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Zusatztext ... Gregg's book has much to recommend it. Gregg provides an encyclopaedic review of the cultural-psychology literature while seeking to reintroduce individual variation as an important variable for understanding the key issues of our times. He raises the important question of the impact of oppression, war and violence on large numbers of residents of the Middle East and North Africa, and provides a useful agenda for future research. Informationen zum Autor After receiving a Ph.D. in personality psychology from the University of Michigan, Gary Gregg spent five years in southern Morocco, conducting ethnographic research on the partly nomadic Imeghrane confederation in the High Atlas-Dades Valley region, and then a Fulbright- and NSF-sponsored study of identity development among young adults. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and currently teaches at Kalamazoo College. Klappentext For over a decade the Middle East has monopolized news headlines in the West. Journalists and commentators regularly speculate that the region's turmoil may stem from the psychological momentum of its cultural traditions or of a "tribal" or "fatalistic" mentality. Yet few studies of theregion's cultural psychology have provided a critical synthesis of psychological research on Middle Eastern societies. Drawing on autobiographies, literary works, ethnographic accounts, and life-history interviews, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, offers the first comprehensive summary of psychological writings on the region, reviewing works by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists that have beenwritten in English, Arabic, and French. Rejecting stereotypical descriptions of the "Arab mind" or "Muslim mentality, ' Gary Gregg adopts a life-span- development framework, examining influences on development in infancy, early childhood, late childhood, and adolescence as well as on identityformation in early and mature adulthood. He views patterns of development in the context of recent work in cultural psychology, and compares Middle Eastern patterns less with Western middle class norms than with those described for the region's neighbors: Hindu India, sub-Saharan Africa, and theMediterranean shore of Europe. The research presented in this volume overwhelmingly suggests that the region's strife stems much less from a stubborn adherence to tradition and resistance to modernity than from widespread frustration with broken promises of modernization--with the slow and haltingpace of economic progress and democratization. A sophisticated account of the Middle East'scultural psychology, The Middle East provides students, researchers, policy-makers, and all those interested in the culture and psychology of the region with invaluable insight into the lives, families, and social relationships of Middle Easterners asthey struggle to reconc Zusammenfassung Offering a comprehensive summary of psychological studies of Arab-Muslim societies, this book examines psychological development through the life-span, describing how traditional patterns appear to be changing in both "modernizing" and "underdeveloping" sectors of Middle Eastern societies. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction Part I: Cultural context of development 1: Misunderstandings 2: The social ecology of psychological development 3: Honor and Islam: Shaping emotions, traits, and selves Part II: Periods of psychological development Introduction to Part II 4: Childbirth and infant care 5: Early childhood 6: Late childhood 7: Adolescence 8: Early adulthood and identity 9: Mature adulthood 10: Patterns and lives: Development through the life-span Afterword: A research agenda ...
