Relating Cultural Psychology and Eco-phenomenology − Setting the Seeds for a Fertile Cooperation

Abstract

AbstractIn the present paper, I relate cultural psychology with eco-phenomenology. I am showing that both sciences draw on similar scientific underpinnings. Here, it is to note that cultural psychology as well as eco-phenomenology analyze a person’s relatedness towards an object. In phenomenology we speak of human landscapes whereas cultural psychology draws on the notion of action fields. Yet, both sciences only come into being while analyzing a person-environment-unit. Moreover, an action field (or landscape) develops between past and future, thus has a horizon of former and further experiences. However, this experience is shaped by other people’s experience, limited or expanded. Furthermore, it is only possible to analyze—in cultural psychology—as well as phenomenology—those meaningful environments by immerging into the action field of the social other. Statistical methods do bracket that environment. However, it is from cultural psychology that phenomenology can learn to incorporate a theory of activity, thus of psychic and physical energy. It is from phenomenology that cultural psychology might incorporate a complex theory of the phenomenological reduction with various opportunities for its application fields such as for the dialogical-self-theory. I end the article in appealing to path a way for a fertile cooperation.