Papers by Floor van Alphen
Culture and Psychology, Jul 5, 2017
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
As scholars have recently emphasized, creativity is not restricted to the individual mind; it can... more As scholars have recently emphasized, creativity is not restricted to the individual mind; it can happen in and through interaction. To evaluate the legitimacy of claims about "distributed creativity," we propose a compare-and-contrast approach to Argentine tango. Tango is an improvisational leader-follower dance of a formally constrained kind, yet one that also allows for a range of modes of being creative together in real-time interaction. Six dance couples were filmed while improvising and subsequently interviewed. Based on video vignettes of a few seconds duration, we microgenetically reconstructed the embodied "give-and-take" between partners, from which creative trajectories emerge. The spectrum of cocreative modalities ranges from creativity realized in interaction, but bearing some mark of the individual, to creativity, in which the interaction itself becomes an operative mechanism. Cocreation can happen in forms guided by a single person, yet jointly executed ("leader creativity"), in subordinate spaces that provide for some individual creative autonomy within a collective dynamic, in parallel or additive creative interaction forms, but also in genuinely multiplicative forms in which self-organizing interaction dynamics become a powerful causal factor that leverages creativity. To accommodate these various modalities, we argue for a dynamic-systemic account, which looks at interdependencies between micro-and macrolevels. Our framework recognizes different degrees of creative autonomy within interaction; it hereby avoids a dichotomy between individualistic accounts and interactionism with a purely collective-level focus.
Cadernos do Tempo Presente, 2013
Recebido: 06 de Fevereiro de 2013 Aprovado: 12 de Fevereiro de 2013 Publicado: 10 de Marco de 2013
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Information Age Publishing, 2021
Culture & Psychology
In this study, we aimed to explore the various ways in which the past is constructed, using or ti... more In this study, we aimed to explore the various ways in which the past is constructed, using or tinkering with a national master narrative, by students surrounded by and immersed in contemporary transnational plurality. Specifically, we studied the permanence of or variations on the Spanish ‘reconquest’ narrative among 14 to 15-year-old students of a public school in Madrid. Semi-structured individual interviews were carried out with 30 students whose families came from Madrid, other regions in Spain and other countries around the world. We carried out a detailed narrative analysis of their constructions of the medieval past on the Iberian Peninsula and found that the ‘reconquest’ narrative still predominates. Few variations in their narratives were found that hint at counternarratives, the ‘travelling’ of narrative schema across national borders, or the transnational trajectories in their families feeding into their constructions. Given these findings, we discuss the role of alterna...
Carretero (2011; Carretero y Bermúdez, 2012) propone un modelo de producción y consumo de las nar... more Carretero (2011; Carretero y Bermúdez, 2012) propone un modelo de producción y consumo de las narrativas históricas nacionales, distinguiendo una sería de características de los grandes relatos históricos, aunque en la investigación que se presenta se analizaron solo cuatro de ellas: 1) El sujeto histórico se establece en términos de inclusión y exclusión, como un conjunto unificado yhomogéneo, opuesto al “otro” histórico también simplificado. Esto determina la "voz" de la narración y la exclusión de las demás voces. 2) En la narrativa existen procesos de identificación en base al afecto personal que se manifiestan enjuicios de valor sobre la unificación y la oposición mencionadas anteriormente. El sujeto histórico se enuncia en la primera persona del plural "nosotros", opuesto lógicamente a "ellos" y a menudo valorado más positivamente. Se establece, entonces, una identidad compartida entre el presente narrador y el sujeto histórico pasado, una identid...
Cultural psychology in communities: tensions and transformations, 2021, ISBN 9781648021961, págs. 1-19, 2021
Cultural psychology in communities: tensions and transformations, 2021, ISBN 9781648021961, págs. 185-207, 2021
Este artículo presenta la noción de efecto bucle propuesta por el filósofo de la ciencia Ian Hack... more Este artículo presenta la noción de efecto bucle propuesta por el filósofo de la ciencia Ian Hacking, para analizar cómo el conocimiento psicológico al clasificar las actividades y atributos de las personas, modifica la forma en que las personas se piensan a sí mismas, lo que resulta a su vez en una alteración de lo estudiado, lo que requiere de nuevo conocimiento. Este efecto determina una pauta de interacción particular entre la disciplina y su público, lo que impone condiciones específicas a la hora de producir conocimiento sobre el humano. Se ordenan el conocimiento psicológico en función de diversos tipos de clases humanas y se discute la distinción que Hacking realiza ellas y clases naturales, en función de cómo el historiador de la psicología Kurt Danziger concibe el desarrollo de las categorías psicológicas. Finalmente, se proponen lineamientos para proseguir el estudio de los efectos bucle en los conocimientos psicológicos.
