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Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences
Charlotte Højholt
Ernst Schraube Editors
Subjectivity
and
Knowledge
Generalization in the Psychological
Study of Everyday Life
Theory and History in the Human
and Social Sciences
Series Editor
Jaan Valsiner
Department of Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences will fill in the gap in the
existing coverage of links between new theoretical advancements in the social and
human sciences and their historical roots. Making that linkage is crucial for the
interdisciplinary synthesis across the disciplines of psychology, anthropology,
sociology, history, semiotics, and the political sciences. In contemporary human
sciences of the 21st there exists increasing differentiation between neurosciences
and all other sciences that are aimed at making sense of the complex social,
psychological, and political processes. Thus new series has the purpose of (1)
coordinating such efforts across the borders of existing human and social sciences,
(2) providing an arena for possible inter-disciplinary theoretical syntheses, (3) bring
into attention of our contemporary scientific community innovative ideas that have
been lost in the dustbin of history for no good reasons, and (4) provide an arena for
international communication between social and human scientists across the World.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15826

Charlotte Højholt • Ernst Schraube
Editors
Subjectivity and Knowledge

Generalization in the Psychological Study
of Everyday Life
Editors
Charlotte Højholt Ernst Schraube
Social Psychology of Everyday Life Social Psychology of Everyday Life
Department of People and Technology Department of People and Technology
Roskilde University Roskilde University
Roskilde, Denmark Roskilde, Denmark
ISSN 2523-8663 ISSN 2523-8671 (electronic)

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences
ISBN 978-3-030-29976-7 ISBN 978-3-030-29977-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Series Editor’s Preface
iving Through Generalizing: Psychology of Desire

L
for Becoming
This book—Subjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study

of Everyday Life—is an important milestone in the theoretical advancement of the
social sciences in our twenty-first century. Its editors—Charlotte Højholt and Ernst
Schraube—have brought together a critical mass of scholars who collectively bring
the need to consider the focus on generalization remain central for science and
social practices. The volume leads to cardinal rethinking generalization in psycho-
logical theory, methodology, and research practice. The very core of the psychologi-
cal science is open to new questions.
The questions are many. How to get in touch and explore general connections
between various areas of knowledge on the basis of the situated, partial, and contex-
tual character of psychological phenomena? What is the role of critique in the pro-
cesses of generalization? How to develop analytical concepts and strategies which
help us to conceive psychological phenomena as processes and movements, and
how does the development of psychological knowledge involve transformations of
everyday practice? We create new solutions—in technology, in our ways of living in
the environment, and in our thinking of it all—all the time. Technological innova-
tions become not only helpful for living but turn into essentials of our human living.
Anybody who has forgotten to take one’s cellular phone along leaving home and
feels that one’s self is denied access to the latest Facebook news can testify about
the paradoxical takeover of the human psyche by a small technological device—
albeit through the meaning construction processes of the proud owner of that trivial
communication aid.
At the same time as generalization possibilities are being sought after in the
book, the authors operate with the credo that science needs to explain the complex
phenomena of our everyday lives and contribute to its betterment. Everyday living
is unique—deeply subjective in its multitude of variations. Human beings live
through their encounters with their Umwelts—and living through equals feeling
v
vi Series Editor’s Preface
through. We feel into our environments and by doing that develop ourselves for
further encounters with the world. Social practices carried out by human beings are
affective practices—a simple truth that can be understood when one observes foot-
ball fans performing their support acts on a stadium, or a gambler in a casino, or a
mother trying to cope with her toddler’s temper tantrum in front of the supermarket
audience. All of the participants in these dramatic events view these as meaning-
ful—“our team must win,” “I want to win,” and “my child should obey” are the
parallel reflections of subjective kinds to support the publicly visible actions. All
these (and other) reflections are local particulars—yet the subjective affectivated
(Cornejo et al. 2018) meanings are a form of single-instance generalizations of
desires and normativity. Human beings are intentional actors who strive towards
goals beyond each and every local everyday life situation—yet the pathways towards
these goals are worked out in each here-and-now situation.
The present volume continues the path of inquiry into new directions in psychol-
ogy that was outlined in the “Yokohama Manifesto” of 2016. In that collective work
(Valsiner et al. 2016) the interdisciplinary foundations for the science of a specifi-
cally human kind of psychology which starts from the axiomatic bases of an open-
systemic look at the psychological functioning of a species where higher
psychological functions play a primary role in our relating with our environments.
Psychological phenomena are unique among those of other sciences by being orga-
nized through normative constraints (Christensen 2019) and are inherently social in
their origins (Joerchel and Benetka 2018). Psychological science is therefore neces-
sarily in need to develop new conceptualizations of its approaches as normativity is
not part of the phenomena of any other natural science. For that reason, borrowing
theoretical systems from psychology’s usual “reference points” in the natural sci-
ences—physics, chemistry, or even biology—would not lead to adequate epistemo-
logical solutions. Our contemporary fascination with the neurosciences is an
intellectual impasse that replaces finding new solutions for understanding by the
seductive beauty of multicolored brain images. Psychology as science needs to find
its own solutions—rather than import these, wholesale, from neighboring
disciplines.
Nevertheless, there are some “near neighbors” from whom we can benefit.
Closest to psychology’s needs would be developmental biology—yet even there the
development of biological systems does not include radical reorganization of the
whole biological system by an “inherent intention” of that system to innovate itself
towards some goal state of an imaginary new “final form.” Psychological science of
everyday life phenomena needs to be built on the assumptions of the active creation
of novel forms of subjective personal worlds under the influence of invented possi-
ble and desirable states of the system in the future. Innovations in technologies and
fashion designs demonstrate the open-endedness of human imagination.
This specificity of psychology—a science of how desires for the future become
turned into realities of human being in its present (and rapidly emerging past)—nec-
essarily is based on the acts of generalization. These acts, however, acquire a special
focus—that of generalizing for the future. The future of a developing human being
is unknown—our personal life histories cannot be predetermined by the past. The
Series Editor’s Preface vii
specific features of the here-and-now states of being cannot be directly transferred

to possible future encounters with similar settings. The experience from the present
needs to be encoded into a generalized abstracted form to be recontextualized in the
future. Such generalization operates on the basis of single instances—particular
encounters with the world—so as to be pre-adapting for future similar (but never
precisely the same) conditions.
We are never the same but always similar. This simple general feature of psycho-
logical phenomena—never being “the same,” as the irreversibility of human life
courses rules that out, but experiencing conditions that the meaning-making mind
detects as being “similar” (to some past encounter)—makes the focus of this vol-
ume on generalization the arena for crucial innovation in psychological science of
the twenty-first century.
Aalborg, Denmark Jaan Valsiner

June, 2019
References
Christensen, B. A. (Ed.) (2019). The second cognitive revolution: A tribute to Rom
Harré. New York: Springer.
Cornejo, C., Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2018). I activate you to affect me:
Affectivating as a cultural psychological phenomenon. In C. Cornejo, G. Marsico
& J. Valsiner (Eds.), I activate you to affect me: Vol. 2. Annals of Cultural
Psychology series (pp. 1–10). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.
Joerchel, A. C., & Benetka, G. (Eds.) (2018). Memories of Gustav Ichheiser: Life
and work of an exiled social scientist. New York: Springer.
Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (Eds.) (2016).
Psychology as the science of human being. Cham: Springer.
Contents
1 Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge – The Formation

of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research�� 1
Ernst Schraube and Charlotte Højholt
Part I Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living

2 Subjectivity, Conflictuality, and Generalization
in Social Praxis �� 23
Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt
3 Rethinking Generalization with Kurt Lewin
and Action Research�� 41
Martin Dege
4 Developing a Dialectical Understanding of Generalization:
An Unfinalized Dialogue Between Vygotsky and Davydov�� 61
Manolis Dafermos
5 Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events�� 79
Jaan Valsiner
Part II Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological

Generalization
6 On the Worldliness of the General: Why Concepts
Matter Ethically �� 101
Jytte Bang
7 Generalizing Together with Children: The Significance
of Children’s Concepts for Mutual Knowledge Creation�� 115
Niklas Alexander Chimirri
ix
x Contents
8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art

of Generalization�� 141
Luca Tateo
9 Reproducing the General Through the Local: Lessons
from Poverty Research�� 157
Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot
Part III Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization

10 Generalizations in Situated Practices�� 177
Ole Dreier
11 Situated Generalization with Prototypes in Dialogical Teaching�� 195
Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck
12 Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical Strategies
of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research�� 221
Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube
Index�� 243
Contributors
Erik Axel Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and

Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Jytte Bang Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and
Peter Busch-Jensen Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People
and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Niklas Alexander Chimirri Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of
People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Manolis Dafermos Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Rethymnon,
Greece
Martin Dege Department of Psychology, The American University of Paris, Paris,
France
Ole Dreier Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark
Shiloh Groot Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New
Zealand
Darrin Hodgetts School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Charlotte Højholt Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People
and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Pita King School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Line Lerche Mørck Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus,
Denmark
Morten Nissen Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
xi
xii Contributors
Ernst Schraube Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and

Ottilie Stolte School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New
Zealand
Luca Tateo Pós-graduação em Ensino, Filosofia e História das Ciências, Federal
University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg,
Denmark
Jaan Valsiner Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University,
Aalborg, Denmark
Chapter 1
Introduction: Subjectivity and
Knowledge – The Formation of Situated
Generalization in Psychological Research
Ernst Schraube and Charlotte Højholt
Psychological phenomena are furnished with an astonishing doubleness: they are

unique and general at the same time. Not only because of language, and because the
words we use to articulate and give meaning to our experiences and activities unite
the particular and the general, but also because we as human beings are social
beings, developing our individual, unique, and particular mental life together with
others in a common world. That is why the relationship between the particular and
the general and processes of generalization are continuously at stake in people’s
everyday lives. However, generalization is also a key activity of science. While out-
side science it is usually a more implicit process, it forms the heart of scientific
research. The central aim of generalization within science is to engage in overcom-
ing superficial, one-sided, and distorted ways of thinking and to develop systematic,
reliable, and socially relevant knowledge. Society’s trust in science is based on a
cogent practice of generalization and the idea that scientific research does not pur-
sue one-sided and selective interests, but engages in developing multisided and gen-
eral knowledge for the common good.
Over the past few decades, there have been major critiques, from various per-
spectives, of the common practice of generalization in psychological research.
Some even argue that the concept should be to abandon entirely. One problem artic-
ulated in the debates, for example, refers to the disposition to identify general
knowledge with static, universal, and final knowledge created through methods iso-
lating the objects of research from their connections in the social world. Such a
perspective can invite an understanding of knowledge in knowledge hierarchies in
which contextual, involved, and everyday knowledge is seen not as knowledge but
as subjective views in need of objective correction. An example could be the
E. Schraube (*) · C. Højholt

Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde
University, Roskilde, Denmark
e-mail: schraube@ruc.dk; charh@ruc.dk
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History
in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_1
2 E. Schraube and C. Højholt
collaboration of different professions on a particular case. When psychological

experts present numbers or results from a test, it is considered as indisputable
knowledge, while professionals working with the case in everyday practice present
their experiences and understandings of connections it is often turned down as
“anecdotes of everyday life” (Røn Larsen 2016), subjective, involved, and emotional.
Within a hierarchical and disembodied vision of the production of knowledge,
psychological research can turn into a control science involved in “governing the
soul” (Rose 1999) and regulating, normalizing, and differentiating persons and their
mental lives, and essential issues of human life slide out of the epistemic horizon.
Attention to differences, for example, can turn into differentiating between persons
and objectifying and othering particular people instead of studying common prob-
lems of the human world. In this way subjectivity is eliminated, together with the
social context of everyday life to which subjectivity is connected. However, how
can we understand psychological phenomena if we disarticulate human subjectivity
and the uniqueness of each individual human being? As Jaan Valsiner emphasizes,
“We need to come to terms with the uneasy recognition that it is the personally
unique subjectivity that is objective in psychology” (2014: 6).
We understand human subjectivity not as something inside persons but connected
to persons’ experience, action, and collective participation in the everyday world
and their ways of perceiving, forming, and changing social and material conditions.
The everyday world is composed of and developed through differences, conflicts,
and changes in relation to shared matters. From different positions and with different
kinds of responsibility and access to knowledge about a problem, persons strive with
and coordinate their efforts in relation to many-sided common causes and concerns
(Axel and Højholt 2019, Chap. 2 in this volume). The practice of generalization in
psychological research has to relate to such common processes in continuous
change, building on particular subjective experiences and action, and analyzing the
relevant internal relations, connections, and constructions of meaning. Psychology,
which roots psychological processes in human life, has to transcend the disposition
to understand generalization as a practice of disarticulating social connections and
human subjectivity and embrace a scientific research practice which facilitates an
understanding of how persons experience, act, and create meaning in a common
world. The vision of a disembodied, static, and universal knowledge represents a
major challenge in the production of psychological knowledge and insight.
Based on a critique of disembodied and universalist conceptions of developing
psychological knowledge, this book is engaged in rethinking the practice of gener-
alization in psychological theory, methodology, and research. How do we get in
touch and explore general connections on the basis of the situated, subjective, and
contextual character of psychological phenomena? What is the role of critique in the
processes of generalization? How do we systematically include the subjectivity of
the researcher as well as the research participants in the practice of generalization?
How do we develop analytical concepts and strategies which help us to conceive of
psychological phenomena as processes and movements, and how does the develop-
ment of psychological knowledge involve transformations of everyday practice?
The chapters of the book contribute to a theoretical and methodological vocabu-
lary which systematically includes the subjective dimension of human life in psy-
1 Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge… 3
chological inquiry and situates the processes of generalization in persons’ common,

social, cultural, and material practices of everyday living. The authors engage in
developing an understanding of generalization as a basis for forming a viable future
society. Before we present the chapters of the book, we will begin by delineating
major approaches to generalization in psychological research, and then we will
reconsider the challenge for psychology to include human subjectivity and everyday
life in the production of knowledge and describe significant perspectives from the
history of psychology contributing to the formation of situated, subjectivity-and-
context-based generalization in psychological research.
ajor Understandings of Generalization in Psychological

M
Research
Within contemporary psychological research, we can distinguish three major

approaches to generalization as the basis for the production of theory and knowl-
edge: first, numerical traditions, generalizing through representative samples pri-
marily based on quantitative methodology; second, post-generalizing traditions,
which conceive of generalization not as a decisive goal in scientific research; and
third, situated traditions, emphasizing the significance of scientific generalization
and generalizing not through representative samples but through subjectivity-in-
context primarily based on a qualitative methodology.
Each of these approaches provides an important epistemic quality and has its
place in scientific work. However, “the difficulties arise,” as Charles Tolman under-
lines, when one of them “is taken as the principal or only form of generalization”
(1989: 203). Even though situated and subjectivity-based traditions of generaliza-
tion can be found throughout the history of psychology, numerical approaches have
almost exclusively dominated the production of knowledge in psychology since the
early part of the twentieth century. In this book we argue for an epistemological
shift and for expanding and redirecting the practice of generalization in psychologi-
cal research toward a situated, subjectivity-and-context-based conception of gener-
alization. This shift refers to the specific content and characteristics of the
psychological subject matter. An embodied, qualitative perspective is the fundament
of any numerical account.
Numerical Generalization
Numerical generalization (other common terms are generalization in frequencies

[e.g. Holzkamp 1983], nomological generalization [e.g., Kaplan 1964], or the quite
misleading term empirical generalization [e.g. Flick 2014]) focuses on classification
and identification of traits or principles that are common to the largest number of
instances. The methodological strategies build on measuring the phenomena in their
relations, identifying the general with the abstract, detached from concrete social
contexts. Within this perspective, generalization is seen as not possible from a single
case. This principle refers to the problem of induction and the notion that it is logi-
cally untenable to conclude from a single case to many or all cases (or from unknown
to known, or from particular to general propositions). Therefore, the research design
is usually based on representative samples which aim to adequately reflect the popu-
lation as a whole so that the findings of the sample can be “generalized” to the popu-
lation. To generalize, here, therefore means to generalize through representative
samples. It is a form of concluding on the basis of statistical inference from a repre-
sentative sample to a more general population, category, or class and in this way a
move toward the abstract aiming at universality. Major traditions of psychological
research build on numerical generalization of frequencies as the basis of evidence
and the central practice of developing knowledge, and apply it in various forms espe-
cially in classical experimental settings as well as surveys with questionnaires.
The exploration of frequencies can definitely help to develop relevant and soci-
etally important knowledge, especially about the distribution of a phenomenon (for
instance, about the frequency of stress in a certain population). However, as the
principal or only form of epistemic approach in psychological research, it would be
too narrow and one-sided. Usually, the results require further, more in-depth psy-
chological investigation to shed light on the phenomenon in its relevant contexts
(e.g., why and how do persons of a certain population develop stress, how is it expe-
rienced in everyday practice, what is stress about, and what kind of conditions is it
connected with?). One issue, which refers to a fundamental dilemma of generaliza-
tion in frequencies is, that the methodological strategies make it difficult to access
the richness of psychological phenomena. Depending on how numbers are used,
interpreted, and communicated, they may lead to a kind of overgeneralization. In
fact, epistemic strategies of measuring can reduce and even distort psychological
phenomena and undermine the possibility of investigating human subjectivity,
experience, and action.
Accordingly, a major concern with numerical generalization as the only form of
developing psychological knowledge refers to the lack of systematically including
human subjectivity in the epistemic account. How can we approach and construc-
tively work with the problems, concerns, and dilemmas of people in the contexts in
which they actually unfold if we do not include the subjective experience, percep-
tion, emotion, thought, and reasons for action of persons? How can we contribute
with substantial knowledge to understanding and bringing movement into the
problems of human life if we do not systematically include human agency and the
creation of and dealing with the problems we are confronted with in our contempo-
rary world? When the world is dangling on a string and natural scientists are warn-
ing that the whole is at risk (Ripple et al. 2017: 1028, in the declaration Warning to
Humanity: A Second Notice, signed by over 15,000 scientists), the question of
rethinking scientific generalization and the relationship between the particular and
the general is at stake. To be able to understand and work with these issues and
participate in forming a possible future society, we have to systematically include
the question of human subjectivity, experience, and agency.
Since the 1960s, the issue of a too narrow, particular, and fixed conception of
generalization and ways of developing scientific knowledge has been widely dis-
cussed in psychology, including the need for a fundamental epistemic renewal of

psychological research practice (Chimirri and Schraube 2019; Gergen 2015;
Holzkamp 1983, 2013a; Teo 2009; Valsiner et al. 2016). In response, an epistemo-
logical shift from a god’s eye view toward situated knowledge has crystallized in
psychological theory of science and the understanding of the practice of developing
scientific knowledge. The representational vision of the production of knowledge is
especially challenged today, as well as the notion of the researcher as an isolated
knower who stands outside the world, aiming to produce knowledge which repre-
sents the world correctly (Brinkmann 2012; Bang 2019, Chap. 6 in this volume).
Scholars realize that their research activities and practices in developing knowledge
do not occur in a social vacuum, but are rooted in the world, a world involving other
human beings as well as societal relations, culture, technology, politics, and nature.
They realize that through their research and production of knowledge, they not only
participate in the creation of the social world, but also view the social world in turn
as affecting their research practices, including their theories, concepts, and method-
ologies as well as their own thoughts, ideas, and conduct of everyday life (Jensen
1999; O’Doherty et al. 2019). With the words of Svend Brinkmann:
Knowing is not something that simply happens – as if we were able to magically represent
the world ‘as it is’ – but rather … an activity. Knowing is something people do, as part of
their lives … . We need to desacralize knowledge and admit that if knowing is a human
activity, it is always already situated somewhere – in some cultural, historical and social
situation. (2012: 32)
With an extensive body of theoretical as well as empirical work, Science Studies

substantiate this epistemological shift and argue for an understanding of scientific
research and the production of knowledge as an inherently worldly situated, embod-
ied, and socially and culturally constructed process (Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour and
Woolgar 1986; Hess 1997). As the historian of science Donna Haraway explains,
the “view from above”, the isolated, disconnected, and infinitive scientific vision is
no longer convincing, “only partial perspective promises objective vision” (1991:
190), and she argues for transcending the dichotomy between human subjectivity
and scientific objectivity.
The topography of subjectivity is multi-dimensional; so, therefore, is vision. The knowing
self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always
constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see
together without claiming to be another. Here is the promise of objectivity: a scientific
knower seeks the subject position not of identity, but of objectivity; that is, partial connec-
tion. (1991: 193)
Post-Generalizing Approaches
Drawing on the epistemological shift toward a situated, subjectivity-based concep-

tion of the production of knowledge, post-generalizing traditions of thought
emerged, which fundamentally question scientific generalization and conceive of it
as neither possible nor desirable. Within this perspective, the diversity and multi-
plicity of psychological phenomena and human life are seen in conflict with nomo-
thetic accounts aiming to identify general principles and laws. Scientific practices of
classification and categorization cannot acknowledge and facilitate the investigation
of the heterogeneity and contextuality of human experience. However, psychologi-
cal inquiry, which appreciates the unique and gives proper weight to the diversity of
human life in local conditions (including those in which numerical generalizations
are applied)—so the main argument—has to turn any generalization into a tentative
working hypothesis, not a conclusion. As Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba explain,
“Local conditions … make it impossible to generalize. If there is a ‘true’ generaliza-
tion, it is that there can be no generalization” (1985: 124).
The shift toward situated epistemologies and the inclusion of the subjectivity,
diversity, and multiplicity of human life consequently involves a move toward
understanding scientific inquiry as action. To a certain extent, the science-as-action
perspective can also lead to a post-generalizing perspective. Within this view, the
success of scientific research can be seen as based not on the universality and truth-
claims of knowledge, but on its social relevance and how it actually can do some-
thing, contributing to improve the world and changing it for the better, including
people’s everyday life. “The researcher,” Kenneth Gergen notes, is “an active agent
in fashioning the future” (2015: 305). “The aim of research,” he explains, is not “to
illuminate what is, but to create what is to become” (2015: 294), and he argues for
“research as a future forming practice – a practice in which social change is indeed
the primary goal” (2015: 292). The perfectly justified emphasis on science-as-action
can turn the question of generalization into a more marginal issue, pivotal is only
how scientific research and the production of knowledge matters as a part of form-
ing a viable future society.
However, it could be stated that any activity to form a viable future society
involves the question of the relationship between the particular and the general and
specific practices of generalization. In fact, the specific practices of generalization
are, in our perspective, a central question in the making of the world. In continuation
of such thinking, we cannot just reject generalization, but have to expand and re-
invent it. That is our vision with the concept of situated generalization.
Situated Generalization
Traditions of situated generalization (also commonly described as substantial [e.g.,

Davydov 1984], structural [e.g., Holzkamp 1983], analytical [e.g., Kvale and
Brinkmann 2009], or theoretical generalization [e.g., Demuth 2017]) build on a
qualitative stance; however, this does not mean that they dismiss quantitative meth-
odology but rather that they include it, if appropriate, in relation to the specific
content and questions of the investigation. Situated generalization systematically
includes human subjectivity, context, and change and focuses on the investigation of
the genesis, internal relations, and interconnections of phenomena in the construc-
tion of psychological knowledge. It attempts to achieve scientific objectivity and
general knowledge not at the cost of the subjective and by disarticulating the subjec-
tive dimension of human life, but rather through the generalization of the subjective.
It is correct that we cannot conclude from a single case to many or all cases.
However, because psychological phenomena are subjective givens, psychological
generalization is only possible from and through single cases, and we have to
expand the conception of generalization as quantitative conclusions toward a quali-
tative stance of elucidating the subjective in its worldly connections. As Valsiner
explains:
Not only is generalization from the single case possible – but it is the only possible base for
generalization. And even more – generalization necessarily happens on the basis of a single
instance – each and every new experience – within the life space of the single case….
While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we operate through general
principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments. Generalization is pos-
sible from any single instance of our encounters with the environment. Generality is in
singularity. (2015: 233)
The key to situated generalization is the notion that generality is in singularity. It

builds on the conception that individual human beings are social beings, living their
everyday life together with others in a shared world. Even if psychological pro-
cesses are subjective, particular and unique, they do not exhaust themselves in it, but
relate in their general dimensions to others and the objective world with its possi-
bilities and limits. That is why they integrate the fascinating doubleness of being
unique and general at the same time (Brock 2016; Dreier 2007; Salvatore and
Valsiner 2010). And that is why the practice of generalization matters, not only in
the construction of theory and knowledge, but also more fundamentally in people’s
everyday life, the making of the social and material world and the formation of
future society.
Because we cannot recognize immediately in the unique, subjective experiences
how they relate to the common world in its relevant dimensions, the investigation of
the internal relations and the processes of making meaning of ourselves in the world
is precisely the task of psychology as a science. Starting from specific questions,
problems, and concerns in everyday experience, situated generalization is in such an
approach rooted in human subjectivity. However, it is a world-oriented practice and
a continuous process of exploring human experience and action (and their
implications) in their relevant worldly connections as a way to analyze, work with,
and bring movement into the problems of human life.
The fundamental challenge of situated psychological generalization is how can
we achieve generalization, objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the
uniqueness, individuality, and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena?
This challenge forms the central question of this volume, and all chapters engage
with it. Looking back over the history of psychology, in the following paragraph, we
present major lines of thought dealing with this challenge and contributing to a
psychological conception of how to develop knowledge through the generalization
of the subjective. But first, we will take a look at why it is so difficult for scientific
psychology to include human subjectivity in its epistemological framework.
ubjectivity, Everyday Life, and Psychological Origins

S
of Situated Generalization
Psychology’s difficulty with systematically including the subjective dimension of

human life in its theoretical and methodological framework can be traced back to
some confusion in understanding the relationship between human subjectivity and
scientific objectivity. Major psychological traditions assume that human subjectiv-
ity represents bias. Both the subjectivity of the researcher and the subjectivity of
research participants seem to be incompatible with scientific objectivity—therefore,
we cannot consider it. However, such a scientific vision seems illusory. It denies the
reality that psychological phenomena are given subjectively. Instead of starting
from the content of research, the human subject and her/his psychological pro-
cesses, and asking about objectivity and generalization from that point to attain
scientific knowledge, the starting point is the apparently objective methodology, and
on this basis, the content of research is operationalized and “objectively” con-
structed (Teo 2015). Reversing the form of knowledge production in psychology in
this way demonstrates confusion between epistemic and ontological objectivity, a
kind of misunderstanding that the philosopher of mind, John Searle, has described
in detail. He explains:
We resist accepting subjectivity as a ground floor, irreducible phenomenon of nature
because, since the seventeenth century, we have come to believe that science must be objec-
tive. But this involves a pun on the notion of objectivity. We are confusing the epistemic
objectivity of the scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical sub-
ject matter … Since science aims at objectivity in the epistemic sense that we seek truths
that are not dependent on the particular point of view of this or that investigator, it has been
tempting to conclude that the reality investigated by science must be objective in the sense
of existing independently of the experiences in the human individual. But this last feature,
ontological objectivity, is not an essential trait of science. If science is supposed to give an
account of how the world works and if subjective states of consciousness are part of the
world, then we should seek an (epistemically) objective account of an (ontologically)
subjective reality, the reality of subjective states of consciousness. What I am arguing here
is that we can have an epistemically objective science of a domain that is ontologically
subjective. (2002: 11)
Psychological phenomena are simply subjective givens. On the one hand, they are
always socially mediated processes (through social, discursive, cultural and techno-
logical practice); on the other hand, they are always someone’s processes. They
exist from the point of view of a unique human being who experiences them, and in
this sense in a subjective, first-person mode (Schraube 2013; Teo 2017). The emo-
tion of love, for example, is ontologically subjective in the sense that it only exists
because it is experienced by individual subjects. Without the concrete experience of
love by an individual, there is no love. Love is an emotion, socially mediated in a
specific historical practice, but still we explore it through different individual sub-
jects’ different experiences with it—connected to their specific participation in
social practice. That is why the analysis of connections is so fundamental to gener-
alization (Højholt and Kousholt 2019). Accordingly, because the typical subject
matter of psychology is ontologically subjective reality the epistemic objectivity of

the scientific investigation has to be based on it. Therefore, the personally unique
subjectivity is objective in psychology, and we have to come to terms with it as the
foundation of our processes of generalization and of developing knowledge.
As already mentioned, the concept of subjectivity not only refers to human expe-
rience and the multiplicity of psychological processes but also to human action.
This includes the notion that humans do not just live their life in a world, but are
actively engaged in the making of the societal world on the basis of their experience
and action, which in turn is re-making themselves. To be able to grasp this internal
relation between subjectivity and the world in its concrete form, we work with the
concept everyday life. Everyday life, in our perspective, does not refer just to a par-
ticular context, such as everyday life in public spaces, but to all the various everyday
contexts and practices—family, educational institutions, organizations, workplaces,
digital spaces, etc.—in and through which psychological processes actually unfold
(Brinkmann 2012, 2015; Hodgetts et al. 2020; Højholt and Schraube 2016; Lave
2019; Lave and Wenger 1991; Lawrence et al. 2004). The concept does not exclude
broader cultural, societal and technological relations: on the contrary, everyday con-
texts are embedded in broader societal structures which are accessible through the
everyday, perhaps in their most concrete form. The concept conduct of everyday life
tries to grasp such an integrated understanding of subjectivity in everyday contexts
and practices (Dreier 2016; Holzkamp 2013b, 2016; Schraube and Højholt 2016).
Despite the difficulties of psychology to include the subjective dimension of
human life in its epistemological frame, psychologies of human subjectivity perme-
ate the history of psychology from the very beginning. Within these traditions, we
can find the endeavor to develop subjectivity-in-context-based conceptions of scien-
tific generalization, and from this body of work, we present in the following a few
important contributions to the formation of situated generalization.
In an historical review of the development of psychology of the nineteenth cen-
tury, William Stern, one of the most distinctive psychologists of the early twentieth
century, differentiated between two major directions: “subject-less psychology”
(subjektlose Psychologie) rooted in a natural science tradition and “subject-
psychology” (Subjektpsychologie) rooted in a concept of an active human subject,
integrating various dimensions of mental life in the individual person (1900: 431).
Although major parts of his body of work engage in experimental psychology in a
natural science tradition, he also knew about its limits. With the development of his
Critical Personalism, he puts the person in everyday life at the center of his think-
ing. His theory of early childhood and language development, for example, was
based on an investigation of his own everyday family life with three children and
included detailed research diaries covering more than 18 years. Stern can be seen as
the founding father of the psychological study of everyday life, influential already
during his time (e.g., for the research by Martha Muchow and her classical study of
children’s everyday life in the city [Muchow and Muchow 2015]). Generalization,
Stern argues, requires rethinking psychological research as “synthesis” and “to
trace the connections between the phenomena investigated” (1938: 15). As he
explains:
Since man and the human mind are in the midst of a world, mental phenomena are con-
nected with the most varied spheres, even with spheres outside mind; the body, fields of
external stimulation (light, sound, etc.), climate and weather, other people and human soci-
ety, civilization, historical circumstances, values. (Stern 1938: 15)
With his notion of persons as active subjects in the world, his concept of synthetic
investigation as well as his concern with moving psychological research out of the
laboratory into everyday life, in which psychological processes actually unfold, he
contributes with important steps toward a situated approach to developing psycho-
logical knowledge. Furthermore, with the concept of psychography (Stern 1911:
327), he suggests not sample-based but individual-based research practices which
actually take the uniqueness and diversity of human life seriously, and which can be
seen, as Valsiner underlines, as “the starting point to understand how generalization
occurs from single episodes of the lives of single persons” (2019: 14, Chap. 5 in this
volume).
Kurt Lewin with his Topological Psychology and the development of Action
Research continues in a subject-psychological direction. His concept of generaliza-
tion refers to human action and connects it systematically with the fabric of the
everyday world aiming to increase human agency. Building on a critique of an
Aristotelian mode of thought in which lawfulness remains limited to the recurrence
of the same event—an idea which underlies the practice of generalization in fre-
quencies—he argues in a Galilean mode of thought for rethinking the lawfulness
and intelligibility of psychological events. “Lawfulness,” he noted, is “inherent in
the nature of the psychic, and hence in all psychic processes, even those occurring
only once” (1931: 152). Every activity and single case, he recognized in his attempt
to rethink lawfulness, can be considered as lawful in the sense of meaningful,
because it resonates with the general structure of the social space in which it occurs
(Tateo 2013). Lewin worked with the question of the relationship between the par-
ticular and the general, the individual and lawful by taking the single case as a
starting point and exploring the dynamics of human life in the concrete situations
and social life-spaces in which psychological processes unfold and by examining
the concrete possibilities and limits of human experience and action within these
spaces. As Martin Dege explains, “Lewin lays the grounds to rethink generalization
as a tool in the hands of the research subjects to understand and shape their indi-
vidual life-space agentively” (2019, Chap. 3 in this volume).
One of the founders of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Lew Vygotzky,
expands the formation of situated generalization. The activity of generalization, we
can learn here, is based on language, general concepts, and theory. Understanding
the phenomena under investigation is not independent of the words we use, and all
words and concepts already embody a process of generalization. Language is the
medium of the human capacity to think, understand and act, and essential in any
process of developing scientific knowledge. As Vygotzky explains:
Everything described as a fact is already a theory … When we meet what is called a cow
and say: “This is a cow,” we add the act of thinking to the act of perception, bringing the
given perception under a general concept … I do not see that this is a cow, for this cannot
be seen. I see something big, black, moving, lowing, etc., and understand that this is a cow.
And this act is an act of classification, of assigning a singular phenomenon to the class of
similar phenomena, of systematizing the experience etc. Thus, language itself contains the
basis and possibilities for the scientific knowledge of a fact. The word is the germ of science
and in this sense we can say that in the beginning of science was the word. (1927/1997:
250f).
No empirical reality is ever perceived just as such; instead, it is always perceived

through the available language and theoretical concepts which, in turn, affect our
views of the world and, thus, our relations to it. In this sense, psychological research
does not just reflect (or represent) reality but virtually creates reality through the
way it conceptualizes it. Every form of empirical research requires explicit theory
and concepts, otherwise it would be lost in pure reproduction of norms, traditions,
and immediate understandings. Scientific generalization therefore includes a con-
tinuous work with the concepts and theoretical vocabulary employed in the investi-
gation (Dafermos 2019, Chap. 4 in this volume).
Furthermore, we can learn from Activity Theory that not only activity and lan-
guage but also the material objects produced through human activity involve pro-
cesses of generalization. As Aleksei N. Leontyev explains with the example
of an axe:
The use of an axe not only corresponds to the objectives of a practical action but at the same
time objectively reflects the properties of the object, i.e. the object of labour, onto which its
action is directed. The blow of an axe subjects the material that constitutes this object to an
unfailing test; it makes a practical analysis and generalisation of the objective properties of
objects according to a certain attribute objectivised in the tool itself. It is thus the tool that
is the carrier or vector of the first real conscious, rational abstraction, the first real con-
scious, rational generalisation. (2009: 191)
The produced material tools, objects, and technologies refer to human life. They
embody human experience and action, and in their making, the relationship between
the particular and the general and the processes of generalization are at stake. These
generalization processes are never complete thought-out; they are in a certain extent
always narrow, one-sided, ambivalent, and partial and therefore require continuous
critical deliberation and re-formation of materialized generalizations (Chimirri and
Schraube 2019).
Within the tradition of Cultural Psychology, Jaan Valsiner and colleagues con-
tribute to the vision of generalization as an ever-new process of signification and
meaning-making. The conception emphasizes the central role of generalization in
any scientific endeavor and fundamentally challenges any form of scientific gener-
alization which does not acknowledge that any event in the world exists in particu-
lars. Accordingly, psychological generalization is addressed and elaborated through
the uniqueness and concrete situation of human living and an exploration of the
various ways we create meaning in an ever-changing world of becoming. An essen-
tial dimension of such “intersubjective generalization” (Tateo 2016: 59) is seen in
the processes of reflexivity, distancing, and breaking away from the uniqueness,
subjectivity, and concrete reality of human life through abstraction, signs, models,
and analyses of the conditions under which the concrete reality of human life occurs.
As Zach Beckstead, Kenneth Cabell and Jaan Valsiner underline:
If phenomena are qualitatively organized by the whole system they are embedded within
(and interrelated with) then generalization should not be based on premises of separate
variables, but rather generalization should be based on the premises of generalizing under
what systemic conditions something occurs. (2009: 72)
However, the processes of reflexivity, distancing, and analyzing conditions do not

mean constructing abstract knowledge disconnected from the concrete reality of
human life; on the contrary, as Valsiner explains, “The key to generalization is the
distancing from the single instance while retaining a connection with it, for the
future” (2015: 241).
In his endeavor of developing Critical Psychology as a Science of Human
Subjectivity, Klaus Holzkamp contributes to the formation of situated generaliza-
tion with the concept of generalization of possibilities. The concept is based on a
systematically developed conception of human subjectivity and a theoretical and
methodological framework articulating in detail the complex societal mediation of
human life. Quite close to Lewin’s perspective, it connects societal structures and
everyday practices with the possibilities and constraints of human experience
and action.
Because human experience and agency refer to a shared social world, “my”
experience actually refers to the experiences of others. Through my personal experi-
ence, I am connected with other people in real terms, because our experiences relate
to the same world and its fabric of possibilities, constraints, problems, and necessi-
ties for action. In such an intersubjective context of experience, subjective experi-
ence becomes objectifiable and generalizable as the individual ways of participating,
dealing with and realizing societal possibilities and limits of experience and action.
As Klaus Holzkamp noted:
Generalization here means recognizing and accounting for those mediational levels and
aspects by which each particular case of subjective-intersubjective experience or situations
is understandable as a specific manifestation of a general case. (1991: 77–78)
Within this perspective, to generalize implies not to disarticulate or abstract away

subjectivity. On the contrary, its aim is to understand difference and uniqueness as
different forms of appearance of general connections and, based on an analysis of
the social conditions, to clarify the possibilities, constraints, and necessities for
action as a fundament for developing everyday practice.
Such historical origins and conceptual contributions move the production of psy-
chological knowledge from dissecting, isolating, and individualizing toward syn-
thetic, relational, and embodied research practices. They reveal that scientific
generalization does not mean just to follow fixed procedures but is an ongoing,
never-ending process determined by the subject matter and content of the investiga-
tion. With the presented psychological contributions, we want to indicate that situ-
ated generalization has a long history. However, its conception is still at its early
days and cannot build on a fine-tuned theoretical and methodological framework.
Nevertheless, over the past few decades, a substantial body of work emerged, and in
this volume, we present some major contributions from distinctive scholars within
the field. The aim of the book is (1) to introduce this emerging body of work and to
demonstrate how it could contribute to a substantial and necessary renewal of the

psychological production of theory and knowledge (2) to present in detail the prac-
tice of situated generalization, its central principles, theoretical concepts, method-
ologies, analytical strategies, and empirical work as well as historical lines of
thought it can build on.
he Practice of Situated Generalization: Outline

