Evaluations that combine social science and law have tremendous potential to illuminate the effects of governmental policies and yield insights into how effectively policy makers’ efforts achieve their aims. This potential is infrequently achieved, however, because such interdisciplinary research contains often overlooked substantive and methodological challenges. This article offers detailed g…
This article focuses on a novel theoretical paradigm emerging in the study of human creativity: the cultural-psychological approach. It starts by differentiating between the long past of individualistic accounts of creativity (the lonely genius) and the short history of psychological understandings (the creative individual). The social and the cross-cultural psychology of creativity are both co…
Glaveanu’s (2010) ‘We-paradigm’ creativity is related to culture and social context, especially due to his emphasis on the role of the community as a provider of criteria for evaluating creativity. In addition, he suggests five principles for studying this kind of creativity. In this article, I will apply these principles to study the Korean cultural phenomenon, Shinmyeong. The characteristics …
The article explores further Lyra (1999) and Hermans’ (1999, 2001a, 2001b) glossing of complexity terminology within analysis of identity formation, taking a particular interest in differing uses of narrative within identity negotiations. Lyra (1999) draws attention to the importance of using an extended time frame to assess the power dynamics involved within any communicative exchange. The fra…
This commentary focuses on Cross’s (2010, this issue) work as an opportunity to elaborate upon how to study narrative-dialogical processes from the perspective of complexity. We start by elaborating on the notion that narrative development is a multidimensional activity that extends through several organizational levels and on the limitations of conventional research methods for narrative analy…
In this article we contribute a new theoretical perspective to the analysis of the relationship between individual and culture, and the person and the environment. Many hotly debated issues in cultural psychology, such as reification, the discourse of personality traits, and models of part—whole hierarchies are productively addressed. Taking a systems-theoretical approach following Niklas Luhma…
The attempt to create general theory in social sciences is not new. Reductionism is one of the main problems in this process. Here I analyze the relationship between human, environment, and culture, based on Luhmann’s systems theory and its implications for modern psychology as discussed in Thommen and Wettstein’s (2010) critique of the field. Distinguishing three types of system (biotic, psych…
What is the status of guilt as an emotion in postmodern society? According to Zygmunt Bauman, postmodern consumer society supplies a cultural context in which guilt loses in importance. By definition, guilt is connected to a breach in shared rules, but rules and norms have allegedly become fluid today, thereby rendering clear breaches and ensuing guilt rare events. In this article, I provide an…
In this corpus-based study I contribute to the description and analysis of linguistic and cultural variation in the conceptualization of sympathy , compassion, and empathy. On the basis of a contrastive semantic analysis of sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and their Russian translational equivalents, socuvstvie , sostradanie, and soperezivanie, I demonstrate significant differences …
The expression of emotion takes many forms and their linguistic expression is one of the key ways they are articulated. The study of the semantic fields in which the expression of emotion takes place is in need of an appropriate methodology and a sufficiently broad set of examples. Anna Gladkova’s attempt to use the methodology of Natural Semantic Metalanguage to explore the semantics of certai…
Free trade agreements have become a central feature of many developing countries' growth strategies, encouraged by an evaluation literature that quantifies their positive impact on trade. However, trade gains come at the cost of policy space, particularly when the partner is a developed country, and though this cost has been acknowledged, its impact has not been explored. This article seeks to …
According to rent-cycling theory, low rent aligns the interests of the elite and the majority in providing public goods and efficiency incentives to promote economic growth, while high rent risks deflecting the elite into self-enriching rent deployment, which distorts the economy and triggers a collapse from which recovery is protracted because rent recipients resist reform. The theory also pre…
The rapid expansion of supermarket retailing, with its impact on farmer communities, represents a contentious part of India's recent economic development. This article reports on three districts of Karnataka, where a survey of 78 farmers supplying fruits and vegetables to Reliance Fresh, a leading supermarket chain, reveals low levels of vertical co-ordination, a lack of written contracts, and …
This article examines the varied impacts of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) as a development delivery institution for the tribal communities vis-ŕ-vis other social groups across the Indian States, using the framework of new institutional economics. A number of State-specific, socio-economic institutional factors seem to be responsible for these variations. The article the…
Governments target transfers so that limited resources reach impoverished households; targeting errors therefore indicate inefficiency in resource use and inability to reach the poorest households. This article examines the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme (SCTS), using mixed methods and multiple data sources, including examination of underlying assumptions, the operationalisation of key conc…
This paper takes an historical perspective on the trajectory of Singapore's arts and cultural landscape from 1965 to 2000. It examines the arts and cultural field as an ideological site within which the People's Action Party government constantly sought to reinvent or vision a new society. From harnessing the arts for the task of creating “civilised” and “cultured” citizens immediately after in…
In its self-conscious transformation into a global city with a national culture that strains to include post-industrial values, contemporary Singapore has had to struggle with the repressed anxieties that threaten to return and disrupt its entry into the advanced stages of global capitalism. This article argues that such struggles are ritually performed in a selection of contemporary Singapore …
Transnational magazines have enjoyed enormous success with readers in Singapore in recent years. But what hurdles are faced by these syndicated magazines as they attempt to enter global markets? This article explores the difficulties of meeting audience demands while obeying strictly monitored rules set down by the state. Drawing from initial research into women's lifestyle magazines, this arti…
The National Games of 1961 and 1964 transformed the theatrics of state power in postcolonial Laos. While using modern sporting spectacle to promote national unity and progress in a context of Cold War division, the games were also embedded in an existing theatrics of power, which dramatised the status of their founder, General Phoumi Nosavan. The modern motifs of national unity and progress wer…
Over the last two decades, increasing attention has been given to trafficking in persons globally. Governments, international organisations and the media generally assume that trafficking is immensely profitable. This paper problematises this assumption in light of ethnographic research within the sex industry along the Thai-Lao border. It argues that the cross-border recruitment of Lao women i…