Culture and its Transfer: Ways of Creating General Knowledge Through the Study of Cultural Particulars

Abstract

Two perspectives of scientific inquiry-both making use of the notion of culture-are analyzed from the perspective of how general knowledge is being constructed by each. It is demonstrated how cross-cultural psychology has made use of traditional psychology's inductive emphasis on comparisons of samples (and generalization to populations). Cross-cultural psychology has been a part of general and differential psychologies. In contrast, the cultural psychology that has developed in parallel with cross-cultural psychology on the basis of anthropology and developmental psychology has been built upon the notion of systemic causality, and on the basis of developmental assumptions. There is overlap in the practical work of cultural and cross-cultural psychologists-cross-cultural evidence can be used in cultural-psychological theorizing. Both disciplines share the focus on interdisciplinary cooperation, and are haunted by the usual limits on inductive inference that plagues all contemporary social sciences.