T
and Summary of Chapters
The chapters in this collection are structured according to three sections. The first
section, Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living, features chapters that
provide a vision for situated generalization that build on subjectivity and context in
continuous movement, and an integrated understanding of human life in a social,
cultural, and material world. In this context, Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt (Chap.
2) identify generalization as a subjective process in praxis in which the way praxis
is coordinated, the things persons deal with in it, and the generalizations unfold
together. Generalizations are understood as subjective and social at the same time.
They are about common causes in praxis, and both are concrete as well as contradic-
tory. Moreover, participants have different perspectives on the common causes,
which stem from the way they participate in them. Generalizations, they argue,
relate to concrete conditions in praxis, and as a consequence, our generalizations
appear varied in particular ways according to the actual conditions. This theoretical
exposition is elucidated using examples from empirical research on school life.
In Chap. 3, Martin Dege presents Kurt Lewin and his concept of generalization.
Lewin is one of the most well-known psychologists. He is the founder of topologi-
cal psychology, closely related to the Gestalt psychologists, and the originator of
action research. Less well-known is the extent to which he saw a political agenda
connected to his work, and little light has been shed on his reflections in the philoso-
phy of science. Dege attempts to bring both these valuable aspects of Lewin’s body
of work into the discussion. From there, he shows how Kurt Lewin’s approach can
contribute to an alternative concept of generalization in psychology and the social
sciences.
In Chap. 4, Manolis Dafermakis presents a dialectical understanding of general-
ization based on a dialogue between Vygotsky and Davydov. Questioning formal
accounts of generalization, a dialectical perspective highlights the concrete,
dynamic, historical connection between the general and the particular. Dafermakis
shows how a dialogue between Vygotsky and Davydov, who were both adherents of
the dialectal tradition in psychology, can provide important insights for re-
conceptualizing generalization. A dialogue on dialectical understanding of general-
ization and its relation to changing societal practices is offered as a way to promote
active, transformative subjectivity.
In Chap. 5, Jaan Valsiner undertakes an intellectual journey to the realm of gen-

eralization in irreversible time. The coverage leads him to a rather paradoxical con-
clusion: in order to create any knowledge, the knowledge maker has to act on the
basis of unique, transient phenomena that occur in the flow of irreversible time. To
accomplish the making of general knowledge, the mundane flow of irreversible time
needs to be transcended. This is only possible through semiotic mediation—
abstracting from experience through signs—arriving at generalized knowledge that
is freed from the confines of time. The process by which this is achieved is abduc-
tion, re-constructing explanations in retrospect, across the border of the present, into
the vanished past. Furthermore, Valsiner argues, the generalized knowledge leads to
very concrete anticipatory actions in practice, thus testing its adequacy again at the
level of unique events. We live on and through personally unique life courses which
are general for all human lives in their basic organization.
Part 2 of the book, Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological
Generalization, provides a series of theoretical and empirical works, which high-
lights the ethical and esthetical dimension of psychological research practice and
the production of scientific knowledge. In opening this section, Jytte Bang (Chap.
6) discusses the worldliness of the general and why concepts matter ethically.
Empiricist ideas have influenced classical psychology’s view of the general. Here,
the general appears as a mind-product, an outcome of individuals’ generalizing
mind activities. However, such a view is problematic in terms of presupposing a
dichotomy between the individual and the world, leaving the dynamic and historical
character of the individual–environment relationship unexplored. In contrast to such
a representationalist approach, Bang argues, drawing on the body of work of Jakob
von Uexküll, Niels Engelsted, and Aleksej N. Leontjev, for a worldly conception of
the general. Furthermore, she explains that it is not solely of theoretical interest how
psychology conceives the general. Conceptions have ethical implications, which
means that, with regard to its basic concepts, psychology does not stand on any
neutral ethical ground. Finally, she problematizes the ethical implications of a rep-
resentationalist approach to the general.
In Chap. 7, Niklas A. Chimirri presents a notion of generalizing conducted
together with children. Children’s generalization practices and knowledges, he
argues, are granted too little societal, pedagogical, and scientific significance: they
remain surrounded by an aura of defectiveness when contrasted with adult knowl-
edges. As a result, the question of what there is to learn of children about the world
and its doings, including of what there is to learn of each and every unique child
about their respective perspectives on everyday life, in order to purposefully and
sustainably develop society together across generations, is too easily rendered
oblique or even superfluous. In response to this shortcoming, he highlights how
researchers and other adults can learn from children for the purpose of developing
more democratic knowledge creation processes in pedagogical institutions, as well
as in other arenas of everyday life. For enabling the systematic inclusion of chil-
dren’s knowledges into generalization processes, he builds on dialectical praxis
psychologies and suggests the praxis-philosophical concept of teleogenetic collabo-

ration. Finally, he suggests to understand academic research and generalizing as
part of everyday life, rather than as aiming for the study of other people’s everyday
life, and argues that its generalizations should become more immediately accessible
and negotiable for everyone irrespective of age.
In Chap. 8, Luca Tateo examines what psychological generalization can learn
from art, in particular from Michelangelo da Caravaggio’s paintings. Tateo presents
a discussion of Caravaggio’s naturalistic style, with respect to the process of gener-
alization in the painting The Seven Works of Mercy, trying to identify the conceptual
elements that make this work a specimen of the human condition of suffering and
relieving. From this analysis, he argues that the process of generalization is neither
an inductive-based extension nor the formulation of a context-independent and
abstract list of traits. The process of generalization starts from experiencing and,
through a zone of potential estrangement, it must be able to return to experience
improving our understanding of it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paint-
ings, we must be able to create specimen by abductively distancing from the single
case and be able to find back the single case using the specimen to understand.
In Chap. 9, Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot trace
how the general is reproduced through the local based on empirical research on
poverty. They identify three interrelated forms of generalization, which invoke
issues around how macro-level structures and intergroup relations are reproduced
through micro-level situations. First, theoretical generalization constitutes our
efforts to enlarge the significance of small-scale exemplars through research by
relating local insights into the broader body of academic knowledge. Second, refer-
ential generalization involves relating everyday artifacts produced by our research
participants to the broader social context and intergroup relations at play. Third,
empathetic generalization involves promoting witnessing, recognition and empathy
toward people experiencing poverty by people who are not living in poverty. These
three forms or elements of generalization, they show, are central to the development
of action strategies to address issues of poverty.
Part 3 of the book, Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization, collects
chapters that articulate how generalization and the production of psychological
knowledge involves social transformation and change and which present analytical
strategies of situated generalization. Ole Dreier (Chap. 10) explores generalization
in situated practice and addresses basic issues about generalization from the per-
spective of critical psychology. He frames his argumentation by a critical analysis
of the classical psychological notion of generalization because psychologists are
educated in this notion and constantly confronted with it in the research literature
and in discussions, reviews, and evaluations of their work. This complicates the
development of an alternative notion of generalization which does not, implicitly or
explicitly, take over key features of the mainstream notion. Dreier’s aim is to present
such an alternative conception of generalization based on the tradition of critical
psychology and by focusing on its key characteristics, accomplishments, issues, and
revisions. Human beings are theorized within this tradition of thought, as partici-
pants in structurally arranged, situated social practices. Their psychological pro-
cesses unfold in, and hang together with, their participation and conduct of everyday
life in such social practices. So, their psychological processes are always affected
by being directed at and part of situated nexuses in subjects’ lives in social practices.
Therefore, to generalize means to generalize about subjects’ psychological func-
tioning in situated nexuses. But, while it is necessary to establish generalizations in
capturing concrete nexuses, it cannot be the sole purpose of research. It is also
important to capture how general and particular aspects hang together dynamically
in nexuses and how their situated composition affect the qualities and status of the
aspect or problem we study. Case studies offer unique possibilities for accomplish-
ing this which Dreier briefly illustrated by an example. Finally, he argues that grasp-
ing phenomena and problems in situated nexuses of social practice is necessary in
basic theorizing as well as in knowledge-based expertise and professional interven-
tions in subjects’ problems in the nexuses of their everyday lives.
In Chap. 11, Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck engage in the development
of situated generalization through the creation of a prototypical model of dialogical
teaching practiced at a PhD course about identity formation, self-representation,
and self-exposure. A prototype is a singular practice (with its objects, premises,
subject-positions, conditions, and structures) modeled as relevant to a specific field
of practice. The idea of the prototype as situated generalization is philosophically
rooted in an epistemology of practice, as read through critical psychology as well as
social practice theory. Nissen and Mørck propose dialogical teaching by recounting
how that was performed, articulated, and reflected at the PhD course by students,
teachers, and co-researchers as different from traditional university teaching. This is
unfolded in several aspects: (a) teaching is resituated as relevant to sociocultural
change in which all participants are equally involved; (b) texts are deconstructed as
relevant to that process of change; (c) participants—including Frigga Haug and
Emily Martin who provided important inspiration—are multi-positioned as the par-
ticipants of the course meet on neutral ground and in movement; (d) together, the
participants make artifacts (including this chapter) with which they represent and
recognize themselves as individuals and as collective; (e) this implies co-creating
ethics of care, overcoming the separation and externality of ethics from practice.
In Chap. 12, Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube focus on the methodology
of situated generalization, including the importance of analyzing social and mate-
rial structures. Based on a presentation of fundamental characteristics of psycho-
logical processes including its subjective, contextual, and transient dimensions,
they argue for a notion of psychological generalization which does not abstract
away human subjectivity and difference but understands it as different manifesta-
tions of the same relationship. Based on such an embodied, subjectivity-in-every-
day-life approach to the production of knowledge, they ask how generalization in
psychological research practice can be done, and they present a variety of basic
analytical strategies of situated generalization including Zooming In to Zoom Out
and Zooming Out to Zoom In.
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Part I
Generalization and the Practice of
Everyday Living
Chapter 2
Subjectivity, Conflictuality,
and Generalization in Social Praxis
Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt
“I thought you were against that sort of thinking!” was a reaction we got while we
were writing about generalization. Through such exchanges, we realized that in
everyday conversation when somebody says “now you are generalizing,” it implies
that one is simplifying the matter at hand, overlooking important aspects of it, and
sometimes even obliterating them. Actually, our friend was right, we question gen-
eralizations of that character.
On the other hand, simplifying can be necessary, since not all aspects of a situa-
tion are important for our purpose in question. We must be able to identify what is
meaningful in a certain historical social practice. To generalize also means that we
must be able to identify what is important for our purpose, and what is not.
To state, on the one hand, that generalizations can be simplifications and may be
understood as holding good for too much, as overgeneralization, and that on the
other we need simplifications and something which holds under these conditions,
offers a clue to our approach to this issue. We want to embed the analysis of gener-
alization in the “historical actualities of people’s doings and relations” (Smith 2005:
56), or as Dreier states regarding his notion of nexus: “A theory meant to capture
linked aspects in a changing social practice must combine generality with change”
(2008: 298, compare Lave 2019). Our critique of generalization as overgeneraliza-
tion points to the theoretical challenge we will address: instead of searching for
scientific methods to verify that whatever studied is universally general, is wide-
spread, counts for everybody in this category, and so on, we need to build on differ-
ences, perspectives, connections, and concrete situations relevant for our purpose.
In this chapter, we seek to demonstrate how we understand the general through
differences, variations, and changes to historical causes and common problems in
E. Axel (*) · C. Højholt

e-mail: eaxel@ruc.dk; charh@ruc.dk

24 E. Axel and C. Højholt
social praxis. We argue that a generalization is in a social praxis (Juul Jensen 1999).
We posit that in order to live in our everyday life, we constantly generalize with all
the strengths and weaknesses of the process. We further posit that scientific gener-
alization is a specific form of everyday generalization that is developed under spe-
cific conditions, never final. In the chapter, we will scrutinize generalization as an
everyday matter from which we can learn about the conditions for scientific gener-
alization and about how we may work with these in relation to research.
As a consequence, our approach blurs the distinction between theory and praxis.
People’s doings and relations are rife with insights, and we can find theories devel-
oped on these. They have been developed more or less systematically in social
praxis. Researchers develop scientific theories on the basis of what appears reason-
able to them, which includes their everyday praxis just like other people’s, as well
as their scientific empirical work and that of others.
Whether a generalization comes to us immediately or slowly over an extended
period of time, it is always a process, and sometimes we find ourselves generalizing
in ways we never did before. Our conceptual approach to generalization must there-
fore assist us in understanding how we make new generalizations and how we learn
in concrete, changing practices. In order to understand how we generalize, we must
focus on the historical conditions of the process. For instance, we generalize about
schooling by taking part in its changing social practice and its historical conditions,
and by investigating how the practice of the school developed before we took part.
So, our understanding of generalization must enable us to grasp such connection
practice, conditions, and history.
According to our approach to generalization situated in historical and everyday
relations, we must begin our presentation by examining how we as human beings
generalize. To do this, we will use examples from everyday school life. We shall
connect generalization to the concrete everyday aspects of human life and analyze
and discuss generalization as tied to people’s doings and relations. This requires
that we study generalization as a personal phenomenon. Drawing on our back-
ground in critical psychology, we will discuss the subjective aspects of our actions
in praxis (Schraube and Osterkamp 2013; Dreier 2008; Axel 2009; Schraube
2015). These subjective aspects shape, and are thereby shaped by, the way we act
and participate in praxis: we must turn things over in praxis in order to generalize
while we act—we must deliberate in order to act in a better way. This means that
generalization has critical elements. On the basis of situating generalization every
day, we shall suggest how an understanding of scientific generalization can be
developed. As a consequence, we shall argue that research must be critical and
oriented toward its own development and focus, its institutions, theories, methods,
and field of study. We will show how in spite of the experienced and systematic
development, scientific generalizations are beset by the same problems as every-
day generalizations, namely for example oversimplification and overgeneraliza-
tion. We shall argue that these problems can be addressed by understanding
scientific generalizations as continuous processes, as a praxis involving relevant,
historical, and critical aspects. It is thus the critical approach open to development
which ensures whether a generalization is anchored in the problems of concrete
2 Subjectivity, Conflictuality, and Generalization in Social Praxis 25
social praxis and encompasses relevant aspects for the combined and relevant
efforts of the different participants. For example, when we generalize in relation to
a problem in a school, we must critically take into account the concrete social
praxis around the school and historical conditions relevant to the problem. If the
generalization of the problem is open to different perspectives in these practices,
and to the context of the school, the relevance of the research to school life will
help us to avoid simplifications and overgeneralizations.
Generalization as Necessary in Everyday Praxis
To understand subjective aspects of human action, we must take point of departure

in the concrete and varied conditions that human beings move in and thereby move.
The acting persons must identify what is relevant and meaningful for them here and
now and in a broader perspective. The concrete conditions vary from location to
location and from one point in time to another. This means that they are never iden-
tical. All the time, we must be able to identify their general implications for our
praxis. We move in concrete circumstances where the general significance of things
is not given in an identical way at any one time. Based on our experience, we must
make the general appear to ourselves in the concrete particularities, in other words
we must generalize. In trying to understand a new situation, our experiences may
help our search for relevant connections. When, for instance, a teacher meets a new
class, she cannot know how the new children will collaborate, but due to experi-
ences with similar situations she might, without directly thinking about the earlier
situations, investigate how, for instance, restlessness in the class is connected to
insecurities in the pupils’ social relations. She has to take into account that the situ-
ation is new, but her experience may help her to investigate and generalize what
might be relevant for understanding this specific situation.
The way we handle the general depends on the particular conditions, we cannot
separate our varied way of handling the general from the conditions in which we
must act: the general is concrete, appears in different particular ways, and therefore
it cannot be something beyond subjective experiences. This does not mean that the
general is only about the here and now. The fact that we are able to identify the
general implications of actual conditions means that we can draw on previous inci-
dents we have participated in or heard of and that we can get an idea of what hap-
pens here or similar places somewhere else and anticipate the consequences. In our
experience, we connect the past, present, and future.
We have thereby characterized a way to approach the subjective aspects of our
actions. Since we must identify the concrete, general implications which are rele-
vant to us, we explore our conditions. Since conditions vary depending on the time
and location, since we cannot separate the general from the conditions in which it
appears, and since the conditions and the general influence each other dialectically,
the general appears in a particular way. In other words, a general aspect does not
appear in an identical way each time we generalize in different locations. The
s ubjective aspects of our action can therefore be seen as related to how we identify
what is relevant by exploring concrete conditions aware of what is going on, what
we want to achieve, and aware of the fact that more is going on, than we are aware of.
When we generalize, we recognize what is important for our purpose and what
is not, and we mediate the past, present, and the future, here and there in meaningful
ways. In moving praxis, we assume that our generalizations will provide stability.
However, since generalization is made on the run in concrete praxis with many con-
nections, its stability is not guaranteed, so we must constantly be prepared to put it
on trial. In Dewey’s (1929/1958: 57) words, the stability of generalization is pre-
carious, perilous, and unsettled. This openness is in contrast to the character of
generalization simplifying the matter at hand, overlooking important aspects of it
that we criticized in the beginning of the chapter and will return to later.
Praxis as Common Causes
Seen from this perspective, human beings are entangled in praxis, and generaliza-
tions are in the relations between human beings and the praxis in which they partici-
pate. Since we generalize on the basis of what is relevant for our participation, the
general is an aspect of our subjective relations in a given situation. We learn about
things acting with each other. On the other hand, our insights depend on the ways in
which each of us participates and has possibilities for it. Even though generaliza-
tions come out of social praxis, any generalization occurs from a person’s subjective
participation in praxis.
Above, we have offered a preliminary account of the relation between praxis and
generalization. Even though generalization mediates other times other places here,
it is in praxis, not brought to it, nor over it, nor taken out of it (Dreier 2019). Because
we are human beings, and because we share similar locations in praxis with similar
experiences and have arranged our conditions in common ways, we can share each
other’s experiences and understandings. As a consequence, our use of the term
“general” points to something changeable that encompasses differences and varia-
tions. For instance the word “family” alludes to something we understand in com-
mon even though particular families vary over time and across the world according
to relations and arrangements. Accordingly, because we generalize in historical con-
crete praxis where our activities are distributed, our generalizations are neither uni-
versal nor a-contextual. Rather, they are historical, social, subjective, and contextual.
Therefore, we generalize differently according to our experiences in praxis.
To grasp the differences in our generalizations that arise due to our different
experiences, we must explicate a concept of praxis. Historically, praxis is connected
with how well an activity is performed with respect to its ethical and political
aspects (Bernstein 1971). Later this understanding was included in the tradition of
historical materialism (Marx and Engels 1845/1969), which is about how human
beings produce and distribute their means of existence and thereby their social con-
ditions and themselves. We take point of departure in this understanding. Praxis is
thereby a general term about human productive social activity which is steeped in
ethical and political aspects due to the distribution of the means of existence. The
term praxis incorporates the comprehensive distributions in human activity. The
term practice comprises specific activities, like teaching and studying, and the
resources they require, while praxis enables us to see how the distribution of the
specific activities is embedded in the more extensive activities of praxis.
In their historical social praxis, people arrange themselves around specific com-
mon causes such as schools, companies, families, construction projects, or political
activities of our time. Each common cause is concrete and consists of compound
practices or things. In schools, for example, children are kept off the streets, and
they find friends in relation to their school life; they are put there in order to learn
and develop, professionals teach them and make arrangements around their social
life, and the professionals cooperate with public administration, other professionals,
and parents. When we work with a common cause, we cannot work with one aspect
in isolation, we must work with the compound aspects of the common cause. All the
same, we strive to simplify matters by attempting to keep things apart. With laws
and privileges, we seek to stabilize the separations of the aspects. Nevertheless,
those involved must acknowledge that they are entangled in the compound aspects
of the common cause to make things work. Today, different kinds of professional-
ism and expertise are separated, e.g., through education, examinations, and rules of
access. In schools, expertise related to teaching is differentiated from social work or
pedagogical strategies aimed at children’s general development. As professionals in
school, teachers are there to teach children. But they cannot separate their teaching
from other activities at school. Teachers have to relate to the social life of children
and, in a way, to all aspects of children’s lives. And today in Denmark we see how
pedagogues increasingly become part of the school: they are supposed to take care
of the children’s social life, and neither can they separate their pedagogical work
with the children’s social life from other activities at school. Thus, the distribution
of contributions and responsibilities in teaching becomes divided and connected in
new ways which must be coordinated in order to make things work. To sum up, we
want to illustrate how different groups of professionals make different contributions
to the same cause and that every contribution blend with other ones.
Contradictions in the Common Causes of Praxis
The compound aspects of a common cause mostly do not fit together; they contain
incompatibilities, and that is why we might term them contradictions. Contradiction
is a concept with a long tradition in philosophy, and contradictions have been under-
stood in many different ways. In some ways of thinking contradictions have been
related to the development of things or meanings. This understanding of develop-
ment is termed dialectics. In some traditions, researchers have sought to establish a
fixed method for analyzing development: the first thing to do is to find the thesis,
i.e., the present thing; then its antithesis (or its negation or contradiction), i.e., the
un-present thing; and lastly the synthesis of the positive and negative theses, i.e., its
idea, thus establishing how the idea of the thing appeared or developed. However,
this fixed procedure has rightfully been rejected for being schematic, a-contextual,
and practically a mere play on words. Other understandings are more situated.
The philosopher Charles Taylor writes about Hegel, who developed a historical
notion of contradictions and dialectics:
His aim is simply to follow the movement of his object of study… . If the argument follows
a dialectical movement, then this must be in the things themselves, not just in the way we
reason about them. (1975: 129)
The quote by Taylor suggests that Hegel’s historical understanding of dialectics

was a world view—we are part of the world moved by contradictions. Furthermore,
dialectics to Hegel implies that a method cannot be described as an abstract proce-
dure: it must be demonstrated concretely. These points were also fundamental
assumptions in Marx’ thinking, where contradictions open up the possibility of
investigating how apparently irreconcilable aspects of social life meet, work
together, and move it in specific directions. This approach has had a great impact on
the human sciences, sociology, anthropology, and psychology (Harvey 1996; Ingold
2000; Lave and Wenger 1991; Vygotsky 1978; Leont’ev 1978; Holzkamp 2013),
while dialectics is much rarer in the natural sciences (Havemann 1966; Levins and
Lewontin 1985). We will limit ourselves to unfolding the implications of such con-
tradictions for the understanding of the concept of “common cause.” Bertell
Ollman’s assumption of contradictions is based on Marx’ work and is concrete and
historical. We will therefore explicate it in more detail here.
Ollman states that contradiction and other confusing dialectical concepts serve to
avoid static, partial, and one-sided understandings (2003: 4). His concept of contra-
diction is related to the concept of internal social relations, which we must identify
first. To embrace the pluralities and diversities in praxis, Ollman advocates a con-
crete understanding of it, writing that the interconnection of things includes their
ties to their own preconditions and future possibilities as well as what is affecting
them and being affected by them (2003: 4). When we investigate schools, we must
embrace their history, what goes on in them, what we are trying to turn them into,
and what they affect and are affected by.
To us there is a problem with Ollman’s concept of social internal relations. The
fact that the way these relations are identified invites us to define their nature in
structural terms without necessarily thinking of their relevance in and for praxis. To
state that a school is constituted by social relations might, for example, open up for
understanding the teacher–pupil relation as objectified in laws, texts, and objects of
the school, and persons who enter it are subjectified. However, with the notion of
common cause, we hope to open up for an understanding of the human subjects in
praxis and of how they participate and coordinate their activities on the basis of their
compound common causes. Thereby our identification of the cause depends on
what is to be achieved, and the identification is tied to the processes in the cause.
History results from the processes in praxis, in which participants contribute and
their contributions push each other along. Based on the particular conditions in
praxis, we may develop a common cause. For example, we may open or close a
school (e.g., when the number of children in that part of town changes), we may be
concerned about schools and discuss it in the media, we may write about how it
could be changed, we may as children feel forced to participate in it and participate
in it for different reasons: e.g., to meet friends, to try to protect ourselves from risks
through it, e.g., to get a job based on one’s exam papers when grown up; or by
avoiding stress by attending schools without grades; we may as parents see our
children as safer in school than on the streets; we may, as teachers, change school
because we are critical of injustices. But, in whatever way, we all participate in com-
mon causes, and to achieve things in the common causes, we are dependent on one
another in them, and our experiences and knowing come through our participation
in them. As human beings, then, we are social beings.
Our insight into internal social relations—or, as we suggest, common causes—
comes from their differences, their cracks, or their incompatibilities, which we term
contradictions. In this way, contradictions are not seen as isolated incompatible ele-
ments. They are aspects of the common cause which force us to adapt to the incom-
patibilities, arrange, or transform them. The common cause is seen as the unit which
makes the contradictions dependent on each other (Ollman 2003: 17), and this
forces us to rework them to make things work. Ollman’s concept of internal social
relations and our concept of common cause are ways of stressing that contradictions
are bound together in a many-sided cause—for instance, a school, a house, or
a family.
Examples of Contradictions in School Life
By seeing the common cause not simply as compound but contradictory, we open
up the possibility of understanding the aspects of its processual nature. We can
move from understanding change as surprising, and apparently coming out of
nowhere, to understanding how people struggle with incompatibilities in their com-
mon causes. Their struggle with incompatibilities helps us to get a sense of possible
directions in which things might develop in praxis. Some directions are intended by
the participants; others are unintended but develop due to overlooked aspects of the
contradictions. We will now draw on some examples to clarify this.
While being taught, children must attend to how teachers instruct them and to
what they want from them. To relieve children from this strict focus, they are
allowed regular breaks in which they mingle with one another and start or stop com-
mon causes like play, sports, and gaming and invite some into the common activity.
Among other things, teaching requires that children focus for a given time on spe-
cific issues that do not always engage them. Between this prolonged focus on teach-
ing and the vivid flexibility of the children’s social life, we find contradictory aspects
that are still dependent on one another. Children in schools relate to the teaching
together and cooperate in their learning processes, but they may still be disturbed by
conflicts in their social relations at the expense of attention to teachings in the
c lassroom. Sometimes they are able to combine teaching with their social life in a
productive way, but sometimes they get stuck in conflicts about this (Højholt 2016;
Højholt and Schwartz 2018; Højholt and Kousholt, 2019b).
We have stated that teachers cannot separate their teaching from the social life of
children, that the two are inseparable, and that we may find possible directions for
developing the common cause of school life in the tensions between teaching the
children and their social awareness in the classroom. All the same, in political dis-
cussions about the school, some strive to keep aspects apart that are tied together in
the everyday life of school practice.
We will unfold the content of this statement using an example about different
perspectives on the outcome of a school reform ushering in “longer school days.”
We use this example to illustrate how we work with generalization by anchoring the
understanding of a specific situation in its historical praxis. The example stems from
the research project, Conflicts about Children’s School Life, funded by the Danish
Council for Independent Research and organized in connected subprojects with a
joint focus on Children’s Inclusion in School Investigated as Conflictual
Cooperation, which study the same schools from different perspectives: those of the
children, as well as their parents, teachers, pedagogues, psychologists, officials, and
school executives (Højholt and Kousholt 2018, 2019b). As a part of this project, the
researchers regularly met and talked with the professionals at the involved schools.
In a situation where everybody presented their current issues, a teacher of one ninth
grade class presented the following example. The teacher explicated the process, as
well as its contradictions, conflicts, and personal dilemmas. At the meeting the
teachers and the researchers discussed how conflicts between pupils can be con-
nected to political conflicts over the school, and how pupils’ provoking engagement
in their school life can be regarded as contradicting the positive publicity of a school.
A radio channel had interviewed some eighth graders, and the pupils had com-
mented positively on the longer school days. Part of the interview was uploaded on
Facebook, and some of the ninth graders felt provoked and contradicted the inter-
view. Their teacher explained at the above-mentioned meeting that she was also
provoked by the one-sidedness of the history and remarked that she understood her
pupils’ reaction since she knew that they had a much tougher timetable. They had
school days running from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with theoretical teaching—and she was
together with in the afternoon hours and had the feeling that this was too much for
them. Still, she found that the way they had expressed themselves was problematic,
and she talked to them about how to deal with disagreements and with the media. As
their teacher, she wanted to show her pupils that she understood their perspectives,
and she also wanted to use the episode as an occasion for them to learn about how
to address different perspectives and exchange standpoints in the media.
Professionals from the radio channel visited the class and taught them about how to
engage with the media and behave on the Internet, and the teacher was satisfied
with this.
Still, later, the head of the school made it clear to her that the pupils should not
talk in a negative way about school problems. The teacher had the feeling that the
head of the school was happy about the positive publicity from the eighth graders,
but she stated that one school could not solve the problem of the longer school days.
At the research meeting in question, this example was the focus of an exchange
about dilemmas between new demands to “brand schools” to ensure that they com-
pared favorably with other schools, and the need to organize and teach about
exchanges of perspectives in a democratic way. Another teacher talked about edu-
cating for citizenship, and the discussion turned to how the school as a democratic
welfare institution today has to compete on the basis of its success measured through
data collected about, e.g., grades, absence, and well-being—and that this threatens
the ideals of democracy, inclusion, and citizenship. During the discussion, the
teachers claimed that it was bad for democracy if teachers and students could not
talk openly about problems in their everyday lives, asking “are we not allowed to
have problems”?
We see here that a communicative contradiction between two groups of pupils
opened up a fundamental contradiction in praxis about incompatible ways of relat-
ing to school problems. This reveals various possible directions for development in
praxis. One approach is based on the evidence of good teaching from grading and
testing; it involves instruction and training, and it is controlled by the curriculum,
supported by the school administration and the law, and includes branding in an
effort to attract pupils from other schools (Busch-Jensen 2018; Røn Larsen 2019).
Another approach takes up current problems, uses them to teach the curriculum, and
thereby opens up for democratic perspectives and for the pupils’ voices. The teach-
ers take this standpoint since they take their point of departure in the need to teach
and to talk openly about problems in their own and the pupils’ everyday lives. The
teachers have to handle these two incompatible ways of teaching, and thereby
develop their teaching practice—not in order to reach a harmonious compromise
but as a way of dealing with the conflicts in question.
Like the teachers, as researchers we find that we must accept the concrete con-
flictual content of common causes, and we must recognize that children handle
these through subjective perspectives and with priorities. We have to understand
concretely how children are obliged to juggle the contradictory conditions of the
teaching with their social relations. Analyzing such connections and contradictory
conditions is part of the generalizing processes.
Our generalizations must be concrete to be relevant in this regard, as this enables
us to follow a dialectical movement. The concrete contradictions in praxis enable us
to understand the content of the conflicts and how they are connected to political
questions, and in this way the conflicts offer possibilities. Finding our way relates to
the priorities we may identify when exploring the subjective meanings of the con-
tradictions. We cannot simply continue doing what we always do; we cannot solve
the contradiction as a problem with a solution. Rather, we must understand what
makes the contradictions incompatible, how they blend together when they are not
attended to, and how we should make them work together in the midst of a con-
stantly moving praxis, which is not solving them. Still, sometimes it is possible to
develop the conditions, and thereby the contradictions, fundamentally. We have
tried to illustrate that the process of generalizing elucidates how a conflict connects
to contradictions and different conditions for working with these. The contradiction
between teaching and the children’s activities in their social life is central in devel-
oping pedagogical strategies and the organization of educational practice.
Abstracting as Focusing in Context
Until now, we have stated that generalizing must be understood as an aspect of

how participants relate subjectively to common causes in praxis. As a historical
relation between person and praxis, generalizing is a concrete simplification of
contradictory praxis that involves identifying what is personally relevant in a com-
mon endeavor. In this way, generalization anchors a conflict in its historical con-
nections and is an analysis of how historical changes and political debates form the
conditions for the interplay and discussions among the participants and the possible
development of their praxis. We have unfolded the concept of praxis, its common
causes, and contradictions, to grasp how we as human beings generalize in our
different ways of handling, moving, and developing praxis and ourselves. As men-
tioned earlier, there are weaknesses and strengths in generalizing being concrete-
simplifications. Based on the above discussion, it is now possible to qualify this
statement conceptually.
We will qualify the statement about generalization by taking our point of depar-
ture in Ollman’s discussion of focusing as abstraction, the idea being that focusing
is selective with more or less context. Since we do not know everything in a given
situation, our selective focusing is tentative. We must select what we find as relevant
aspects in order to find a proper way to handle the cause. Commonly, to focus means
to pinpoint something and stick to it, but there is a double meaning in the word “to
focus.” The term has a dialectical content. Originally, focus meant domestic hearth,
the place from where light and heat spread out, lighting, and warming the room.
This meaning is retained when we talk about the focus of an earthquake from where
energy spreads out and damages things. Focus can substitute the term focal point
and now means the point where light or energy is collected, concentrated, and inten-
sified. From this last meaning of the term derives the idea of being in focus, which
is the point where a thing must be located in order to give a precise picture behind
the lens of a camera. The fact that focusing can mean concentrating as well as
spreading out shows us that the two can be confounded—or better understood as
one—and later on we will present an example of this. Now, Ollman emphasizes that
we are engaged in the process of abstraction when we focus on, give special atten-
tion to, isolate, or simply notice something inside the field of investigation, whether
we sense it or whether we remember, dream about, hope, fear, plan, or conceptual-
ize it (2015: 15). Again, there is a double meaning in the term abstraction here. The
practical meaning of abstracting refers to, e.g., removing salt from water. In some
psychological traditions of thought, the theoretical meaning of abstraction is derived
from its practical meaning: to abstract a concept is to separate it from irrelevancies
so that it stands out well defined, homogenized, and purified. Here “well defined”
means that the boundaries of the concept are marked out clearly—sometimes this
purifying sense of abstraction is even wrongly taken to mean the same as general-
ization. When we argue that all of us must abstract even when we focus, we under-
stand the process of abstraction more concretely as tied to focusing with others—from
different perspectives—in context: when we focus we select or abstract what we are
concentrating on and spread out our attention to what we perceive as relevant to a
problem in a field. By combining the concepts of abstraction and focus, we see that
Ollman insists on understanding abstraction as our way of selecting something in a
situation but not everything, and with the term focus, he underlines that the selected
focus is formed by its context and forms it. We see that generalization at the same
time is abstracting and focusing, the former simplifying, and the latter concentrating
and dispersing our undertaking in context. We thus simultaneously abstract/simplify
and concretize. In this way, generalization is a dialectical process of selecting con-
textually what is relevant for our problem in praxis.
We can demonstrate this using the previously presented example, in which we
had to concentrate on the situation of the youngsters as well as to “spread out” the
analysis to many related contexts. The researchers were discussing how to under-
stand this situation, and in the ensuing discussion, the dispersed preconditions and
consequences of the disagreement were incorporated according to the specific and
common relevancies of the focus point. One of the common relevancies was the
prolonged school days—a key issue in political conflicts over the school reform.
The school leader worried about the school’s brand and wanted to prevent the pupils
from talking in a negative way about school problems. From the teachers’ perspec-
tive, the ninth graders’ anger was seen as something to take seriously and as an
opportunity to teach the pupils about their democratic possibilities.
From the ninth graders’ perspective, their anger at the same time could be under-
stood as containing their feeling of being constrained and wish to do something
about it. Their anger became a point of focus for the constraining conditions and for
their exploration; their anger was a concentration and spreading out. The constrain-
ing aspect of the anger may contain many other contradictions to explore, like hav-
ing to concentrate and dissipating attention in class, but the ninth graders fell upon
the eighth graders.
The participants select and prioritize different aspects of the incident in the dis-
cussion, according to their perspectives, in exploring how to understand the situa-
tion. In general, teachers must deal with an administrative approach to their
many-sided activities, and they have to accept things whose relevance they may not
agree upon. They will prioritize, and they will engage in discussions about what can
be ignored, what is irrelevant, and what must be kept apart. The focus, or the prob-
lem discussed, forces them to both spread out and concentrate in order to handle the
problem properly. Still, the teachers must insist on incorporating apparently irrele-
vant aspects like the children’s social lives in specific ways in their teaching, in
order to make the teaching work. With this example, we hope to have exemplified
the concepts of focusing, spreading out, selecting and the conflicts about relevance
and to have illustrated how we came to understand the problem in new ways.
There is truth in all perspectives, and as researchers we are not in a privileged
position, but by investigating and trying to systematically integrate the different
perspectives, it becomes possible to ensure that the generalization is anchored in the

problems of concrete social practice and encompasses relevant aspects of the com-
bined efforts of the different participants. We see that the weakness of generaliza-
tion is based on the fact that we do not know everything relevant to our endeavor and
that its strength derives from how we handle contradictions and explore how the
generalizations become integrated into everyday life. Mostly, we do this through
more or less conflictual discussions about our different ways of understanding the
common cause. This is an illustration of how one can work with the concept of
generalization as simultaneously spreading and concentrating. This could be con-
ceptualized as concrete abstraction, unlike abstract abstraction which supports one-
sided ways of understanding.
In line with Ollman’s observations, we see that generalization is a social process:
in our example, the evaluation of eighth and ninth graders’ school day arrangements
is tossed between pupils, teachers, and leaders, with different meanings appearing
in the process. The generalization is historical, since what it encompasses depends
on the conditions at the time. Ollman also states that abstraction is a result of pro-
cesses in praxis, even though it is not the final one: understanding the impact of the
school day is a result of the ongoing social process of generalizing among partici-
pants. But most importantly, he stresses that the extension of the field we focus on
varies. We see that on the one hand, when we generalize there is always a field, a
context, but our access to that field can be more or less concrete and differently
formed in terms of relevancies. It is a matter of how we systematically take heed of
what might be relevant. It is a matter of how to proceed, method, and generalizing
processes. Because generalization is a process, and since different aspects are con-
nected in common causes, and since different perspectives are connected in social
praxis, we have to deal with focus in a flexible way.
To Focus and to Be Flexible
Since we generalize in a continuous exploring process in a context where we do not

know everything, it becomes important to establish how we should proceed if we
want to integrate the different ways of understanding a situation, namely we need to
focus and be flexible at the same time (Højholt and Kousholt 2018, 2019a). We need
to keep track of what we are doing while at the same time we are obliged to take
heed of what might be more or less unexpectedly relevant for our purpose. For
example, teachers must focus on teaching, but must take other activities into account
in order to be able to teach. For a teacher to teach a maths class, she must stay
focused on maths, which may tempt her to, for example, overlook the distracted,
silent child brooding over a lost friendship, or to perceive the noisy activity of some
children as disturbance. However, she must be flexible and attend to the social
aspects of the children’s participation in order to help them concentrate on the
teaching (Mardahl-Hansen 2018). Thus, participants struggle with coordinating the
aspects and help each other to do it.
If they do not do that, teaching will not work properly. We term this outcome the
“vengeance of the concrete” (Axel 2003). Aspects of praxis that are overlooked by
abstract generalized procedures for evidence-based teaching appear in the teachers’
praxis in class and require attentiveness, ultimately moving praxis in specific direc-
tions. In the presented example, the overlooked contradiction that manifested itself
resulted in a particular type of cooperation, and the teacher conceded to the con-
crete, overlooked aspects of praxis. To struggle with the incompatibilities of teach-
ing and social relations in the common cause of school life is a case of conflictual
cooperation (Axel 2011). With the concept conflictual cooperation we emphasize
how participants cooperate in a common contradictory cause in praxis, in which
contradictions can be handled in different ways, some of which lead to conflict. We
have argued earlier that the common cause forces us to adapt contradictions or
incompatibilities to it, and to arrange or transform them. Thereby, we can under-
stand the intricacies of the common cause by developing it through its contradic-
tions. This also means that we may learn about the intricacies through the conflicts
generated by the contradictions in the common cause, and this is one of the ways in
which we can open up the possibility of developing praxis (Busch-Jensen 2015).
Participants generalizing around a common cause thus perform a practical con-
tradictory endeavor. In everyday school life, the contradiction between teaching and
the children’s social lives does not always lead to more or less severe conflicts.
Mardahl-Hansen (2018) has shown how when teaching in the classroom, teachers
simultaneously organize and reorganize social situations in practical ways—adjust-
ing rules, switching between different foci, keeping focus, engaging as well as
demanding things of children, involving different perspectives and aspects in flexi-
ble ways. This involves practical procedures such as agendas, rules for speaking up,
and lists of things to remember, and it also involves using such things in flexible
ways due to the ongoing exploration of situated challenges in the classroom. For
their part, the children seem to wish for flexibility while at the same time they con-
stantly try hard to restore the focus of their engagement, and they can only combine
the many aspects of their school life by working with the way they focus themselves.
he Historical Splitting of Experience into the Contradiction

T
Between Theory and Praxis
We have focused on generalization, argued that it is in praxis, and demonstrated

how it appears in our everyday life. Some would claim that our understanding of
generalization is, in Bernstein’s words, for “the practical man (who) is one … not
concerned with theory … who knows how to get along in the rough and tumble
world; he is interested in the ‘practical’ or ‘material’ things in life” (1971: xiv).
Following this line of thought, some readers might ask: does the notion of experi-
ence based on generalization that we have outlined constitute a theoretical and sci-
entific approach?
We can find a preliminary answer to this question in Dewey’s notion that “the
things of ordinary experience contain within themselves a mixture of the perilous
and unsettled with the settled and uniform” (1929/1958: x). We see this as a conse-
quence of the fact that we know something but not everything in a context and are
affected by the unknown. Dewey identified two aspects of experience. On the one
hand it is a “limit of movement” based on past activities and on the other a prospec-
tive orientation of the person involving curiosity and experimentation (1911/1985:
448f). We would stress that keeping to the past or being proactive is not only an
isolated act of a person but depends on what the person’s conditions and possibili-
ties for participating in praxis are and how the person can relate to them. Socially
and historically, Dewey saw that the differentiation of experience has developed
problematically into a split of theory and practice (1929/1958: 358), implying that
theory separated from experience leads away from exploration and into the assump-
tion that theory involves direct access to things: “Philosophies have often tried to
forego the actual work that is involved in penetrating the concrete experience, by
setting up a purely theoretical security and certainty” (Dewey 1929/1958: xi).
Again, we would stress that this widespread social phenomenon must be under-
stood not as an individualized matter but as a subjective matter in social praxis: how
we understand and work with theories, whether we believe we should try to apply
them or with Dewey explore with them and their contradictions, depends on our
contradictory social locations, our conditions therein, and the way we relate to these
based on our experience. We will never know everything relevant to our case.
Therefore, we will never know when we must revise our generalizations: we may
put ourselves at risk by sticking to them, and they are never settled once and for all.
This may expose us so that we are at the mercy of events and their conditions in
praxis. How to work with generalizations in research praxis is therefore also a mat-
ter of how we relate systematically to our generalizations and experiences and of
being able to criticize our understandings—by focusing and being flexible in our
exploration of concrete common causes.
Historically, being at the mercy of conditions has made us strive more for cer-
tainty in our generalizations than for elusive mastery. Knowing in praxis how to do
things also makes it possible to instruct others what to do. Instruction may take
place in locations where the things one is talking about are not present. It therefore
becomes common to degrade practical knowledge by stating that it is unstable,
messy, incoherent, and undependable. Accordingly, in such an approach experience
seems to become split between undependable practice, which is approximate and to
be constantly corrected, and on the other hand dependable procedures with trusted
results. In our current secularized society, it has become common to strive for
abstract, one-sided scientific theory, with final statements confirmed by experiments.
Without going into the historical reasons why scientific practice developed so as
to generally favor theory meant for application, we can describe this state of affairs
using Schön’s words:
Science became … a hypothetico-deductive system. In order to account for his observa-
tions, the scientist constructed hypothesis, abstract models of an unseen world which could
be tested only indirectly through deductions susceptible to confirmation or disconfirmation
by experiment. The heart of scientific inquiry consisted in the use of crucial experiments to
choose among competing theories”. (1983: 33)
The confirmed theories were considered so dependable that it would be possible

to select the means appropriate to one’s ends by applying relevant scientific theory
(ibid. p. 34). This is what we find in some political demands regarding school
administration today when some politicians admonish school leaders to use
evidence-based teaching methods and tests, to use well-defined theories and fixed
methods that supposedly ensure that children learn better and more (cf. the critique
of John Hatties’ visible learning theory, e.g., Klitmøller and Nielsen 2017). Schön
coined the term “technical rationality” to describe this way of using science.
The separation or split between unstable messy praxis and dependable, final, and
fixed scientific theories was criticized by Dewey, who turned the meaning of what
is prestigious upside down: “The proper contrast is not between experience and
something else higher and better than experience, but between a crude, narrow, and
mechanical experience, and an intelligent, enriched, and free, or growing, experi-
ence” (1911/1985: 451). To him, the contrast is not between theory and practice, but
between whether we relate to our experiences in a one-sided way or an investiga-
tive way.
In this chapter, we have limited ourselves to outlining two striking ways of relat-
ing to experiences of, participation in, and attempts at understanding praxis. We
have stressed that praxis must always be understood from particular perspectives. It
may be defensive of the current praxis and some participants’ dominant interests.
The defensive position will strengthen the tendency to instruct others to do specific
things, overlooking their concrete conditions. On the other hand, the perspective
may attempt to push praxis in a direction that integrates the participants’ different
interests. By this, we are not implying that specific positions will lead to specific
understandings, i.e., that leaders maintain one understanding and teachers another.
But we stress that the different social conditions of participants’ activities put them
under pressure to understand their activities in particular ways, and yet it is their
way of relating to their conditions which is decisive. For us, it is important to note
that teachers are under pressure to take the concrete into account and that they are
thereby also under pressure to integrate different understandings of the problems of
the school system. The scientific researcher has the possibility to systemically
uncover the intricacies in a complex common cause in praxis like a school, and
thereby participate in its integrating development.
We have argued that scientific theoretical work in the human sciences is based on
our participation in social praxis and that this includes an explorative stance even
toward the understandings we are working with. It is with theories that we become
surprised by unexpected phenomena, and we must reflect systematically on the con-
tradictions in our theories in order to develop them further. How to work with gen-
eralizations in research praxis is therefore also a matter of how we relate
systematically to widespread generalizations and experiences, and of being able to
criticize one-sided understandings and restrictive conditions.
eneralization as Flexibly Focusing on the Relevancies

