The emerging global psychology movement: Lessons from Arab psychology

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511720437.007

4 - The emerging global psychology movement: Lessons from Arab psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010

Uwe P. Gielen

Edited by

Sevda Bekman and

Ayhan Aksu-Koç

Foreword by

M. Brewster Smith

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Sevda Bekman: Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
Ayhan Aksu-Koç: Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul

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Summary

During my graduate school and early career days in the 1970s and 1980s, cross-cultural and global psychology were of marginal concern to most American (and European) psychologists. For my part, however, I considered the American psychology of the day to be highly ethnocentric in nature, in part because I had traveled widely in Europe, Asia, and Africa. So it was with great interest that, in 1990, I picked up Berman's (1990) edited volume, Nebraska 's Symposium on Motivation 1989: Cross-cultural Perspectives. Among its prominent chapter authors, Çiğdem stood out as the only non-westerner (Kağıtçıbaşı 1990). As a developmentally oriented social psychologist, I found her systematic way of linking cross-culturally variable family systems to equally variable socialization practices and to social change both novel and convincing – and I still do.

Years later, I had the opportunity to meet Kağıtçıbaşı on a few occasions, such as the Twenty-sixth International Congress of Applied Psychology in Athens. This 2006 Congress was part of the ever-expanding movement to give psychology a global rather than merely Euro-American basis. Following this tradition, my chapter outlines the status and future prospects of psychology in some of Turkey's neighboring Arab countries. In these countries, a battle is now underway for the hearts and minds of their inhabitants, a battle that pits fundamentalist interpretations of Islam against the politically and culturally more liberal frameworks suggested by the forces of modernization.

Type: Chapter
Information: Perspectives on Human Development, Family, and Culture , pp. 50 - 66

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720437.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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