Incluye bibliografías

PART I: SOCIOCULTURAL ECOLOGY OF VALUES. -- PART II: VALUES IN THE FIELD: FRAMING OF ACTIONS. -- PART III: VALUES AND PREJUDICES: MARKING THE BORDERS OF APPROACH–AVOIDANCE DYNAMICS. -- PART IV: INCLUSION AND/OR EXCLUSION: CULTURAL AMBIVALENCES.

The study of human values, particularly the investigation of the way ontogenesis intermingles with sociogenesis and is related to microgenesis, has not received much attention within the rapidly advancing field of cultural psychology. Considering the great relevance of this phenomena in terms of human life and development within contemporary societies, and the challenge of building a just and democratic world, cultural psychology urgently needs to address such issues, usually only partially investigated by traditional social psychologists, anthropologists, and other social sciences. We hope this international selection of theoretical elaborations will contribute to further promote the theoretical study and empirical investigation that we believe are absolutely necessary to better understand, from a psychological standpoint, human values constructions and cultural practices. With the present selection of texts, we want this book to invite the reader to reflect upon how cultural psychology may help to further investigate socially relevant phenomena concerning moral values and cultural practices, keeping in mind the mutual construction of cultural activities and values, both comprised in the cornerstone of human development. This is a particularly relevant topic for investigation all over the capitalist globalized world, where violence and an increasing difficulty to live according to ethical principles prevail.