The Dynamic Paradigm of Ethnic Culture: Variations Across Context, Time, and Meaning

Abstract

In this article, we argue that counseling psychology research on ethnic culture can be enhanced by drawing upon advancements in conceptual and methodological approaches from other fields. Accordingly, we present the dynamic paradigm of culture to provide counseling psychologists with a useful conceptualization of ethnic culture that serves as the impetus for developing novel research agendas. Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship from social psychology, developmental psychology, political science, and sociology, this paradigm’s core concept is ethnic culture’s malleable nature; that is, ethnic culture varies across social contexts, across time, and in its meaning across individuals. These three dimensions of ethnic culture are elaborated within three perspectives: (a) the contextual perspective focuses on the situational and domain-specific nature of cultural influences, (b) the temporal perspective characterizes ethnic culture and individuals’ cultural orientation as continually evolving through time, and (c) the constructionist perspective emphasizes the fragmented, subjective, antiessentialist, and performative nature of ethnic culture.