G
of a Problem
We have presented an understanding of generalization as connected to subjective

aspects of persons’ participation in common causes in praxis. It is commonly under-
stood that generalization decontextualizes a phenomenon so that it appears valid
everywhere. We have challenged this by arguing that the way we generalize appears
in concrete praxis and has implications for how praxis is coordinated. The things we
generalize about appear to vary in particular ways, and we experience things as a
compound of aspects. Our generalizations are at once subjective and social. Persons
must identify what is relevant for them in their concrete many-sided praxis. They
must coordinate themselves around common causes which contain incompatible
elements and are contradictory. Working systematically with generalizations in
research, we must generalize around the contradictions and how they cohere in
praxis: we must focus on what is relevant and the context thereof. Our understand-
ing of contradictions gives us a sense of the direction of the development of praxis.
To make the common causes work, we must more or less explicitly include more or
less context as needed. The more concrete our struggle with common causes with
particular variations, the more concrete and comprehensive our generalizations. In
our struggle with common causes, we must explore openly and systematically, that
is, we must focus on the relevancies of a problem and flexibly focus around it as
needed (Højholt and Kousholt 2018). The common cause does not run its course
automatically. We must maintain it. We can achieve a flexible stability through the
processes of many-sided generalizations. This has become more necessary with the
division of labor by professionals: We are forced to restrict who must be knowledge-
able about what, and who must do what. That is, with privileges we are forced to
prioritize specific ways of seeing things. However, even if our approach is supported
by privileged theories and tools and we thereby try to maintain stability, the con-
creteness of praxis forces us to stay flexible and thereby critical in order to make
things work. In this way, critique is seen as a way to surmount one-sided, isolated
and excluding generalizations. The more comprehensive the possibility for critique,
the more comprehensive the development we can achieve.
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Chapter 3
Rethinking Generalization with Kurt
Lewin and Action Research
Martin Dege
Introduction
My goal in this chapter is simple. I want to shed light on the not-so-well-known

accomplishments of the well-known psychologist Kurt Zadek Lewin. Lewin has
found his place in the history of psychology and is generally considered to be one
of the important voices in Gestalt psychology, the originator of the concept of voli-
tion, and the inventor of topological psychology. His political agenda is however
generally ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood. In an attempt to rectify this mis-
take, I am using the following sections of this chapter to go over Lewin’s work in
chronological order from his very early research projects in Berlin to his work in
New York, at MIT, and the beginnings of a promising collaboration with the
Tavistock Institute in London shortly before his untimely death in 1947. The pur-
pose of this narrative is to show that Lewin’s research and his commitment to con-
crete projects were always politically motivated. Lewin’s theoretical works,
particularly his writings in the philosophy of science and epistemology, lay the
grounds for a revamped understanding of social science research, which he himself
defined as “no action without research, no research without action” (Lewin 1945b:
5). Part and parcel of this concept is of course Lewin’s famous Action Research
approach which provided the grounds for developments in the field of participatory
research for years to come. Interestingly enough though, Lewin’s works in psychol-
ogy proper in addition to his writings in epistemology and the philosophy of science
are generally rendered as a separate body of work, entirely disconnected from his
efforts in Action Research. Scholars of one branch of his research often ignore the
other, as if there were two Kurt Lewins: Lewin the psychologist and Lewin the
Action Researcher. My goal in this chapter is not to convince one or the other side
M. Dege (*)
Department of Psychology, The American University of Paris, Paris, France
e-mail: mdege@aup.edu

42 M. Dege
that a holistic reading of Lewin would be beneficial, for one because this seems self-
evident to me; at least if you want to do justice to the full body of Lewin’s thought.
The other reason is more practical and guided by the theme of this book. I believe
that from this peculiar combination of the two (or maybe even three) Lewins -
the (theoretical) psychologist and epistemologist, and the Action Researcher
- derives a particular understanding of the politics of research. More concretely, I
believe that Lewin develops a particular understanding of the effects and conse-
quences of research results in the social sciences, that is, their generalization. In so
doing, Lewin envisions a concept of generalization that goes beyond the traditional
equation in psychology where generalization amounts to a question of frequency
(Michell 1999: 39). I am not the only one (Dege 2011) and certainly not the first to
argue this (see, e.g., Beckstead et al. 2009; Tateo 2013; Danziger 1994; Lück 2009,
2001; Schönpflug 1992). However, I believe that, so far, the literature has ignored
the connection between Lewin’s revolutionary thinking in methodology and his
political agenda. I want to argue that we can better grasp the interrelations of action,
change, research, and subjectivity that come to light in his concept of generalization
if we take the political aspects of his work into account. Lewin understood that
generalization of a research practice that consisted of action must itself consist of
action. He understood, so I claim, that research in the social sciences cannot focus
on historically geographically concrete data (Lewin 1936a: 30) to speculate about
events in the present or the future. In other words, for Lewin it seemed clear that—
no matter how sophisticated the research procedure would be, including complex
statistical models—concrete data points from the past could tell us very little about
a future to come. Instead, Lewin understood that we would have to generalize
actions: The core of any social science research project in such manner would be to
increase human agency in any given situation. In turn, the social science endeavor
would be inherently political. It is this political impetus in Lewin’s work that is lost
if his work is split into two. And it is the far-reaching consequences of his ideas that
drop out of sight if researchers fail to relate his work on action research (and his
community work and his work on teacher education) back to his more psychologi-
cal studies and his reflections on the philosophy of science. To show how valuable
such a connection might be, I want to draw a more political picture of Lewin’s work
in the following sections to ultimately show how a concept of generalization as
generalization of human agency naturally follows from his research agenda.
Kurt Lewin’s Development as a Researcher: The Early Years
For Kurt Lewin, as for many psychologists of his time, psychology was closely con-
nected to politics. His attempts to change the discipline went hand in hand with his
commitment to building a better world in the face of inexplicable suffering. Like
many of his German colleagues in psychology, he was of Jewish decent (Lewin
1916: 37, 1992: 16) and became the victim of an ever growing anti-Semitism in
Europe, and specifically in Germany. In a letter addressed to Wolfgang Köhler who
3 Rethinking Generalization with Kurt Lewin and Action Research 43
served as the chair of the psychology department in Berlin, Lewin reflects on this
anti-Semitism.
I don’t know whether you realize to what extent the social exclusion of Jews and their
forced restriction to a very few professions actually existed before the war. My parents were
among those few Jews who owned a farm. I therefore know that 100% anti-Semitism of the
coarsest type was taken for granted and constituted the basic stance not only of the landed
aristocracy, but also of the peasants in the surrounding area. (Lewin 1981, 1986: 42)
Despite such experiences early on in his life and like so many other Germans with
a Jewish background, he enlisted in the army as soon as World War I broke out. In
1918, he was injured, discharged from the army and honored with the iron cross.
While in the military, Lewin defended his dissertation in 1916 and published his
first article (Lewin 1917). He was a member of a left-leaning student group during
that time which discussed social issues and organized seminars for workers called
workingmen’s courses. The seminars focused on the general education of the work-
ing class (Marrow 1969: 6/7). Out of this group of students, it was particularly
Hedda and Karl Korsch who developed a close relationship with Lewin. Together
with Karl Korsch, Lewin wrote a paper about the problems of using mathematical
formulas in social psychology (Lewin and Korsch 1939), and he also published an
article about Frederick Taylor’s concept of scientific management in Korsch’s jour-
nal (Lewin 1920). Together with Hans Rupp, he worked on attitude measurement in
the textile industry (Lewin and Rupp 1928a, b) in the hopes to improve the working
conditions of the mostly female employees.
Most of these politically charged activities early on in Lewin’s career are typi-
cally downplayed or ignored in favor of his more academic (and experimental) work
during the 1920s until the early 1940s, when he established himself as an academic
psychologist in the USA. However, a close reading of his academic work shows the
same impetus, it points into a similar direction.
As such, Lewin’s turn to experimental psychology and problems of volition mea-
surement (Lewin 1916, 1922a, b) was at least to some extent forced upon him as a
prerequisite to secure a position in academia (Métraux 1992). The first version of
his Habilitationsschrift (Lewin 1921)—a second qualifying thesis after the PhD
required in Germany at the time to receive the venia legendi (the right to teach)—
submitted in 1919 or 1920, was rejected by the Berlin department. Why he was first
rejected remains subject to speculation; it is however safe to say that the committee
was unhappy with the direction Lewin had chosen for his research. Lewin later
passed his Habilitation to become a university professor on the basis of an extended
version of his dissertation (Lewin 1922b).1
After his Habilitation, Lewin taught at the Berlin Institute, offering classes in
psychology and philosophy, and developed his field theory. Facing rapid political
changes in Europe, Lewin would eventually be forced to leave Berlin. Thanks to his
American student Junius Flagg Brown who published a paper entitled “The methods
For details about the rejection and eventual acceptance of Lewin’s Habilitationsschrift, see
1
Métraux (1983).
44 M. Dege
of Professor Lewin in the psychology of action and affection” in Psychological

Review (Brown 1929), his work became known in the United States. Also, in 1930
Lewin was able to persuade Donald K. Adams to translate one of his papers entitled
“Der Übergang von der aristotelischen zur galileischen Denkweise in Biologie und
Psychologie” which was about to appear in Erkenntnis, a well-known German jour-
nal concerned mainly with epistemological questions (Lewin 1931a). Adams had
considerable difficulties translating the text specifically because Lewin’s style of
writing was oftentimes demanding, not particularly reader-friendly and made exten-
sive use of neologisms.2 In 1931, Adams’s translation appeared in the Journal of
General Psychology entitled “The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian
modes of thought in contemporary psychology” (Lewin 1931b). With this article,
Lewin became popular in the USA and started to build his reputation as a theorist in
psychology who aimed at re-elaborating the very foundations of the discipline.
The Early Years in the USA: Methodology and Politics
The central argument of “The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of
thought in contemporary psychology” (Lewin 1931b) was indeed revolutionary for
American academic psychology at the time. Lewin argued for psychology as an
idiographic science: Psychological laws, so he claimed, cannot be generated from
huge studies with large samples, but rather from investigating the single individual
in its wholeness (De Rivera 1976: 18). In many ways, this paper is the first articula-
tion of a reinvention of the concept of generalization (Tateo 2013). Lewin’s concept
of an ideographic psychology was fully unfolded, eventually, in his Principles of
Topological Psychology (Henle 1984) which he translated into English during the
summers of 1934 and 1935 with the help of Fritz and Grace Heider (Lewin 1936a).
The book—and specifically the translation—is notoriously difficult to read; a fact
that most likely contributed to its ultimate failure on the academic market. Lewin
himself acknowledged this fact and spoke of the book as an unfinished product of “a
very long growth” (Lewin 1936a: vii). In the book, Lewin presented his concept of
Topological Psychology, an approach to understand human (inter)action based on
his field theory. Lewin wrote:
The person is to be represented as a connected region which is separated from the environ-
ment by a Jordan curve. Within this region there are part regions. One can begin by distin-
guishing as such parts the inner-personal regions […] from the motor and perceptual region
[…]. The motor and perceptual region has the position of a boundary-zone between the
inner-personal regions and the environment. (Lewin 1936a: 177)
2
See Adams interviewed by Marrow, specifically the creation of the term “valence” which trans-
lated the German “Aufforderungscharacter” and quickly became adopted by Tolman as a replace-
ment for his concept of “demand value” and later even translated back to German as “Valenz”
(Marrow 1969: 56–57). The “affordance” concept as discussed today in technology studies and
first introduced by Gibson also draws on Lewin’s Aufforderungscharakter (Gibson 1977, 2015).
Passages as these contribute to the typical reading of Lewin’s body of work within
the discipline of psychology. He is largely regarded as a theorist who contributed to
Gestalt psychology and founded his own school of vector psychology (also called
field or topological psychology); an approach that is considered to carry historical
value only (Ash 1992). While it is true that vector psychology is not an active field
of development in psychology today, it allowed Lewin to rethink the concept of
generalization from the standpoint of a theoretical critique of his discipline. As I
have outlined above, however, this is not the end of the story: Lewin was concerned
with and strongly influenced by political issues early on in his career. Even more so,
his political activities intensified after he had migrated to the United States (van
Elteren 1993).
Among other things, Lewin’s political agenda is visible in his attempts to estab-
lish a psychology department at the Hebrew university in Palestine. During February
1935, Lewin wrote two papers (Lewin 1935a, b; see also Bargal 1998) to outline his
ideas for research in Palestine in general and for the psychology institute to be
founded in particular.
A Department of Psychology in the Hebrew University is an essential unit of the cultural,
educational and practical services of the University […]. Its research work will begin by
concentrating upon the psychological problems connected with immigration, social adapta-
tion and the processes by which Jews from different parts of the world integrate into a single
cultural community. […] Because Palestine is a concentrated area in which there come
together a great variety of people of diverse and conflicting cultural backgrounds, it will be
possible to undertake fundamental studies in certain problems of social fusion and adjust-
ment which are characteristic of social and cultural history everywhere. (Lewin 1935a: 1–2)
Lewin suggested to closely examine several topics: the relationship between immi-
grants from different countries, the lack of a common language, the impact of a
more collectivist society found in the kibbutzim on immigrants with more individu-
alistic cultural backgrounds, the influence of ideology—specifically Zionism—on
the individual. For Lewin, theory, methodology, and politics are deeply connected:
I personally find especially intriguing endeavours to coordinate with the field-studies exper-
imental studies of the factors that condition the opinions and transformation of ideologies;
of the effects of cultural and social homogeneity and non-homogeneity on the structure of
a group; of the effect of cultural differences on work; etc. (1935b: 4)
These descriptions carry the seeds of what Lewin would later call Action Research.
Had he been able to secure funding for his project at Hebrew University, the history
of Action Research in the Lewinian tradition might have started some 10 years ear-
lier. However, creating a psychology institute at Hebrew University did not work
out, Lewin gave up on his attempts to secure funding and the university on its own
was not able to provide the salary Lewin was asking for, let alone offer the kinds of
research funds necessary to conduct Lewin’s projects.3
3
The faith of psychology at Hebrew University took a different turn after negotiations with Lewin
had failed: In 1939 Joseph Bonaventura was appointed Professor of Psychology at Hebrew
University. However, according to the university archives he did not teach in psychology and
focused on education instead. Only in 1941, psychology was approved as a secondary field of
46 M. Dege
Instead of Hebrew University, Lewin moved to Iowa with a research grand from
the Rockefeller foundation with the amount of $90,000 per year (Ash 1992: 201).
At Iowa, Lewin was quick to establish research networks such as the famous
Quasselstrippe—the hot air club (Marrow 1969: 88). The Topology Group which he
founded around the same time met annually even long after his death; the last meet-
ing took place in 1964 (Marrow 1969: 111–115). The group quickly grew to a meet-
ing place for some of the most influential thinkers in psychology and the social
sciences. Thanks to Lewin’s benefactor Lawrence Frank, the Rockefeller Foundation
covered all expenses. Among the participants were Donald K. Adams, Karl E. Zener,
Edward C. Tolman, David Krech, Tamara Dembo, Erik Erikson, Lawrence Frank
himself, Fritz and Grace Heider, Wolfgang Köhler, Donald W. MacKinnon, Margret
Mead, William Stern, and others.
The freedom at Iowa and its intellectually rich atmosphere allowed Lewin to
establish himself in the USA. Lewin continued his reflections on the methodology
of psychology and published several papers during his Iowa time. In 1935, Lewin
elaborated his concept of life space and social space that indicate his growing interest
in social psychology (Lewin 1935c). He also worked on measurement theory in
combination with his field theory in “The conceptual representation and the mea-
surement of psychological forces” (Lewin 1938). Most of his other publications
during this time period speak the same language. In 1939, he published a paper
together with Karl Korsch in which he describes the tasks for psychology on three
levels: experimental research, formalization and mathematization, and inventing
dynamic constructs (Lewin and Korsch 1939). Yet another article published in the
American Journal of Sociology that same year focused on the advances of a formal-
ized approach to the social world and efforts to make various approaches more com-
mensurable (Lewin 1939b). Lewin writes:
[The commensurability of various approaches] can be accomplished by the use of con-
structs which characterize objects and events in terms of interdependence rather than of
phenotypical similarity or dissimilarity. It may seem that emphasizing interdependence
will make the problem of classification even more difficult because, generally, it is more
difficult to describe a fact in terms of its effect on others and its being affected by others
(its conditional-genetic properties) than in terms of its appearance (phenotypical proper-
ties). However, as soon as one grasps the idea, it becomes evident that if one character-
izes an object or event by the way it affects the situation, every type of fact is placed on
the same level and becomes interrelated to any other fact which affects the situation.
(1939b: 888)
As can be seen, Lewin concentrated on methodological problems during his Iowa

years. And indeed, it can be argued that many of the issues he grappled with and
actually provided valuable solutions for, are still at the heart of the most elemen-
tary methodological questions in psychology today. It was during his Iowa times
that Lewin “connect[ed] the concrete to the conceptual and deal[t] with the essential
specialization for BA students. No experimental psychology existed at the university until the end
of World War II (Bargal 1998: 65). A psychology department was not established until 1957,
10 years after Lewin’s untimely death.
structures […] that occur beneath observation and description.” Lewin realized that
“the focus on essential structures moves us from breaking phenomena apart and
studying elements in isolation to a systemic orientation that is oriented towards”
what Beckstead et al. call “systemic causality” (Beckstead et al. 2009: 71): Lewin
moved away from a variable centered psychology; he realized that a generalization
of phenotypical properties on average cannot lead to proper results. Instead his
psychology is concerned with the effects of what he calls ‘facts’ rather than the
ontology of those facts. In this vein, he describes the “Formalization and Progress
in Psychology”:
[T]o make oneself master of the forces of this vast scientific continent one has to fulfill a
rather peculiar task. The ultimate goal is to establish a network of highways and superhigh-
ways, so that any important point may be linked easily with any other. This network of
highways will have to be adapted to the natural topography of the country and will thus
itself be a mirror of its structure and of the position of its resources. (1940: 11)
In many ways, the appeal of Lewin’s work to (some, theoretically inclined, critical,
etc.) psychologists today is reflected in the above quotation. Lewin provides a very
early critique of variable-centered psychology; a critique that is in many respects
still applicable today. Furthermore, he elaborates his alternative on his profound
expertise in methodology and the philosophy of science. And he promises a clear,
scientific, and formalized way in his attempts to “find a mathematization which
adequately represents this dynamic interdependence between psychological pro-
cesses” (Lewin and Korsch 1939: 398). It is this keen interest in formalization and
in solving methodological problems that most reconceptualizations of generaliza-
tion draw upon. Tateo, for example, argues that, following Lewin, “generalization is
a conceptual abstraction, establishing meaningful relationships between the parts of
a whole” (Tateo 2013: 534). In a similar vein, Beckstead et al. argue that “Post-
Galilean thought not only denied the epistemological treatment of generalization
through ‘frequency’ but also changed the locus of causation away from the intrinsic
properties of the object to the structural relationships between objects” (Beckstead
et al. 2009: 79). While I do not see anything wrong with either of these conclusions,
I contend that they fall short of Lewin’s own approach to generalization as he shaped
it over the course of the final years of his career.
he Later Years: Empirical Projects, Community Work,

T
Political Action
The famous experiments on autocracy and democracy Lewin conducted during the
late 1930s and early 1940s together with his students Ronald Lippitt and Ralph
White (Lewin et al. 1939; Lippitt 1940; White and Lippitt 1960), influenced Lewin’s
future work in two significant ways. First, he turned more strongly to the social
world and to groups, a shift in his work that had already started with his paper on
minority research in 1935 (Lewin 1935c). Second, Lewin became more involved in
48 M. Dege
a public debate on democracy and democratic education that reached beyond the
dominant discourse in American psychology at the time toward a more transdisci-
plinary, action-oriented, and political approach. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak
of World War II, Lewin wrote a clairvoyant paper entitled “When facing danger,”
the general tone of which can perhaps be summarized in one quote: “[T]hose who
are interested in democracy,” Lewin attested, “need to realize that there is but one
of two alternatives, either to live as slaves under Fascism, or to be ready to die for
democracy” (Lewin 1997b: 116). His concern with the fate of the Jewish population
not just in Europe but all over the world also directly translated into his research. He
realized that researching the individual alone will not accomplish any change on a
broader scale. Instead, it seemed more promising to study the interaction of groups
with other groups, specifically if interaction patterns between minority and majority
groups were to be understood. Lewin writes:
If it has ever been a question whether the Jewish problem is an individual or a social one, a
clear-cut answer was provided by the S. A. men [S. A. was the acronym for Sturmabteilung,
the paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP),
M.D.] in the streets of Vienna who beat with steel rods any Jew irrespective of his past
conduct or status. Jews all over the world now recognize that the Jewish problem is a social
problem. (1997b: 117)
Also, Lewin realized that change cannot be brought about by changing the respec-
tive minority or majority alone. Instead “[I]t should be understood that any under-
privileged minority is preserved as such by the more privileged majority” (Lewin
1997b: 117). There is a “need of the majority for a scapegoat […] [A need that]
grows out of tension, e.g. from an economic depression. […] No ‘logical’ argument
will destroy these basic forces” (Lewin 1997b: 118). Lewin realized that the prob-
lem of the Jewish people and, more broadly, the problem of minorities cannot be
singlehandedly resolved by science proper. Instead, “the Jew will have to realize
that for him (sic) as well as for any other underprivileged group the following state-
ment holds: Only the efforts of the group itself will achieve the emancipation of the
group” (Lewin 1997b: 118). As such, Lewin believed that to emancipate a group,
one first needs to invest in the strengths and inner cohesion of the group itself
because such a “group will have an organic life of its own. It will show organization
and inner strength.” In contrast, a “minority kept together only from outside is in
itself chaotic. It is composed of a mass of individuals without inner relations with
each other, a group unorganized and weak” (Lewin 1997b: 119). The emancipation
of a group “would be more than a self-centered act. It would have a direct bearing
upon the struggle of the majority for the solution of their economic and political
problems” (Lewin 1997b: 121).
In the following years, Lewin’s research concentrated on topics such as group
dynamics (Lewin 1939a), social change (Lewin 1943a), and action research (Lewin
1943b, 1946). With an increasing amount of funding that Lewin was able to secure,
he inaugurated two research centers. In the first months of 1945, Lewin established
the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T. and the Commission on
Community Interrelations (CCI) of the American Jewish Congress located in
New York City.
Naturally, Lewin was interested in combining the work of the two institutes.
Most of his students, such as Lippitt, Radke, Festinger, French Jr., and Cartwright
were involved in both the projects (Marrow 1969: 173). Lewin also kept close rela-
tionships with Douglas McGregor and Charles Myers at MIT as well as Henry
Murray and Gordon Allport at Harvard. The Research Center for Group Dynamics
was mainly concerned with positive and negative forces at work in human groups.
Lewin himself described the goals and research prospects of the center in an article
published in Sociometry in 1945. The Center should investigate “the forces which
bring about change or which resist change.” He insisted that “all aspects of group
life would have to be taken into consideration.” Further, Lewin claims absolute
independence for his project: “[T]he study of group life should be independent of
the way in which society is accustomed to classify a particular group phenomenon.”
He envisions a “systematic scientific approach” for the Center which “follow[s]
comparative lines.” This approach includes the “use of whatever qualitative or quan-
titative psychological, sociological, or anthropological methods […] are needed for
investigation.” This could only be achieved, so Lewin argues, if “theories [are kept]
abreast and partly ahead of the gathering of data” (Lewin 1945a: 130–131). As such,
the Research Center for Group Dynamics was envisioned with a primary focus on
theoretical development and empirical application to gain results which would
explain the basics of group functioning.4
The Commission on Community Interrelations, in contrast, had a strong focus on
applying scientific knowledge to existing social issues. The American Jewish
Congress (AJC) as the central provider of funds used the Commission as their tool
to investigate the ongoing struggles of public concern. The AJC itself was originally
established to help European Jews in America after World War I and to advocate
civil rights and equality for Jews (Cherry and Borshuk 1998: 121). This focus
broadened however specifically during World War II when American liberals began
to fear that forms of fascism and racism could become more dominant in the United
States. These fears were specifically underlined by Gunnar Myrdal’s study about
race inequality in the United States (Myrdal et al. 1944; Jackson 1994; McLean
1946: 159). Following these results, “Jewish Congress leaders perceived the need
for a more broadly based attack on discrimination and prejudice. Indeed, the
American Jewish Congress’ leadership adopted the principle of ‘collective secu-
rity’; an assault on anyone’s constitutional rights was now [a] just cause for the
Jewish Congress to come to the defence of the injured party or group” (Frommer
1978: 540). Such attacks on the constitutional rights of people should be contested
not only with the means of the law itself, but also with social sciences. As such, the
CCI from the beginning set out to use social science knowledge to improve the life
circumstances not only of the Jewish population in the United States but of minority
groups in general. A self-description published in the Weekly Congress, the main
Journal of the AJC, reads like this:
4
A good illustration of the way in which group dynamics were approached at the Center can be
found in (Lewin 1947a, b). An extended list of the publications during Lewin’s time at MIT can be
found in Marrow (1969: 277–284).
50 M. Dege
There are other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, engaged in this work. The question
the layman is entitled to ask is: What innovation will the new Commission bring into the
general strategy? The answer is knowledge of facts. In the struggle against anti-Semitism
two fundamental issues are involved: the safety of Jewish life and—what is of greater
importance to all people—the ability of democracies to build a better world. […] What the
Commission on Community Interrelations proposes to do is to acquire precise and thorough
knowledge of facts and to proceed with action based upon the facts. (Lewin 1945b: 4–5)
The facts needed “to build a better world” are to be gathered in a scientific manner.
The aim is to “take the struggle against prejudice out of the realm of hope, faith,
opinion and guesswork and place it within the scope of scientific measurement and
scientific fact” (Interrelations 1945: 3–4). The credo is “no action without research,
no research without action” (Lewin 1945b: 5). For Lewin, the CCI offered a “new
approach to old problems,” and its methods could be the “infra-red rays of social
science” (Lewin 1945c: 7). His hope was to effectively combine immediate action
and long-range research to generate effective responses to social problems: “[W]e
do not want that type of so-called ‘realistic policy’ which lives from day to day. […]
Any constructive plan must see both the long range goal and the day by day action.
It should see not only the local situation […] but also the broader issues and social
forces” (Lewin 1945c: 6).
In the last year of his life, Lewin became involved with the Tavistock Institute in
London which was founded by Eric Trist, whom Lewin had met during the APA
congress in 1929 at Yale University, and the British psychologist A. T. M. Wilson.
Together, they established the Journal Human Relations. Lewin had originally
planned to spend the summer of 1947 at the Tavistock Institute in London. On the
evening of February 11, 1947, however Lewin fell sick. The family doctor diag-
nosed a minor heart attack and advised Lewin to go to the hospital the following
day. But before he could leave the house the next morning, another heart attack
stroke him. This time it was fatal.
Lewin and the Problem of Generalization
The purpose of the sections above was to shed some light on the complexities of
Kurt Lewin’s research from his very first projects in Germany to his role as a coor-
dinator of several large-scale research projects later and until he died. As I have tried
to show, Lewin’s career cannot be understood independently from the historical
circumstances he had to witness. Neither can it be understood without tying all the
ends together: Kurt Lewin the psychologist, Kurt Lewin the methodologist and phi-
losopher of science, and Kurt Lewin the politically engaged citizen. I have already
pointed to a specific reading of Lewin’s concept of generalization that is indeed
revolutionary for psychology (and other social sciences that follow the variable-
centered model, see Beckstead et al. 2009; De Rivera 1976; Tateo 2013). And I have
also indicated that, in my view, this understanding is not radical enough. To elabo-
rate my point, I will briefly go over Lewin’s philosophy of science and clarify his
understanding of generalization and how this understanding carries the potential
to reflect scientific debates in the political realm.
During the time in Germany as well as in the first years in America, Lewin had
strong affinities to the left and was inspired by Marxist thought. When he began to
develop Action Research, however, Lewin had turned toward liberalism and became
an advocate of American liberal democracy. This shift occurred not only in Lewin’s
thought but seemed to be a general phenomenon of the time and the way in which
essential events were interpreted, that shaped social psychology in the United States
before, during, and after.
Lewin established field theory and topological or vector psychology toward the
end of his Berlin years (published in his magnum opus during the first years in the
USA (Lewin 1936a)), largely on the basis of his background in phenomenology that
he inherited from his PhD advisor Carl Stumpf (1992: 15). As such, Lewin’s psy-
chology offers a combination of phenomenology (Lewin 1917), sociological meta-
theory (Lewin 1943a), empirical and mathematical rigor (Lewin and Korsch 1939),
and applied psychology (Lewin 1943b). It can be said that Lewin conceived of
psychology as a tripartite system: theorizing, which for the psychologist was
enriched and at the same time substantiated by experimental research, and applied
psychology. The often quoted line “there is nothing so practical as a good theory”
(Lewin 1997a: 288) is frequently misread and seems to suggest that Lewin gave a
primacy to theory. However, the full quote reveals Lewin’s critique of the “pure
theoretician.” Instead he advocated mutually constitutive relationships between
theory and (political) practice.
It would be most unfortunate if the trend toward theoretical psychology were weakened by
the necessity of dealing with natural groups when studying certain problems of social psy-
chology. One should not be blind, however, to the fact that this development offers great
opportunities as well as threats to theoretical psychology. The greatest handicap of applied
psychology has been the fact that, without proper theoretical help, it had to follow the
costly, inefficient, and limited method of trial and error. Many psychologists working today
in an applied field are keenly aware of the need for close cooperation between theoretical
and applied psychology. This can be accomplished in psychology, as it has been accom-
plished in physics, if the theorist does not look toward applied problems with highbrow
aversion or with a fear of social problems, and if the applied psychologist realizes that there
is nothing so practical as a good theory. (1997a: 288)
From the very beginning of his works, Lewin was well aware of the necessity to
bridge the gap between theory and applied research. He realized that a systematic
approach to the problems of the social sciences can only be successful, if it mean-
ingfully combines theory and praxis. And this combination is, for Lewin, possible
because “Kant in his Copernican Turn, transformed the question of ‘is insight
(Erkenntnis) possible’ into ‘how is insight (Erkenntnis) possible.’” For Lewin, it is
the transformation from speculative science to phenomenological science, “a sci-
ence which—instead of being based on a few presupposed axioms—takes its start-
ing point in the concrete, existing (vorliegenden) objects” (Lewin 1927: 375).
Lewin’s goal was to capture the subject under investigation as an empirical whole—
and that whole had to be lawful. Put differently, Lewin realized that every form of
52 M. Dege
behavior was lawful—that is to say meaningful—not just lawful on average (as

variable-centered psychology would have it).
Lewin’s way of thinking about the epistemology in psychology is of course
strongly influenced by Ernst Cassirer with whom he studied in Berlin (Lück 2009:
83) and whom he considered to be one of his central influences (Lewin 1999: 23).
There is but one paper where Lewin makes this connection explicit. It was published
in a collection of essays about Cassirer’s work (Schilpp 1949) only after Lewin’s
death (Lewin 1949). The paper examines Cassirer’s philosophy in relation to the
natural sciences and Lewin’s attempts to put these concepts to use in the social sci-
ences, and in psychology in particular.5 If Carl Stumpf and the phenomenological
tradition shaped Lewin’s general approach to perception (Bargal 2006: 370), then it
was clearly Ernst Cassirer’s work that shaped Lewin’s understanding of science.
Specifically, Cassirer’s ideas of Substanzbegriff and Funktionsbegriff (Cassirer
1910)—literally meaning “the term of substance” and “the term of function” but
somewhat problematically translated into English simply as “substance” and “func-
tion” (Cassirer 1923)—proved to be invaluable for Lewin (Lewin 1999: 24).
In Substance and Function, Cassirer investigates the production of knowledge in
the natural sciences and develops a concept of scientific progress. Lewin subscribes
to these ideas and renders scientific development based on an interplay between the
development of theory (function) and the acquisition of facts (substance) for “the
term ‘scientific development’ refers to levels of scientific maturity” (Lewin 1999:
26). Moreover, Lewin believed that Cassirer’s model, originally developed for
mathematics and then broadened to encompass the “exact sciences” (Cassirer 1923:
iii), can be applied to and would indeed benefit the social sciences as well (Lewin
1999: 24). Cassirer sees science as a system, very much alike Lewin’s view of the
social world. Cassirer argues that stable facts can only be understood as part of a
greater whole in which changes occur:
[I]f it were true that exact proof were only possible of that which always maintains itself in
the same form, then change could be tolerated as an auxiliary concept, but could not be used
as an independent logical principle. […] [B]ut this unchangeableness cannot be defined
unless we understand, as its ideal background, certain fundamental changes in opposition
to which it gains its validity. (1923: 90)
In line with his neo-Kantian education of “philosophy as a consultant to science”

(Lewin 1999: 24), Lewin develops his own methodological approach based on
Cassirer’s thought. Following Cassirer’s model of science as a system, Lewin comes
to terms with the “particular state of development of his science.” He realizes that
research “methods have to be adjusted to the specific state of affairs at a given time”
(Lewin 1999: 25), rendering “the basic character of science as the eternal attempt to
go beyond what is regarded scientifically accessible”(Lewin 1999: 26), to take “the
next step from the known into the jungle of the unknown” (Lewin 1947a: 6).
5
Cassirer’s philosophy provides the grounds for Lewin’s reflections in many ways; Cassirerian
philosophy shines through in many places and is explicitly mentioned several times throughout
Lewin’s writings (Lewin 1931b, 1947a, b).
Progress thus always means to invent new methods and new theories which will at
first inevitably be considered “unscientific” or “illogical” because
like social taboos, a scientific taboo is kept up not so much by a rational argument as by a
common attitude among scientists: Any member of the scientific guild who does not strictly
adhere to the taboo is looked upon as queer; he is suspected of not adhering to the scientific
standards of critical thinking. (Lewin 1999: 28)
The young (pre-war) Lewin believed in a final scientific revolution which would
bring about unity for his discipline or even the social sciences in general. Galilei
achieved this for physics—in Cassirer’s interpretation which Lewin follows—and
clearly Lewin felt that his field theory represented the Galilean/Copernican revolu-
tion for the social sciences in “that it has shifted the previous logical constants […],
that it has set them at another place than before” (Cassirer 1923: 373; Lewin 1936a).
And indeed, the Aristotelian mode of thought, which Lewin described as dominant
in psychology in his 1931 paper (Lewin 1931a, b: 158) is framed as a diminishing
relic of the past in his later writings (Lewin 1947a, b, 1949). The Aristotelian
approach is nothing but “anthropomorphic and inexact. […] It classes many things
with very slight or unimportant relationships together and separates things that
objectively are closely and importantly related” (Lewin 1931b: 142; Brown 1935).
For Lewin, distinctions in psychology such as “pathological” and “normal” or
“personality” and “social” psychology are an expression of this Aristotelian, anthro-
pomorphic view, since logically all these fields are heavily intertwined (Lewin
1936a: 5). “Psychology speaks of the ‘errors’ of children, of ‘practice,’ of ‘forget-
ting,’ thus classifying whole groups of processes according to the value of their
products, instead of according to the nature of the psychological processes involved”
(Lewin 1931b: 143). Instead, psychology must “yield to a conception which seeks
to derive the same laws for all these fields, and to classify the whole field on the
basis of other, essentially functional, differences” (Lewin 1931b: 144). Lewin is
convinced that “[w]e are to return to the making of speculative ‘systems’ [to avoid]
a blind collecting that splits the field of psychology into a number of unrelated
branches” (Lewin 1936a: 5). A flexible system is needed to unite the various sub-
fields of psychology. It would need to be oriented in two directions, namely toward
theoretical connectedness and empirical concreteness. It would have to be equally
suitable for the representation of general laws and the characteristics of the indi-
vidual case (Lewin 1936a: 5). It would in turn allow for the dissociation of “gener-
alization” and “frequency,” since every behavior would be considered lawful and
would thus be a reflection of a general structure that represents not attributes of
subjects on average but the network of conditions under which something occurs.
The distinction between lawful behavior and chance—that is, the idea that parts of
the variance are explained while others are random occurrences—is therefore
reversed. Instead of looking for empirical instances that follow a scientific law,
Lewin sets the law as the premise and argues that everything follows a particular
law. The single case, regardless of its frequency of occurrence, must be considered
lawful (Lewin 1931b: 150). In the same way, the nature of an object or construct
cannot be determined by its “membership in a certain conceptual class.” Objects in
54 M. Dege
the Galilean mode of thought are not determined by their classification but by their
relation to each other (Lewin 1931b: 149). While this could easily be turned into an
argument against quantitative approaches in psychology, for Lewin this is not the
case. The problem is not simply one of mathematization, it is the way in which
mathematics and statistics are applied in the Aristotelian mode: “Lawfulness is
believed to be related to regularity, and considered the antithesis of the individual
case” (Lewin 1931b: 154).
“Frequency of occurrence” poses a central problem in psychology, namely that
knowledge based on empirical data collected in such a manner is inherently histori-
cally and geographically determined (Lewin 1936a: 30); it relies on data of past
occurrences in specific locations—it assumes that the past is predestined to repeat
itself. Generalization in this mode of thought becomes a measure of the extent to
which the present can be described as mirroring some event in the past.
The determination of the cases to be placed in a statistical group is essentially on historic-
geographic grounds. For a group defined in historic-geographic terms, perhaps the one-
year-old children of Vienna or New York in the year 1928, averages are calculated which
are doubtless of the greatest significance to the historian or to the practical school man, but
which do not lose their dependence upon the “accidents” of the historic-geographic given
even though one go [sic] on to an average of the children of Germany, of Europe, or of the
whole world, or of a decade instead of a year. Such an extension of the geographic and
historic basis does not do away with the specific dependence of this concept upon the fre-
quency with which the individual cases occur within historically-geographically defined
fields. (Lewin 1931b: 157)
For Lewin “the content of a law cannot then be determined by the calculation of
averages of historically given cases.” Laws generated in such a manner apply “to an
‘average’ situation. But there just is no such thing as an ‘average situation’ any more
than an average child” (Lewin 1931b: 172). From a Galilean perspective, historical
frequency is a mere “accident” and a “matter of chance” (Lewin 1931b: 162) and
can only be generalized on average; it reports a potential future that is precondi-
tioned upon certain assumptions about the past (Beckstead et al. 2009: 66). Leaving
the Aristotelian point of view behind, Lewin turns to the dynamics of life, because
“[o]nly by the concrete whole which comprises the object and the situation are the
vectors which determine the dynamics of the event defined” (Lewin 1931b: 165).
From this viewpoint, the psychologist aspires to “comprehend the whole situation
involved, with all its characteristics, as precisely as possible” (Lewin 1931b: 166).
Again, Lewin’s concept of psychological research is not a negation of quantita-
tive research nor does it express a strong preference for what we call qualitative
research today. Even more so, Lewin is not arguing for a special interest in the sin-
gle event or the individual subject alone. Deconstructing historically-geographically
concrete data as what they are—events of the past—allows for a critical discussion
of their generalizability. In Galilean terms, there is no reason to assume that past
events will reoccur—independently of their frequency. This however does not mean
that psychological research cannot be generalized or that generalizability is a con-
cept unsuitable to psychological research. On the contrary, “[t]his step to the general
is automatically and immediately given. […] Instead of a reference to the abstract
average of as many historically given cases as possible, there is a reference to the

full concreteness of the particular situations” (Lewin 1931b: 166).
From this perspective, it is Aristotelian psychology—traditional mainstream
psychology—that fails to produce generalizable results; for one because main-
stream research relies on frequencies of historically and geographically concrete
data. More importantly though, generalization must fail because psychological
research in what Lewin calls an Aristotelian manner, always already operates on a
level of abstraction in order to produce countable frequencies.
Present-day child psychology and affect psychology also exemplify clearly the Aristotelian
habit. […] The fact that three-year-old children are quite often negative is considered evi-
dence that negativism is inherent in the nature of three-year-olds, and the concept of a nega-
tivistic age or stage is then regarded as an explanation […] for the appearance of negativism
in a given particular case! Quite analogously, the concept of drives, for example, the hunger
drive or the maternal instinct, is nothing more than the abstract selection of the features
common to a group of acts that are of relatively frequent occurrence. This abstraction is set
up as the essential reality of the behavior and is then in turn used to explain the frequent
occurrence of the instinctive behavior, for example, of the care of infant progeny. (Lewin
1931b: 153)
The concrete, individual case—individual life—in contrast, fails to produce “actual

repetition, a recurrence of the same event, is not to be expected” (Lewin 1931b:
152). Lewin attests a circular process to Aristotelian/mainstream psychology:
historically-geographically concrete data are collected and averaged to produce
propositions as explanations of individual behavior. These explanations rely on a
paradoxical abstraction from the concrete subject and the concrete situation in
which the subject acted. Consequently, “lawfulness and individuality are considered
antitheses.” Individuality is reduced “to a treatment […] in terms of mere averages,
as exemplified by tests and questionnaires” (Lewin 1931b: 155). Such “investiga-
tions are consequently unable as a rule to give an explanation of the dynamics of the
processes involved” (Lewin 1931b: 157). To be clear, Lewin is not favoring qualita-
tive over quantitative approaches, for it can be shown that qualitative studies can
exhibit the same flaw if they rely on attempts to generalize research results based on
empirical date; that is past occurrences categorized in abstraction. “[T]he Aristotelian
immediate relation to the historically regular and its average really means giving up
the attempt to understand the particular, always situation-conditioned event” (Lewin
1931b: 166).
Instead, Lewin proposes an understanding of generalization in psychological
research based on a different form of abstraction. He advocates for what he calls the
study of the lawfulness of the individual case. And he exemplifies his concept with
Galilei:
The mere fact that [Galilei] did not investigate the heavy body itself, but the process of ‘free
falling or movement on an inclined plane’ signifies a transition to concepts which can be
defined only by reference to a certain sort of situation (namely, the presence of a plane with
a certain inclination or of an unimpeded vertical extent of space through which to fall). The
idea of investigating free falling, which is too rapid for satisfactory observation, by resort-
ing to the slower movement upon an inclined plane, presupposes that the dynamics of the
56 M. Dege
event is no longer related to the isolated object as such, but is seen to be dependent upon the
whole situation in which the event occurs. (Lewin 1931b: 164)
As such, individual, subjective behavior can be understood, if the historically regu-

lar average is substituted by a reinstated particular in the situation as a whole. As a
presupposition, it must be “just the same whether the situation is frequent and per-
manent or rare and transitory” (Lewin 1931b: 166–167). It follows that “[t]he
dynamics of the processes is always to be derived from the relation of the concrete
individual to the concrete situation, and, so far as internal forces are concerned,
from the mutual relations of the various functional systems that make up the indi-
vidual” (Lewin 1931b: 174).
Borrowing from Max Wertheimer (1922, 1923, 1925), Lewin emphasizes “situ-
ation” as a central term. Instead of investigating certain past occurrences and accu-
mulate those, Lewin argues that the concrete situation needs to be investigated. This
way, “a picture that shows in a definite way how the different facts in an individual’s
environment are related to each other and to the individual himself [sic], can be
acquired” (Lewin 1936a: 13). For Lewin, a situation (unlike an occurrence as a
historical-geographical data point) is never a single incident but always a process of
change. To understand the situation means to understand that change.
onclusion: Lewin, Minorities, and the Politics

