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Chapter 16 - The Role of Symbolic Resources in Human Lives

from Part IV - Symbolic resources for the constitution of experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Tania Zittoun
Edited by
Jaan Valsiner  and
Alberto Rosa
Jaan Valsiner
Affiliation:
Clark University, Massachusetts
Alberto Rosa
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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Summary

A person using a symbolic resource is a person using a novel, a film, a picture, a song, or a ritual, to address an unfamiliar situation in her everyday life. This chapter sketches the historical background of the notion of symbolic resource, and highlights its potential for socio-cultural psychology. It gives a model for the analysis of uses of symbolic resources. The chapter shows how symbolic resources participate to psychological development because of their mediation of three basic psychological processes: intentionality, inscription in time, and distancing. It explains that the symbolic systems and artefacts have as major property the fact that they encapsulate human meaning and experience; people are constantly striving for meaning, especially in moments of change. However, it appears that social sciences are still unable to account for how cultural tools participate in people's personal meaning making, and emotional elaboration as part of psychic transformation.

Keywords

Ape Language Researchculture theoryethnographic accountszone of proximal developmentlanguagenon-human primates
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology , pp. 343 - 361
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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