How I am Constructing Culture‐inclusive Theories of Social‐psychological Process in our Age of Globalization

Accepting C ole's the premise that, “cultural‐inclusive psychology has been … an elusive goal” (1996, pp. 7–8) but one worth striving to attain, I first set out to identify my domain of interest and competence as an intellectual. Deciding it to be social interaction between individuals, I then searched out theoretical approaches to this domain that encompassed as many approaches to this trans‐historical concern that have emerged from cultural traditions bequeathing us their legacies. Doing this search comprehensively required me to move outside my J udeo‐ C hristian, G reco‐ R oman, Renaissance heritage and its international diffusion via the E uropean E mpires since the 1500's, embodied most recently the A merican dominance of intellectual discourse since the S econd W orld W ar. In my case, this journey has taken me in to C hinese culture and psychology where I have worked towards integrating the C hinese worldview and its psychological measures into the discipline of social psychology. Striving for a more inclusive culture‐view, I am now using multi‐cultural data bases to transcend this two‐cultural focus and incorporate wider measures of cultural variation into our theorizing and empirical validation of universal models for social interaction. This paper describes my current procedures for such culture‐mapping.