C
of Generalization
Lewin invented a clever metaphor to elude to a problem he had identified in psy-

chology. He keenly observed a methodological difference between what he identi-
fies as an Aristotelian and a Galilean mode of thought. This metaphor allows him to
introduce a concept for research to psychology that privileges the individual case
over large collections of data points. It allows for the minorities that he so enthusi-
astically supported throughout his life, to be as “scientifically lawful” as the societal
majorities against which they had to prove themselves. Lewin realized that tradi-
tional psychology was the psychology of the manifestation of the majority and their
believes. He understood that psychology “confused the notion of abstraction and
democratic majority dominance” (Beckstead et al. 2009: 78). Minorities in research
that rely on historically-geographically specific data are rendered as “the exception
[that] proves the rule” (Lewin 1931b: 156). Lewin develops a model based not on a
single occurrence of an event, but on a single meaningful situation and its dynamics,
where “the situation is to be regarded as the total of possibilities” (Lewin 1936a:
15)—what Lewin first called psychological life space (Lewin 1936a: 12) and later
social space (Lewin 1939a) or group life space (Lewin 1935c, 1947a: 12).
It is at this point that Lewin goes beyond the consequences drawn from his meth-
odological reflections. The subject becomes an actor in a situation confronted with
various (inner and outer) forces. As such, the individual is determined by the situa-
tion and the concrete possibilities of action therein. At the same time, the individual
determines the situation in that it produces effects that determine the psychological
reality: “What is real is what has effects” (Lewin 1936a: 19). Consequently, “the
situation must be represented in the way in which it is ‘real’ for the individual in
question, that is, as it affects him [sic]” (Lewin 1936a: 25), because it is the person
in their life-space who determines the “degrees of freedom” (Lewin 1936b: 272).
Lewin is not interested in attitudes, states, and trades of the person. Instead, he
wants to understand the very situation in which agency is shaped dynamically as an
interplay of the subject and the situational forces: “A dynamic psychology has to
represent the personality and the state of a person as the total of possible and not
possible ways of behaving” (Lewin 1936a: 14).
For Lewin, subjectivity is not a composition of historical facts, nor should it be
understood as “nothing more than an abstraction—a being who properly should be
described as a cross section of the groups to which he belongs” (Lewin 1939a: 21).
Instead it is the very subjectivity produced in the dynamics of a specific situation
which presents the starting point of psychological investigations. From there, psy-
chological research, be it with individuals or with groups, follows a specific pattern:
The subjective life space is investigated with respect to its “facts,” i.e., everything
that “matters” for the particular person or group. This procedure creates an account
of the actions taken by the person or group and the subjectively following steps. In
case of a conflict, the resolution depends on the analysis of the subjective life spaces
of the parties involved, paired with an analysis of the objective situation, i.e., all the
possible actions in the very situation which is used in order to “communicate to
each other the structure of their life spaces with the object of equalizing them”
(Lewin 1947a: 12) to create a shared subjectivity as a generalization from the situa-
tion. As such, the analysis of group conflict “swings from an analysis of ‘perception
to that of ‘action,’ from the ‘subjective’ to the ‘objective’ and back again” (Lewin
1947a: 12–13). Generalization in those terms is not a generalization of research
results, nor a generalization on average. It is the generalization of individualized
potentialities within a particular life-space. As such, Lewin lays the grounds to
rethink generalization as a tool in the hands of the research subjects that enables
them to understand and shape their individual life-space agentively.
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White, R. K., & Lippitt, R. (1960). Autocracy and democracy: An experimental inquiry. New York:
Harper.
Chapter 4
Developing a Dialectical Understanding
of Generalization: An Unfinalized Dialogue
Between Vygotsky and Davydov
Manolis Dafermos
Introduction
The issue of generalization was an object of intensive, ongoing discussions at dif-

ferent stages in the history of philosophy (see, for example, the dispute between
Plato and Aristotle on the existence of forms, the debate between realism and nomi-
nalism on universals, the long-standing conflict between empiricism and rational-
ism on the origin of knowledge, and the discussion on analytic/synthetic distinction).
The issue of generalization arose in the period of the emancipation of psychology
from philosophy in the context of the endeavor to establish psychology as a strict
natural science in accordance with the pattern of Newtonian physics. Even nowa-
days, psychology pretends to become a discipline able to find some universal laws
of mental life and human behavior. Discovering and justifying laws and law-like
generalizations stem from the striving to establish psychology as a natural, “nomo-
thetic” discipline. Danziger (2009) labeled the search for universals as the “Holy
Grail” in psychology.
Despite the claim to produce generally accepted and universal knowledge, in the
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, psychology was trapped in a
deep crisis. Various attempts at conceptualization and explanation of the crisis in
psychology emerged (Willy 1897, 1899; Bühler 1927; Lewin 1931; Driesch 1925;
Vygotsky 1997a). The crisis and fragmentation of psychology undermined the
claim to establish universal generalizations and raised difficult questions: how is the
establishment of psychology as a scientific discipline possible? What kind of gener-
alization can be employed for building a psychological theory?
The problem of generalization in quantitative research is examined as “a numeri-
cal problem, which is to be solved by statistical means” (Flick 2007: 118).
M. Dafermos (*)
Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece
e-mail: mdafermo@uoc.gr

62 M. Dafermos
Generalization in psychology is examined mainly in terms of formal logic.

Operationalism promoted further the technical apparatus of formal logic in relation
to measurement in psychology in its quest for universality. This type of generaliza-
tion produced on the basis of statistical means has been criticized for formalism that
leads “to an epistemological misunderstanding, as far as the nonreflexive research-
ers forget that any inference—whether inductive, deductive or abductive—is con-
text and content dependent” (Tateo 2015: 60).
In comparison with the dominant nomothetic approach to explaining human
behavior, an idiographic approach is formed as a way of understanding unique indi-
viduals in particular contexts. Nomothetic-idiographic perspectives reflect and elab-
orate further the ongoing controversy between the general and the particular in the
study of mental life and human behavior. In contrast to widespread methodological
dualism between idiographic and nomothetic approaches, dialectics focuses on the
close interconnection between the general and the particular. From a dialectical
perspective, the knowledge spiral includes the double movement of thinking from
the particular to the general and from the general to the particular (Blakeley 1964;
Vygotsky 1987).
The issue of generalization and the relation between general and particular are
complex theoretical and methodological problems connected with the examination
of a set of other issues such as inductive and deductive reasoning, the relation
between the concrete and the abstract, the analysis–synthesis process, and the inter-
action between everyday and scientific concepts. In contrast to the abstract and for-
malistic conceptualization of generalization that has become widespread in
mainstream positivist-oriented psychology, the adherents of the dialectical tradition
in philosophy and psychology advocate that the general is internally bound up with
the particular. The concept of the concrete universal developed within the dialecti-
cal tradition is especially important in order to go beyond the rigid particular/gen-
eral dichotomy.
Due to the hostility to dialectics in Anglo-American and continental philosophy
of science in the twentieth century (see Popper 1940), dialectical thinking remains
“terra incognita” in North Atlantic academia. The present work is an attempt to fill
the gap in understanding of dialectics by conceptualizing the issue of generalization
from a dialectical perspective. More concretely, the chapter explores how general-
ization has been conceptualized in Vygotsky’s work. The chapter also discusses the
contribution of Vasily Davydov (1930–1998), an eminent psychologist in Vygotsky’s
footsteps who investigated theoretical generalization. Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s
ideas on generalization were formed within the dialectical tradition in the field of
psychology. Bringing into dialogue Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s dialectical insights
can enrich the contemporary discussion on formal and situated generalization.
4 Developing a Dialectical Understanding of Generalization: An Unfinalized Dialogue… 63
Exploring Generalization as an Act of Human Consciousness
Vygotsky’s project has rightly been characterized as “the first attempt in psychol-
ogy and education to apply the principles of Marxist dialectics in developing theory
of human development and learning” (Stetsenko 2010: 70). Materialist dialectics
was employed by Vygotsky as a way to overcome the crisis in psychology that was
internally connected with the dominant conceptualization of generalization in the
domain of psychology. For Vygotsky, the crisis in psychology is related to the ten-
dency of the main trends in the field of psychology toward generalization. The rep-
resentatives of various trends of psychology such as Gestalt, psychoanalysis, and
reflexology go beyond their boundaries and transfer their concepts to adjacent
fields. Particular concepts, ideas, or discoveries from the particular fields and sub-
disciplines of psychology tend to become universal postulates for the explanation of
the totality of psychological phenomena. Vygotsky focused his attention on the ten-
dency for the extrapolation of particular ideas beyond the proper boundaries into the
broader realm of knowledge. This tendency demonstrates the real need to develop a
kind of generalization in the domain of psychology and the failure of the current
approaches to offer a solution to this problem. Vygotsky found a link between the
tendency toward unification and generalization in a discipline. Moreover, the failure
to solve the problem of unification and generalization is examined by Vygotsky as
an objective and necessary illusion, instead of attributing it to the personal mistake
of the scientists involved. The failure to solve the problem of unification and gener-
alization through the extrapolation of concepts and ideas beyond their boundaries is
similar to the transcendental illusions of pure Reason that were analyzed by Kant.
Transcendental illusions inevitably emerge when Reason attempts to apply concepts
beyond all possible experience.
Vygotsky discussed critically Neokantian conceptualization of psychology. He
agreed with Binswanger’s idea that general science is “a theory of ultimate founda-
tion, of the general principles and problems of a given area of knowledge” (Vygotsky
1997a: 247) from special disciplines (sub-disciplines). However, he challenged
Binswanger’s examination of general science as a part of the logic that studies vari-
ous logical forms in different disciplines. More generally, Vygotsky called into
question Kantian and Neokantian “critique of psychology” and any kind of a priori
formalistic construction of a system of concepts of scientific knowledge: “We pro-
ceed by induction-we generalize enormous groups of facts, compare them, analyze
and create new abstractions” (Vygotsky 1997a: 252). However, for Vygotsky, scien-
tific research is not reduced to a simple observation and description of empirical
data. Scientific knowledge goes beyond the boundaries of sensuous experience.
Scientific work “isolates, analyzes, separates, abstracts a single feature” (Vygotsky
1997a: 274).
In the first stages of their development, concrete disciplines move from the sen-
suous concrete to the abstract by using methods such as the analysis of phenomena
into their elements and inductive generalization. The absolutization of the move-
ment from the sensuous concrete to the abstract leads to the “cult of empiricism” in
64 M. Dafermos
mainstream North American psychology (Toulmin and Leary 1985). The attempt to
avoid philosophical theory and the concomitant faith in empirical data and the
“facts” themselves is one of the expressions of the “cult of empiricism.” As part of
the movement of thinking from the sensuous concrete to the abstract in the domain
of psychology a set of quantitative procedures and technical tools has been employed
as a means to establish universality of psychological knowledge.
Vygotsky found not only the Kantian a priori construction of a system of scien-
tific concepts problematic but also the empiricist account of science as a linear accu-
mulation of pure empirical facts. Vygotsky accepted Goethe’s idea that every fact
becomes fact within a particular theory: “Everything described as a fact is already a
theory” (Vygotsky 1997a: 249). The strict opposition between the description of
facts and the articulation of theoretical concepts reproduces a dualism in the process
of knowledge construction. More generally, Vygotsky challenged the reproduction
of an unbridgeable gap between concepts and objects as well as the separation of the
conceptual system of psychology from its historical development as a discipline.
Moreover, in contrast to the examination of methodology as a homogeneous cor-
pus of technical instruments, Vygotsky stated that there is not a general methodol-
ogy of psychology, but a struggle between “deeply hostile, mutually exclusive,
methodological principles” (Vygotsky 1997a: 261). For Vygotsky, a general theory
or a general methodology cannot be established through an eclectic combination of
elements from different theories and methodologies. Challenging eclecticism,
Vygotsky proposed the development of “the dialectic of psychology – this is what
we may now call the general psychology” (Vygotsky 1997a: 256). The need for the
re-foundation of psychology as a discipline stems first and foremost from the soci-
etal practice. Bridging the gap between theory and societal practice is one of the
most important challenges from the perspective of dialectics. “The dialectic unity of
methodology and practice” (Vygotsky 1997a: 310) was presented by Vygotsky as a
way to develop a new conceptualization of generalization. Developing a monistic,
dialectic system of psychological concepts on the basis of new societal and profes-
sional practice was crucial for Vygotsky. It was argued that a system of concepts of
psychology should be built, as Marx established the system of concepts of political
economy. “Psychology is in need of its own Das Kapital” (Vygotsky 1997a: 330).
But for building the system of concepts of psychology, it is necessary to find its
“cell,” its starting point. In contrast to analysis into elements, Vygotsky proposed
promoting an analysis into units that reveals the smallest part of a complex whole
with all its essential properties. The unit of analysis serves as a starting point for the
theoretical reconstruction of a complex whole as a developing process. Vygotsky’s
idea on “cell” and “units of analysis” constitutes an important contribution to the
understanding of generalization in the domain of psychology. The “cell” and “units
of analysis” fit the investigation of self-organizing, changing, developing systems,
rather than mechanical systems. Vygotsky employed these concepts in order to
develop a dialectical, holistic, historical approach to consciousness (Dafermos 2018).
In his manuscript “The historical sense of psychological crisis,” Vygotsky sup-
posed that “the mechanism of reaction” (Vygotsky 1997a: 320) is the “cell” of
psychology as a science. In the subsequent stages of his creative development,
Vygotsky proposed other definitions of the “unit of analysis” (or “cell”) (Vygotsky
1987: 46), “instrumental act” (Vygotsky 1997b), “meaning” (Vygotsky 1987: 244),
“perezhivanie”1 (Vygotsky 1994). It seems that Vygotsky was not satisfied by his
own proposals of the “cell’” and “units of analysis” (Veresov 1999; Dafermos
2014). The issue of theoretical generalization was posed by Vygotsky, but it
remained unsolved. Generalization was examined by Vygotsky in the context of his
investigation of concept formation by using the method of double stimulation2 from
a developmental perspective. Vygotsky distinguished different types of generaliza-
tion in the process of concept development. During the syncretic stage, children
collect objects together in accordance with their subjective impressions, without
understanding the objective relations between the objects themselves. Complexive
thinking was examined by Vygotsky as a crucial stage of concept development.
Children become able to define both subjective and objective connections that actu-
ally exist among the objects that are involved in a practical operation. “The complex-
collection is a generalization based on their co-participation in a single practical
operation, a generalization of things based on their functional collaboration”
(Vygotsky 1987: 139).
Conceptual thinking is based on the ability to generalize on the basis of essential
relations between objects. It consists of the development of an ability to reveal the
complex hierarchical relations between things, the relations between the general
and the particular: “the process of concept formation came to be understood as a
complex process involving the movement of thinking through the pyramid of con-
cepts, a process involving constant movement from the general to the particular and
from the particular to the general” (Vygotsky 1987: 162).
For Vygotsky, concept development is connected with the formation of the
child’s ability to generalize. The development of generalization is internally con-
nected with the transition from the sensuous concrete to abstract thinking in the
process of resolving concrete problems. The main limitation of Vygotsky’s investi-
gation of concept formation on the basis of the method of double stimulation was
connected with his focus on artificial concepts and the lack of attention on the word
meaning. From the investigation of artificial concepts on the basis of the method of
double stimulation, Vygotsky moved toward an inquiry into real-life concepts.
Vygotsky investigated the interconnection between everyday and scientific con-
cepts on the basis of a critical reflection of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
1
The Russian word “perezhivanie” refers to living through experience and working through it. The
concept of perezhivanie was used by Vygotsky as a part of the system of concepts of cultural-his-
torical theory. This concept expresses the dialectical, dynamic relation between personality, and
the social environment which is part and parcel of personality development (Dafermos 2018). “In
an emotional experience [perezhivanie] we are always dealing with an indivisible unity of personal
characteristics and situational characteristics, which are represented in the emotional experience
[perezhivanie]” (Vygotsky 1994: 342).
2
L. Sakharov and L. Vygotsky developed the method of double stimulation for the study of the
development of higher functions with the help of two types of stimuli: simple stimuli that cause a
direct response and auxiliary means that help the subject to organize his behavior (Vygotsky 1987;
Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018).
66 M. Dafermos
Everyday concepts are acquired by children in their everyday life, while scientific
concepts are formed in the context of the systematic school instruction. Everyday
concepts develop from “bottom to top,” from everyday experience to generaliza-
tions, while scientific concepts from “top to bottom,” from verbal explanations to
children’s everyday experience. “Concepts are distributed between poles ranging
from an immediate, sensual, graphic grasping of the object to the ultimate general-
ization (i.e., the most abstract concept)” (Vygotsky 1987: 226).
Concept development was examined by Vygotsky as a transition from a con-
crete, immediate sensory grasp of an object to the abstract thinking based on maxi-
mally generalized conceptualization. Braun (1991) notes that Vygotsky associated
the concrete thought with factually based mental complexes and the abstract thought
with the articulation of logical concepts. The identification of the concrete with
sensuous perception and the abstract with a maximally generalized conceptualiza-
tion in Vygotsky’s writings demonstrates that despite Vygotsky’s attempt to develop
a dialectical account of human development, he could not avoid the influence of the
Lockean empiricist tradition on his research on concept development.
At the last stage of the elaboration of his book Thinking and Speech Vygotsky
took an important step toward overcoming the intellectualistic understanding of
concept formation. For Vygotsky, thinking as a higher mental function reflects real-
ity “in a generalized way” (Vygotsky 1997a: 48–49). For Vygotsky, every word
contains a kind of generalization. The generalized function of a word is connected
with its meaning. “From a psychological perspective, word meaning is first and
foremost a generalization” (Vygotsky 1997a: 47). Meaning was examined by
Vygotsky as a unit of analysis of consciousness. The elaboration of the concept of
unit of analysis can be examined as an attempt to go beyond empirical, inductive
generalization and develop a theoretical generalization.
Empirical generalization is a kind of inference based on identifying external
similarities between different properties or parts of an object. For example, a phe-
notypical, formal analysis of the external characteristics of the whale leads to the
conclusion that it is a fish. A theoretical generalization is an act of thinking that
reflects the internal relations of an object as a whole, its dynamics of development.
Based on a theoretical generalization, comparative and evolutionary biology offers
evidence that the whale is a marine mammal.
Vygotsky’s understanding of the word as a kind of generalization was formed
under the influence of his reading of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebook. Lenin articu-
lated the idea that “every word already universalizes” (Zavershneva and Van der
Veer 2018: 136). According to Vygotsky, Lenin examined the rational core of ideal-
ism which connected the freedom that every concept offers. “In the simplest gener-
alization, in the most elementary general idea, there is a certain bit of fantasy =
freedom. In the concept, there is freedom” (Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018:
134). This bit of fantasy offers the freedom from the thing. The danger of idealism
consists in turning concepts into isolated, separated beings. The dialectical under-
standing of generalization reflects the twofold movement of thinking “toward the
real thing and away from it” (Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018: 134).
Generalization as a product of this twofold movement of thinking develops in the

process of social communication, rather than an individual mind. Vygotsky estab-
lished an internal connection between generalization as function of thinking and
communication: “generalization becomes possible only with the development of
social interaction” (Vygotsky 1997a: 48). Vygotsky’s idea of the unity between
thinking and communication is linked with his project on the investigation of con-
sciousness. The interconnection between thinking and communication is reflected
in the etymology of the word “consciousness” that originates from the Latin ‘cons-
cius’ (con- ‘together’ + scientia- ‘to know’). The very term “consciousness” refers
to the process of sharing knowledge jointly knowing:
Etymologically, of course, the term ‘consciousness’ is a knowledge word. This is evidenced
by the Latin form, -sci-, in the middle of the word. But what are we to make of the prefix
con- that precedes it? Look at the usage in Roman Law, and the answer will be easy enough.
Two or more agents who act jointly—having formed a common intention, framed a shared
plan, and concerted their actions – are as a result conscientes. They act as they do knowing
one another’s plans: they are jointly knowing. (Toulmin 1982: 64)
Due to his early death, Vygotsky’s project on the investigation of consciousness

remained unfinalized. However, several of Vygotsky’s ideas, developed in the last
phase of his life, still retain their importance for the examination of the issue of
generalization. It is worth noting that for Vygotsky, thinking and generalization as
its essential function is a social process, rather than an individual or purely cogni-
tive process. From a cultural-historical perspective, thinking can be examined as a
sign-mediating joint action. From this perspective, generalization is a reflective,
sense making, intersubjective act of human consciousness, rather than a purely cog-
nitive process based on formalist procedures. In separation from a sense-making
process of human consciousness in a concrete sociohistorical and scientific context,
any kind of generalization can lose its meaning.
Based on an analysis of Vygotsky’s “Psychology of Art,” Valsiner (2015) argues
that Vygotsky developed an affective generalization in the form of feelings. More
concretely, Vygotsky employed the concept of short circuit (korotkoe zamykanie)
that emerges as a result of the clash and destruction of tension between opposite
emotions. In other words, generalization as a form of dialectical synthesis can be
achieved not only on a cognitive level but also in the form of feelings and, more
generally, as an act of human consciousness.
A Search for Theoretical Generalization
The issue of generalization arose in the context of discussions on activity theory and
its relation to Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory. One of the most important con-
tributions to the investigation of the issue of generalization was associated with the
eminent adherent of activity theory, Vasily Davydov. He was involved in a debate
about the possibilities of the creation of a system of psychological concepts on the
basis of the concept of activity.
68 M. Dafermos
Calling into question Vygotskian conceptualization of generalization, Davydov

developed his own understanding of generalization under the influence of discus-
sions on dialectics of Marx’s “Das Kapital” in the 1950s to early 1960s in the
USSR. A rich and multifaceted tradition of the study of the concepts and laws of
dialectics was formed in that context (Ilyenkov 1960; Vaziulin 1985, 2002; Dafermos
2003; Levant and Oittinen 2014).
On the basis of a reflection on Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s “Das Kapital,” Ilyenkov
(2009) offered a critique of Locke’s empiricist tradition in philosophy and concrete
disciplines and their understanding of the universal in terms of sameness, a common
characteristic of a group of phenomena. In the empiricist tradition, universal is
examined as a property abstracted, isolated from the concrete phenomena. In con-
trast to the concept of abstract universal, Ilyenkov proposed the concept of the con-
crete universal as the substance, or the genetic root of a concrete whole. For Ilyenkov,
Marx’s concept of value in Das Kapital serves as a form of a concrete universal
(Ilyenkov 1960).
Challenging the examination of generalization from the perspective of formal
logic, Davydov proposed that dialectical logic can offer a new understanding of
theoretical generalization. Under the influence of Ilyenkov’s account of dialectical
logic, Davydov advocated that the method of the ascent from the abstract to the
concrete can be employed for the construction of a system of psychological con-
cepts. For Davydov, the concept of activity serves as a concrete universal, the “germ
cell” for building a monistic psychological theory. Davydov proposed the elabora-
tion of the concept of theoretical generalization. He criticized the dominance of a
narrow empiricism in school education and educational psychology.
In accordance with the dominant, empiricist type of conceptualization, general-
ization is a process of finding some similar (or common) qualities, stable character-
istics in a class of objects. Generalization is based on the transition from the
empirical description to making comparison between the qualities of an object (or a
class of objects). Moreover, by using the operation of abstracting, some common
elements or qualities are defined. Following the nominalist tradition, empirical gen-
eralization deals with observable, individual objects, their comparison, and the pro-
cess of abstracting of their common properties on the basis of formal logic.
According to Davydov (1990, 1996), the dominant understanding of generalization
in psychology and didactics originates from formal logic. The formation of con-
cepts takes place through finding similarities and differences in observable, indi-
vidual objects. In other words, empirical generalization is internally linked with the
movement of thinking from the concrete sensory to the abstract.
The general is defined in formal logic as something important and essential that
emerges as a result of the isolation from the non-essential, the particular. General
and particular, essential and non-essential are presented as mutually exclusive con-
cepts. In other words, the dialectical, historical relationship between the general and
the particular is lost. The lack of a dialectical understanding of the relation between
the general and the particular is reflected in the realism vs. nominalism debate. The
representatives of nominalism argue that the properties and relations of objects are
particular, not universal. Denying the existence of universals, nominalist tradition
leads to the reproduction of dualism between general/universal concepts and par-

ticular facts. Particular facts are examined as singular and divorced from any gen-
eral concepts, while general, universal concepts are presented as formal and abstract.
Davydov demonstrated the limitations of formal logical understanding of gener-
alization. For Davydov, formal logic and mathematical logic cannot serve as a main
criterion of truth, because they are “isolated from the concrete elaboration of empir-
ical material” (Davydov 1988: 174). It was argued that the truly concrete universal
is distinct from both the formal general and sensible concrete. Davydov argued that
Vygotsky did not offer a well-defined criterion for the distinction between sponta-
neous (everyday) and scientific concepts: “the determining difference between
everyday concepts and scientific ones was found, not in their objective content, but
in the method and ways of mastery (‘personal experience … the process of instruc-
tion’)” (Davydov 1990: 88). For Davydov, the criteria between spontaneous (every-
day) and scientific concepts lie in the distinction between empirical and theoretical
types of knowledge. Spontaneous (everyday) concepts are based on observation and
categorization of the external properties of a concrete object, while scientific con-
cepts represent its essential, internal relations.
Theoretical generalization of the internal relation of an object was examined by
Davydov as a result of a deduction, a movement of thinking from the general to the
particular, from the internal to the external. It was argued that the educational pro-
cess should be oriented on the formation of contentful generalizations that repro-
duce the concrete universal properties of things. This kind of contentful, theoretical
generalization develops from the basis of special activities replicating the concrete
object as a whole, rather than as a sum of elements (Davydov 1988). Theoretical
thinking was considered by Davydov as a purposeful activity oriented to the reflec-
tion of essential relationships and transforming the material reality. The deep knowl-
edge of the internal societal contradictions offers the opportunity to promote
transformative action. Davydov’s conceptualization of theoretical generalization
has been criticized from various perspectives (Engeström 2015; Koshmanova 2007;
Nissen 2012; Hedegaard and Chaiklin 2005). For Koshmanova (2007: 84),
Davydov’s conceptualization of theoretical generalization “might lead to the forma-
tion of formalistic knowledge.” Similarly, Nissen (2012) notes that Davydov’s “the-
oretical concepts” are not dialectically connected with empirical concepts, and they
shape scholastic knowledge. Engeström (2015) argues that Davydov’s argumenta-
tion tends to reproduce a dichotomic way of thinking. From my perspective, because
of his strong criticism of empiricism, Davydov was led straight to the other extrem-
ity, the absolutization of theoretical thinking and the devaluation of empirical think-
ing. First, it is significant to note that sensuous experience is not identical with
empiricism. Second, the understanding of the relation between theoretical and
empirical thinking in Davydov’s theory of generalization is found problematic:
“Empirical thinking and theoretical thinking are presented as mutually exclusive
alternatives. Their mutual dependency and mutual penetration are temporarily set
aside” (Engeström 2015: 196). The exclusive emphasis on theoretical generaliza-
tion is a problematic approach because it does not consider the complexity of the
educational process.
70 M. Dafermos
There is a certain danger of transforming deductive teaching into students’ memorization of

concepts, which might lead to the formation of formalistic knowledge. This approach works
only for intellectually homogeneous groups of students who have a positive motivation to
learn and are ready to grasp complex theoretical knowledge. My experience has shown that
students who do not have a great interest in learning a subject are not able to study theoreti-
cal concepts. (Koshmanova 2007: 84–85)
Koshmanova (2007) argues that theoretical generalization should be combined with

inductive generalization. However, the following questions can be raised: How is it
possible to combine empirical and theoretical thinking, empirical and theoretical
generalization? Usually, the very idea of the combination between empirical and
theoretical thinking stems from their examination as isolated processes. The strong
opposition between empirical and theoretical thinking as well as the gap between
particular and general seems to be questionable. More specifically, it can be argued
that there are two different approaches to the relation between empirical and theo-
retical thinking within the dialectical tradition. The representatives of the first
approach focus almost exclusively on the development of theoretical thinking
(Davydov 1996). The representatives of the second approach propose to go beyond
the absolute distinction between theoretical and empirical thinking and concepts
(Nissen 2012). From the perspective of the second approach, the general is inter-
nally bound up with the particular. In the same direction, it can be argued that
empirical and theoretical thinking internally connects moments of the knowledge
spiral (Vaziulin 1985). Moreover, the question of the relation between the general
and particular, between empirical and theoretical thinking, is not merely cognitive
or epistemological but also social and practical. In particular, it is important to
address some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of the combination of
empirical and theoretical thinking? What type of problems can we attempt to solve
by using empirical and theoretical generalization and in which context?
romoting a Dialogue on Dialectical Understanding

P
of Generalization
From the previous analysis, we see that both Lev Vygotsky and Vasily Davydov
attempted to overcome the crisis of traditional psychology based on formal general-
izations and develop a dialectical account of human development in its complexity.
They were inspired by dialectics as a way of thinking and attempted to build a
monistic theory in the domain of psychology. Developing a monistic account of
human development was a way to go beyond Cartesian dualism that still dominates
psychology.
Moreover, in the quest for a “dialectical synthesis,” both Vygotsky and Davydov
posed the problem of the concrete universal in the field of psychology, but they
resolved it in different ways. There are essential differences between Vygotsky and
Davydov in understanding of the relation between empirical and theoretical gener-
alization as well as the interaction between everyday and scientific concepts.
They were involved in the search for the theoretical generalization that can
become the fundament of the construction of a new psychological theory. Both
Vygotsky and Davydov articulated this crucial question, but they attempted to solve
it in different ways. In contrast to the dominant tendency in psychology for a reduc-
tionist analysis into elements, Vygotsky proposed “units of analysis.” He was look-
ing for a way of investigating the complex configuration of human subjectivity. For
Davydov, the concept of activity can serve as the “germ cell” for the building of a
system of psychological concepts. Vygotsky’s search for “units of analysis” and
Davydov’s emphasis on theoretical generalization can be examined as different
ways of formulating the problem of concrete universal in the field of psychology.
Inspired by Davydov’s concept of generalization, Tolman argue that “…the crisis in
general psychology is such that it can only be resolved by resorting to an alternate
form of generalization that leads to concrete theoretical knowledge rather than
abstract generalities” (Tolman 1989: 207). This type of universality that became the
dominant way of thinking in psychology was labeled by Hegel as “abstract”:
The activity of the understanding consists generally in the bestowing of the form of univer-
sality on its content; and the universal posited by the understanding is, of course, an abstract
one, which is held onto in firm opposition to the particular. (Hegel 1991: 126)
Hegel’s conceptualization of generalization is based on the distinction between

Understanding (Verstand) and Reason (Vernunft). Understanding applies a set of
concepts and procedures to empirical data in order to produce generalized knowl-
edge. Understanding as a way of thinking moves away from sensuous perception to
the abstract through an analysis based on the separation of various aspects of its
object. The concepts formed through Understanding are static, inert and unchang-
ing. For Hegel, Understanding is not able to go beyond abstract generalization of
phenomena based on the separation of the universal from the particular.
Understanding cannot grasp and conceptually reflect the internal relations of a con-
crete object, its movement and change (Vaziulin 1985; Pavlidis 2010). At the level
of Understanding, the general and the particular are considered as isolated and
alienated each from other (the general as negation of the particular and the particu-
lar as a negation of the general). Offering an abstract, formal generalization,
Understanding as a way of thinking is unable to grasp the complex configuration
between various sides and determinations of an object.
It is important to clarify that according to Hegel, a reflection on universals is
crucial for philosophical thinking: “Philosophy is in the region of thought, and has
therefore to deal with universals” (Hegel 1892: 24). However, developing a strong
criticism of abstract generalization, Hegel proposed the concept of the concrete
universal as “a unity of distinct determinations” (Hegel 1991: 71). The concrete
universal can be considered as a totality of the essential relations between particu-
larities (Baumann 2011). Ilyenkov (1960) argued that the concrete universal is the
“cell” of all particular phenomena. From this perspective, the concrete universal
incorporates into itself the richness of particularities, but it is not reduced to them or
to their sum.
72 M. Dafermos
We ought to take into account a contradiction in Hegel’s understanding of the

concrete universal. In contrast to dogmatism of the metaphysics of Understanding
that “consists in its adherence to one-sided thought determinations in their isola-
tion” (Hegel 1991: 70), Hegel advocated dialectical Reason (Vernunft) that reflects
a concrete universal as a totality of multiple determinations. From this perspective,
the universal is contained within its particular manifestations. At the same time,
subsuming the particular under the universal, Hegel treats an object in general (its
logic in general), rather than the peculiar logic of a peculiar object as Marx pro-
posed. Instead, Marx proposed that the main task consists “in grasping the specific
logic of the specific subject” (Marx 1975: 91).
Inspired largely by Hegel, Marx developed a further dialectical method for the
theoretical reconstruction of the capitalist mode of production as a living, organic,
developing whole through the creation of a system of interrelated categories. As I
have already mentioned, Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s views on generalization were
developed in the context of an extensive discussion on dialectical methodology in
Marx’s “Das Kapital” in the USSR.
From a dialectical perspective, the concept of concrete universal is crucial for the
investigation of complex organic systems that could not be sufficiently explained by
employing reductionist, atomistic models based on abstract and formal generaliza-
tions. Vygotsky developed the concept of “units of analysis” as a part of his project
of the investigation of consciousness. Davydov developed the concept of theoretical
generalization in the context of his attempt to establish an interdisciplinary activity
theory. Despite the essential differences in the subject matter and the research focus
between Vygotsky and Davydov, both thinkers shared some important common ori-
entations. Both Vygotsky and Davydov attempted to investigate human subjectivity
as a complex phenomenon that it is impossible to grasp by employing abstract and
formal generalizations of empiricist psychology. Both of them were against the
“cult of empiricism” in psychology. Vygotsky was aware of the limitations of nar-
row empiricism, but for him inductive generalization cannot be expelled from psy-
chology. For Vygotsky (1987), inductive generalization is employed inevitably in
the concrete stages of cognitive development (e.g., thinking in complexes).
Vygotsky (1987) focused on the double movement of thinking from the general
to the particular and from the particular to the general in the process of concept
formation. Davydov (1988) emphasized exclusively on the movement of thinking
from the general to the particular in the practice of teaching. However, the dialectics
of the knowledge process can be lost as a result of the underestimation of the oppo-
site side, the movement of thinking from the particular to the general.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning Oscar Wilde statement that “It is only shal-
low people who do not judge by appearances.” Although I am firmly convinced that
Davydov was very far from being a shallow person, I think that the depreciation of
the movement of thinking from the appearance to the essence3 is a weak point in his
3
There is a fundamental difference between essentialism and the dialectical conceptualization of
the relation between essence and phenomena. Essentialism is a metaphysical conceptualization of
generalization based on the examination of specific properties of an object as stable, universal, and
theory of generalization. The movement of thinking from the appearance to the

essence as well as from the particular to the general is dialectically connected with
the movement from the essence to the appearance and from the general to the par-
ticular. The indifference to particularities and the lack of understanding of the dia-
lectical interconnection between the particular and the general leads inevitably to
the transformation of theoretical generalization into a new abstract, formal universal.
For Davydov, the learning activity of children can be built only on the basis of
theoretical generalization. Hence, a question may arise: Is it fruitful to reduce the
learning process to the replacement of everyday concepts by the scientific concepts
based on theoretical generalization? From my perspective, ignoring subjectivity and
the active agency of participants of the learning process, the idea of the replacement
of everyday concepts with the scientific concepts is linear and one-dimensional. It
is more constructive to examine the learning process in terms of a dialectical trans-
formation of both everyday and scientific concepts rather than as the replacement of
the former by the latter.
It is important to take into account that the question of the interaction between
everyday concepts and scientific concepts is not a purely cognitive or epistemologi-
cal question but also a practical issue. Both Vygotsky and Davydov advocated that
teaching/learning can promote children’s mental development. Vygotsky’s concept
of Zone of Proximal Development was an attempt to respond to the question of what
kind of teaching/learning can promote development. Davydov’s theory of develop-
mental education marks a slightly different route to solve the same crucial problem.
Theoretical and practical questions raised by Vygotsky and Davydov remain rea-
sonably discussable. Hedegaard and Chaiklin (2005) argue that Vygotsky’s investi-
gation of everyday and scientific concepts is insufficient, because “it does not have
an analysis of the relation of knowledge to children’s societal lives, and his analysis
of the relation between forms of practice and forms of knowledge was not suffi-
ciently explicit” (Hedegaard and Chaiklin 2005: 34). From a radical-local point of
view, Hedegaard and Chaiklin expand dialogue on the relation between everyday
and scientific concepts by proposing its examination in the context of the living
conditions of children and the real problems that they face in their everyday life. In
fact, in order to overcome the cognitivist framework of the examination of the rela-
tion between everyday and scientific concepts, it is important to focus on participa-
tion in society’s existing and potential economic, political, and cultural practices.
not dependent on the concrete context. From a dialectical perspective, essence is examined as a
system of contradictory, dynamic, historical relations of a concrete, developing object, rather than
an abstract, formal set of deconceptualized attributes. Moving from a purely descriptive, empirical
study of phenomena to investigate their internal essence was a crucial issue for Vygotsky. “In
theory, the internal essence of things and the external form of their manifestation do not coincide.
“If the form of manifestation and the essence of things coincided directly, then all science would
be superfluous”” (Vygotsky 1998: 188–189).
74 M. Dafermos
dvancing Dialogue on Generalization and Its Relation

