Internationalism in Psychology: We Need It Cole, M., Gay, J., Glick, J
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psychology as a profession and set out for graduate Gay, J., & Cole, M. (1967). The new mathematics and an school—both for him and for the world. old culture. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Selected Bibliography Luria, A. R. (1971). Towards the problem of the historical nature of psychological processes (M. Cole, Trans.). Inter- Cole, M. (Ed.). (1976). Forward. In A. R. Luria, Cognitive national Journal of Psychology, 6(4), 259–272. development: Its cultural and social foundations (pp. xi– xvi). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Newman, D., Griffin, P., & Cole, M. (1989). The construc- tion zone: Working for cognitive change in school. New Cole, M. (1988). Cross-cultural research in the socio-his- York: Cambridge University Press. torical tradition. Human Development, 31, 147–157. Nissim-Sabat, D., Cole, M., & Belyaeva, A. V. (1997). Telecommunications in the former Soviet Union: Activities Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future in psychology. European Psychologist, 2(1), 52–58. discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of liter- Cole, M. (1998). Can cultural psychology help us think acy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. about diversity? Mind, Culture and Activity, 5, 291–304. Sharp, D., Cole, M., & Lave, J. (1979). Education and cog- Cole, M., & Cole, S. (1989). The development of children. nitive development: The evidence from experimental re- New York: Scientific American Press. search. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 44(1–2, Serial No. 178). Cole, M., Dore, J., Hall, W. S., & Dowley, G. (1978). Sit- uational variability in the speech of preschool children. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 318, 65–105. Internationalism in Psychology: We Need It Cole, M., Gay, J., Glick, J. A., & Sharp, D. W. (Eds.). Now More Than Ever (1971). The cultural context of learning and thinking. New Michael Cole York: Basic Books. University of California, San Diego Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S., & Souberman, E. (Eds.). (1978). L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in society: The devel- opment of higher processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press. A concern with international cooperation in psychology has been present since the beginnings of psychology as a Cole, M., & Korzh, N. N. (1966). Obuchenie veroyatnos- science. In this article, the author traces the development tyam pri dlitelnom trenirovke u bolnich schizofreniei of international cooperation from the late 19th century to [Probability learning with extended training in schizophren- the present day to document the interesting ways in which ics]. Zh. Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii, 66, 882–885. the forms of collaboration have always been related to the large social and political contexts of which they are a part. Cole, M., & Levitin, K. (Eds.). (2005). The autobiography of A. R. Luria: A dialogue with the making of mind. Mah- wah, NJ: Erlbaum. Editor’s Note Michael Cole received the Award for Distinguished Contri- Cole, M., & Maltzman, I. (Eds.). (1969). Handbook of con- butions to the International Advancement of Psychology. temporary Soviet psychology. New York: Basic Books. Award winners are invited to deliver an award address at the APA’s annual convention. A version of this award ad- Cole, M., & Means, B. (1981). Comparative studies of how dress was delivered at the 114th annual meeting, held Au- people think: An introduction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard gust 10–13, 2006, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Articles University Press. based on award addresses are reviewed, but they differ from unsolicited articles in that they are expressions of the Cole, M., & Scribner, S. (Eds.). (1974). Culture and winners’ reflections on their work and their views of the thought: A psychological introduction. New York: Wiley. field. 904 November 2006 ● American Psychologist This historical material is followed by an autobiographical with widespread collaboration, and the continuous ex- account of the author’s own involvement in cooperative change of observations, information, and experiments. He international research to illustrate how such activity can insisted on the necessity for mutual knowledge and respect play out. A few selected collaborative enterprises are then as this was the best way to lay to rest polemics that were described to emphasize the point that psychology stands to often just misunderstandings and confusions of terminology benefit enormously from continued international (Nicolas & So¨derlund, 2005, p. 395). cooperation, especially in times of international conflict Eight years later, the first International Congress of Psy- such as that being experienced at the present time. chology was held in Paris and has continued to be held every few years since, with the exception of the years of Keywords: international cooperation, cross-cultural research, socio-political context the two World Wars in the first half of the 20th century. However, until well after the end of World War