ABSTRACT
Explanations offered by a cultural psychology of self and identity will most likely be of the ‘cases
and interpretations’ kind rather than of ‘laws and instances’. They will, to borrow Clifford
Geertz’s memorable phrase, look ‘less for the sort of thing that connects planets and pendulums
and more for the sort that connects chrysanthemums and swords’.1 Such connections are symbolic,
implicative, socially constructed and diverse. The interpretations which psychology itself makes,
like those it studies, are creations rather than revelations. Harré further reminds us that ‘they are
creations only if they become reality-creating interpretations, that is become the interpretations
used by most people’.2The culturally distinctive features of a people are the ways in which their
interpretations of the world channel how they act in it. This sense of themselves as a distinct
people is part of the foundation for what is called national identity.