A
to Changing Societal Practice
Addressing the issue of the contribution of different forms of practice (in home,
school, community, work, etc.) to concept formation, the theory of situated learning
promises a broader perspective for research of generalization. The community of
practice framework has been proposed by the adherents of situated learning as a
way to go beyond the abstract and decontextualized models of generating by focus-
ing on the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of human life (Rogoff and
Lave 1984; Henning 2004). Situated learning became one the most important ways
to fill a real gap in understanding the relation between everyday and scientific con-
cepts and offer a contextual, relational, and intersubjective understanding of learn-
ing. The question arises whether the knowledge that has been acquired in everyday
situations in particular contexts and domains can be generalized. It is important also
to clarify what kind of generalization it is and how it is associated with other forms
of generalization.
The issue of the relation between formal and situated generalization provokes
tension and controversy. Nemirovsky argues that “adherents of the situated cogni-
tion perspective are at ease with the pervasive evidence that local circumstances,
ongoing goals, and tools at hand, shape human thinking and action, while, on the
other hand, generalizing and abstraction appear difficult to account for” (Nemirovsky
2002: 234). Calling into question formal generalization, the situated cognition per-
spective brings to light the complexity of cognition and learning in particular
domains and contexts. Clancey argues that “the theory of situated learning claims
that every idea and human action is a generalization, adapted to the ongoing envi-
ronment” (1995: 49). The particularistic emphasis implicit in the theory of situated
learning is an understandable reaction against universalism of cognitivism
(Bredo 1997).
The focus on situated cognition has been developed—to a significant extent—
under the influence of the postmodern criticism of the modern pursuit of universal-
ity that “leads to the repression of particularity” (Susen 2015: 46). Particularism as
a way of thinking is close to the postmodern glorification of difference and diversity.
However, the postmodern celebration of particularity and differences risks asserting
them as a new “universal” (or an “new absolute”). It is easy to jump from one
extreme to another and difficult to grasp the dialectical interconnection between the
general and the particular. The reduction of the general to the particular is no less
one-dimensional than the Hegelian approach to subsume the particular under the
universal. More generally, I argue that universalism and particularism mutually
reinforce each other, and they can be examined as two sides of the same coin. From
my perspective, the creative potential of the concrete, situated ways of knowing can
be tapped only in its dialectical interconnection with the general forms of cognition
in terms of a dialectical synthesis.
The dialectical way of thinking offers the opportunity to go beyond the tension
between empirical and abstract generalization and highlight the spiral-like
d evelopment of knowledge that includes both the movements of thinking from the
concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to the concrete (Vaziulin 1985). By
employing this dialectical, double movement of thinking (the movements of think-
ing from the sensuous concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to the concrete),
the subjects become aware of the complexity of the real world and are actively
involved in societal practice. From a dialectical perspective, generalization emerges
as a creative, reflective act (see Tateo 2013) with a complex configuration.
Revealing the shortcomings of abstract, formal generalization that remains dom-
inant in positivist-oriented psychology, both Vygotsky and Davydov proposed to
develop a dialectical approach to generalization. The disagreements between them
on the ways of the development of a dialectical approach to generalization demon-
strate the complexity of this issue and the real need to examine it concretely and
historically. The relation between the general and the particular is not static, but it
changes dynamically in the process of the historical development of society and
science. The dialectical way of thinking brings to light the historicity of the con-
cepts “general” and “particular” and the transformations of their interrelations
(included their meanings) in the social history and the history of science. Moreover,
the dialectical way of thinking offers the opportunity to address the issue of gener-
alization not only on the domain of actually existing societal forms, but also antici-
pate potential future societal development.
The understanding of the dynamic, historical relation between the general and
the particular as well as the spiral-like development of knowledge as a contradictory
unity of both movements of thinking from the sensuous concrete to the abstract and
from the abstract to the concrete are essential in order to develop a dialectical grasp
of the relationship between theory and societal practice. Challenging the traditional
theory–practice dichotomy that remains dominant in psychology, Holzkamp argued
that “the comprehensive meaning of the reason-guided reflection and generalization
of human issues is not merely to be reconstructed in practice but also in theory …
And only then can the self-evident insight become effective that, just as theory
remains irrelevant without practice, practice is inevitably blind without a ‘theoreti-
cal public’” (Holzkamp 2013: 110–111). Moving beyond the theory–practice
dichotomy, the dialectical way of thinking reflects the historical relation between
the general and the particular in order to promote active, transformative
subjectivity.
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Chapter 5
Generalization in Science: Abstracting
from Unique Events
Jaan Valsiner
Generalization is an ever-new process of signification. New understanding grows

step by step based on the experience as it unfolds, and moves beyond the concrete
into the abstract realm. By looking carefully at the ways in which new ideas are
reached in the slow process of scientific process (Wertheimer 1982) we can find
evidence for both pathways to breakthroughs and stagnation domains (Valsiner
2012, Chap. 10). The latter is often linked with making a science into a domain of
knowledge where practical uses dominate over efforts at generating basic knowl-
edge. Generalization was, is, and will remain the main goal of any science.
My goal in this chapter is to give further elaboration to the idea that generaliza-
tion in science is not only possible from single cases (N = 1) but is necessarily lim-
ited to it (e.g., if N = 2 there are two single cases involved, if N = N + 1 there is
precisely that infinite number of single cases under study). Furthermore, given the
flow of irreversible time—making many phenomena in developmental sciences,
from psychology to astrophysics1—uniquely transient, we need to accept that gen-
eralization can be limited to the database of a single instant (Valsiner 2015a, b). This
focus is diametrically opposite to the contemporary fascination of collecting “big
data” through the help of ever extensive technological devices. I here elaborate the
1
Astrophysics is a developmental science of objects (galaxies, neutron stars, “black holes,” etc.)
that emerge, develop, and extinguish. They do not belong to the category of living systems but are
examples of open systems in the existence of the universe. They exist in temporarily equilibrated
states of dynamic stability, transforming from one form into another. All these qualitative transi-
tions are unique events of irreversible kind. Completely new and difficult to classify new phenom-
ena are observed—such as Oumuamua (the first interstellar object traveling from constellation of
Lyra toward Pegasus, discovered on October 19, 2017). The return of such interstellar objects is
not expected. Likewise the emergence of “black holes” from the collapse of neutron stars is a short
one-time event of no recurrence (producing gravitational waves—https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/
page/what-are-gw)
J. Valsiner (*)
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

80 J. Valsiner
new focus on nanopsychology (Valsiner 2018)—the maximum theoretical benefit

by generalizing from the minimal (but relevant) data. The present perspective treats
the “sample size” as being constant at N = 1, and deals with finding out how from
such base general knowledge could be obtained.
What Does “Single Case” Mean?
The meaning of the denotation “single case” is variable. In psychologists’ usual

opposition it is the counterpart of a “sample,” and in the value system dominated by
the statistical mindset denigrated to be untrustable, and at times even “unethical” to
be used for scientific generalization. In direct contrast to this orientation is the focus
on the reality of human existence within irreversible time—each event in psyche is
a unique single case and its validity is given by its real function in the given moment
within a real human life course. A successful act of suicide—started by an instant
affective moment or from long dissatisfaction with one’s life—is a single existen-
tially definite event in the life of a single person in the given context. If successful,
it is the single event that ends the life of a human being. As such it is deeply existen-
tially real—and does not need any further validation in a second act of similar kind
that is no longer even possible.
Practice and Theory United—Focus on the Single Case
The reality of the single instances within single cases brings two areas of work
within psychology—clinical, educational, and organizational practices on the one
hand, and basic science on the other. The advancement of idiographic science
(Molenaar 2004; Salvatore et al. 2009, 2010a, b, 2012, 2014; Salvatore and Valsiner
2010) indicates the move of basic science away from the statistical mindset of large
sample research to the focus on the real individual cases. The focus on such cases is
a given reality for all applied areas—a clinical treatment of a patient, a consultation
of a business firm, or advice to a government about the impacts of introducing a new
legislation are all single cases where the general understanding of the principles of
their organization is crucial. This leads us to the question of our axiomatic setup of
how we conceptualize the structure of the single case (event).
A Case Is Not a Thing But a System
There are three possible ways how to axiomatically conceptualize a single case
(Fig. 5.1), The three ways have dramatic implications for science.
5 Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events 81
Fig. 5.1 Axiomatic presentations of a single case
The CASE AS AN OBJECT (Fig. 5.1a) axiomatic stand is the standard implicit

option used in all social science research efforts where samples of data are collected
for some purposes. The individual cases (events) are classified into similarity cate-
gories (X) and that classification makes it possible to accumulate the data over time
and space (contexts) into summary indices which are subsequently submitted to
statistical routines leading to inductive generalization. The relevance of the single
case (event) here is limited to the maximum—it needs to occur (be detectable), it
must be classifiable into a given or emerging strict classification systems, the accu-
mulations of which are then compared (e.g., Xs versus Ys). “Irregular” cases (e.g.,
those that do not conform to the assumed form of distribution) are either discarded
or the distribution is transferred to the expected one (non-normal to normal distribu-
tion transfers in statistics). The single case here is no longer relevant once it has
become accumulated into the data set. This axiomatic stand is naively realistic—it
detects events that did occur (and accumulates those) while being completely
“blind” to similar events (X) that in a current context could have become expressed
(but were not). The absence of context of Xs makes such determination impossible.
The axiomatic look at the case as a SYSTEM (Fig. 5.1b) presumes that each case
entails internal structure (the minimal case—A and B) and the relationship between
these internal structural units. Within this axiomatic stand, the single case is defini-
tive—only one of such systems needs to be analyzed to arrive at general knowledge
about how it functions. The system can be dynamic (e.g., the dominance relations
between A and B can fluctuate) but it cannot be developmental (no not internal
structure can evolve).
82 J. Valsiner
It is only the OPEN SYSTEMIC AXIOMATIC VIEW (Fig. 5.1c) that is appro-

priate for the study of all human systems. In this case the dynamic structure of the
system is situated within the context (C) with which it is in constant and critically
relevant exchange relationship (i.e., the defining nature of open systems). The single
case is here treated as definitive (no accumulation needed), dynamic, and develop-
mental. The focus of research efforts to figure out how it is organized is on the
border—documenting the inward-outward transfers of materials. Under ordinary
circumstances this transfer is organized without any difficulty—we breathe in and
out, and our breathing makes it possible to maintain our biological being. However,
if our breathing becomes occluded we realize how dependent we are on this con-
stant interchange with the environment.
This focus on the border zone of the open system’s relation with its immediate
context is new for psychology. In psychology, the use of intra-individual and espe-
cially inter-individual reference frames (Valsiner 2000, 2017a) is naturalized—in
perfect non-fit with the nature of the phenomena (which are of open systemic
nature). Instead, it is the individual-socioecological reference frame that fits the
axiomatic bases for psychological science. What would make psychology into sci-
ence is the development of new methodology of the investigation of the membrane
dynamics of the border of the system and its surroundings. Generalizable knowl-
edge comes from the analysis of this dynamics within the single case (Nedergaard
et al. 2015). In this respect—generalizing knowledge does not exclude the context,
but includes it in the abstracted generalized knowledge.
Basic Processes of Generalization
The act of generalization includes selective abstraction of some features of the con-
crete phenomenon. In a classic summary of the idea on the border of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, the notion of generalization was described in conjunction
with abstraction:
All generalization involves abstraction; to generalize is to recognize likeness which had
been previously masked by differences; to recognize the likeness is also therefore to recog-
nize these differences as irrelevant, and to disregard them from the point of view of the
general conception. Such recognition is abstraction (Stout and Baldwin 1901a: 408, added
emphases)
In the generalization process, differences are detected—but they are not maintained.
What these differences allow us to do is to find unity that transcends these differ-
ences. This is done by abstraction. Abstraction includes selection and distancing.
The latter leads to the act of dismissal:
…abstraction occurs only when the interest of thought lies in following out of its relations,
not within, but outside this context. To this end its relations within the given context must
be as far as possible ignored; and when they obtrude themselves, they must be recognized as
irrelevant, and for that reason disregarded. (Stout and Baldwin 1901b: 8, added emphases)
The process of abstracting is an act of distancing of some aspect of the selected

phenomenon in opposition to the rest—which become the context for the selected
part. Imagination is necessary for that distancing—together with the dismissal of
the original context as irrelevant. Abstraction is a process of making a generalized
AS-IF structures of thought by leaving the confines of the reality (AS-IS). Abstract
generalization:
…breaks up the very constituents of existence and puts them together again in a far more
general manner, in the process discovering the many possibilities which might still—have
been possible (Vaihinger 1935: 55)
Abstraction leads to generalization—which opens new possibilities for the exten-

sion of an idea at the expense of losing the ties with the local context. It entails the
unity of construction and destruction—through increasing the level of the Gestalt
(von Ehrenfels 1932/1988; Valsiner 2016). This level of Gestalt is the qualitative
character of the whole in terms of its depth of structure. Thus a whole comprised of
two parts W(A & B) is of lower level Gestalt than another consisting of an extra unit
C—such as W{C & (A&B)}. Raising of the Gestalt level leads to distancing from
the original whole and constructing its new image by abstractive generalization.
All higher psychological processes of intentional nature work through abstrac-
tive generalization (Bühler 1934/1965: 45ff)—it is through the worm of similes and
metaphors that human thinking distances itself from the here-and-now setting to
make transfer (Katona 1940) of meanings through higher-level Gestalt sign fields to
new anticipated settings. Such transfer based on higher-level Gestalts is usual in
memory where specific cases of some kind of event (e.g., unlucky event a, b, c, d)
lead to generalization “I have little luck” and to abstraction (“I am an unlucky per-
son”). That generalized Gestalt about the self as “unlucky person” would then
become re-contextualized various settings where on its basis further “unlucky
events” are anticipated.
Negation: From Single to Double
The act of negation is central for our cognitive processes. It entails resistance to the
imposition of the here-and-now settings (Valsiner 2017a) which makes it in princi-
ple possible to “go beyond the information given”—which is—to think. The func-
tion of negation
…appears in refusal, prohibition, imperatives, and wishes. Without negation no sphere of
human activity could reach the stage of decision and determination or overcome the stage
of chaos and indecision and enter the stage of order and cosmos. Without negation no cre-
ation of the human mind (like science, philosophy, art, or religion) could reach unity of
meaning. (Heinemann 1943-1944: 137)
The cognitive dynamics in abstractive generalization is isomorphic with the notion

of double negation in the framework of classical dialectical philosophy (Hegel
1802/1998). Most of psychological research never goes beyond the first negation:
84 J. Valsiner
IF WE FIND A TO BE DIFFERENT FROM B (empirically)

then it is true that
A IS NOT B AND B IS NOT A (logically)
What is negated in this First Negation is the similarity of A and B. An example is
simple. Psychologists like to demonstrate gender differences between samples of
males and females in almost any “measure” they ever invent. Once a statistically
significant difference is found between averages of sample A (men) and of sample
B (women) then through the rules of inductive generalization they claim that men
are different from women and vice versa. This generalization entails a trick of
abstractive homogenization of the samples (Valsiner 1986)—in the empirical phase
of research the heterogeneous nature of the samples is accepted (and used for statis-
tical analysis). Once the resulting significant difference is obtained, the heterogene-
ity of the sample is left behind and substituted by the assumption of homogeneity
(all A are A and all B are B: all women are similar to one another as women and all
men to one another as men). Most of psychology’s generalizations end at this stage
of abstraction.
Double negation makes generalization possible. The Second Negation in the tra-
dition of dialectical philosophy—not utilized widely in psychology—entails the
negation of the relevance of the First Negation:
IF WE FIND A TO BE DIFFERENT FROM B (empirically)
then it is true that
A IS NOT B AND B IS NOT A (logically)
But
THE FOUND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A AND B DOES NOT MATTER
since we assume that the compared phenomena have some basic aspects in common that
MAKE THE FIRST COMPARISON POSSIBLE
It is notable that the comparison of males and females happens within the whole of
the given species (human) rather than across species. No psychologist would prob-
ably take seriously a suggestion that a sample of army ants be compared with a
sample of males recruited into an army to find out their differences in “aggressivity.”
Such comparison makes no sense—while that of men with women does. But why
does it? Men and women are parts of the same whole (humans) differentiated into
two complementary subforms that are necessary for the survival of the whole (spe-
cies) and of the sub-wholes (family units that guarantee reproduction)—thus sur-
vival of the species. As long as higher biological species have left the reproductive
tactics of parthenogenesis behind, the difference between men and women hides
their basic compatibility. That can be seen in androgyny—the unity of male and
female characteristics within each and every man and woman.
The question that presents itself at this junction is—why do psychologists docu-
ment between-samples empirical differences at all, if these in the end do not matter?
The takeover of the “empire of chance” (Gigerenzer et al. 1989) in the domain of
psychology’s methodology, together with the underdevelopment of the theoretically
productive abstractive languages (in contrast with chemistry—Valsiner 2012) has
led psychology into a state where the empirical accumulation of data grows expo-
nentially while the generalizing theoretical systems have only slowly advanced
(Toomela and Valsiner 2010). Psychology today is similar to a powerful engine that
is working at full strength in accumulating empirical evidence but failing to arrive
at generalized basic knowledge of the psyche.
Where Is the Problem?
The problem for psychology today is similar to that of chemistry from the eigh-
teenth to nineteenth centuries—the mismatch between the wholistic nature of the
phenomena on the one hand, and the elementaristic analytic conceptual instru-
ments to make sense of the complexity, on the other. In the human case, this is
further complicated by the inherent intentionalities encoded into complex phenom-
ena. This limitation goes beyond the parallel with chemistry—while complex
chemical compounds may relate with others in complex ways, none of these rela-
tions can be claimed to have any trace of intentionality. It would be absurd to claim
that the intention of water is to put out fire upon which it is thrown, but it is per-
fectly reasonable to assume that the fire fighter who wants to put out a fire inten-
tionally throws water on it. Human conduct is structured and intentional—both of
these features are forgotten in psychology over the past century. Two forgotten
directions of thought are waiting to be reintroduced in our contemporary psychol-
ogy. First, Franz Brentano’s philosophy of intentional nature of objects combined
with William MacDougall’s “hormic psychology” if developed further from their
starting efforts and turned into methodologically solid (i.e., qualitative) analytic
schemes would overcome the basic “error of the measurement orientation”2 that
has plagued psychology since the 1950s. Secondly, the pioneering efforts of
Ganzeitspsychologie in the 1910s–1930s can be revisited for innovation. The
Ganzheitsychologie tradition (Krueger 1915; Diriwächter 2008) maintains the pri-
macy of the whole—fluid, semi-structured, or well-structured (such as in case of
Gestalt psychology) over its parts—thus fitting with the nature of the complexity of
psychological phenomena.
2
What I refer to here is not “measurement error” but the error of the whole task of measurement in
psychology. As Joel Michell (1999) has demonstrated, it is from the 1950s onward that psychology
has canonized the notion of measurement as a task of “assigning numbers” to psychological phe-
nomena and subsequently considering the results of such assignments as representing real psycho-
logical characteristics that causally influence one another within the objects thus “measured.” This
act is a projective construction of consensually accepted non-reality as if it can explain the reality
of psychological functions.
86 J. Valsiner
Fig. 5.2 A cloud as a dynamic Ganzheit
Structures of Ganzheit
Wholistic units—even temporary and vaporous ones (Fig. 5.2)—have structure. A

cloud is a good example of a whole that has semi-structure that changes all the time.
The dynamics of various layers of air and particles of dust provide for a large variety
of recognizable cloud types.3 The variety of clouds are generated by similar general
principles—even if their observable forms are highly variable.
Clouds are wholes that are characterized by topographic continuity—each part
of the cloud is a neighbor to some other part, until the edge of the form. The con-
tours of the edges are complex curves that vary in form all the time. This variability
of contours over time can be fascinating for the observers but irrelevant for the
researcher into the basic processes of cloud formation. Cloud dynamics does not
create permanent structures—their impermanence is the rule of the game. Other
forms in nature—geological formations and biological organisms—develop rela-
tively stable forms of organization that are also topographically continuous.
Developing of embryos is of such kind—calling for a field theory to make sense of
the transformation of form over the life course of the organisms (Gurwitsch 1914,
1922, 1947).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud#Formation_and_distribution
3
Differently from clouds, embryos develop into an expected adult form of the
given species. While this process of development happens without any intentional-
ity of psychological kind (no embryo is expected to “want to grow into adult form”),
it poses theoretical problems connected with the necessity to consider anticipation
of the species-specific final form in embryonic development (e.g., Hans Driesch’s
efforts—Valsiner 2017b). The theoretical dilemma is profound—in our scientific
model making we are reluctant to operate with notions of expected futures (and if
we need to do so—we resort to one or another notion of probability). At the same
time, the reality of biological organisms transforming from embryonic states to
adult forms happens across generations with remarkable consistency and living up
to the principle of equifinality. The plan for movement into the adult form needs to
be guaranteed by the biological developing organism as of now—but the form of the
plan is for the future. This would call for some version of pre-formist hypothesis
(e.g., that of genetic determinacy of the adult forms) but at the same time it is pre-
cisely the epigenetic perspective that informs contemporary genetics (Lux and
Richter 2014) that renders such pre-formist hypothesis untenable. In the middle of
epigenetic variability and the open systemic modulation of exchange relations with
the environment the developing organisms still manage to grow up into a recogniz-
able adult form of the given species.
How is that continuity in the middle of variability amplification (Maruyama
1963, 1991) possible? In embryogenesis, answers are sought in the ways in which
the whole (geometry of the region) includes the various movement vectors for the
cells (Chardantseva and Cherdantsev 2006). If this is the case, the present wholistic
configuration of a field generates its own inherent “intentionality” for the ways in
which the system moves into a new state. The field is self-transforming—but not
goal-oriented (Fig. 5.3). In Fig. 5.3, a simple system of two units (A<>B) generates
such development vector in the interaction on their shared border (membrane)
where the new part C emerges.
Figure 5.3 is a hypothetical example of the central relevance of the periphery—of
the border of A and B where the oppositionally directed forces →← operate. This
follows the general notion of Gegenstand (Fig. 5.4.).
Gegenstand—something that stands against something else in literal expression,
it is the minimal wholistic structure in systems that include inherent intentional-
ity—in its minimum form this equals the presence of directionality vector in the
system—toward the border D. The vector toward D starts from an imaginary “start-
ing field” within which many other potential directions of vectors (all except the
actual one detected as oriented to D). This leads us to accepting the axiomatic deter-
mination that all psychological phenomena include inherent directionality once
they are formed (from the not-differentiated “starting field”). “I am striving towards
D but have not yet reached there” would be a personal translation of the abstract
scheme in Fig. 5.4. It also entails recognition of the movement in irreversible time—
from the past through the present (“I am moving towards D”) to the future.
The notion of Gegenstand as a theoretical term was widespread in philosophy
and psychology from eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, but together with the
monologization of psychologists’ focus onto elementary constituents (“behavior”)
88 J. Valsiner
Fig. 5.3 The central role

of the border
Fig. 5.4 The basic structure of Gegenstand and its origins

Fig. 5.5 A Gegenstand

facing an opposite
Gegenstand: the birth of a
directional vector on the
common border
of complex phenomena and the monopolization of psychological science by quan-

titative focus in methodology, it has vanished from theorizing. The current
reinstallation of the relevance of qualitative foci in psychology (under the disguise
of “qualitative methods”) makes it necessary to return to structural-dynamic abstract
units of analysis that unite direction of psychological processes with resistance to
such actions (Chaudhary et al. 2016). Gegenstand is one of such possible elemen-
tary forms. Each cell membrane (Fig. 5.3) operates in resistance both to what is in
the given cell and in its neighboring cell.
Figure 5.5 gives a generalized version of the emergence of directionality vector
from the tension point of two Gegenstände. It is an abstract elaboration of the cell
division processes depicted above (Fig. 5.3). In traditional field theories of growth
of multicellular organisms (Cherdantsev 2006; Gurwitsch 1914, 1922, 1947) the
direction of the growth-orienting lines is posited and demonstrated on the basis of
cross sections of cell patterns, not specifying the mechanisms of growth in-between
neighboring cells.
By actively creating the tension and counter-tension for the border of the whole
co-construct the emergence of a new direction is accomplished. It makes the border
region of any system—cf. Fig. 5.1c above—the place where innovation is happening.
Abstractions in Theory Building: Inductive and Deductive
Where do abstractions come from? In our contemporary qualitatively oriented psy-

chology they are often viewed as results of inductive generalization—result of dili-
gent sieving through the qualitative data within the scheme of Grounded Theory
research. In contrast, the reintroduction of the notion of Gegenstand comes from
deductive insertion as a result of thinking through the Methodology Cycle (Fig. 5.6).
It is only mildly ironic that the Methodology Cycle—that has been around for
more than two decades (Branco and Valsiner 1997)—has been ignored by the think-
ing of researchers most of whom are busy demonstrating their productivity by
empirical work. Being filled with empirical evidence does not let the research
reports become relevant for generalizable knowledge. Grounded Theory is no solu-
90 J. Valsiner
Fig. 5.6 The Methodology

Cycle
tion—no inductive generalization can be complete unless at some moment it is tran-

scended and it turns into a deductive basis for understanding. This happens through
the process of abduction.
The basic meta-code (“basic assumption”) in psychological research is the quali-
tative nature of all psychological phenomena—from the simplest (simple reaction
to stimuli based on nervous system) to the most complex (religious and ideological
values). Secondly, psychological phenomena are person-based and unique—as
human lives are bounded by their flow within irreversible time. Thirdly, human
conduct is intentional and oriented toward self-generated goal orientations.
Fourthly—all human conduct is guided by other human beings—immediately pres-
ent or imagined to be present.
Based on these four axioms, it is possible to generate a theory for different kinds
of human psychological issues (Van Geert 1986, 1988). The axiom of uniqueness
requires that the testing of the theory needs to happen within one episode—be it that
of life experience or a question in an interview or questionnaire. It also calls for the
theory to be of the kind—of sufficient generality—to be testable on single episodes.
The question of generalization from empirical evidence requires analysis of the
axiomatic and theoretical structures about which the evidence is to provide knowl-
edge. “Evidence-based” empirical work becomes science only if it is theoretically
clear what kind of evidence is relevant for our generalized knowledge.
Pathways to Generalized Knowledge
Arriving at generalized knowledge in any science is a matter of thinking strategies:

what kind of knowledge is to be obtained from what sources under what conditions
and with what limitations? Back in 1911, William Stern systematized four different
perspectives on empirical research (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8) that have shaped psychology
over the past century.
Figure 5.7 illustrates the socially normative generalization strategies in most of
contemporary psychology—reliance upon inter-individual reference frame (Valsiner
2000) and using the inter-individual variation within samples to arrive at generaliza-
tions which are then projected back into individuals (Valsiner 1986). The futility of
this knowledge construction trajectory has been demonstrated in basic ways
(Molenaar 2004; Van Geert 1998; Michell 1999; Smedslund 1995) but as an
accepted social practice continues to proliferate.
In contrast, Stern also outlined individual-based research tactics (Fig. 5.8). Of
these, it is precisely the Psychographie that is the starting point to understand how
generalization occurs from single episodes of the lives of single persons. A human
being proceeds on the trajectory of one’s irreversible life course. On that course
many similar (but not same) events happen. Within the life course, the person can
compare each of these unique events over time and arrive at some generalization
about him or herself. Such general psychological features of the life course have
similar basic structure—each birthday party of the person over life is similar in
Fig. 5.7 William Stern’s view on sample based research tactics

92 J. Valsiner
Fig. 5.8 Individual-centered research tactics (Stern 1911/1994: 18)
structure yet different in personal meaning. Becoming 18 differs from becoming 80.
The psychographic depiction of the life course is that of unique events, while the
basic structure of the life course is formally similar across all persons. Similarly to
the generality of human anatomical universality across history of the species and
geographical distribution, it is in the area of psychological functions that similar
generality is expected. The only question is that about its abstract nature.
Stern’s depiction of psychography did not include time—the parameters in
Fig. 5.8 constitute a synchronic profile (of a single case, or in comparison with a
second or other cases in Komparationsforschung). This is a major limitation for any
perspective that recognizes development of the system under study to take place.
There can be synchronic profiles—representing the current cross section of the sys-
tem—but these profiles are undergoing change all the time in the case of each and
every compared individual (Molenaar et al. 2002).
The psychographic generalization needs to involve the study of various features
(Merkmale) in their systemic unity over time (Fig. 5.9).
Generalization under conditions of irreversible time necessarily involves relying
on the singular episodes observable in the look at the single case (Fig. 5.9). The first
observation—by definition an idiographic description—becomes nomothetic as
some features from it become generalized. These features are not about that single
case or about that episode itself, but about general principles that are analyzable in
this selected empirical model. Lev Vygotsky back in 1927 clarified the relevance of
the empirical work in physiology by Ivan Pavlov:
I.P. Pavlov practically studies the activity of the salivary gland of the dog. What gives him
the right to call his study that of the higher nervous activity of animals? Maybe he should
test his experiments on a horse, a crow, etc.—on all, or at least on the majority of animal
Fig. 5.9 Generalization from single instances over irreversible time
species, so as to make his conclusions? Or, maybe he should label his study like this:
investigation of salivation in the dog? But Pavlov did not study actually the salivation of a
dog as such. His research does not add anything to our knowledge of the dog as such or
salivation as such. In his studies of the dog he studied not the dog, but the animal in gen-
eral, in salivation – the reflex in general, i.e. in the study of this animal and in that phenom-
enon he emphasized that what was common with all similar phenomena. That is why his
conclusions not only relate to all animals but to all biology: the fact of salivation in the
case of Pavlovian dogs to Pavlov’s signals become directly into a general biological prin-
ciple—transformation of the inherited experience into that of the animal. (Vygotsky
1982/1927: 404)
Vygotsky pointed to Pavlov’s abstraction of the principles of conditional nature of

the reflexes that could be created in laboratory conditions—and on one species—
to all living organisms with nervous systems and under all conditions of “local
contexts.” That universality than include many-to-many relations between the
parts in the system. For example, our contemporary developmental biologists
study the genes-to-neurons connections on a tiny nematode C. elegans because in
this species the connections of the very few neurons that are mapped (301 in num-
ber) for small body (1 mm in length, including precisely 959 cells) can be con-
trasted with a not too big a genetic generating system that is also described
(comprising 20,470 protein-coding genes). What has been the target for research-
ers’ interest—is the epigenetic principles by which the many (genes) to few (neu-
rons) linkages are organized. The genetic code of C.elegans has 35% overlap with
the human genome. That overlap would be insufficient to look at specifically
human features in the nematode but models of genetic encoding of neurons rele-
vant for different diseases that are present in humans (Alzheimer’s disease) can
provide for fruitful analogy.
Similarly, the example in Fig. 5.9 entails the remove of the generalizable knowl-
edge from the episodes observed. The knowledge at stake is that of general princi-
ples of development that are to be found in a sequence of idiographic episodes of
developmental transitions. It is therefore not surprising that much knowledge in
basic developmental science—of the kind practiced by James Mark Baldwin,
94 J. Valsiner
William and Clara Stern, David and Rosa Katz, and Jean Piaget—comes from the
observations of single episodes of conduct of children under the conditions of life-
time longitudinal investigation.
General Conclusions: Abstraction as the Key to Knowledge
To answer the question set in this chapter—how is generalization from a single

episode possible in science?—my answer is simple—through abstraction that
includes both making empirical distinctions in the analysis of the episode and then
selectively ignoring some of the comparisons in the act of generalization. It is here
where the inductive and deductive knowledge making operations meet.
The distinctions made—given that the episode under consideration is unique—
are all necessarily of the kind THIS IS X <> BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN Y. These
are {As-Is <> As-If} structures in terms of Hans Vaihinger (1935). The distinctions
thus entail both a real and imaginary component, leading to the need to adjust psy-
chology’s methodological schemes to this axiomatic necessity. This has been put
into research practice in the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach—Sato 2017,
Sato et al. 2016). Each unique forward move in human life course includes affective
contrasting (Zittoun 2008) of the different possibilities of the future out of which
only one ends up being real as the life course proceeds.
At the theory construction level, this research attitude equals the adoption of the
abductive perspective on the knowledge creation process. Abduction as a general-
izing tool grew out of Charles Sanders Peirce’s efforts to overcome the contrast
between inductive and deductive pathways of inference (Valsiner and Salvatore
2012; Pizzarroso and Valsiner 2017). When set up in irreversible time, the tradi-
tional scheme of abduction (X was found → it is surprising given considered expla-
nations A or B → but if explanation C were the case X would be ordinary → hence
C is likely) needs modification as it operates backward across the border of the
Present in the irreversible time (Fig. 5.10).
Figure 5.10 is a hybrid of Peirce’s scheme on time (where past and future never
meet, except for coming infinitely close in the present and creating polarized ten-
sion of insistency) and the notion of abduction of looking for hypothetical explana-
tion backward across the border of the present—leading to new knowledge to be
deductively applied to a future expected episode of a similar kind. Thus abductive
generalization is a “hostage” to the thinking process always proceeding forward in
irreversible time. Any generalization is thus time-freed abstraction that lags behind
the process of experiencing.
This “lagging behind” sets up constraints upon the use of abductive generaliza-
tions. The move from the abductive act to that of making a new deduction base
through the generalized nature of the abducted explanation is the critical move in
which both breakthroughs and blunders of theoretical innovation become possible.
Nevertheless this risk of inventing bogus explanatory concepts on the border of real
generalized knowledge is worth taking. We cannot escape the reality of research
taking place in irreversible time.
Fig. 5.10 Abduction in irreversible time
In this chapter, I undertook a complicated intellectual journey to the realm of

generalization in irreversible time. The coverage led us to a rather paradoxical con-
clusion—in order to create any knowledge, the knowledge maker has to act on the
basis of unique, transient, phenomena that occur in the flow of irreversible time. To
accomplish the making of general knowledge the mundane flow of irreversible time
needs to be transcended. This is only possible through semiotic mediation—
abstracting from experience through signs—arriving at generalized knowledge that
is freed from the confines of time. The process by which this is achieved is abduc-
tion—reconstructing explanations in retrospect, across the border of the present,
into the vanished past. Furthermore—the generalized knowledge leads to very con-
crete anticipatory actions in practice—thus testing its adequacy again at the level of
unique events. We live on and through personally unique life courses which are
general for all human lives in their basic organization.
Acknowledgments The editorial suggestions by Charlotte Højholt and Ernst Schraube were
helpful in fine tuning this chapter. I am grateful to Danske Grundforskningfond for 5 years of sup-
port to my work in 2013–2018 under the Niels Bohr Professorship scheme.
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Part II
Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of
Psychological Generalization
Chapter 6
On the Worldliness of the General: Why
Concepts Matter Ethically
Jytte Bang
The core point of the present chapter is that the general can be conceived in opposite
manners depending on how the relationship of the individual and the environment
is approached. One position (dualism) assumes a dichotomy between the individual
mind and the environment, suggesting that psychology is a discipline which is
occupied with reflections caused by impressions received from the world. This
position is influenced by Descartes’ philosophy as well as by empiricism. An
opposite position considers a dichotomy between the individual (mind) and the
environment to be a major issue to psychology and argues that overcoming dualism
potentially changes the ways in which psychology and psychological phenomena
are conceived. From the perspective of its critiques, the dualist position is sometimes
thought of as “representational” theory or just “representationalism” indicating that
psyche is a cognitive activity which mirrors and combines (represent) impressions
from the outer world in mind. From such a position, the critique of dualism can be
referred to as critique of representationalism. The present chapter argues that these
two basic positions influence how we think about core-concepts in psychology—in
this particular case, about the general. The aim of the present chapter is (first) to
discuss the possibilities to get beyond a representational understanding of the
general and pave the way for a worldly and genetic (that is, historical/developmental)
approach. Furthermore, the chapter aims to discuss, how the different “psychologies
of the general” have ethical implications to psychology.
J. Bang (*)
e-mail: jyba@ruc.dk

