Dr Bradley Franks, STC. S307

Optional course for MSc Culture and Society, MSc Social and Cultural Psychology, MSc Organisational and Social Psychology, and MSc Social and Public Communication. Students on degrees without a psychology component may only attend subject to numbers, their own degree regulations and at the discretion of the teacher responsible.

The course examines recent directions in research relating to the relationships between mind and culture.

Specific content will include a variety of theoretical issues, for example:  relationships between social facts and psychological facts; naturalistic and non-naturalistic concepts of culture; symbolic culture; cultural relativity and universals; evolutionary and developmental constraints on the relations between mind and culture; communication, cultural transmission and change. These issues will be discussed with reference to specific domains of investigation, such as: emotions, representations of religion, race and natural kinds; pragmatics and communication; and social divisions of labour in meaning and representation, including deference and expertise.

Lecture (one hour) x 10 LT; Seminar (one hour) x 10 LT.

An essay plan of not more than 500 words is required.

Detailed references and a synopsis of lectures and class topics are distributed in the first lecture of the series, and are available in S315 and in Outlook/Public Folders/Departments/Social Psychology. The following are of general use: S Atran, Cognitive Foundations of Natural History, Cambridge University Press, 1990; P Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas, University of California Press, 1996; D E Brown, Human Universals, McGraw-Hill, 1991; D M Buss & D T Kenrick, Evolutionary Social Psychology, 1998, cited in D T Gilbert, S T Fiske & G Lindzey (Eds), The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol 2, McGraw-Hill, pps. 982-1026; M Cole, Cultural Psychology, Harvard University Press, 1996; S T Fiske et al, The Cultural Matrix of Social Psychology, cited in D T Gilbert, S T Fiske & G Lindzey (Eds), The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol 2, McGraw-Hill; L Hirschfeld, Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child's Construction of Social Kinds, MIT Press, 1996; R Nisbett & D Cohen, The Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, Westview Press, 1995; P B Smith & M H Bond, Social Psychology Across Cultures (2nd edn), Prentice Hall, 1998; D Sperber, Explaining Culture, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

A written assignment of not more than 3,000 words is required (100%).