Understanding Cultural Contexts and Their Relationship to Resilience Processes

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider some of the ways in which both macro- and micro-cultural contexts promote cultural guidelines for everyday living. These processes include, but are not limited to, cultural scripts, national identities, and broad value systems. We then comment critically on the limitations implicit in these processes for explaining resilience processes. Finally we consider how individuals' active navigation of the various cultural contexts they traverse, and critical engagement with their cultural heritage and capital, support a co-constructed process that impacts resilience. This chapter will not, however, explain the complex theories of how cultural allegiances are acquired, how culture shapes learning, comment on how culture and biology are intertwined, or how culture is measured (see, amongst others, Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003; Hofstede, 1980; Lee, 2010; Pagel, 2012). And, while touched on briefly, it also does not explore in detail how culture intersects with resilience, or explain how culture matters for resilience, as this is foregrounded in the studies reported in Part II of this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)