102 J. Bang
The General from the Perspective of Representationalism
Alan Costall (2007) suggests the terms “mediationism” and “representationalism”

to describe the assumed barrier (dualism) between an individual and the world,
which is often assumed in psychology. He argues that what characterizes such an
approach is that we neither have, nor can have, direct contact with our surroundings.
One can feel the irony when he states that: “Something or other is always supposed
to be getting in our way: internal rules and representations, schemas, or prototypes,
in the case of standard cognitive theory” (Costall 2007: 109). The problem is that by
thinking of psychological processes in terms of representations, individuals become
detached and abstracted from their concrete and practical life conditions—
psychology becomes occupied with “cognition” rather than with “practice.”
Therefore, a psychology based on representationalism tends to reproduce dualism
in psychology. According to Costall, representationalism can be viewed as a means
by which psychology historically could break free from behaviorism and introduce
“cognition” in terms of representations. This turn has been very successful and
influential, and (since the 1980s) psychology as a whole has (roughly speaking)
been defined as the study of cognition. However, as Costall outlines, there are
fundamental issues, which follows with representationalism. For example, how can
rules and representations apply to actual life situations and how do we know that
they are appropriate? What are the origins of representations in the first place and
how do they come to have meaning? If we argue that representations derive from
our past experiences, how can we know how the past experiences can apply to the
present? Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor (2015) likewise address issues that
relate to representationalism and suggest that such mediational theory is paradoxical:
if the “simple ideas” come through pure causal impingement, how can they be
challenged? They can only be what Dreyfus and Taylor call “pure Givens”; hence,
they argue that mediational theory builds on the “Myth of the (Pure) Given”
(2015: 73).
Despite such obvious theoretical concerns, representationalism has been widely
influential with regard to the ways in which psyche is conceived. According to a
commonsense view, psyche is that activity which goes on in the head of an individual.
This view supports a dualism, which originated in Cartesian philosophy (that is, his
distinction between res cogitans and res extensa). Even though the view is challenged
by post-Cartesian theorists, it nevertheless is widely accepted (Bernstein 1983:
116). There are differences between Descartes and the empiricist philosophers, but
they also share common views. Being inspired by Descartes (and influencing
Enlightenment thinker) (Favrholdt 1965), Locke’s empiricist position influenced
philosophy as well as psychology by operating with a distinction (dualism) between
senses and experience (impression coming from the outside), on the one hand, and
reflection (the cognition of ideas), on the other hand. In An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1961), John Locke outlines his theory about the mind and
the sources of it. According to Locke, the mind is “white paper void of all characters”
(1961: 77) and the “idea” is the first effect made on the mind mediated through the
6 On the Worldliness of the General: Why Concepts Matter Ethically 103
senses (as sensations). These ideas may become connected and combined by the
operations of mind (the reflections). He says:
First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind
several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects
do affect them […]. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon
our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation. […] Second, the
other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is the
perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas
it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the
understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And
such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the
different actings of our minds; which we, being conscious of and observing in ourselves, do
from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting
our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not
sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly
enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this reflection, the
ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within
itself. (Locke 1961: 77f)
How does such a widely accepted dualism between sensation and reflection influ-
ence the ways in which psychology conceives the general? If accepting Locke’s line
of thought, it seems obvious that the general must be associated with reflection in
the mind of an individual; it is defined as generalization. According to Locke, when
simple ideas are received passively by mind based on sensations, mind actively
reflects on these simple ideas and combine them in various manners into complex
ideas, relations as more simultaneous ideas, and abstracts; that is, the discrimination
of ideas from other ideas and the formation of general ideas. Hence, it follows from
empiricism that the general is a mental construct and generalization is the process
in which mental operations work on the simple ideas to form general ideas.
Psychology becomes the study of how the individual’s senses meet the stimulations
from the world in terms of impressions (ideas); and (next) of the inner reflections
(wider, emotions) that follow the reception of ideas. Hence, the general is an out-
come of the individual mind’s cognitive processing.
Why Is There a Problem with Representationalism?
A prominent critical voice concerning the influence of dualism and representation-

alism in psychology belongs to James J. Gibson. According to Gibson (1966), it is
important to study the mutual relationship of an organism with its world. Organisms
do not live in a mechanical world from which they receive impressions in a passive
and receptive manner; they live in an ecological world in which they actively take
part. Organisms have ecological niches; they are part of their environment in spe-
cies-specific ways and do not stand opposite to the world as isolated “cognitive”
individuals. The senses are not just passive receptors of outer impressions but func-
tional systems, which are available for the organism’s active exchange with the
104 J. Bang
environment. From this perspective, psychology is not just the discipline to study
cognition; rather, it is the discipline to study the (species-specific, niche-based)
manifold, complex, and practical exchanges of organisms with the environment.
Gibson’s view, and ecological psychology in general, settles psychology into the
history of practical, explorative activity of living organisms which opposes indi-
vidualized, passive and abstract notions of psyche. According to ecological theory,
psyche does not begin with the individual mind nor with cognitive operations.
Psyche begins with the historically developed meaningful activities of organisms in
their species-specific environments. It begins with active explorative activities of
the organisms (for discussion, see also Bang 2007, 2009). According to the ecologi-
cal perspective of Gibson, it is quite problematic to define the general merely with
reference to the individual mind. Rather, the general is a lived relationship, not just
a cognized one. Organisms live the general whenever they actively live their mean-
ingful relationships with the world. They live the common, historically developed,
environmental conditions of life—the general is a worldly phenomenon.
The Worldliness of the General
What does it mean that the general is a worldly phenomenon? In order to open up a
perspective on the general not limited by representationalism, a few theoretical
illustrations may be helpful. The illustrations are concerned with meaning relations
in nature and in human life and draw on the work of von Jakob von Uexküll, Niels
Engelsted, and Aleksej N. Leontjev.
Meaning Relations in Nature (First Illustration) Von Uexküll’s (1940/1982)
theory of meaning relations in nature presents the phenomenon of lived biological
relationships. One of his credits was that he showed how the biological environment
is different for different species and that the biological environment include
complexes of food, enemies, means for protection, etc. From the perspective of
identifying the general as a lived relationship, Von Uexküll’s theory is interesting
because he addresses how meaning resides in the invisible. Meaning is a kind of
(invisible, yet present) ‘plan’ behind the particular members of a species or the
particular environmental characteristics. From this theoretical perspective, the
‘plan’ mirrors a kind of ‘fit’ or mutuality between the species and the environment
and in this respect, it cannot be reduced to a single individual organism’s relationship
with specific environmental objects. Rather, von Uexküll’s idea of the ‘plan’ creates
a connection between the individual’s specific environmental relationships and the
general life conditions of the species to which the individual belongs. From this
perspective, meaning is theorized to be the general dimension of the individual-
environment relationship. This view of the general implies that the concrete and the
particular individual-environment relationships are genetic (i.e., historical, see
Wertsch 1985), they are specific outcomes of ongoing historical processes. From
this perspective, the general is the relational character of the biologically founded
mutuality—it is active without being visible (it is absent-present). For example, a

spider and its web constitute such a mutual relationship. Rather than beginning his
environmental analysis with the individual fly and spider (that is, with the individual
organism and a particular fly that it perceives), Von Uexküll begins with the web,
which he describes as a reflection of the fly. The web is not just a reflection of a
specific fly perceived by a spider. Rather, the individual spider makes its web before
it ever actually sees a fly. In this sense, the web reflects the archetypical fly (any fly,
the fly ‘as such’). The spider is a meaning-user, which is adapted to the meaning-
carrier, that is, the fly. The web is a picture of the fly even if it is not a picture of a
specific or perceived fly. In this respect, the web tells the story of a general meaning
relationship, which is an outcome of historical processes of species-specific
becoming. In general, in nature these kinds of general meaning relations between
the various organisms and the environment can be sought for. In other words, in
nature there are meaning relations, which do not have anything to do with individual
consciousness or cognition. In this sense, the general is to be understood as the lived
relationships of the individual organisms with their species-specific environment.
Auto-Kinesis and Psyche as Teleological Activity (Second Illustration) In his

theory of ‘auto-kinesis (which refers to the spontaneous activity of an organism not
caused by specific environmental stimuli or ‘impressions’), Engelsted (1989)
opposes the idea of defining psyche in terms of mental reflection caused by specific
outer stimuli. Even though this kind of reflection is a reality, such as when an organ-
ism responds to available food in the immediate environment, Engelsted suggests
that it does not define psyche as such. He argues that basic psychic activity is defined
by the first instance of such activity in phylo-genesis. Evidently, psyche-as-mind
does not live up to this criterion, no matter how commonly agreed upon the mind
definition of psyche appears to be. So, what is the defining characteristic (first
instance in phylo-genesis) of psychic activity? According to Engelsted, it is the first
instance of the phenomenon of auto-kinesis (i.e., spontaneous activity) – an organ-
ism’s free exploration of its environment. This first instance situation of psychic
activity appears in phylo-genesis when food is not immediately present in the envi-
ronment of an organism, yet the organism must eat in order to survive. This situation
implies that spontaneous ‘search’ activity and from this point, the mere principle of
the active organism has emerged: the organism moves around spontaneously and at
some point food becomes present. Hence, psyche as a phenomenon is not the reflec-
tion of immediate environmental stimuli (such as the presence of food or (in gen-
eral) a present object to stimulate the organism). When food is absent, ‘search’
activity sets psyche as a non-mechanical activity mirroring the separation of the
organism and the stimuli. In other words, auto-kinesis is displayed by an organism
without any outer stimulation. However, the fact that activity can happen in organ-
isms without any outer stimulation does not mean that the activity is without a
cause. Engelsted argues:
The object is the other-being of the subject. As long as the organism is living, and thus a
subject, its biological relation to the food is always a very present reality. Environmentally,
106 J. Bang
however, the subject can be, and often is, separated from its food. This absence of the food-
object (and thereby the absence of the positive stimulus for the consummatory response)
also confronts the organism as reality. The behavior of auto-kinesis as designed by natural
selection serves to bridge the two realities, so the environmental reality does not refute the
biological. Auto-kinesis is at the same time a behavioral expression of the connection and
of the disconnection between subject and object. (1989: 40).
A general conclusion based on the analysis of auto-kinesis is, that psyche is teleo-
logical activity. Teleological activity is a lived relationship of an organism with the
world into which the general relationship (organisms must eat to survive) is already
embedded. As a phenomenon, psyche mirrors a real biological relationship of an
organism with its environment. This implies that the general is not to be defined
merely as a mind phenomenon; it is not to be understood merely as a result of cogni-
tive reflections and generalizations based on ‘ideas.’ Psyche (teleological activity) is
in itself a general worldly phenomenon which emerges long before cognition.
Therefore, psychic activity is not bound to, and not defined by, the individual mind.
This shift of view implies that (1) one cannot uphold the idea that an organism
responds solely to the immediate stimuli from the surroundings (even though it also
does so); (2) the organism is not passive but active and unfolds spontaneous activity;
(3) the first instances of the general is not defined as an individual cognitive act.
Rather, it is a worldly relationship not reducible to a single individual’s particular
exchange with the particular present aspects of its environment. As argued above,
the relationship of an individual with the world is a historical one, an outcome of the
general changes of the conditions of life across of time.
Meaning Relations in Human Life (Third Illustration) From von Uexküll as
well as from Engelsted we learn that there are reasons for theoretical optimism as
for conceiving the general in terms of relational ontology. Does this kind of insight
still make sense when it comes to humans who have the capacity of reflection and
therefore seem to serve as good examples of representationalism’s approach to the
general? Let us assume that the basic insights from relational ontology is continuous
with human life. What might be the theoretical evidence to support such an
assumption? Drawing on Marxist philosophy, one may suggest that the collaborative
and creative processes by which humans create their own conditions of life construct
rich and varied general relations and that these general relations appear in the shape
of meaningful particulars. For example, a chair is a particular, which mirrors the
general relationship of humans and their societal needs (sit and eat, sit and read, sit
and play, sit and sew, etc.). From such a perspective one may suggest a certain kind
of parallel between the general analyzed in the examples above and the general in
terms of human cultural life. In the historical processes of human life, humans
transform nature and give shape to various kinds of human praxis and values. All
sorts of things (artifacts) are included into these processes and so are value based
institutional arrangements, relationships, materiality, norms, activities, discourses,
etc.
This perspective has two theoretical implications: (1) the general is a collective,
collaborative (historical) phenomenon produced and changed over time by humans;
(2) individuals come to know about the historically produced general in practical
terms by living it in their everyday practical life—they practice the general, they do
not just cognize it.
From this perspective it follows that it is not possible to conceive an individual
person abstractly as isolated from his or her historical context. There is no such
thing as a ‘pure’ act of the mind merely based on ‘ideas’ passively received from
outside the individual. The individual lives in a historically constituted and pre-
ordered practical world, which is loaded with other people and their relations in all
possible (complex and contradictory) ways. A child ‘stumbles’ over the complexities
of the practical world and begins the process of living the general. According to
Aleksei N. Leontjev (1977), human consciousness is not just determined by
surrounding things and phenomena but rather by being, that is, by the actual life of
people. He suggests the concept of ‘activity’ as the process of inter-traffic between
opposite poles, the individual and the environment. By focusing on the practical
activities of life, psychology does no longer limit itself to ‘inner’ activities. It is the
practical activities as part of societal praxis, which link the individual with the
world. Leontjev’s concept of ‘the Fifth Quasi-Dimension’ is helpful to illustrate this
point. Leontjev (1982: 8) emphasizes that what we perceive is not just the form of
an object but the system of meaning (System der Bedeutungen) that the object is
(whether a cup, a clock, or other things). Systems of meaning may be thought of as
the general relationships created historically by humans. For example, clocks can
have different shapes and appearances. Despite these perceived differences, they all
mirror the general meaning of a ‘clock’ being: an object produced for the purpose
of measure time in a time-measuring society. This general meaning of ‘clock’
(regardless of its specific perceivable appearance) is its defining characteristic. In
general, artifacts mirror and co-organize such general historically created human
relationships. An object is what it is because it is involved into social praxis and is
meaningful as part of this. The concept of the ‘fifth quasi-dimension’ grasps the
humanly produced general, which lies behind any specific and particular object
(e.g., the variety of clocks). Hence, Leontjev breaks off from what he calls ‘the
axiom of immediacy’ and this break off is fully in line both with the ideas of von
Uexküll and Engelsted. According to the axiom of immediacy, there is nothing more
to the object than the sensual impression they make on a perceiver (a return to the
passively receiving subject). Objects, in this sense, is but singular immediate
‘impressions’—a view strongly associated with empiricism as argued earlier. From
the perspective of the axiom of immediacy, any clock seems different from any
other clock because of their sensual differences. The general idea of what a clock is
can only be described in limited ways as an outcome of individual cognizing activity
leading to a generalization based on the connection of ideas and not as a lived
general. Alternatively, Leontjev suggests that the general are lived phenomena,
which originate in human creative processes and exists in terms of the artifacts and
relationships which characterize the human world. Again, these ideas suggest that
there is a continuation from the analysis of meaning relations in nature to meaning
relations in human life. Within both realms, there is a lived general.
108 J. Bang
Why Does the Conceiving of the General Matter?
It would be wrong to conclude that a critique of empiricism and its way to approach
the general is of theoretical interest only. On the contrary, just like other concepts in
psychology have the potentials to influence how we think about humans, society,
societal norms and standards, ethics, etc., so does the concept of the general. This
part of the chapter will discuss why and how conceiving of the general matters. The
first two parts of the present chapter discussed of the influence of empiricism on
psychology and the theoretical controversies concerning definitions of the general.
These kinds of controversies go back to the question of what is it that constitutes
psychology as a discipline, what is its basic unit of analysis and, hence, what defines
psyche: does psychology begin “in the head” of the single individual or does
psychology begin with the interrelationship of individuals with the world—not just
in an immediate sense but in the sense of history (phylo-, cultural, and ontogenesis)?
The point is that the general is defined differently depending on how one defines,
what psychology is about and what is its basic unit of analysis. Further, the point is
that the empiricist approach falls short to include history and that this is less than
helpful when it comes to overcoming dualism and its consequences. Therefore, in
the next part, focus will be the potential (and problematic) and ethical (hence,
human-political) consequences of adapting a dualist and empiricist position with
regard to the concept of the general. Hopefully it will become clear that concepts—
even words—are not value-free. Rather, they have the capacity to direct both
attention and thinking in certain ways. In this sense, they co-contribute to the
common ways in which to think about humans, political events, and ethics, all of
which belong to the societal realities.
Does Enlightenment Have Anything to Do With It?
With regard to societal realities, empiricist thought going out from John Locke has
been very influential. Locke did not only outline his theory of human knowledge,
identity, and selfhood from which the present chapter has quoted. He also contributed
in fundamental ways to Enlightenment and to the development of liberalism, which
grew out of a general critique of the power of the state and of the church.
Enlightenment thinkers are commonly associated with the ideas of freedom and of
freedom of thought (for a discussion, see Taylor 1999), and these are regarded
essential in order to allow humanity to achieve progress in societal life. Therefore,
it is no wonder that the next step in the present chapter is to discuss the association
of the general with those ideas. Edward Said (2004) emphasizes that Enlightenment,
with its idea of “the sovereignity of the subject,” made the cogito the center of all
human knowledge and in this manner contributed to essentializing thought in itself.
Several influential theorists, among them Karl Marx, challenged this idea and put a
focus on the fact that humans are not individually free but co-contribute to, hence
frame, their own conditions of life in society. This challenged the liberal idea of the
“free individual” and framed the individual as a societal being. If we follow Said’s
suggestion to think of humanism in terms of an ongoing practice which includes a
critical humanistic stance (rather than in terms of rejecting humanism), it is possible
to open up for an understanding of how the struggle about the general is associated
with human-political, that is, ethical, issues. In order to discuss these possible
ideological connections, it is relevant to look into the work of scholars, who
discusses Enlightenment from a general humanistic and political perspective.
In his book The Conditions of Postmodernity, David Harvey (1990) analyzes the
project of modernity, which came into focus during the eighteenth century as an
effort on the part of Enlightenment thinkers “to develop objective science, universal
morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic” (Habermas
1983, as cited in Harvey 1990: 12). Harvey emphasizes that Enlightenment thought
embraced the idea of progress—it sought to actively break with history and tradition.
In relation to this self-understanding of Enlightenment, he characterizes modernity
as a secular movement, which aimed to demystify knowledge and social organization
in order to liberate human beings from their chains. Harvey describes the ideas in
this way:
The scientific domination of nature promised freedom from scarcity, want, and the arbitrari-
ness of natural calamity. The development of rational forms of social organization and
rational modes of thought promised liberation from the irrationalities of myth, religion,
superstition, release from the arbitrary use of power as well as from the dark side of our
human natures. Only through such a project could the universal, eternal, and the immutable
qualities of all of humanity be revealed. (1990: 12)
As Harvey describes, Enlightenment brings with it an overall idea of progress. This

implies a faith in universal reason, powers of human intelligence and in values of
liberty and equality. Despite of such a future-oriented stance, Richard Bernstein
(1983) emphasizes that from a general perspective there is both an optimistic and a
critical perspective on Enlightenment. The optimistic perspective takes departure in
the self-understanding of the Enlightenment itself, as described above. However, the
Enlightenment project seems contradictory and it does not seem possible to realize
it without facing (perhaps unexpected and unintended) contradictory consequences.
Harvey (1990) emphasizes the strong belief in linear progress, absolute truth, and
rational planning as part of the eighteenth-century modernism. Planning was of
ideal social order under the conditions of standardizing of knowledge and production.
Such views influenced society broadly, including science. Harvey analyses that
within the realm of esthetics, this belief created “radical subjectivism” (the emotional
side of the Cartesian dualism), individualism and a search for self-realization. From
Harvey’s perspective it seems that the Cartesian dichotomy of a mechanical world
(on the one hand), and the rational mind (on the other hand), is mirrored in the
modernism’s version of Enlightenment (and that mystification of mind and of
emotions is one of the outcomes). He says:
The modernism that emerged before the First World War was […] a reaction to the new
conditions of production (the machine, the factory, urbanization), circulation (the new
systems of transport and communications), and consumption (the rise of mass markets,
advertising, mass fashion). (1990: 23)
110 J. Bang
In line with this view, Dreyfus and Taylor (2015) suggest that the idea of the “idea”
came under the influence of the mechanization of the worldview associated with the
scientific revolution. This association implies that the subject–object relationship is
viewed a mechanical one: “Perception, considered as a process in material nature,
could best be conceived as the impression created in the mind by surrounding
reality” (Dreyfus and Taylor 2015: 9). One can see how this kind of mechanization
is not far away from Locke’s passively receiving individual.
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944/1999) were concerned about
the negative political consequences of Enlightenment as well. Writing not only
under the overall influence of the nineteenth century and the scientific revolution
but, more darkly, under the impression of World War II, of which they experienced
the consequences, they likewise characterize the contradictory character of
Enlightenment movements. They found that the ideal of Enlightenment (both in its
rationalist and empiricist versions) is a system from which all and everything
follows. They seem highly concerned about the totalitarian potentialities of the
Enlightenment movements when they unfold under certain political-historical
conditions. Because of these structural determinations, “the multiplicity of forms is
reduced to position and arrangement, history to fact, things to matter.” (Adorno and
Horkheimer 1944/1999: 7). Further, formal logic, being the major school of a
unified science, provided Enlightenment thinkers with tools for the calculability of
the world. In their view, numbers are not a neutral means for counting; rather,
numbers become the “canon of Enlightenment” (Adorno and Horkheimer
1944/1999: 7). In a similar way, “numbering” the world is not an isolated and
scientifically solid achievement based on which humanity and the world as such do
progress. Quite on the contrary, numbering the world implies that what is dissimilar
is made comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. From an overall perspective,
this implies that the ideas of Enlightenment to set humans free from the abstract
powers of dogma and religion turns into a negation once the “abstract quantities”
take over as a general standard. It becomes a tool for domination of people in that
general standards are being established as chains, which become the tools for ruling
the everyday lives of people. When numbers rule, that which does not reduce to
numbers becomes an illusion, a deviancy from the “normal.” The strong consequences
of this movement are that there is no room for qualities, these are being destructed,
variations and dynamic movements of people’s ordinary lives and the possibility of
people to influence their lives are being neglected, and nature is shown no respect
but is turned into mere objectivity and a tool. Adorno and Horkheimer raise a strong
concern about the human and political consequences of these reductions of worldly
qualities into numbers and quantities. They say:
Men pay for the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise
their power. Enlightenment behaves toward things as a dictator toward men. He knows them
in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can
make them. (1944/1999: 12)
Harvey follows the concern that the Enlightenment optimism turns upside down:
The twentieth century – with its death camps and death squads, its militarism and two world
wars, its threat of nuclear annihilation and its experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – has
certainly shattered this optimism. Worse still, the suspicion lurks that the Enlightenment
project was doomed to turn against itself and transform the quest for human emancipation
into a system of universal oppression in the name of human liberation. (1990: 13)
Harvey follows up on the theme of oppression in his book A Brief History of

Neoliberalism from 2005 in which he argues that there are two kinds of freedom, a
good one and a bad one. The good one is the one we like to associate with liberal
freedom of the individual in a democratic society: the freedom of speech, freedom
of meeting, freedom to choose one’s own job, etc. The bad one, however, is an
“evil” freedom of exploiting other human being, to achieve private gains with no
service to society, etc. The point is that under the conditions of neoliberal utopian
marked vision, the bad freedom is coproduced and challenges the good one in very
serious ways. With a reference to Polanyi, Harvey emphasizes that neoliberal
utopianism is doomed to be “frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright
fascism” (Harvey 2005). This analysis exemplifies that Adorno and Horkheimer’s
concern about the outcomes of Enlightenment are still relevant and should not be
associated solely with the historical circumstances under which they lived and
worked. According to this view, Enlightenment rationality is a logic of domination
and oppression (like Adorno and Horkheimer would say).
If describing extreme outcomes of the negation of the good intentions of
Enlightenment, the analysis nevertheless provides potentials for analyzing also the
present political-historical realities of neoliberalism and the phenomenon of self-
governmentality presented in Rose’s (2007) Foucault-inspired analysis of “freedom.”
As described, Harvey (2005) is also aware of the contradictory outcome of
“freedom” and couples it with neoliberalism. He finds neoliberalism to be a utopian
project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international
capitalism; that it can be considered as a political project to reestablish the conditions
for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites. Under the
conditions of creating the power of an economic elite, freedom becomes
contradictory. Summing up, there is not much evidence that the issues identified by
Adorno and Horkheimer during World War II describe just a special case, a distorted
and deviant version of capitalism and its “interpretation” of Enlightenment ideas.
Historical Versus Ahistorical Approaches to the General
Learning from these theorists, the combination of an ahistorical and dualistic view
of the individual person and the general intrumentalization and “numbering” of
society and of human relations under the conditions of current neoliberalism,
requires of psychology to be aware of its own conceptual contributions to this state
of things. If psychology defines itself on the ground of dualism and representation-
alism and considers this a value-free stance, psychology may end up contributing
to the instrumentalization processes sketched by the above mentioned theorists.
112 J. Bang
This may happen by singling out individuals to be the beginning and end of his or
her own life—including his or her “own” problems and/or own “successes.” It may
happen by offering reduced and individualistic analyses of the psychological issues
that people experience even if, in fact, these seem epidemic. The current increase
of psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem among
young people (especially girls) in the Western world serves as an illustration of
epidemic phenomena, which are dealt with individualistically. Consequently, a
“blame the victim” approach may be one of the serious ethical issues following an
ahistorical, non-dynamic, and dualistic approach to the individual in psychology.
In opposition to this view, a historical and developmental approach (like the ones
outlined earlier in the present chapter) suggests an integral level of understanding,
which include dynamics (economic, political, and institutional), in order to under-
stand individuals as societal beings. This will help understand epidemic psycho-
logical issues as a matter of individual opportunities to deal with shared
(problematic) societal conditions of life. According to such an approach, focus is
put on the dynamic relationship of individuals and the social realities of their
everyday lives (Dreier 2016; Schraube and Højholt 2019, Chap. 1 in this volume).
In this case, the general is part of systemic qualities of the environment, which
opens up for treating psychological issues (also) at a systemic and societal level
(political, institutional, and discursive). However, if taking departure in representa-
tionalism, the general supports an understanding of psychological issues as resid-
ing inside the head of an individual and consequently suggests individualistic
approaches to be the most effective. To sum up, the general is in play as a core
concept whenever someone (psychologists, other professionals, political decision-
makers, etc.) addresses psychological issues as well as issues concerning humans
and the conditions of human life in general.
Epilogue: A “Revolt of Human Nature”
It seems appropriate to finish the present chapter by referring to the work of Victor
Klemperer, who rightly emphasized the importance of concepts and language use to
societal practices in his book Language of the Third Reich. In order to illustrate how
the struggle about concepts is also a struggle about practical life conditions, about
power, humanism, and freedom, let me quote Klemperer’s analyses of the concept
of “heroism.” In the first introductory chapter of the book he says:
Only in the rarest cases am I convinced by heroism when it blows its own trumpet in public
and makes sure that success is all-too-handsomely rewarded. Heroism is purer and more
significant the quieter it is, the less audience it has, the less it furthers the hero himself, and
the less it is decorated. My criticism of the Nazi concept of heroism is that it is always
shackled to decoration and vainglorious. Officially Nazism didn’t recognize any kind of
decent, real heroism. It thereby perverted the whole notion and brought it into dispute. [real
heroism] led to the purest kind of heroism, but on the other side so to speak. I am thinking
of the many brave people in the concentration camps, of all those people who recklessly
committed illegal acts. (1957/2013: 6)
In the light of how conceptual struggles link with societal processes and the condi-
tions of everyday life of people, today this re-actualizes for what Horkheimer (1947:
92) terms a “revolt of human nature” against the instrumental reason and its oppres-
sive power. Even though the present chapter does not necessarily completely agree
to take departure in Freudian thought of “human nature,” it agrees that a revolt is
needed and that it is urgent for psychology to develop its concepts in close connec-
tion with life processes.
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University Press.
Chapter 7
Generalizing Together with Children:
The Significance of Children’s Concepts
for Mutual Knowledge Creation
Niklas Alexander Chimirri
Despite repeated attempts by childhood researchers and contextual developmental

psychologists to promote the systematic integration of children’s knowledges into
the scientific generalization process, and to thereby produce concepts that are of
more relevance to children’s everyday life, their knowledges are still granted too
little societal and pedagogical significance. Drawing on Vygotsky’s 1929 article
“The fundamental problems of defectology” (Vygotsky 2004a), I suggest that chil-
dren’s knowledges remain surrounded by an aura of defectiveness when contrasted
with adult knowledges, and are first and foremost negatively defined as what they
have not yet become. In his own article, Vygotsky couples his analyses of the defec-
tological view to the study of mentally and physically differently developed chil-
dren, of those children that would nowadays be labeled as “handicapped.” He
criticizes that psychology and educational studies focus on these children’s nega-
tively defined characteristics alone, i.e., they focus on that which they seem to be
missing when contrasted with the developmental norm, and may thereby neglect
what is constitutive of these children’s subjectivity: “But we still know nothing
about [these children’s] positive characteristics, about the children’s uniqueness:
such is the research of the future” (p. 173).
From the vantage point of this chapter, Vygotsky’s critique and call for an alter-
native child research, a child research that empirically investigates how each child
is different from any other, is unique, and on these grounds develops scientific con-
cepts for creating better pedagogical praxis, is untimely. Moreover, it is of argumen-
tative significance for every knowledge creation process that seeks to be of practical
relevance for children’s everyday life. The idea that “defective” or “deviating” chil-
dren do not live up to developmental or other societal norms, as other children sup-
posedly do, can be applied to a more general attitude in our contemporary society
N. A. Chimirri (*)
Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology,
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
e-mail: chimirri@ruc.dk

116 N. A. Chimirri
toward ascribing little importance to children’s individually unique knowledges:

they seemingly deviate from adult knowledges, and are thus not “normal” enough
to be able to purposefully codevelop our societal institutions. This understanding is
mirrored in current trends to start earlier and earlier with focusing early years edu-
cation on the top-down programmatic teaching of children’s declarative knowledge
and rational thinking, rather than on supporting children’s self-initiated activities on
their own terms, as was for long the tradition among others in the Scandinavian
welfare societies such as Denmark (see Juhl 2018) or Norway (see Otterstad and
Braathe 2016). In contrast, learning that departs from children’s self-initiated activi-
ties and interests, and which thereby explicitly couples the development of declara-
tive knowledge to children’s procedural knowledge development via action or
praxis, is not trusted any longer. The political-educational emphasis is instead put
on what John Hattie calls Visible Learning, supposedly objective and evidence-
based, impact-focused teaching programs, in which learning is rationalistically
understood as information processing, thus leaving no conceptual room for the cre-
ative, self-directed, and critical dimensions of learning (cf. Nielsen and
Klitmøller 2017).
The defectological view that focuses on children’s lack of knowledge alone,
while shunning their knowledges’ positive characteristics, brings with it at least
four problems that stand in the way of developing more relevant knowledge cre-
ation together with children: First, it creates an artificial separation of declarative
and procedural knowledges, as well as of knowledge products and knowledge pro-
cesses, while dialectical praxis psychologies and philosophies, pragmatist educa-
tional philosophies, and many others, have long argued that they closely depend on
one another. Second, this dualistic separation contributes to hierarchizing knowl-
edge, by prioritizing declarative over procedural knowledge, and in its wake, it also
prioritizes its (rather explicable or declarative) products over (rather tacit and pro-
cedural) knowledge creation processes. It thereby thirdly hierarchizes human
beings, by claiming that adults are in possession of the most relevant knowledge,
namely the declarative knowledge that children need to learn about to codevelop
future society. Fourth, the assumed possession of relevant knowledge becomes cor-
related with age, thus hypergeneralizing and superimposing a societally constructed
differentiation between children and adults that reduces children to teaching objects,
rather than understanding them as co-learning human subjects. As a result, the
question of what there is to learn of children about the world and its doings, or
rather of what there is to learn of each and every unique child about their respective
perspectives on and knowledges of everyday life, in order to purposefully and sus-
tainably develop society together across generations, is too easily rendered oblique
or even superfluous.
The chapter wishes to thwart these problematic understandings by highlighting
how researchers and all other adults can learn from children for the purpose of
developing more democratic knowledge creation processes in pedagogical institu-
tions, as well as in other arenas of societal everyday life. This undertaking is crucial
not only for the children’s development of subjectivity, but for the development of
contemporary societies: children not only will be, but already are, an inextricably
7 Generalizing Together with Children: The Significance of Children’s Concepts… 117
entangled part of safeguarding and developing human life. To move toward a more
democratic, codevelopmental knowledge creation praxis that systematically
includes children, the chapter builds on dialectical praxis psychologies to propose a
number of necessary conceptual reconfigurations on the ontological, the epistemo-
logical, the methodological, and the ethical level:
1. The first reconfiguration regards the researcher’s own positioning in relation to
the children, whom the researcher intends to engage in research together with. It
departs from Childhood Studies’ methodological principle of ethical symmetry,
and further expands it in terms of acknowledging ontological symmetry on epis-
temically asymmetric grounds across researchers and co-researchers, irrespec-
tive of whether they are adults or children.
2. Secondly, the notion of scientific generalization is reconfigured, as necessarily
related to everyday knowledge. This reconfiguration is of relevance, as it desta-
bilizes rationalistic forms of knowledge that are primarily associated to more
declarative “adult” thinking, and shows how more tacit and procedural forms of
knowledge are central to scientific knowledge creation.
3. In prolongation of this dialectical conceptual move, it is thereafter shown how
scientific generalizations are always process- and context-bound and are con-
stantly re-situated in everyday life in order to make sense of them and put them
to work. At the same time, scientific generalizations also supersede the respec-
tive situation, and make it possible to imagine alternative means and ends. This
is illustrated via an example from a theater project conducted together with pre-
school children at a Danish daycare institution, in which scientific generaliza-
tions framed all other generalizations, while also being transformed in the
process via everyday experiences and knowledges of children, pedagogical staff,
parents, and the researcher.
4. In conclusion, the praxis-philosophical concept of teleogenetic collaboration is
suggested as a possibility to gather these conceptual reconfigurations and to
thereby give both researchers and other adults working together with children an
alternative self-understanding of their role in the mutual learning processes that
they engage in alongside the children. It posits scientific research and general-
izing as part of everyday life, rather than as aiming for the study of other people’s
everyday life, and aims for its generalizations to become more immediately
accessible and negotiable for everyone irrespective of age.
Hence, the chapter problematizes that the presumed inferior relevance of children’s
knowledges depends not only on what tends to be considered truly significant
knowledge, for instance so-called “scientific generalizations” that appear detached
from, and are therefore deemed superior to, everyday knowledge. It particularly
problematizes that children’s generalizations are seen as largely insignificant to
societal knowledge creation. On these grounds, the chapter gives an insight into
how epistemological discourses (how is significant knowledge understood and cre-
ated?) are entangled with ontological discourses (who or what is it that creates this
significant knowledge, adults or children, majorities or minorities, etc.?), which in
turn are deeply entangled with ethical-political discourses (whose knowledge is con-
118 N. A. Chimirri
sidered valuable given the role children play in a specific context and practice,
including the research practice?). Or to formulate the chapter’s research question in
a more empirical-practical manner: What do we adults lose from sight and experi-
ence, if we continue neglecting children’s knowledges as significant part of main-
taining and transforming human life?
thical Symmetry as Starting Point for Knowledge

E
Co-Creation with Children
The first conceptual reconfiguration needed in order to create meaningful knowl-

edge together with children regards the foundational point of departure of the
researcher–researched relationship: Who are we scientific researchers in relation to
the children we wish to do research together with, and what do we hope to achieve
by doing research together with children?
Since the 1990s and particularly the 2000s, qualitative inquiry into children’s
experiences and actions has increasingly drawn on participatory methodologies that
explore children’s perspectives together with children from within praxis, thus plac-
ing the researcher’s investigation within children’s everyday lives. Aiming at full
participation of children in research and herewith generalization processes builds on
a relational conceptualization of agency, in which the latter is not regarded as an
essence that children or adults possess, but as a distributed process that emerges
from intergenerational collective actions, a networked practice to which everyone
contributes differently (e.g., Eßer and Sitter 2018; Eßer 2016; Stith and Roth 2006).
Such a relational understanding of agency, nowadays broadly acknowledged within
childhood studies (e.g., Eßer et al. 2016; cf. also Spyrou 2018), also resonates well
with contextual developmental psychological conceptualizations of children’s sub-
jectivity (e.g., Aronsson et al. 2018), among others that of a dialectic-materialist
Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), in which every human being
co-creates the societal conditions that she is dependent on together with others
(Holzkamp 2013). It is this latter theoretical framework, including its relational and
sociomaterial approach to subjectivity and herewith agency that serves as main the-
oretical backdrop for this chapter’s conceptual discussions.
In the meantime, just because children are regarded as interrelated social actors
and societal contributors, it does not automatically mean that society’s largely adult-
centered, structural arrangements fundamentally account for children’s co-creation
processes, for instance by having them actively codevelop institutional arrange-
ments and practice. Instead, children’s contributions tend to remain overlooked,
ignored, are belittled—even within participatory Childhood Studies (e.g., see the
critiques by Tisdall and Punch 2012; Spyrou 2018). This social asymmetry of chil-
dren’s participation possibilities in research was recognized by Christensen and
Prout (2002) when they originally proposed their concept of ethical symmetry for
social research with children:
By this [ethical symmetry] we mean that the researcher takes as his or her starting point the
view that the ethical relationship between researcher and informant is the same whether he
or she conducts research with adults or with children. This has a number of implications.
The first is that the researcher employs the same ethical principles whether they are
researching children or adults. Second, that each right and ethical consideration in relation
to adults in the research process has its counterpart for children. Third, the symmetrical
treatment of children in research means that any differences between carrying out research
with children or with adults should be allowed to arise from this starting point, according to
the concrete situation of children, rather than being assumed in advance.
Thus, from this point of view, researchers do not have to use particular methods or,
indeed, work with a different set of ethical standards when working with children. Rather it
means that the practices employed in the research have to be in line with children’s experi-
ences, interests, values and everyday routines. (p. 482)
Striving for ethical symmetry does not deny that children may be participating in
research differently than adults. But this approach explicitly acknowledges that
these differences are societally arranged, and should not be presumed as natural
given. Researchers should, therefore, not a priori decide to ethically relate to chil-
dren in a different manner than they do to adults throughout their research engage-
ments. Rather, the relational and processual emergence of these differences from
within the research process, ergo how the adult researcher gradually starts relating
to the participating children differently than to the participating adults, are a crucial
source of knowledge in order to learn about the children’s everyday experiences,
interests, values, and routines, and in particular about their possibilities of contribut-
ing to social life. It is via ethical symmetry as a study’s methodological point of
departure that child(hood) researchers can draw on their own, critically self-reflexive
experiences of gradually treating children differently, in spite of their initially sym-
metrical grounding, in order to further generalize the inequality-propelling societal
arrangements of children’s everyday lives that render a more participatory research
with children impossible. Without being able to go into too much detail with this
methodology (see, e.g., Salamon 2015, who shows how an ethical-symmetrical
research project can be implemented even with infants), meanwhile, the most
important questions to be posed in the context of this chapter on knowledge co-
creation are: Who is the nominal knowledge producer in an ethical-symmetrical
project à la Christensen and Prout (2002), and who benefits from the knowledge
produced in this way? What status is granted to children’s knowledges in this
approach?
While strongly sympathizing with the central idea that the researcher is to posi-
tion herself in an ethical-symmetrical way, by bracketing presumptions and expec-
tations on how a participatory project with children should play out, including what
knowledge should thereby be produced, one problem persists that obstructs mean-
ingful knowledge co-creation with children: It is the researcher who, out of ethical
and methodological considerations, decides on whether she wishes to implement
her research with children based on this ethical-symmetrical strategy. Ethical sym-
metry is explicitly considered a methodological strategy in Christensen and Prout’s
(2002) original conceptualization, and does thus not question the underlying onto-
logical and epistemological presumption that researchers and their “co-researchers”
120 N. A. Chimirri
(as the children are also termed in this approach) are two fundamentally different
categories of people. In their quest of wanting to let the researchers and co-
researchers critically inquire into the commonly taken-for-granted categories of
adult/child in an ethical-symmetrical way, by showing that ontological and episte-
mological differences essentially emerge from within the research process in the
context of its broader societal arrangements, Christensen and Prout do not suffi-
ciently focus on questioning the researcher/researched binary alongside the adult/
child binary. It remains up to the academic researcher’s goodwill to choose whether
or not her research gets grounded in an ethical-symmetrical starting point. Moreover,
while the researcher may thereby—strategically—attain a different knowledge
about the societal arrangements that propel difference between adults and children,
it remains unclear what it is that the participating children get out of such explora-
tions. What becomes of the children’s “differing” knowledges here?
Instead of considering ethical symmetry a methodological-strategical decision
that depends on the researcher’s goodwill, I will in the next subsection draw on
Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS) in order to propose that
knowledge co-creation, i.e., mutually learning together with children, is an onto-
logical and epistemological necessity for human learning on a general level. A
more symmetrical ethics follows from this premise. If not acknowledging this
premise, research generalizations emerging from studying institutionalized contexts
with children (including the less regulated in-between spaces; e.g., Eßer and Sitter
2018) continue foregrounding their epistemic and practical significance for adult
researchers and/or other professionals, and at times parents. What relevance the
thereby created knowledge has for children is, if at all, discussed in relation to how
adults can improve their understandings of or conditions for acting on/with chil-
dren. But should for instance, from an ethical-symmetrical co-researcher stance,
generalizations not also be relevant for children in a more immediate manner, so
that they can actually influence the knowledge products while they are being created
in situ by participating in the research process—rather than regarding children’s
research participation and scientific knowledge creation as two separate processes,
where children contribute to the latter only by adult researcher proxy mediation, and
thus in a tokenistic manner (cf. Mannion 2010)?
As will be argued, a universalizing methodological principle such as Christensen
and Prout’s ethical symmetry can, from a perspective grounded in PSS, really only
be a starting point for situated processes of knowledge co-creation with children. In
addition, these processes must systematically include children and their knowledges
as equivalently significant and yet differently anchored contributions, i.e., differ-
ently situated in terms of unique life experiences, positionings, imaginations, etc.,
to understanding and tackling pressing societal issues in concrete everyday life
practice. Dialogical knowledge exchange across generationed boundaries becomes
key as the world we adults and children inhabit is the same but can be understood
and lived in innumerably different ways. In order to further understand the potenti-
ality (as well as the dangers) certain knowledges of the world point to, children’s
knowledges ought to be taken more seriously and conceptually better grasped. This
requires reconfiguring widely spread notions of generalization, which arrange and
consolidate hierarchical, monolithically abstract and thus highly undemocratic (di)

visions of labor and knowledges—not only between adults and children, but also
between those we term “researchers” and all those other participants in a scientific
research project, including children.
rom Ethical Symmetry as Research Strategy to Mutual

F
Learning as Ontological Necessity
Childhood Studies’ ambition to co-research children’s agency and knowledge cre-

ation as relational phenomena is also ingrained in the thoroughly conceptualized
co-researcher concept that dialectical-critical Psychology from the Standpoint of
the Subject (PSS) proposes. Here, children’s and adults’ subjectivity and knowledge
creation processes are mutually constitutive, and therefore call for ongoing dialog
across adult and children’s perspectives on how to understand and meaningfully act
together in everyday life. Mutual learning (Højholt and Kousholt 2019) is an onto-
logically and epistemologically unavoidable phenomenon, a constitutive process
that makes it possible to tackle a general human condition that limits our respective
knowledges, namely epistemic asymmetry: not only do we partake in knowledge
creation from different positions in society, but also on the grounds of different first-
person perspectives—and all of these are significant for learning about how the
conditions we are dependent of are constituted. With explicit inspiration from phe-
nomenology, Schraube (2013) connects epistemic asymmetry to the notion of onto-
logical symmetry:
In human relations the other has no direct access to any first-person mental phenomena
except her/his own. Only I can know what I experience, think, feel, or why I have acted or
act in such and such a way. From this epistemic asymmetry, … it follows that there is a
fundamental ontological symmetry in human relations. As I experience myself and the
world from my perspective, and act in the world from my perspective and standpoint, then
logically the other also experiences her/himself and the world from her/his perspective and
acts from her/his perspective and standpoint in the world. This reflexive reciprocity of the
subjects’ first-person perspectives in human relations can be characterized as a symmetrical
reciprocity of the first-person perspective or as intersubjective symmetry and is a fundamen-
tal distinguishing feature of human sociality. Human sociality builds on intersubjective
symmetry and the reciprocal recognition of the other’s first-person perspective. Social
thought is therefore actually symmetrical thought and has to be based on an understanding
of the other as coequal center of intentionality and origin of her/his agency and on an inclu-
sion of the other’s interests, perspectives and standpoint. (p. 26)
The epistemic asymmetry that Schraube refers to is already acknowledged in Greek

political philosophy (cf. Arendt 2005: 128). It points to the insight that human
beings need one another’s experiences of the world in order to make sense of them
in a more general, or Arendt would say “objective,” light. Furthermore, as Schraube
argues, this epistemic asymmetry is an ontological fact that human beings all have
in common, and that in consequence constitutes a fundamental ontological sym-
metry within human relations: We are all the same in that we are aware that we
122 N. A. Chimirri
cannot know it all on our own (see also Axel 2011). Understanding the other as a
coequal center of intentionality and thereby creating an intersubjective symmetrical
reciprocity among one another, is a prerequisite and distinguishing feature of human
sociality, of being able to think socially and herewith act purposefully together.
Opting for ethical symmetry in research with children, as Christensen and Prout
(2002) call for, is on the grounds of Schraube’s propositions not merely a kind of
strategic decision, or even worse a mere token gesture, that researchers offer to
their co-researchers given their privileged position in society. From a subject-sci-
entific, critical PSS viewpoint such as Schraube’s, researchers (or anyone else) are
not able to engage in purposeful social thinking and acting on children’s everyday
living conditions without presuming and departing from an intersubjectively sym-
metrical relationship with their co-researchers—by engaging in mutual learning
processes and herein ontologically acknowledging them as coequal centers of
intentionality and agency (cf. Højholt and Kousholt 2019). The consequence of
not departing from this symmetrical understanding between researcher and
researched, between adult and child, between me and you and you, between all of
us, would be that epistemic asymmetry across children and adults could not be
purposefully tackled via dialogical exploration and knowledge co-creation, and
more general insights into child–adult relations and human living conditions
would be rendered impossible. Human cross-generational sociality would gradu-
ally wither, as adults could not meaningfully communicate with and make sense of
children, while irrespectively taking decisions on their behalf, and children could
not make sense of adults, feeling left paternalized and without agency. Opting for
ethical symmetry in child(hood) research, as well as in any other research involv-
ing human beings, thus becomes an ontological necessity, and arguably, a conditio
sine qua non for human survival.
In order to truly honor an ethically ontologically intersubjective symmetry that
bridges the presumed child/adult binary as well as the researcher/researched binary,
thus facilitating communication, mutual learning, reciprocal sensemaking and
thereby knowledge co-creation across generational and other societal (di)visions of
labor, research with children and any other human, being requires a conceptual
reconfiguration of what scientific knowledge is and of what it is good for. Knowledge
is not merely an abstract generalization, a product generated by researching scien-
tists enclosed behind hermetic walls, only accessible via academic journals, or
when digested and reinterpreted by journalists, policy-makers, etc. This form of
knowledge creation is the absolute exception. Rather, knowledge is produced in
everyday praxis, by everyone, all the time. Knowledge products are constantly put
into action, applied, negotiated, reconfigured, in the process of everyday living by
adults and by children. Paradoxically, however, and in spite of many pragmatist as
well as praxis philosophers’ counterarguments, the creation and performance of
everyday knowledges continue to appear as largely detached from the creation and
performance of scientific knowledges in societal discourses: the generalizations that
constitute everyday knowledges are somehow granted less significance than those
that constitute scientific knowledges. But why is that so? Do all generalizations not
only become societally significant if rendered relevant for everyday life? Are s cience
and the generalizations it creates not just as much immanent to everyday life as any
other knowledge?
eneralization as Interplay Between Everyday Concepts

G
and Scientific Concepts
For children and other research participants to have a say in creating scientific gen-
eralizations, and thus be symmetrically considered coequal centers of intentionality
in co-research processes, the notion of scientific generalization needs to be recon-
figured in a way that does not artificially detach it from everyday life, but that fur-
ther clarifies its generalizations’ relevance for mutually learning together as concrete
daily praxis. An important step in this process is to reconsider how generalizations
relevant to children could be understood as co-creating scientifically relevant knowl-
edge. As will be argued for, this requires us to analyze the relationship between
scientific knowledges and everyday knowledges with a focus on the role of general-
ization in everyday life, and on these grounds pinpoint the dialectical ontology of
generalization as product and process in everyday life, including the dialectical
interplay between declarative and procedural knowledge. The upcoming theoretical
discussion, which emphasizes the inner relatedness of scientific and everyday con-
cepts, is based on my participation in a long-term pedagogical daycare project that
gradually analyzed and generalized fellow learning processes in order to create a
theater play—a project which, in its efforts to continuously interrelate scientific and
everyday products in these processes, will be suggested as an initial prototype for
future transgenerational knowledge co-creation.1
The interplay between scientific and everyday knowledge creation, as well as
between generalizations as both product and process, has been of particular interest
for the cultural-historical research tradition of psychology—a tradition that has
strongly influenced Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), also
given its fellow dialectical, praxis-philosophical roots. Since its inception in the
1920s, children’s development, knowledge creation, and learning processes have
constituted the most important empirical focus of cultural-historical psychology.
The tradition’s founder, Lev S. Vygotsky, extensively researched how children learn
about and form concepts, as generalized and yet context-specific knowledge prod-
ucts. Drawing on Vygotsky’s work, Sikder and Fleer (2015) highlight the interrela-
tion between everyday concepts and scientific concepts:
A cultural-historical view of concept formation in young children foregrounds the impor-
tance of context, in conjunction with the dynamic and evolving nature of concept formation
… There are two dimensions of concept development—everyday concepts and scientific
concepts—which are related. (p. 447)
I draw on Nissen’s (2009) understanding of a prototype in this chapter.

