An intercultural approach to the psychology of culture

Abstract

Arguably, issues of culture are now more prominent in psychology today than in any other time in the discipline’s history. This is in part due to the global reach of the discipline as well as psychology coming of age in a range of countries. It is time that stock is taken of different approaches to issues of culture and psychology across these various contexts. This involves considering the relevance of different approaches that have been clustered into disciplinary domains such as cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychologies. This chapter introduces these various approaches before offering an overview of contributing chapters from across the Asia Pacific region. This region has been chosen in order to initiate a conversation between neighbours about how they are addressing issues of culture. This region is also important due to the rapid expansion of psychology internationally and the recent expansion of more localised approaches.