It is believed that there exist in the world five thousand languages and at least as many cultures. If the concept of culture is crucial for human experience, it remains difficult to place into a unitary and coherent theoretical framework. This volume's goal is to offer conceptual tools for comprehending cultural processes on the basis of the assumption that critical awareness of one's own culture is a fundamental precondition for knowledge of other cultures. This means that culture constitutes the epistemological and methodological landscape for the entire discipline of psychology: general, social, clinical, applied, and developmental psychology cannot help being cultural.

Contents: Introduction - 1. Culture: Mediation, Construction, and Participation - 2. Between Nature and Culture - 3. The Philogenetic Origins of Culture - 4. The Development of Culture in the Child - 5. Knowledge, Thought, and Culture - 6. Language, Communication, and Culture - 7. Emotions, Affection, and Culture - 8. Values, Self, and Personality - 9. Groups, Social Behaviour, and Organisation - 10. Culture, Mental Health, and Subjective Well-being - 11. Cultural Differences and Multicultural Identity - Bibliographical References

Luigi Anolli teaches Psychology of Culture and Psychology of Communication in the Faculty of Psychology at the Bicocca University of Milan.