This volume aims at further articulating and developing the cultural psychological interest in co... more This volume aims at further articulating and developing the cultural psychological interest in community. It focuses on the processes through which individuals constitute communities and the processes that restrain or enable moving forward with others. This interest is necessary especially now that the world is on the move. Economic crises, political crises and ecological crises have led to reinforced migration patterns, a rise in authoritarianism and xenophobia, and have become a threat to the survival of the world as we know it, particularly to minorities and indigenous communities. At the same time, we are witnessing the birth of new networks, dialogues and actions, generated by people within, between and among communities. Therefore, this volume collects interdisciplinary theoretical, empirical and applied contributions enabling engagement with communities in cultural psychology. This involves both reflections on meaning-making processes and projections on how they feed into social transformation, in exchange with community psychology, anthropology and sociology. People vitally depend on community to effectively negotiate or resist in complex intercultural or intergroup settings. In the wake of human rights violations or to prevent further damage to the environment a community is needed to undertake action. From feminist movements and disability activism to the otherwise marginalized: how do people constitute communities? How do they resist as a community? How can cultural psychology contribute not only to understand meaning-making processes, but also connect them to processes of social transformation? Migration, moving through and connecting to different communities can affect meaning making in significant ways. People consider themselves as members of one or another community, but they also increasingly enter into new settings of social practice with new means for action. How might creative meaning-making build bridges between communities? How might new community arise in between or with others? How can cultural psychology deal with intercultural processes without reifying different cultures? These are the central questions that the, mostly emerging, scholars from many corners of the world address in this book. Their research addresses different institutional settings that are resisted and transformed from within, in dialogue with others. From social work, NGOs and municipal activity to university talent mobility and art projects for youth. Other settings are newly inhabited, from the public square and the social media to a foreign city and neighborhood church. Thus, more communities appear on the map of cultural psychology.
Looping effects or myriad ways of a psychological category Floor van Alphen | 0210870 Supervisor:... more Looping effects or myriad ways of a psychological category Floor van Alphen | 0210870 Supervisor: Prof. dr. ir. Gerard de Vries 01-07-2010 2. Creativity, history of a psychological category p. 14 3. Creativity in public p. 17 Creativity and education p. 17 Creativity and innovation p. 19 Marketing creativity p. 20 One, two or more public creativities p. 22 Between myths and scientific norms p. 23 4. Psychological creativity p. 25 A science of human innovation p. 25 Psychologically approaching creativity p. 27 Creativity definitions p. 31 5. Creative looping p. 33 Eminent looping p. 34 Implicating Creativity p. 35 Everyday looping p. 37 Theoretical normativity p. 39 Looping between creativities p. 40 Interaction or cultural embeddedness? p. 42 Creative kindness p. 43 Creative conclusion? p. 46 Literature p. 48
This chapter focuses on the imaginative co-construction of past and future in times of crisis by ... more This chapter focuses on the imaginative co-construction of past and future in times of crisis by drawing on Hartog’s notion of regimes of historicity. Formulated in Koselleck’s terms, goal is to examine how horizons of expectations and spaces of experience dynamically co-construct one another. Imagining future in current pandemic times will be put into historical perspective and compared to how the future was imagined in different regimes of historicity – e.g., in terms of religious prophecies, scientific progress, threatening horizon, etc. The nuclear imagery (the mushroom cloud, devastated cities, nuclear reactor, radiation symbol, etcetera) traveled worldwide and immediately became a global imaginary, generating new social representations of science, and at the same time, a set of iconic artifacts for remembering the past vis-a-vis imagined futures. In times of crisis and change, imagination is required more urgently than ever to be able to imagine the future together in light of actions carried out in the present and to imagine other possible.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2015
Integrative psychological & behavioral science, 2014
Tango dancing is not just ethnographically interesting, but might actually provide a way to study... more Tango dancing is not just ethnographically interesting, but might actually provide a way to study interaction as such. An orientation to this improvisational dance as an embodied practice and experience is given. Enactivism is proposed as an adequate framework for further study. It is argued that approaching tango in terms of participatory sense-making, mutual incorporation and consensually coordinated action helps in clarifying its possible contributions to (cultural) psychology. Possible contributions such as facilitating the study of the dynamics of interaction, of intersubjectivity and of culture as joint activity.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2012
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Papers by Floor van Alphen
According to Aristotle it is the nature of human beings to live in communities. In this vein, Packer (2018) points at the mutual constitution between people and their forms of life. On the one hand, members of a community constitute it, as they decide upon ways to live together. On the other hand, communities constitute the people living in it, making their forms of life possible. Community has been present in cultural psychology mainly in considering the constitution of complex psychological processes and focusing on internalizing cultural means through social interaction. Approaching dynamic cultural psychological processes it is quite common to look at individual meaning making against a significant collective backdrop. These processes happen through irreversible time (Valsiner, 2019). However, what if we look more closely at how individuals constitute communities? What processes do cultural psychologists and researchers in adjacent fields encounter when they look at meaning making through a social space as well as through time? What tensions and transformations can be found in the movement within, through and between communities? This volume aims at further articulating and developing the cultural psychological interest in community, by focusing on the processes through which individuals constitute communities and the processes that restrain or enable moving forward with others. At the same time, community can be more explicitly and strongly conceptualized in cultural psychology, and its relevance for the field further examined.