Thinking Through Cultures, by Richard Shweder

The University of Chicago anthropologist Richard Shweder (1991, 72) defined cultural psychology as the study of “the way cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion.” If we here substitute human brain for human psyche and neural unity for psychic unity and then add “brain” to the loci of ethnic divergence, we obtain an accurate depiction of cultural neuroscience.

The difference between neuroanthropology and cultural neuroscience with regard to neuroimaging is consistent with their conceptual and disciplinary roots in cultural anthropology and cultural psychology respectively. Cultural psychology is indeed cultural neuroscience’s “parent discipline” (Denkhaus and Bös 2012)—but in a manner that involves little more than replacing the “mind” of the psy by the “brain” of the neuro.

Vidal, Fernando and Ortega, Francisco. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Forms of Living)....

Shweder, Richard A. 1991. Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge,...

Thinking Through Cultures on Google Books

Richard Shweder's profile in the University of Chicago's website

Robust Cultural Pluralism: An Interview With Professor Richard A. Shweder