Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses cultural psychology, with a strong appeal to cultural psychology as a psychology aimed to reclaim its commitments as a science dealing with the totality of experience of human subjects acting and interacting in historically and culturally constituted worlds. It deals with the cultural psychology of specific phenomena – self, emotions, body, hyperobjects, or society in general – in order to demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of cultural psychological approaches. The book seeks to advance the field of cultural psychology by reviving its historical legacies, by encouraging its continuous epistemological reflection, by arguing for its social responsibility in future historical development. It examines changes in nature–culture debates and argues for an approach termed transformative activist stance which posits cultural-historical and transformative ontoepistemology at the center focusing on transformative praxis as the process of world- and self-creation.