1
124 N. A. Chimirri
According to the authors, play activities become crucial for developing thinking and
producing generalizations, understood here as concept formation. The authors cite
Vygotsky (1966):
The concepts are not simply a collection of associative connections learned with the aid of
memory. The child’s concepts can be improved to a higher level through consciousness. So
concepts develop. At any stage of its development, the concept is an act of generalization
which is Elementary Generalization and higher forms of generalization. Direct instruction
in concepts is impossible. Then the child does not learn the concept; only imitate the word
through memory rather than thought. (pp. 169–170; cited in Sikder and Fleer 2015: 447)
In short, Vygotsky considered acts of elementary generalization to lead to everyday

or spontaneous concepts.2 What he called “higher,” or rather more complex forms
of generalization, result in scientific concepts. Scientific concepts emerge from an
integration of everyday concepts into a concept system, in which everyday concepts
become interrelated to one another through daily activities, such as play, and thereby
restructured and changed, superseding the child’s immediate social situation.
Scientific concepts thus become a form of theoretical, mediating filter, through
which future and past everyday activities and concepts can subsequently be read and
understood. While the immediate relevance of the learning process for a given situ-
ation is superseded in the transformation of spontaneous into mediating, highly gen-
eralized concepts, contextual relevance nevertheless remains key for initiating any
learning process: without feeling the need to learn in a concrete everyday situation,
without having any good reason to do so, no meaningful conceptual learning via
generalization will take place.3
While the adults’ crucial role in assisting and (indirectly) instructing children in
this transformational process is explicitly acknowledged and discussed by Vygotsky
as well as by Sikder and Fleer, however, I consider the children’s role in transform-
ing adults’ spontaneous concepts into scientific concepts—and thus their role in
promoting mutual learning processes—to remain underdetermined, i.e. regarding
the question of: What role do children’s knowledges play in developing adult knowl-
edges? This shortcoming I will return to below. For now, it is important to pinpoint
that Vygotsky’s contextual developmental understanding of generalization precisely
bridges scientific and everyday concepts, in that scientific concepts emerge from
their inner relationship to everyday concepts, and that they in turn must be re-
situated in everyday (conceptual) activities in order to become relevant for learning.
It is this theoretical and thus discursive bridge that, as I will argue later, is crucial in
order to rethink the societal significance of children’s knowledges in scientific gen-
eralization processes. But before getting to that: What is anyway the role of scientific
2
According to Dafermos (2018: 161), Vygotsky preferred the term everyday concepts over Piaget’s
term spontaneous concepts. I will henceforth draw on Vygotsky’s preferred term.
3
Meaningfulness is here related to a person’s development of knowledge: If one is instructed to
learn, it could still be considered relevant for the person to learn in order to shirk reprimanding or
other forms of punishment. But then the person will foremost learn something about social hierar-
chies and obedience, rather than learn about the content-knowledge that it is supposed to be
instructed in.
concepts, of mediating generalizations that supersede the immediacy of everyday

practice? Must they not also be regarded as immediately essential for everyday life?
Problematizing the Separation of Theorizing and Everyday Life
We do research for purposes of living, and theories of social and psychological life are just
some of the tools we employ in the process (others are art and education). This also means
that literally anything that we encounter in our lives can become material in and for our
inquiries. (Brinkmann 2015: 412)
While in daily conversation with each other, we do not necessarily consider how we
all the time draw on and potentially develop theoretical generalizations, or what we
now, following Vygotsky’s notion that scientific concepts are syntheses of everyday
concepts, else may call “scientific knowledge.” All generalizations are part of acting
in everyday life, of praxis. And all of these generalizations can, in line with
Brinkmann, become a matter worth analyzing, irrespective of how abstract or mun-
dane they appear. Meanwhile, considering them as “tools,” as Brinkmann does in
the above citation, may make it sound as if they were just “out there” in the world
for our taking, as instruments for better controlling the world. In his chapter about
using one’s own experiences as a subject matter of inquiry, however, Brinkmann is
among others building on Tim Ingold’s (2011) sociomaterial anthropology of every-
day life as well as pragmatist educational philosophy. His above statement therefore
rather proposes that theoretical generalizations are an inextricable part of being
human, of our bodies, our perception, our affects, that means: of our everyday
lively doings.
Read in this light, Brinkmann’s understanding of theoretical generalizations
stands in stark opposition to positivist notions of theories as representational tools,
tools that are expected to represent “truth” in as universally valid as possible ways:
independent of the concrete environment they emerged from and are used in, and
independent of the researcher, i.e., of the observing, analyzing, and writing knowl-
edge creator. Such an epistemology tends to confound theoretical generalization
with universalization, in that it aims at offering context-independent and thus
detached-rationalist explanations of a phenomenon that can be imposed onto other
phenomena that may sound or look familiar. This kind of “theoretical tools” is
meant to represent and render manageable a relatively stable truth of the world that
is out there for human instrumental scrutiny and taking, thereby excluding truths
that are situated, dynamically changing, inherently contradictory, and in that sense
complex. A fictitious example: say that a positivistically grounded study found a
statistically significant positive correlation between using a specifically programmed
teaching robot and boys’ learning acquisition, a study repeatedly reproduced over
the course of a few weeks across a selected, supposedly representative number of
preschools in Denmark. In the interpretation of this probabilistically generalized
correlative result, the positive correlation suddenly becomes translated into a
theoretical representation that can easily be read in a universalist manner (for
126 N. A. Chimirri
instance: “artificial intelligence”), so that readers of the study, or of mediated trans-

lations of the study, may start deducing that robots are the more “intelligent” lan-
guage teachers—irrespective of the specific robot’s model and function, of the
specific preschool’s technical, care, and learning support structures, of the respec-
tive children’s interests and learning preferences, the role of family and peers, of the
locale, the time of day or year, the weather, the socioeconomic background, as well
as the history of the concept of “intelligence,” etc.
This form of theoretical generalizations, understood as universally valid repre-
sentations of a (apparently artificially intelligent?) “truth out there,” is powerfully
present in many daily conversations, even though it creates a kind of knowledge that
is most detached from everyday life and its intricate complexities and contradic-
tions. In probabilistic correlation studies, most complexities as context variables
tend to be regarded as “noise” (or “mess”; cf. Law 2007), and are as far as possible
eliminated in order to control for involuntary side effects. Once trying to make such
results relevant for everyday life praxis, however, the prior elimination of context
variables effectuated in the original study is abstracted from and neglected. Its effect
is that an authoritative, invalid and deeply unethical,4 universalizing representa-
tional generalization gets communicated to the world—creating knowledge that
detaches scientific practice from contextual everyday life praxis.
The danger lying in context elimination is to create an artificially abstracting,
rationalistic understanding of a knowledge of the world that is not livable as it is not
lovable; a merely representational vision of the world that, on the basis of David
Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest, can be compared to how the world must
look to someone afflicted with an anhedonic state of depression, a state his fictional
character Kate Gompert heavily suffers from:
It’s kind of emotional novocaine, this form of depression, and while it’s not overtly painful
its deadness is disconcerting and … well, depressing. Kate Gompert’s always thought of
this anhedonic state as a kind of radical abstracting of everything, a hollowing out of stuff
that used to have affective content. Terms the undepressed toss around and take for granted
as full and fleshy – happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love – are stripped to their skeletons
and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The
anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable
of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, or of believing them to
exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects
become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate but
has no location. (Wallace 2006/1996: 693)
It is current societies’ educational focus on declarative and denotative knowl-

edge, also described at the beginning of this chapter, a focus on the representational,
rationalistic generalizations that are explicable, that in my view do not allow for
children’s and other marginalized knowledges to become just as significant for
human knowledge co-creation, for our tackling of epistemic asymmetry through
dialogue, and thus for a more purposeful, transgenerational development of societal
4
Unethical because it ignores the situative historicity of being human and circumvents any fellow
exploration of knowledge.
arrangements. What Wallace describes as the “anhedonic state” cannot make people
thrive, as it hinders meaningful collaboration. And in Vygotsky’s sense, it is not
truly scientific concepts or generalizations that this kind of detached knowledge is
operating on, even though it comes close to what may often be deemed “scientific
knowledge”: artificially abstracting ideas, universal and thus context-independent,
denotation without connotation, schemata, maps, mere representations, detached
from their affective content—and I would add: with a focus on the knowledge prod-
ucts alone, and not on its processes of (joint) sensemaking and creation. Wallace’s
“anhedonic state” reciprocates the universalist fallacy, “the reduction of similarity
to sameness” (Valsiner 2014: 241), of conceiving originally context-dependent
knowledge as universally and thus context-independently valid.
eneralization for Imagining a Better Everyday Life:

G
The Dialectical Inner Relation Between Scientific and Everyday
Knowledge and Its Relevance
To become truly scientific in Vygotsky’s understanding, instead, theoretical knowl-

edge needs to be able to grasp its inner relatedness to everyday knowledge and
thereby be rendered relevant for everyday life. Livable conceptual knowledge can-
not be erected on representation alone and cannot merely opt for creating abstract
and universal generalizations: We cannot and arguably neither want to fully elimi-
nate generalizations’ noise and mess, their contradictoriness and complexity. In
contrary, a livable everyday life feeds on its noise and mess, and remains, in contrast
to the positivist ideal of scientific experimenting, largely unpredictable and uncon-
trollable. But precisely this defining characteristic of everyday life seldom plays a
role in scientific research: its complex meaningfulness for conducting everyday life
is sacrificed only to attain predictive control and, in this sense, maximum technical
relevance. Generalizations that truly are of technical relevance to everyday life, that
are practically-technically useful for conducting everyday life, however, require to
be processually re-situated in the everyday life of those that co-created these gener-
alizations. It is thereby they also attain emancipatory relevance: a relevance for
bettering our life circumstances together, on the grounds of our diverse knowledges
and capabilities, in order to best possibly embrace and societally arrange life’s com-
plexity and unpredictability without mystifying them (for a more detailed conceptu-
alization of emancipatory and technical relevance, see Chimirri 2015a).
In order to understand and act from within everyday life, hence, it is the dialecti-
cal combination of knowledge generalizations’ technical and emancipatory rele-
vance that is, I will argue, the most helpful for emphasizing the potentialities of
knowledge co-creation with children. In the light of such a dialectical reformulation
of generalizations’ relevance, generalizations are not mere stepping stones in the
process of transforming social life. Generalization products are also that, but they
are technically just as much always already present and in play in everyday life,
128 N. A. Chimirri
although not necessarily actualized as such: They are virtually (Kontopodis 2012)
or imaginatively (Sieland 2017) present at all times, and in consequence not neces-
sarily in an explicit, articulated manner. Generalizations lead to a knowledge not
only of what, for instance, an “arm” is, but also how an “arm” feels, or more pre-
cisely: of how my arm feels in relation to what I know about what an “arm” is and
how an “arm” feels to others I have talked to about it, heard about, read about, etc.
Most often, though, I do not explicitly think about and thereby consciously actualize
the generalized “arm” concept that is imaginatively embodied in my theorizing.
Usually I only explicitly actualize the concept once my experience of it changes its
qualities.
Most of the generalizations we draw on, instead, loom in the vague shadows of
imagined future trajectories, of what we both explicitly and tacitly hope our knowl-
edge may help us some day with doing, technically and/or emancipatorily.
Generalizations are only seldom consciously presenced and explicitly actualized.
Yet, I propose, even the more unconsciously, vaguely-imaginatively present gener-
alizations orient our knowledge creation processes at any time, are thereby them-
selves constantly worked out and negotiated, actualizing our conceptual
(everyday-scientific) knowledge. One could say that such imaginatively “present”
generalizations act as a vague telic or action-orienting premise for acting (cf. Sieland
and Chimirri in press), and with it, a vaguely present and yet action-orienting prem-
ise for developing knowledge. Subsequently, we most often learn about and develop
generalizations without explicitly knowing that we are learning about them and for
what reasons, and yet, these generalizations become constitutive of our actions, of
how we contribute to knowledge creation.
Vaguely present generalizations are thus constitutive of directing human mental
activity and action processes, potentially in both technically and emancipatorily
relevant ways: Such knowledge can be of technical relevance in that it may reveal
possible practical-technical steps, or a method, of becoming able to consciously
actualize imagined realities; and it can simultaneously be of emancipatory rele-
vance, in that it may supersede the immediate circumstances of an actualization’s
practical-technical feasibility and give an idea of whether and how these imagined
realities may be or become livable. The potentiality of vaguely present generaliza-
tions, however, can only be enacted by acknowledging the societal significance of
imagination, i.e., the dialectical relation of its technical and emancipatory relevance.
This acknowledgment would render it possible to imagine the concrete, everyday
improvement of present and future life circumstances and societal arrangements
also by conceptually synthetizing means that cannot (yet) be fathomed.5 This latter,
as I would term it, magical-realist aspect of imagination, as generalizing the not-
yet-present on the grounds of what we may not have directly experienced to know
but can somehow vaguely grasp, given human collective knowledge co-creation and
5
It should be noted that imagination does not per definition lead to subjectively meaningful action.
It can also hinder meaningful action and restrict one’s agency (cf. Sieland 2017; Sieland and
Chimirri in press). It is therefore essential to conceptualize its societal significance also in collec-
tive terms.
thus by relating to other person’s experiences and the sociomaterial world we are
part of, is similarly described by Vygotsky:
Imagination takes on a very important function in human behavior and human develop-
ment. It becomes the means by which a person’s experience is broadened, because he can
imagine what he has not seen, can conceptualize something from another person’s narration
and description of what he himself has never directly experienced. He is not limited to the
narrow circle and narrow boundaries of his own experience but can venture far beyond these
boundaries, assimilating, with the help of his imagination someone else’s historical or
social experience. In this form, imagination is a completely essential condition for almost
all human mental activity. (2004b: 17)
By furthermore connecting this understanding of the societally significant imagi-

nation to cultural psychologist Jaan Valsiner’s (2014, 2015) mereological perspec-
tive, it can be inferred that everyday generalizations/concepts are at any time
constitutive parts of the not-yet-graspable WHOLE that a scientific generalization
seeks to articulate and somehow render graspable, explicable, and thus workable
across individual knowledges—even if it involves what we could, under given cir-
cumstances, consider unfathomable, or perhaps even magical. But the WHOLE is
also always already present in its parts, i.e., scientific generalization is always
already present in everyday generalization: in everyday life, any learning process
involving generalization already builds on an imagined, generalized knowledge
product, which, however, remains mostly vague and moreover dynamic. Dialectic
generalizations therefore equally supersede the differentiation between science and
everyday life, between process and product, between declarative knowledge and
procedural knowledge, between denotation and connotation, between apparently
rational and irrational thinking, between realism and magic, between technical and
emancipatory relevance, between action and imagination—as will be illustrated via
an example of a pedagogical daycare project. Here, the final staging of the theater
play, the product, was always already present as a generalized whole in its continu-
ously developing parts, and yet remained vague and dynamic, according to context
and according to whom was relating to this WHOLE in different ways.
he Magical Realism of a Dragon Egg: Scientific-Everyday

T
Generalization and Its Significance for Pedagogical Praxis
The following case example is intended to show that the pedagogical professionals
that I have encountered during my long-term field studies in one German and two
Danish daycare centers are constantly working with generalizations in order to cre-
ate knowledge together with children. It is to show that the generalizations they
created together with children, colleagues, parents, etc., are dialectical, in that the
staff members work with them as internally related declarative knowledge products
and simultaneously as procedural knowledge processes. The staff-initiated knowl-
edge co-creation praxis highlighted in the example below builds on scientific as
well as everyday concepts, which combine both magical and realist aspects of the
130 N. A. Chimirri
WHOLE and which are of both emancipatory and technical relevance for the mutual
learning processes across children and adults.
Meanwhile, the pedagogical staff is primarily confronted with political, profes-
sional, and scientific discourses that primarily emphasize teaching for children’s
declarative, anhedonic-rationalist and measurable knowledge acquisition as their
work’s foremost goal, discourses that are based on the premise that children’s
knowledges are somehow defective and inferior to that of the pedagogical staff. The
knowledge co-creation that the staff in praxis often initiates and operates with,
including its relative indeterminateness and openness to all participants’ diverse
experiences, knowledges, and relevance structures, is gradually absenced in these
societal discourses and in the documentation products the staff is to use. The conse-
quence is that the indeterminateness or openness of mutual learning processes is
gradually rendered unimaginable and marginalized in institutional everyday life—a
trend further propelled by current digitalization initiatives in the early childhood
sector, which tend to put a major emphasis on pre-defined, goal-oriented learning of
rationalist and representational knowledge. Magical-realist projects like the one to
be described now, which draw on digital devices and representations as support for
(primarily analogue) learning from one another about the world we are together part
of, may thereby become less imaginable in the future—if their societal significance
remains conceptually-practically underdetermined.
The shortly outlined case is a theatrical project that involved all preschool chil-
dren from three different daycare groups in one Danish daycare center. On the
grounds of their hitherto experiences with those children that were to transition to
school in summer 2017, the pedagogical staff came up with the idea to organize and
implement a theatrical stage play that was to be presented to the parents during the
last days of their children’s daycare stay. The preparations took several months,
given that the pedagogues arranged for a frame that allowed the process to unfold
slowly and cooperatively by gradually adding details to the envisioned final prod-
uct: the theater play. Also, they wanted to make use of the digital infrastructure at
hand: the iPads each group had, as well as the media pedagogical support unit the
municipality had founded in order to support the integration of digital devices into
local pedagogical work and everyday life at the daycare centers.
The preschool children were to be involved at every stage of the preparations:
the play itself and its dialogues/script were developed together, and ended up
with enmeshing Vikings, ninjas, knights, and a dragon egg; music clips were to
be chosen and vocally reenacted by the children with assistance from the munici-
pal IT pedagogue; excursions to the city and the countryside were organized in
order for the children to take digital photographs that could be projected onto the
stage as visual, locally situated backdrop; costumes and props were collected
from the various homes, or newly “homemade” especially for this purpose, also
with the help of some of the daycare parents; some of the props were photo-
graphed as well, animated, and integrated into the background projection (for
instance the handcrafted dragon), in order to explicitly interrelate the digital
background with the analogue staging. Some of the preparatory processes were
also filmed by the pedagogues, who produced a short “behind-the-scenes” docu-

mentary as an add-on to the theatrical play.
This highly creative, largely collaborative, and long-lasting process, that became
part of the staff’s and the children’s pedagogical co-engagements a couple of days a
week for around 2–3 months, drew on, developed, and created innumerable gener-
alizations along its way. While children gradually gained conceptual-practical
knowledge about what a “theater play” may be and about how it can be realized in
this context, thus dialectically relating everyday concepts to scientific concepts and
vice versa, the pedagogical staff did as well. Arguably, the staff had an experience-
based, conceptually more widely interrelated, and thus “more general” imagination
of what a theater play usually is to be and how it is to play out. But they constantly
needed to adapt their scientific-everyday generalizations of what a theater play is
and can become, negotiate it anew with the children, colleagues, and parents to
render it meaningful for the others, by breaking it down into technically workable
parts that nevertheless would purposefully contribute to the already somewhat dif-
ferently envisioned knowledge product, the WHOLE of a theatrical play. The staff
needed to relate the pedagogical-professional, emancipatory-technical relevance
they started out with to the conceptual knowledge the children brought into the col-
laborations, thereby re-situating their generalized imaginative knowledge according
to the transcontextual understanding and relevance of the various elements that the
children experientially and imaginatively drew on; transcontextual because children
conduct their everyday lives not only in the institution’s context, but also at home
and other places. Hence, their knowledge is never only bound to one context but
connects to the many experiences they make across spaces and places, positionings,
and situations (cf. Chimirri 2013). Such knowledge is general knowledge, in that it
supersedes its immediate contextual boundedness, drawing on and pointing to
knowledge many places across its respective participants, though without abstract-
ing it from its immediate relevance for acting together in the context-at-hand.
Let us take the dragon egg as an example of general knowledge that dialectically
draws on scientific and everyday concepts, is both magical and realist, imaginative
and yet concrete, both mediated and immediately relevant. The dragon egg is a con-
cept that conveys potentially generalized notions of a dragon, of an egg, of a dragon
as an egg-laying and yet fantastic being, of how a dragon could look like and sound,
of what its egg could look like, what size and color it could have, etc. It is a fantastic,
not-(yet-)existing artifact, whose conceptualization therefore allows for a broad
diversity of imaginative interpretations: a dragon egg is discursively and herewith
also sociomaterially less solidified and graspable than, for instance, a chicken egg.
Meanwhile, it should be remembered that the standardized chicken egg commonly
offered at Northern or Central European supermarkets is a somewhat fantastic arti-
fact as well: The standard white or brown, perfectly shaped M-XL supermarket eggs
are rendered general as a prototype of an egg, a prototype which however disregards
of a very broad variety of other egg colors, shapes, and sizes. Following Vygotsky,
just because a more broadly universalized, more or less standardized understanding
of a chicken egg exists, the “chicken egg” does not have to be a more scientific
concept than a “dragon egg”: a concept’s scientificity emerges in relation to whether
132 N. A. Chimirri
it can be rendered meaningful for technically-emancipatorily relevant, collabora-

tive everyday praxis. So knowledge of a dragon egg can turn out to be just as, or
even more, relevant than a chicken egg, thus becoming generalized knowledge—at
least when re-situated in the context of collaborating on implementing a theatrical
stage play.
Generalizations that tend to be more vaguely present, such as the “dragon egg,”
can furthermore be important to challenge largely accepted, hegemonized, or uni-
versalized concepts, for instance of an “egg” as a standardized M-XL chicken egg,
and thereby potentially contribute to more general knowledge of an “egg.” But in
order to be able to co-create more general knowledge, collaborators are required to
allow for a situated openness to their vaguely present, generalizations or imagina-
tions as meaningful premise for acting together. Let us say, for instance, that a
young child grew up on a farm with non-standardized chickens, and one day came
to tell her peers and the pedagogical daycare staff that all the eggs that she knew
were rather small, almost ball-round and violet, rejecting the concept “egg” that
denotes the white standardized chicken eggs laying in front of them at the daycare
center: would the others allow for their experience-based, generalized conceptual
understanding of a standard chicken egg to get troubled by the farm-child’s fantastic-
sounding violet ball-eggs, that may perhaps rather remind of dragon eggs? Would
they acknowledge that, in order to attain a more general understanding of an “egg”
or of a “chicken egg,” the farm-child’s experiences could productively contribute to
the fellow knowledge co-creation of this scientific-everyday concept that is poten-
tially relevant for all their respective everyday lives?
earning from Pedagogical Knowledge Co-Creation

L
for Academic Knowledge Co-Creation Via an Egg
In the case of the theater play staged at the daycare center, the dragon egg played the
role of the “MacGuffin”: an object that everybody, Vikings, ninjas, and knights,
craves while it never is fully explained why this is so. But throughout the process of
imagining and crafting this artifact, it has played many other roles as well: the
knowledge that the pedagogical staff and children co-created in relation to the
dragon egg as a potential generalization product was processually re-situated
according to who was involved in discussing it, to what they found to be relevant to
conceptually relate to, across everyday life contexts, including the production stage
the dragon egg was in. Speculatively, it even triggered discussions about how it
relates to a standardized chicken egg.
What this knowledge-situating praxis across participants craved, meanwhile,
was that the pedagogical staff, qua the authority entitled to them as pedagogically
trained adults vis-à-vis the children they have the duty to take care of, decided to
position themselves as symmetrically as they could fathom in the knowledge and
play-production processes with the children, and to keep the imagined end product,
the theater play, open for renegotiation with the children. This would point to the
above introduced concept of ethical symmetry, in that the pedagogical staff “strate-
gically” decided to depart from a symmetrical positioning, for the children to have
an equal say in influencing the process’ outcome. Based on this strategical under-
standing of ethical symmetry, the “symmetrical” starting point would have been
granted to the children qua the staff’s societal positioning, representing an instru-
mental token gesture to promote the (learning) agenda the staff is politically
expected to increasingly pursue: for instance in order to make the “task” of imple-
menting a theatrical play more attractive for the preschool children and nudge them
to comply with staff instructions, or to minimize nerve-wrecking conflict, or to fur-
ther democratic decision-taking at the daycare center so as to check it off on the
municipality’s evaluation schema. Despite potentially good intentions, children’s
knowledges would herewith have been implicitly reproduced as defective, as less
significant for societal development than the staff’s, as the latter has the possibility
to strategically grant a symmetrical positioning to the children, and not the other
way around.
Actually, however, the pedagogical staff members that I talked to primarily
emphasized that their openness to the children’s influence on the theatrical play’s
products and processes was due to their interest in learning from the children about
their knowledges. The staff wanted to engage in an activity together with the chil-
dren, in which the children’s knowledges could be articulated in many different
ways, through handicraft, drawing, digital editing, programming, singing, acting,
and of course: talking. Such multimodal dialogue made it possible for the pedagogi-
cal staff not only to learn about the children’s interests and capabilities, but also for
the staff to get its own interests and capabilities, as well as their knowledges, chal-
lenged and diversified by the children. They were seeking ethical symmetry not for
strategical reasons (at least not alone), but because, in my interpretation, they
wanted to supersede epistemic asymmetry by acknowledging ontological symmetry,
by acknowledging that they required the children’s alternative knowledges for
developing as human beings by developing their conceptual understandings of
everyday life.
In such a light, then, the dragon egg’s technical-emancipatory relevance for
knowledge co-creation, for the sake of producing the theatrical play in a pedagogi-
cal context, but in particular for mutually learning for everyday life across ages,
across generationed thresholds, only emerges once acknowledging ethical symme-
try as ontological necessity: The emergence of epistemic asymmetry in the encoun-
ter of whatever kind of egg is neither mere “noise” or “mess” in the knowledge
creation process, it should thus never be eliminated from a generalization process;
rather, the concept of a differently shaped and colored, seemingly singular chicken
or dragon egg contributes as a relevant part to the WHOLE, and thus to a more
nuanced, complex, dialectically intrarelated generalization of an egg. This expanded
knowledge may help all of us understand our respective everyday lives better, and
to more purposefully act together on changing everyday life’s societal arrange-
ments. Neither the dragon egg, nor the violet, ball-shaped chicken egg, merely fal-
sify previous understandings of an egg, but they co-create a potentially productive,
134 N. A. Chimirri
developmental knowledge crisis: superseding “scientific” knowledge praxis always

already builds on a conflictual and yet highly productive struggle between seem-
ingly contradictory everyday understandings and related epistemic-ontological cri-
ses. Asserting the scientific and thus societal significance of any generalized
concept, no matter how mundane it may seem, such as that of an odd-looking, only
vaguely definite egg, is thus also a political-ethical endeavor: by emphasizing the
technical-emancipatory relevance of such a scientific-everyday concept, daily strug-
gles regarding the contradictoriness and conflictual potentiality of any generaliza-
tion can be acknowledged as societally purposeful, inherent to ongoing democratic
negotiation and collaboration processes trying to continuously supersede the par-
tiality and particularity of knowledge, its singularity and uniqueness, while at the
same time feeding on these.
eleogenetic Collaboration for Co-Creating Knowledge

T
with Children: Research as Everyday Life, Everyday Life
as Research
The dragon egg example and the pedagogical staff’s openness to letting their own
scientific and everyday knowledges get troubled by the children, described in the
case, is relevant to academically anchored co-research and knowledge co-creation
processes with children and anyone else as well. “Scientific” knowledge creation
also always builds on the researcher’s conduct of everyday life across contexts: the
researcher’s actions and knowledge creation are “part of the weave” (Slunecko
2019; Chimirri et al. 2015), of the conjointly created fabric of everyday life, of relat-
ing everyday concepts and scientific concepts in order to make them relevant to the
researcher himself/herself, as well as to other researchers and all other human
beings. Schraube’s proposed concept of intersubjective, ontological symmetry for
the sake of seeking the general in epistemic asymmetry implies continuously inquir-
ing into one’s own role in the knowledge co-creation process—and of how not only
the researcher, but also of how the research participants including children benefit
from this process and the knowledge products that emerge from it. The researcher
may initiate an inquiry on the grounds of her own respective epistemic ambition and
knowledge interests, and of an imagined, temporary end product to the inquiry (an
article, a monograph, a conference presentation, etc.). But these must remain open
to processual renegotiation with the participants’ knowledges, their ambitions and
interests, their vaguely generalized end products.
Research that truly acknowledges ethical-ontological symmetry in order to
embrace and mutually learn from epistemic asymmetry requires, I propose, teleoge-
netic collaboration (Chimirri 2015b, 2016, 2019)6: an ongoing dialogue about
6
The concept of teleogenetic collaboration is strongly inspired by Axel’s (2011) concept of conflic-
tual cooperation, as well as by Valsiner’s (2014) following proposition: “Human beings are not
where our knowledge co-creation processes may be taking us, about what we deem
relevant to pursue according to our diversely imagined, temporary end products of
the generalization processes we engage together in. This process necessarily chal-
lenges the researcher’s own pre-understandings, his ideological worldview (Teo
2009: 42), including the researcher’s potential view of science and scientific con-
cepts as detached from everyday concepts. What we consider to be “real” must be
able to get troubled by what we consider “magical” or fantastic, of what we may
consider to be “defective” at first glance: the magical aspects of everyday life are
just as much a significant part of reality, of the WHOLE, as other generalizations
are, and must therefore be made an explicit part of any research process, of its
knowledge co-creation, be it academically institutionalized or not.
This proposition is itself a generalization, a knowledge product that emerged
from the knowledge co-creation processes that I experienced together with the chil-
dren and the pedagogical staff at the daycare centers I participated in. It describes a
single case that will be re-situated in relation to the reader’s knowledge creation
processes, if conceptually deemed of technical and emancipatory relevance to her.
It can thereby contribute to other generalizations as parts of the WHOLE, though
without knowing for sure how it will be generalized by the reader, who is in turn
part of the knowledge co-creation that may follow from writing this chapter. Any
single case is thus significant in order to more meaningfully conceive of everyday
life beyond the single case, as Valsiner explains:
instance—each and every new experience – within the life space of the single case. This
claim follows from the biological limit of all living systems functioning in irreversible time.
We live through encountering ever-new unique instances of relating with our environments.
We take singular risks – here and now – once – yet with consequences for the whole of the
life course that follows. While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we oper-
ate through general principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments.
Generalization is possible from any single instance of our encounters with the environment.
Generality is in singularity. (2015: 233–234)
Scientific research and all other forms of generating generalized knowledge serve
living and its experienced uniqueness, its singularity—and not mere survival.
Acknowledging an ethical-ontological symmetry across human beings, irrespective
of age, can be regarded as a precondition for being able to co-explore epistemic
asymmetry and thus inquire into different generalized conceptualizations of what it
may mean to live. To approach a more generally relevant understanding of a pur-
poseful directedness for living in the world together, meanwhile, everyone must be
willing to listen, stay curious, receptive, and responsible—also to the non-verbal
sociomaterial aspects of communication (Chimirri 2016). Otherwise, it all comes
down to “who can yell the loudest” or “strike hardest” in order to establish a fellow,
acting teleologically—by orientation to some future goals, but teleogenetically. They create their
own goal-orientations for the future as they move toward their immediate future states, turning
those into the passing presents” (p. 15x).
136 N. A. Chimirri
temporarily prototypical course for action. Such teleogenetic collaboration requires

an ethically ontologically symmetrical relationship to one another, including to chil-
dren, in order to engage in a meaningful transformative-activist co-exploration of
the world (cf. Chimirri and Pedersen 2019).
The chapter proposed reconfiguring some of the concepts that seek to grasp the
importance of co-creating generalizations, together with children and all other
beings, without considering any of their knowledges as defective. Understanding
knowledge co-creation processes as teleogenetic collaboration, i.e., a purposeful,
ongoing renegotiation of concepts as knowledge products, would allow for mutual
learning processes (Højholt and Kousholt 2019) that render aware of different com-
munication and relevance modalities, of different perspectives, that nevertheless
constitute the social WHOLE that requires to be transformed together across gen-
erationed thresholds, across ages, across societally arranged and maintained bina-
ries between child and adult, as well as between researcher and researched.
Generalizations and concepts of emancipatory relevance can only be developed if
co-researchers also dialogue about what technical relevance or feasibilities they
operate with given the contexts they conduct their everyday lives through, thus
understanding their social interdependency by collectively discovering generaliza-
tions that are of broader societal significance, relevant to more than just the scien-
tific researcher, or the pedagogue, or the parent, or the single child.
To return the concept of teleogenetic collaboration on co-creatively generalizing
knowledge to Sikder and Fleer’s (2015) initially presented reading of Vygotsky’s
interplay of scientific and everyday concepts: concepts are not merely abstracted
symbolic representations, they are, following Vygotsky (1966), Wartofsky (1979)
and other praxis theorists, also ways of doing and knowing, praxis, from which
generalizations or “concept systems” can be inferred (Derry 2013). They are acts of
generalization, and they develop in contextual ways. Arguably, a methodology for
learning generalization processes (from one another!) is what the pedagogical
efforts of the daycare staff on co-creating the theatrical stage play implicitly pro-
posed. Crucially, here, the pedagogues were also explicitly receptive to learning
about the children’s relevance modalities in order to be able to teach about the gen-
eral knowledge inherent to developing a theater play. If such an approach to one
another gets to be considered ontologically necessary in order to meaningfully
embrace human epistemic asymmetry, generalization becomes not only relevant in
terms of ethical-practical implications for scientific research, but in terms of any
fellow, analytic-pedagogical process: this methodology implies analyzing the world
with one another from a variety of perspectives, thereby dialogically reflecting on
living conditions together and learn from one another about how to change them in
an ongoing fashion. This is what we anyway constantly do in everyday life, and also
what pedagogues do in their daily work—so why should this not be a prototype for
scientific research with children and everyone else as well? There is still much to
learn from one another about how a better world could look like, about our different
and yet internally related imaginations, and thereby about how humanity could on
these grounds further generalize the world it is part of together.
Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues from the research

group Subject, Technology and Social Practice at Roskilde University, who gave valuable feed-
back on an early draft of this chapter. Furthermore, the editors of this anthology have continuously
and substantially contributed to further developing the chapter’s argumentation via their feedback,
which I am deeply thankful for.
Parts of the empirical material were generated in the context of a project supported by the
Center for Daginstitutionsforskning (The Danish Center for Research in Early Childhood
Education and Care).
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Chapter 8
Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy
and the Art of Generalization
Luca Tateo
The problem of generalization in psychology is of course a relevant issue, as far as

it concerns the relationship between the uniqueness of each and every human expe-
rience and the need for finding similarities between humans: assumptions about
communalities and differences are the necessary grounds for both scientific knowl-
edge and for collective life (Tateo 2013, 2015). A third way to approach the topic
from a different angle is the method of art. A closer look at it, I suggest, can illumi-
nate the understanding of the psyche and innovate the methodology of psychologi-
cal sciences (Tateo 2016, 2018). Both art and psychology work through a distanced
immersion in reality, producing a shift between direct and “mediated” experience.
Such a zone of potential estrangement creates an emptiness from which new mean-
ings can emerge (Tateo 2014; Tateo and Marsico 2013). The method of art also
constitutes a link between individual and collective action, taking a critical ethical
stance: an ongoing dialogue between innovation and cultural continuity (Tateo
2016). To elaborate this line of argumentation, I will try to discuss the topic of gen-
eralization by analyzing the method of a well-known baroque Italian artist, acknowl-
edged as the main innovator in “realism”: Caravaggio. He was renowned for his
“naturalistic” style. He used to depict scenes and people taken directly from every-
day life, even in his religious paintings. However, this is not a mere realism. I argue
that behind his apparent naturalism, there is a process of reflection and generaliza-
tion about the human condition. I will discuss the process of generalization in the
painting “The Seven Works of Mercy,” trying to identify the conceptual elements
that make this work a specimen of the everyday human condition of suffering and
relieving. I will argue that the process of generalization is neither an inductive-
based extension nor the formulation of a context-independent and abstract list of
L. Tateo (*)
Pós-graduação em Ensino, Filosofia e História das Ciências, Federal University of Bahia,
Salvador, Brazil
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

142 L. Tateo
traits. The process of generalization starts from everyday experiencing and, through
what I call a zone of potential estrangement, it must be able to return to experience
improving our understanding of it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paint-
ings, we must be able to create specimen by abductively distancing from the single
case, and be able to find back the single case using the specimen to understand.
Caravaggio in Naples
Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio (born 1571 in Milan, dead 1610 in Porto
Ercole) was actually a fugitive when he arrived in Naples during the autumn of
1606. Just few month before, he was living in Rome as one of the most sought-after
emerging artists, working in the massive renewal of the town started by Pope Sixtus
V. Caravaggio used to spend his free time from painting in the brothels, taverns, and
alleys around the (in)famous Campo De’ Fiori, where he frequented the prostitutes,
gamblers, ordinary laborers, and beggars that he would later cast as saints and wit-
nesses in his most religious paintings. But the night of May 28, 1606, in Campo
Marzio, Caravaggio was involved in a street fight over a wager on a tennis match,
during which he was wounded, but stabbed and killed in return a man known as
captain Ranuccio Tomassoni. Merisi had to start a long wandering to avoid the
arrest and the following sentence to death by default. The first stop was actually
Naples, where he was courted by the Neapolitan aristocracy and welcomed by the
local painters, as his fame was already Europe-wide.
Soon after his arrival, he executed an altarpiece for the Church of Pio Monte
della Misericordia, a painting that would depict the Seven Works (or Acts) of Mercy:
clothing the naked, visiting the ill and imprisoned, giving food to the hungry and
drink to the thirsty, sheltering the traveler and burying the dead (Fig. 8.1).
Let’s try to take for a while the perspective of the painter in the moment he cre-
ated this masterpiece. Caravaggio was going through one of the most tragic periods
of his life. Just few months before he was one of the most celebrated artists in Rome.
Cardinals, religious orders, and nobles where fascinated by his creativity, though
keeping a very ambivalent feeling towards his art (Christiansen 1977). Caravaggio
was an innovator, as he started to practice painting from live models (in Italian: “dal
naturale ritratto”) in resemblance to the studio photography at the beginning of this
art form (Christiansen 1977; Sontag 1977). From time to time, some of his works
were eventually rejected by the religious buyers because his peculiar way of repre-
senting saints and gods using live laypeople models. For instance, his Madonna and
Child with St. Anne (so called in Italian Dei Palafrenieri) (Fig. 8.2), painted right
before leaving Rome, was initially destined to the altar of confraternity of the Papal
Grooms (Italian: Arciconfraternita di Sant’Anna de Parafrenieri) (Bologna 2005).
The naturalistic and humble representation of the figures—including the Virgin
Mary who looks like a woman of the people, St. Anne like an old woman of humble
origins and the “natural” appearance of the young Christ—eventually shocked and
scandalized the buyers. The painting was in fact soon removed from the chapel and
8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art of Generalization 143
Fig. 8.1 Caravaggio—
Seven works of Mercy
(1607, Pio Monte della
Misericordia, Naples)
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:The_Seven_Works_
of_Mercy-Caravaggio_
(1607).jpg. All images in
this chapter fall under fair
use commons license (see
https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
Commons:Reusing_
content_outside_
Wikimedia))
subsequently sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a pragmatic art amateur, who

hanged the canvas in his mansion (Bologna 2005), that later became the museum of
Galleria Borghese.
Caravaggio thus arrived in Naples escaping death penalty, hardly recovering
from the wounds and becoming aware of entering the old age. His vision of the
world was becoming more pessimistic and his future was looking obscure. In this
context, he was confronted with the swarming atmosphere of the Spanish-ruled city
of Naples. Prose (2007) vividly describes the influence of the town on Caravaggio’s
technique:
Indeed, the relationship between Caravaggio and the atmosphere of Naples (which can
make Rome appear quiet and orderly) seems so complex and synergistic that looking at
Caravaggio’s paintings makes you see the city in a new way—and vice versa. The heavy
blacks that appear so frequently in his late works make a different kind of sense after
you’ve experienced the city’s inky shadows, and the drapery that floats near the top of some
of his canvases begins to remind you of the laundry strung across its narrow alleys. (Prose
2007: 86)
144 L. Tateo
Fig. 8.2 Caravaggio—
Madonna and Child with
St. Anne (1605–1606,
Galleria Borghese, Rome)
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/w/index.
php?curid=509486)
Indeed, the action of the painting appears to be set in a “vicolo” at night.

