Valsiner (1998), Dan Wagner (1993), James Wertsch (1998), Sheldon White (Cahan and White 1992), and many others (including the contributors to this current volume). At this writing, several major psychol- ogy journals (including Mind, Culture, and Activity, Theory & Psychology, Culture & Psychology, Narrative Inquiry, and Subjectivity) regularly publish work in sociocultural psychology that adopts constitutive, strongly rela- tional perspectives. Moreover, many colleges and universities now offer courses in fields such as cultural psychology and narrative psychology; a growing number of graduate programs even afford students the opportu- nity to specialize in sociocultural theories and methods. Beyond psychol- ogy, these types of contemporary sociocultural approaches to psychological phenomena and issues are currently being applied widely in education, social work, psychotherapy, business, nursing, language instruction and learning, and many other areas (e.g., Hoshmand 2006; John-Steiner, Pan- ofsky, and Smith 1994; Kozulin 1998).