II, the in- When a person is recognized for lifetime achievements in ternational composition of the congress was dominated by an area of scientific endeavor, this indicates that the person Europe and the United States, reflecting their dominance so recognized has probably lived long enough to have ex- on the world stage. At the first congress, all but 1 of the 27 perienced personally a meaningful fraction of the history of members of its committees were from Northern Europe the topic at hand. Consequently, such a person has the op- (the exception was William James). At the 6th congress in portunity to examine the topic both in the long duree of 1909, Euro-Americans were joined by a delegate from the science and its historical context, and in the not so long Cuba, and in the following congress in 1923, a Japanese duree of a single scientific career. delegate was included. But leadership of the organization My topic is the involvement of psychologists in interna- remained firmly in Euro-American hands. These countries tional research and collaboration. I begin by providing a dominate participation and management of the congress to brief history of international collaborations among psychol- this day, despite the fact that psychologists from approxi- ogists living in different countries. I then summarize my mately 100 countries currently participate (Rosenzweig, own international experience, which began at a pivotal Holtzman, Sabourin, & Be´langer, 2000). time in this history. I end by describing a little of the cur- Over this same period, English replaced French as the rent state of internationalism in psychology in order to re- dominant language of congress presentations, with the mix flect on the special significance of international collabora- of other languages depending on the country in which the tion at this particular juncture in the truly long duree of congress was held. This trend paralleled the growing influ- world history. ence of the United States as a leader in world affairs, as well as in psychology. Internationalism in Psychology Since the Beginning: When the view of the origins of psychology is broad- The Broad Picture ened to include the state of world history as the field was What is often referred to as scientific psychology was born emerging, the domination of Europe and North America in almost simultaneously in America and several countries in international psychological relations is not difficult to un- Europe. Although textbooks credit Wilhelm Wundt with derstand. The first congress coincided with the period dur- founding the first experimental laboratory in Leipzig in ing which European colonialism reached its high water- 1879, the new approach to the study of the mind was not mark. Several events marked this coincidence. For really the province of any one person or country. For ex- example, in 1884, 15 European powers (joined by the ample, at almost the same time, William James was en- United States) gathered in Berlin to complete the “scramble couraging his students to conduct experiments at Harvard; for Africa.” Colonial powers were officially enjoined to Francis Galton in England was initiating the first applica- defend and administer the areas they occupied if they tions of intelligence tests; and Vladimir Bekhterev opened wanted other countries to recognize their claims. By 1900, a laboratory in Kazan that explored a wide variety of top- roughly 90% of Africa, 99% of Polynesia, 56% of Asia, ics including mechanisms of learning, alcoholism, social and 27% of the Americas were under European colonial behavior, and psychopathology (Cole, 1996). rule (and this does not count either Australia or the United Almost simultaneously, a proposal was made by a Pol- States; Sapan, 1906). ish scholar, Julian Ochorowicz, for initiating an interna- The United States, in fact, had joined the process of tional organization to bring psychologists from different colonial expansion, most notably in the Philippine Islands. countries together around a broad range of potential com- On December 21st, 1898, President William McKinley mon topics (Nicolas & So¨derlund, 2005). According to published a proclamation asserting American sovereignty Nicolas and So¨derlund (2005), Ochorowicz pointed out that over the Philippines. He referred to his policy of colonial psychology had changed a great deal in 50 years and that it control as “benevolent assimilationism.” It is estimated that was getting closer to the natural sciences. He suggested more than 250,000 Filipinos, mostly noncombatants, were that it would require collective effort to progress rapidly, killed in the ensuing insurrections. In 1901, resistance to November 2006 ● American Psychologist 905 U.S. occupation was made a capital crime by the United sponse to special events (such as the Southeast Asian tsu- States Congress (Blount, 1913). nami of 2004). The political, economic, and military domination of the The American Psychological Association has played an colonized countries by the colonizing countries was accom- active role in IUPsyS for many years. In 1944, it created panied by a parallel set of beliefs concerning the relative the Committee on International Relations in Psychology to psychological status of the colonizers and the colonized.