Wissen und Handlungsregulation in kulturellen Systemen

Abstract

Knowledge and action regulation are intricately interwoven with each other. The critical question is why in real-life situations only certain domains of knowledge were used in the process of action regulation, although other domains of knowledge would be (even conciously) available to the individual actor. To understand the process of knowledge utilization one has to capture the interrelationships between knowledge, value systems, motives, and emotions. Moreover, one has to take into account that human actions are inevitably situated, i. e. embedded in social and cultural systems. Thus, the conceptual framework of the present paper is based on the idea of human actions as multiple-actions whereby the coordination between individual or collective action goals which are either rooted in domain-specific knowledge (e. g. ecological knowledge) or social and cultural knowledge (e. g. knowledge about social and cultural rules, norms, and value systems) is critical. Based on this conceptual framework one can interpret, for example, why particular individuals within particular social and cultural systems don’t make any use of their domain-specific knowledge in the process of action regulation and why they prefer, instead, the utilization of social and cultural knowledge, i. e. knowledge which allows them to act in conformity with other individuals, other social or cultural groups.