Caravaggio chose to represent the classical theme of the works of mercy in a quite
unconventional way, far beyond any allegorical representation. In particular, he cre-
ated a crowded and jumbled night scene, without a clear focus of attention. The
action takes place in a narrow alley that could easily remind the vicoli of Naples. We
can read the composition from right to left, following the direction of the light. The
only illumination of the whole scene is indeed provided by a candle lifted by a priest
(Fig. 8.3), who is turning the street corner with two other persons carrying a dead
body half-wrapped in a shroud. We can see only the feet of the body while it is dis-
appearing around the corner. This group represents the act of burying the dead.
The light of the candle provides the whole painting with the peculiar atmosphere
and the sad mood. Interestingly enough, it illuminates also the heavenly figures
from below, creating a striking effect with another source of light that seems to
come from the sky above the Virgin outside the canvas. The illumination projects
the shadows of the heavenly creatures on the wall in a way that could be interpreted
both as mystic and threatening. As we will see later on, this illustrates also the spiri-
tual condition of Caravaggio at that moment and perfectly combines with the loca-
tion of the canvas into the church. According to Prose (2007), the canvas constitutes
Fig. 8.3 Detail: burying

the dead, Caravaggio—
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Sette_opere_di_
Misericordia_-_
Seppellire_i_morti.jpg)
a continuum with the outside everyday life and the church. The large canvas is
indeed hanging beyond the main altar:
With its teeming composition set in a nocturnal streetscape, the altarpiece may make you
feel as if the cyclonic street life of the city has somehow followed you inside the church.
(Prose 2007: 86)
Entering the main church door, one can see the large canvas in front, mirroring
the outside alley. Moving down right the canvas, we can see a second group of two
figures that illustrates two themes in one: visiting imprisoned and giving food to the
hungry (Fig. 8.4).
We can see a young woman visiting an imprisoned old man and giving him milk
from her own breast through the prison’s bars. Also in this case, Caravaggio chose
to represent Christian virtues in an unusual way, by alluding to a classical pagan
ancient Roman story of Caritas (Charity): the legend of Pero, a plebeian woman,
who secretly breastfed her father, Cimon, as he was incarcerated and sentenced to
146 L. Tateo
Fig. 8.4 Detail: visiting

imprisoned, giving food to
the hungry, Caravaggio—
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
Misericordia_-_Visitare_i_
carcerati.jpg)
death by starvation. The story says that when Pero was found out by a jailer, her act
of piety and selflessness impressed officials and won her father’s release. Also in
this scene, the painter chose a stunning realism, almost incestuous as in the Baroque
tradition, enhanced by some details like the drop of milk fallen on Cimon’s beard.
Moving to the left of the canvas, we can see another group of figures, which
represents three acts: clothing the naked, visiting the ill, and sheltering the traveler
(Fig. 8.5).
Caravaggio interprets the legend of Saint Martin, who is represented with the
clothes of a rich Spanish gentleman of the seventeenth century in the act of sharing
his coat with a poor beggar, who is also the sick to be visited. Right beyond the
couple, we can see two other male figures: one is a pilgrim, as indicated by the shell
of the Camino de Santiago on his dress, while the other is pointing somewhere on
the left outside the canvas, probably in direction of a hostel.
As we move little up on the left, we can see the act of drinking to the thirsty
(Fig. 8.6). The artist chose another unusual representation: Samson drinks water
from the jawbone of an ass, referring to a story contained into the Book of Judges
of the Hebrew Bible.
The final group of figures occupies the central top part of the canvas. Caravaggio
portraits the Virgin Mary with young Jesus Christ and two angels (black and white).
Fig. 8.5 Detail: clothing

the naked, visiting the ill
and sheltering the traveler,
Caravaggio—Seven works
of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte
della Misericordia, Naples)
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
Misericordia_-_
Ospitare_i_pellegrini.jpg)
Fig. 8.6 Detail: drink to

the thirsty, Caravaggio—
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
Misericordia_-_Dar_da_
bere_agli_assetati.jpg)
148 L. Tateo
It is the most ambiguous representation of the whole composition, as it does not

carry the usual serene, sacred, and heavenly character of these types of images
(Fig. 8.7).
Caravaggio seems to ask: where is the divinity when people on earth are going
everyday through suffering and are enacting their piety? We can see the two angels
looking downwards, apparently gripping each other while falling. The angel with
the black wings is stretching out his hand towards the group of people below. One
cannot really discern whether the angel is blessing the suffering ones, or he is trying
to drive away humanity from the gates of heaven. On the top of the group, Virgin
Mary is looking down at the crowd with a mix of compassion and distance. She
seems to keep the young Christ from turning to the people or going down to help. In
the middle of Counter-Reformation, Caravaggio expresses all the bewilderment of
a human being in between hope for salvation and fear of a violent and chaotic soci-
ety. While experiencing a moment of despair in his life, the artist is questioning the
nature of divinity and reflecting his vicinity to the everyday life struggle of laypeo-
ple. I think that the Seven Works of Mercy is a very complex sociological, theologi-
cal, and philosophical analysis of the historical period, as well as a rich introspection
of the artist. It could superficially be understood as an allegory of charity, but I will
argue that Caravaggio is able to produce a reflective process of linking theory and
observation, producing a very interesting form of generalization. For the psychol-
ogy of everyday life, for instance, it could provide a useful suggestion about how to
see the society in the person as well as the person in the society. What else can we
learn from it?
Fig. 8.7 Detail: Mary, Christ, and the angels, Caravaggio—Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio
Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sette_opere_di_
Misericordia_-_Madonna_col_Bambino_e_angeli.jpg)
Everyday Life?
The interest of the psychology of everyday life is in the interplay between the ordi-
nary and the extraordinary, production and reproduction, and between continuity
and discontinuity (Højholt and Schraube 2016). My first question is: in this sense,
does Caravaggio represent everyday life? In the Seven Works of Mercy, it is quite
evident how the artist used the direct observation of everyday life in the streets of
Naples to depict the very abstract concepts of the seven Catholic precepts. His beg-
gars, priests, saints, even the angels and the Christ have the faces and the bodies of
everyday people, caught in the context of street life. Their attitude is even more
realistic, as it betrays the astonishment, the ambivalence, the suffering, and the
affectivity of everyday human experience. Such a poetic was quite unusual at that
time, to the extent that it “humanizes” the religious iconography, and takes the
opposite direction of to Catholic Counter Reformation, which promoted a different
ideal fo divinity. It is not a case, indeed, that Caravaggio strongly influenced the
Flemish painters who lived in the Spanish Naples at the time of the Thirty years’
War. Those painters were in fact closer to the way of understanding the relationship
between divinity and everyday life that characterized North European culture
affected by Lutheran Reformation.
So let’s assume that Caravaggio was trying to grasp the “human nature,” a per-
fectly suitable quest at his time, being able to use his method of painting live models
that allowed him to produce a deep analysis of everyday experience by direct obser-
vation. Caravaggio’s portraits are the equivalent of “thick” descriptions in ethno-
methodology, in which the totality and uniqueness of the painted subject emerge in
all their liveliness. In this sense, they can be considered ancestors of portraiture in
qualitative inquiry (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis 1997). However, those portraits
become at the same time “types,” to the extent that one can find the very same faces,
attitudes, and gestures in every street of that time. On the other hand, Caravaggio
does not limit himself to depict “psychological” (por)traits in the Seven Works of
Mercy. He created a collective scene in which everyday life meets divinity. The
issue that he was facing was not just how to generalize the uniqueness of human
psyche, but to understand it in its context. Christiansen (1977), in his discussion
about naturalism, comments:
It goes without saying that this approach to painting directly from a model was applicable
only to pictures of a few figures that could be viewed in isolation against a simple back-
ground. Difficulties arose as soon as Caravaggio took up more complicated allegorical
subjects of the sort that could not be resolved by putting a few vine leaves in his or another
model’s hair, a sheet around one shoulder, and a few pieces of fruit on a ledge—as in the
Bacchino Malato (Borghese Gallery). Mancini’s caveat about the inapplicability of paint-
ing large scale compositions from a group of posed models is amply documented in the
massive revisions in the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio’s first truly large-scale
narrative. How did Caravaggio proceed when confronted with this sort of elaborate compo-
sition? That he had a method, or rather, that he evolved one, is indubitable. (Christiansen
1977: 422)
150 L. Tateo
Apparently, Caravaggio seemed to paint from live models in a live environment,

but the solution that the painter adopted was completely different. He used to paint
the live models in different poses, and then he organized the scene by putting the
figures in the composition. Thus, what looks like a real-life, real-time scene is an
“artificial” reconstruction of a context with which Caravaggio was eventually very
familiar. He introduces a new understanding of “objectivity,” as Pacelli (1977)
describes, the technique produces a back and forth movement between observation
and construction”:
It is not with Caravaggio a question verisimilitude, of mere imitation, thing seen, but a
dogged and aimed at encompassing all aspects (here reaching sublime heights) to visualize
the world quite a new way. The painting seen from close reveals in specific details a deliber-
ate simplification and ‘impressionistic’ shorthand which in certain instances take the form
of pure blobs of colour and luminous touches: the painter does not produce the facts them-
selves by describing them prosaically, but only provides what the eye would perceive from
a certain distance; thus when we retreat from the canvas, the vision recomposes itself out of
the separate elements which were never rendered in a minute or pedantically analytical
manner. From a distance everything becomes natural again, but it is a deeper and richer kind
of truthfulness that is achieved, than it would have been, had too much attention been paid
to the naturalistic details. (Pacelli 1977: 826)
In other words, Caravaggio’s naturalism is not inductive, rather abductive (Tateo

2015). Instead of “pedantically” reproducing reality, he does not hide his gaze and
rather becomes a “participant observer.” He grasps the richness and uniqueness of
people’s everyday lives, representing their affective states and ambivalent acting.
But to do this, he needs to distance from realism and reproduce a narration that turns
real people into abductive specimen of humanity: the person in the society as well
as the society in the person. Only in this way everyday life experience can be gen-
eralized, without falling into the illusion of inductive accumulation. Caravaggio
indeed did not create his figures by inductively reproducing summative traits of real
models. He rather uses single case observations to which the observer can affec-
tively relate and immediately grasp the wholeness of their experience. When we
look at the figures, we can immediately recognize familiar aspects, and we can as
immediately find persons that look like those figures when we go out of the church
(Fig. 8.8).
The operation that Caravaggio makes through his way of painting is to create a
specimen of human experience by abductive generalization, that is, a thick affective
representation of human experience. Once this specimen has been created, it serves
to better understand everyday life experience in return. The creation of new knowl-
edge does not occur in the first moment (as it is supposed to happen in inductive
generalization), but takes place in the moment in which we return to everyday life
to understand by the light of the specimen. The emergence of the new knowledge
occurs in what I call zone of potential estrangement (ZPE), that is, the dialogical
gaining of mutual awareness between the actors involved in the research interaction
that knowledge is not representation rather interpretation. This idea has been nicely
expressed by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (2005) recalling her first intuitions about the
methodology of portraiture:
Enhanced theoretical understanding and

observation skills
Specimen
zone of potential estrangement
Abductive generalization Understanding
Everyday experience
Single case observation
Fig. 8.8 Abductive generalization, understanding and zone of potential estrangement
I learned, for example, that these portraits did not capture me as I saw myself, that they were
not like looking in the mirror at my reflection. Instead, they seemed to capture my “essence”;
qualities of character and history, some of which I was unaware, some of which I resisted
mightily, some of which felt deeply familiar. But the translation of image was anything but
literal. It was probing, layered, and interpretive. In addition to portraying my image, the
piece expressed the perspective of the artist and was shaped by the evolving relationship
between the artist and me. I also recognized that in searching for the essence, in moving
beyond the surface image, the artist was both generous and tough, skeptical and receptive.
I was never treated or seen as object but always as a person of strength and vulnerability,
beauty and imperfection, mystery and openness. The artist needed to be vigilant in captur-
ing the image but always watchful of my feelings, perspective, and experience. I learned, as
well, that the portraits expressed a haunting paradox of a moment in time and of timeless-
ness. (Lawrence-Lightfoot 2005: 5)
In this quotation, Lawrence-Lightfoot (2005) describes very nicely the ZPE: a

field of open meanings that emerges in between the act of exploring everyday expe-
rience and the act of telling everyday experience. This movement of reading-telling-
estrangement-understanding (ZPE) does not occur through inductive accumulation,
rather through single case observation. New insights and understandings can come
from finding potentially “strange” everyday life, opening a ZPE, in which distanc-
ing goes together with empathizing. Differently from epoché (Christensen and
Brumfield 2010), the ZPE is systematically constructed through the method of art in
order to generalize a single case (e.g., a portrait) into a specimen (e.g., a universal
image of human experience).
Susan Sontag (1977) notes a similar process about photography: potential
estrangement emerges in the implicit desire of knowledge as capturing and the disil-
lusion of identity. Taking a picture is not an inductive recording. It is experiencing a
unique moment: a single case in everyday experience. On the other hand, any cap-
turing is a form of violence and it is transformational. In the pure inductive mode of
thought, one can believe that it is just a matter of precision: the more my picture-
measuring is accurate, the more my understanding. Yet it is a matter of transforma-
tion and creation (Tateo 2013): portrait cannot be inductive. It is necessarily
abductive and abstractive (Tateo 2015). It is the only way in which generalization
152 L. Tateo
can capture the paradoxical nature of human experience (Lawrence-Lightfoot

2005). Rather than thinking about generalization as incompatible with everyday
life, individual and critical knowledge (to the extent that generalizing is bounded by
internal logic consistency), Caravaggio seems to illustrate how the zone of potential
estrangement, evoked by the method of art, can help us to build generalizations that
embrace the full ambivalence and paradoxical nature of human beings, in both per-
sonal and collective forms. Yet acknowledging the role of sensitivity and esthetics
in knowledge building (Tateo 2018) does not have to mislead us towards a naïve
poeticizing or professed aestheticism: art has a method of knowing.
The Seven Works of Mercy has also the purpose of illustrating some very abstract
and complex Catholic values. Thus, in this painting there is also a vertical concep-
tual movement from the concrete to the abstract. The painting is about several con-
cepts: suffering, charity, mercy, salvation, etc. The work was meant to illustrate
these concepts and to provide a specific social guidance to the emergence of feel-
ings in the observer. Furthermore, Caravaggio conveys also his personal point of
view with respect to those concepts and his personal theological view. How is this
possible? How Caravaggio can express abstract concepts through the representation
of live models? It is probably a bidirectional process. On the one hand, he uses con-
crete figures to represent the abstract concepts (e.g., the woman’s breast), while on
the other hand the abstract concepts provide an affective orientation to the interpre-
tation of the figures (e.g., understanding the breastfeeding instead of a lustful scene).
The emergence of the generalization process depends upon the relationship between
the individual figures, the context, and the concepts. Differently from allegory, in
which the abstract concepts are symbolically and metonymically embodied by
images (e.g., a blindfolded woman figure to represent the concept of justice or for-
tune); in this case, the meaning is that everybody potentially can embody the mercy,
the mercy can affect everyone and everybody in everyday life are bounded by the
concept of mercy (Fig. 8.9).
The process of generalization cannot be separated from the context and the sub-
ject. It means that every generalization is never context-independent or subject-
independent (Tateo 2015). At the same time, the understanding of the relationship
between context and subject cannot be attained without the tools of abstract con-
cepts. Thus, naïve empiricism does not work neither in the ethnographic nor in the
experimental sense. The conduct of everyday life is not a “given,” that the researcher
can observe “out there”. It is rather a concept, a construction that psychology can
elaborate on the basis of specimen. In return, people’s experience acquires a specific
meaning to the extent that is understood by the concept of “conduct of every-
day life.”
So far, we can draw the following lessons from Caravaggio’s work, with respect
to the psychology of everyday life:
• The starting point for the process of generalization is not an inductive accumula-
tion of empirical instances. Generalization works as an abductive process of
grasping the complexities of experience. Abductive generalization means the
Fig. 8.9 Person, context, and concept
creation of a specimen of the phenomenon that will guide the understanding

process. In the case of Caravaggio, the live model becomes a specimen that helps
the observer to understand the experience back in real life. This implies a con-
tinuous movement of approaching and distancing the phenomenon.
• Every action of approaching and distancing implies a different understanding. In
this sense, Caravaggio’s work is neither naturalistic nor reproductive. He
“abducts” his models, brings them into his personal perspective, and restitutes
them as new forms of understanding.
• Subject, context, and concept cannot be separated, as they mutually feed into
each other. In Caravaggio’s painting, the concept of mercy can be understood
only referring to the specimen, and the scattered figures are bounded by both the
context and the concept of mercy. On the other hand, it is possible to understand
the figures and the concept because there is a common cultural context that binds
them together. So, generalizing is not context-independent.
• The perspective of the artist is not a bias, rather a key to understanding. The
painting is neither a mere representation nor just an expression of feelings. The
work is a reflection upon the world and the human condition. At the same time,
the psychological and the theological are contextualized in the contemporary
society of Caravaggio, suggesting that the human condition can be generalized.
154 L. Tateo
Generalization as a Creative and Reflective Act
My initial question was: what can we learn from Caravaggio’s art? I have tried to
analyze the process of generalization in the Seven Works of Mercy, trying to iden-
tify the conceptual elements that make this work a specimen of the human condition
of suffering and relieving. From this analysis, I argue that the process of generaliza-
tion is not an inductive-based extension of some features to a larger portion of the
universe we observe (Tateo 2015). It is neither the formulation of a
context-independent and abstract list of traits. If the process of generalization starts
from experiencing, either in everyday life or in exceptional circumstances, once
distanced by it must be able to return to experience improving our understanding of
it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paintings, we must be able to create
specimen by abductively distancing from the single case and be able to find back
the single case using the specimen to understand it. This movement of back and
forth, I argue, takes place in the ZPE. Generalizing is neither grouping, selecting, or
extending, but is creating a new form of knowledge. Generalization “is a conceptual
abstraction, establishing meaningful relationships between the parts of a whole”
(Tateo 2013: 534). Generalizing is a reflective act because it distances from the
everyday experience and accesses a higher level of abstraction. It builds a represen-
tation of a process, not of the outcomes, from the existing knowledge and from the
observation of psychological phenomena. Generalizing is also a creative act because
it builds something that was not there before: it constructs a new theory about the
world. Generalizing constitutes an act of interpretation because it implies a
perspective-taking by the observer and a sense-making process. Finally, generaliz-
ing is a mediated process. There is no direct relationship between the phenomeno-
logical data and the conceptual abstraction. This relationship is mediated by a
scientific apparatus and a set of cultural and personal values that affect both the
construction of phenomenological data and the observer’s position. In the case of
art, the mediation is carried out with different means, but the characteristics of the
generalizing movement are similar.
In the case of Caravaggio, the apparatus consists of his technique “dal naturale”
and his theological perspective. In the case of psychology, it consists of the set of
shared practices and concepts, as well as the ethical perspective that every scholar
must be aware of. Generalization is a creation of reflective knowledge that helps to
reflect in return. Once we have identified this process, we can find example of the
ZPE in other contexts and in different times. For instance, we can find similar pro-
cesses in photography (Fig. 8.10).
Almost three centuries later, this very famous photograph by the Dorothea Lange
works on the same process of Caravaggio’s naturalism. The author starts from a live
model, apparently adopting a naturalistic and documentary approach, while turning
the figure into a specimen of a generalizable experience: the migrant mother. At the
same time, this images is historically contextualized in the crisis of the “dust bowl”
of the 1920s in the United States, allowing us in return to better understand the
condition of the real person in that situation. Yet would be naïve to believe that this
Fig. 8.10 Migrant Mother,

(Dorothea Lange, 1936,
United States Library of
Congress’s Prints and
Photographs division)
(https://upload.wikimedia.
org/wikipedia/
commons/5/54/Lange-
MigrantMother02.jpg)
is a portrait photography. While Lange was traveling in Nipomo, California, as

employee of the Farm Security Administration, documenting the life of poor pick-
ers’ migrating families, she stopped at some shelters. She saw the woman, 32 years
old, and agreed with her to take some pictures. She listened to her story of famine
and migration, despair and fear for the future of her children (Meltzer 2000). So,
Lange decided to use photography to turn that single everyday life experience into
a specimen of the human condition of a whole community of people in a given
socio-historical moment and she succeeded. As Dorothea Lange puts it: “I knew I
had recorded the essence of my assignment” (Meltzer 2000: 133). This is a creative
generalization in which the photographer was looking for “the precise expression
on the subject’s face that supported their own notions about poverty, light, dignity,
texture, exploitation, and geometry” (Sontag 1977: 6): from the concrete bodies to
the concepts.
I have tried to provide some hints in order to reflect upon the meaning of gener-
alization. Generalizing is not opposite to psychology of everyday life or qualitative
inquiry. On the one hand, I have proposed the concept of zone of potential estrange-
ment, in which the person uses instruments and methods to observe single cases,
elaborate them to stress the complexities of the person-context whole, and give
them back to us as specimen of a generalizable human experience: that is as con-
cept. On the other hand, the concept will help us to better understand further single
cases in return. The examples that I have discussed so far with respect to art can help
us to use this process in our own work. The challenge that Caravaggio gives us,
156 L. Tateo
since five centuries, is that of being able to understand our fellow human beings as
unique persons in a collectivity, but also to build knowledge about human condition
as a common endeavor.
Acknowledgments This article has been possible, thanks to the project “The administration of
fear: using art to study psycho-social phenomena,” funded by the Danish Agency for Science,
Technology and Innovation, 2016 International Network Programme.
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Chapter 9
Reproducing the General Through
the Local: Lessons from Poverty Research
Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot
Throughout our disciplinary history, psychologists have responded to general issues

of poverty through engagements with particular community settings (Hodgetts et al.
2010; Hodgetts and O’Doherty 2018). Accompanying an early focus on everyday
poverty were concerns regarding the consequences of inequitable social arrange-
ments on everyday life (Jahoda et al. 1933; Jahoda 1992). Today, poverty research-
ers continue to document how the general (including political-economic systems
that generate poverty) is reproduced through the particular (persons and communi-
ties). Scholarship in this area speaks to the [dis]functioning of societal structures
in local settings. It draws on a dialectical understanding of society to explore how
the general becomes entangled within the particular. Articulating such a societal
perspective on the quotidian, Simmel (1900/1978: 99) writes:
…society is a structure that transcends the individual, but that is not abstract. Historical
life thus escapes the alternative of taking place either in individuals or in abstract generali-
ties. Society is the universal which, at the same time, is concretely alive.
Building on Simmel’s insight, our understanding of the quotidian does not

require a choice between the particular/personal and the general/abstract. Both are
entangled in each other. As Simmel argues, each historic moment contains aspects
of personal lived experience and society at large. This orientation enables us to
D. Hodgetts (*) · P. King

School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: D.J.Hodgetts@massey.ac.nz; P.R.W.King@massey.ac.nz
O. Stolte
School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
e-mail: ottilie@waikato.ac.nz
S. Groot
Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: s.groot@auckland.ac.nz

158 D. Hodgetts et al.
move out beyond everyday experiences of hardship and into consideration of the
ways in which broader societal formations take form in everyday lives in adversity.
Accordingly, we approach everyday life as a domain of human interaction where
dynamic facets of people’s lives come together, often in concert with those of peo-
ple around them in ways that reproduce social structures (Hodgetts et al. 2018).
Everyday life is where human experience and action exists simultaneously in per-
sonal and societal life (Holzkamp 1995/2016). The quotidian constitutes a social
realm through which small acts are cumulatively combined to forge inhabited social
environments that manifest broader societal structures. As Dreier (2016: 21) notes:
‘Persons include simple routines in more extensive personal arrangements of their
conduct of everyday life that they establish in relation to the societal arrangements
of everyday social practice’. Personal acts such as turning off a heater to save power,
eating rotten food, or sleeping on the streets take on significance as social practices
through which societal inequalities and marginality are reproduced (Halkier 2011;
Halkier and Jensen 2011). Such practices often enact phronetic or practically ori-
ented, tacit, provisional, malleable, and experiential knowledge that people develop
in response to their own situations of poverty (cf., Flyvbjerg et al. 2012). These
everyday acts can appear insignificant and unremarkable on the surface. It is when
we consider such practices in the context of broader relational configurations that
their societal significance comes to light.
Concisely, supporting the philosophical position that the specific resembles the
general, but is not reducible to it (Simmel 1903/1997), we work to extract general
insights out of detailed considerations of local practices and objects (Davis 1973;
Frisby 1981). Because the general is already entangled within the particular, our
approach is anchored in lived experiences of adversity whilst speaking to the broader
societal aetiology of everyday poverty (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Central is a con-
ceptual shift from the specific out towards what Goffman (1963) refers to as the
backstage of social phenomenon. This backstage is populated by intergroup rela-
tionships that drive wealth concentration into the hands of the few at the expense of
growing numbers of people in countries such as New Zealand (Hodgetts and Stolte
2017). We seek to convey insights into particular scenes featuring our participants
in a manner that enables readers to recognise the societal forces at play.
In many respects, we have come to understand this approach as similar to that of
early impressionist painters and earlier impressionist social scientists such as Georg
Simmel (Davis 1973; Frisby 1981). These artists focused on everyday subject mat-
ter and worked to move our gaze with broad strokes from local scenes out to the
social universe at play in situated happenstance. As we work our way out from
experiences of hardship to the broader social structures at play, we also move out
beyond the tendency in ruling psychology to individualise social problems, such as
poverty as magically the product of personal inadequacies. Instead, we locate the
aetiology of poverty primarily in broader dysfunctional intergroup relations that
have been shaped by greed rather than need (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Rather than
trying to capture or duplicate a frozen moment plucked from ‘real’ lives, like
impressionist painters we aim to offer readers an overall impression of the dynamics
of everyday poverty. The value of such impressions is not whether or not they
9 Reproducing the General Through the Local: Lessons from Poverty Research 159
represent an actual stable reality (assuming for a moment that this might is even
possible). Value resides in offering more affluent audiences who have not experi-
enced poverty themselves, but whose collective actions shape poverty for others,
understandings and insights that enable them to understand and empathise with
people who are living in poverty. In producing such impressions, we move con-
stantly between specific descriptions of a local scene and theoretical abstractions
that afford a means of invoking more general deliberations regarding the impover-
ished situations in which our participants find themselves. The result is an intensi-
fied picture of actuality that is comprised, at least metaphorically of incomplete
brush strokes that hint at, rather than capture everyday poverty.
This chapter exemplifies our developing impressionist orientation in relation to
the use of visual exercises designed to aid our participants in sharing their experi-
ences of poverty with us. These activities are designed to allow participants to
‘show’ and ‘tell’ us about their everyday lives (Hodgetts et al. 2007). Instead, of
viewing the resulting drawings or photographs as hard ‘data’ that conveys set, con-
crete evidence of reality, we view these materials as offering incomplete insights
that often hint at, but never fully capture what everyday poverty is like for people.
We will demonstrate how the mimetic objects produced by our research participants
can be understood as empirically valuable agentive efforts to re-assemble, mimic,
imitate, approximate, partially express and render more tangible their experiences
of hardship and the material ramifications of inequitable social structures (Hodgetts
et al. 2018). In extending our account of impressionistic scholarship, we set out
three interrelated aspects of generalisation.
In this chapter, we approach generalisation as a multi-faceted process made up of
various elements, forms, or dimensions. As such, we present an account of three
forms of generalisation that are central to our research and advocacy work around
issues of societal inequalities and everyday urban poverty. These three forms of
generalisation are not exhaustive. These three are elements of core relevance to our
work that are evident within broader processes of generalisation in research into
everyday life. First, our efforts involve theoretical generalisation or bringing con-
ceptual abstractions to bear as we interpret what participants’ show and tell us about
their experiences of poverty. Second, we explore the broader societal structures and
relationships that shape personal experiences of hardship or what we term referen-
tial generalisation. Third, empathetic generalisation is central to our efforts to culti-
vate compassion among people whose decisions impact the lives of our participants.
All three forms are part of a greater whole that is generalisation.
Theoretical Generalisation
Theoretical generalisation has been considered at some length in scholarly discus-

sions regarding qualitative research (Fine 2006; Halkier 2011) and is central to
approaches such as grounded theory that seek to generate theory from research
(Strauss and Corbin 1994). For us, efforts to generalise through theory are less about
developing new theory from qualitative data and are more about bridging the space
between everyday human experience and broader and existing theoretical debates
and abstractions that populate the academy (cf., Simmel 1903/1997). We draw on
scholarly theory in order to situate and interpret systemically the everyday experi-
ences of poverty with which we are grappling through research. As we recount
below, theoretical generalisation involves bringing images produced by participants
into conversation with existing theoretical abstractions in order to crack these arte-
facts open and to develop our interpretations of depicted events and relationships
(Halkier 2011). For example, such an approach enables us to better comprehend
how neoliberalism, which has been theorised to increase poverty and reduce societal
supports for people in need is reproduced everyday when people try to access wel-
fare services. We also draw on theoretical generalisation to make sense of what
research participants are doing when they attempt to reconstruct and communicate
their experiences of hardship visually during research by drawing on philosophical
concepts such as mimesis (Benjamin 1933/1978, 1982). Whether focused on con-
tent (neoliberalism) or processes of picturing (mimesis), theoretical generalisation
involves (methodologically) adopting the position of the researcher as bricoleur
(Lévi-Strauss 1962) by bringing together insights from everyday experiences with
insights from theory to create new impressions of poverty and its lived implications.
To demonstrate our orientation towards theoretical generalisation, we refer to an
example from a previous research project on urban poverty in Auckland. As part of
the Family100 project (Hodgetts et al. 2014), we asked participants to draw and talk
about the social services they came into contact with over the previous 2 weeks.
Many of the participants drew cluttered service maps. For example, Fig. 9.1 depicts
numerous agencies this participant engaged with, whilst the jagged lines represent
stressful or discordance interactions with many of these organisations. For us, this
image is not simply a dispassionate chart of the everyday interactions of an indi-
vidual in need. The significance of Fig. 9.1 extends beyond the page, as a depiction
of a chaotic and dysfunctional welfare sector, which Wacquant (2009) has theorised
as ‘penal welfare’. This service map illustrates how welfare no longer functions as
a coherent ‘system’. Instead, when positioned as denizens (Bauman 2004), people
facing poverty must navigate a raft of loosely connected agencies that are overly
bureaucratic, punitive, and demanding in orientation towards them (Hodgetts et al.
2014). This often results in a high degree of time wasting and experiences of futility
that add to the stress of poverty (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). As Hayley states:
It’s the run around. I’m pretty organised and even if you do have…the paperwork that’s
required, there is still one thing they will demand you get… So you’ve got to rebook your
appointment, use up more gas to go and run around, or more money for the buses.
Above, Hayley invokes time wasting as a core activity in everyday scenes where
people attempt to access welfare supports. Typically, in order to access welfare pay-
ments from a government agency people must obtain certification from a budgeter,
even though the government agency already knows what their income is because
they are the one’s paying it. Once this task is completed, a person is then often asked
for additional documentation from sources such as power companies to further
Fig. 9.1 Welfare service map
prove their need for financial assistance. Such tasks all take time, and no money is
forthcoming until all of the required documentation is obtained. It is no surprise
then that participants, such as Hayley, emphasise the emotional strain and futility of
trying to access welfare supports to which they are legally entitled (Hodgetts and
Stolte 2017). They draw and talk openly about the stress, frustration, futility, and
anger they experience in having to weave the various agencies depicted in Fig. 9.1
together to create some semblance of a service landscape for themselves. In a previ-
ous publication, we theorised such relationships between welfare recipients and
agencies using the concept of structural violence (Hodgetts et al. 2014).
Psychological researchers frequently pride themselves on being more objective
than other social science disciplines, by offering a supposedly unbiased account of
the pictures and associated accounts produced by our participants. Yet, such an
approach can limit analyses to description or partitioned cause–effect occurrences.
Instead, we advocate for the need to ‘go beyond your data’ in order develop inter-
pretations of artefacts such as the one featured in Fig. 9.1, which uncover the traces
of the general buried within a particular image or account. Theoretical generalisa-
tion enables us to situate this service map as a starting point for moving beyond a
description of dysfunctional relationships between Hayley and services to interpret-
ing what is going on at an institutional societal level.
We can use theoretical abstractions to cultivate our impressions of the reasons
why the welfare system has become dysfunctional, inhumane, and brutal to people
such as Hayley. We begin by thinking creatively and by bringing various abstrac-

tions to bear in order to take us beyond the frame of Fig. 9.1. This aids us in situating
this map societally and ideologically. Folding scholarship on neoliberalism, struc-
tural violence, and penal welfare into our developing impression of the map and
Hayley’s associated account enables us to speak to broader societal issues of wel-
fare retrenchment that extends beyond our shores. We can consider what Hayley’s
engagements with services tell us about the implications of contemporary welfare
policies and practices that emphasise conditional support, rather than citizenship
and rights (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). The broader relevance of the service map in
Fig. 9.1 is highlighted by drawing on a wide palette of theoretical constructs. In this
case, we connect the interactions evident in Fig. 9.1 to the institutionalisation of
‘penal welfare’ (Wacquant 2009) and structural violence (Hodgetts et al. 2014), and
the rise of denizens (Bauman 2004) and the new precariat class (Standing 2011).
These overlapping theoretical concepts help to paint a picture of international socio-
economic and political developments that shape personal experiences of poverty
and welfare (Flyvbjerg 2006). In this way, theoretical concepts, which originate in
North America and Europe are used to inform our understanding of why people in
New Zealand must work within a chaotic and fragmented service landscape in order
to gain access to the basic necessities of life. Conversely, the exemplars (including
Fig. 9.1) we use from New Zealand inform international debates regarding these
theories. Through theoretical generalisation, we can relate the experiences of our
participants in New Zealand at the abstract level to those in other OECD nations
also experiencing the rise of penal welfare and the denizenising of people living in
poverty. The resulting enhanced theorising of poverty can then be redeployed in
further research across a range of contexts.
Theoretical generalisation from artefacts such as Fig. 9.1 can also be purposed to
extending efforts to conceptualise the psychological processes via which partici-
pants produce such artefacts to share their everyday experiences to us. In our case,
this process is enabled through our theorising of Benjamin’s concepts (1933/1978,
1982) such as ‘mimesis’ and the ‘dialogical image’. These concepts speak to the
human propensity to create objects and pictures that approximate, reproduce, and
mimic aspects of their circumstances, experiences, and practices (Hodgetts et al.
2018). When combined with notions of phronesis, these concepts can enable us to
think more directly about how, through the production of meaningful objects people
can work to share insights into their own lifeworlds. Using such concepts enables us
to open up vantage points on participant drawings, for example, via which we can
recognise the efforts of human beings to make sense of, picture and communicate
what it is like to live in poverty and have to engage with welfare services.
Using such concepts can extend our reflexive understandings of what we are
doing methodologically in research into everyday life. As a result of our theoretical
generalisation efforts in the methodology space, we have become particularly inter-
ested in picturing as a communicative practice that is used by participants to invoke
the aspects of hardship that are hard to put into words alone (Hodgetts et al. 2018).
Consideration of their efforts to let us know what is going on also leads to further
abstract and concrete considerations of the increased difficulties surrounding inter-
group communication between people in the city (Hodgetts et al. 2018).
This conceptual orientation is crucial for impressionistic analysis because
memetic objects such as that depicted in Fig. 9.1 remain incomplete and merely hint
at, rather than fully capture what everyday life in poverty is like for someone. It also
enables us to better understand participant difficulties in showing and telling us
about hardship in a society that often blames them for their situations. This, in turn
has led us to consider the dialogical potential of images (Benjamin 1940, 1982), and
how participant picturing practices can render their hardships more tangible for
audiences living very different and more privileged lives. In grappling with similar
theoretical concerns, Benjamin (1940) states:
For what do we know of street corners, curb-stones, the architecture of the pavement - we
who have never felt heat, filth, and the edges of stones beneath our naked soles, and have
never scrutinized the uneven placement of the paving stones with an eye toward bedding
down on them.
In adopting an impressionist approach, we do not seek to produce a definitive inter-

pretation of Fig. 9.1 or associated participant experiences. Rather, we seek to theo-
rise with such memetic snippets in order to conceptualise poverty in ways that
embrace and situate participant experiences systemically. We can engage intellectu-
ally with participant’s agentive efforts to make sense of and communicate deeply
felt experiences of hardship and futility, which are hard to put into words alone. This
theoretical and practical orientation is important because comprehending the pic-
tures our participants create to ‘show’ and ‘tell’ us about their situations requires
dialogue through which we move outwards beyond such data (pictures and accounts)
to consider the more general societal significance of what they choose to depict
(Hodgetts et al. 2007). Engaging in such dialogical processes of meaning making,
we are looking from within and out beyond the frames of their pictures with them.
Finally, our use of the theoretical construct of the conduct of everyday life in the
beginning of this chapter reflects how seamlessly we can bring general theoretical
abstractions to bear on moments of the particular, and in doing so speak from the
particular to the general. Maps such as that depicted in Fig. 9.1 elicit commentary
about the phronetic practices our participants employ to try and piece a workable
welfare system together for themselves (Hodgetts et al. 2014). Ultimately, theoreti-
cal generalisation is extremely useful in providing analytic tools that facilitate our
thinking about and evolving understandings of particular objects and accounts pro-
duced by research participants. From the standpoint of praxis, theory helps us
understand the broader intergroup relations at play in ‘still objects’ such as pictures
created and employed by our participants. Correspondingly, our approach to gener-
alisation does not begin or end with theoretical abstractions. As we will demon-
strate, processes of generalisation are also of fundamental importance to action, and
efforts to not only understand, but to also address issues of poverty. This brings
related forms of referential and empathetic generalisation into focus.
Referential Generalisation
Our approach to referential generalisation is, in many respects, based on the asser-
tion that poverty is created within a social world that features dysfunctional inter-
group relations and institutional practices. We also propose that it is important that
we do not detach experiences of poverty from this socio-economic context. To do so
is to risk individualising poverty and engaging in the age-old practice of victim
blaming (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). As such, referential generalisation involves
efforts to engage with the social universe at play in the situations, people, practices,
and objects the populate participant pictures and accounts of everyday life. Such
generalisation work often begins with engagements with specific artefacts such as
the service diagram in Fig. 9.1. It also involves working with images that partici-
pants may have plucked from other sources such as the internet in order to convey
aspects of their experiences or to render these material and therefore real (see
Fig. 9.2). Such seemingly inanimate objects carry aspects of the broader social
milieu from which they emerge and need to be analysed as such.
Referential generalisation enables us to ground structurally orientated explana-
tions for poverty. We can implicate neoliberal socio-economic systems that have
been set up to service selfish wealth extraction among elites as core causes of soci-
etal inequalities and poverty. The focus here can be on problems such as elite greed
shaping economic and institutional practices in ways that benefit wealthy people,
and at the cost of increased inequalities in society and the resulting hardships expe-
rienced by our participants (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). In this way, referential gen-
eralisation involves seeking the societal through the local. This is appropriate if one
accepts that: ‘The general content is thus not dissolved into a multitude of empirical
facts but is concretised in a theoretical analysis of a given social configuration and
related to the whole of the historical process of which it is an insolvable part’
(Horkheimer 1941: 22). Through referential generalisation objects such as Figs. 9.1
and 9.2 can be rendered as situational representations (Delmar 2010), which are
useful in grappling with the double articulation of the general in the particular.
Practically, this requires a series of interpretive shifts out from particular artefacts,
Fig. 9.2 GLOW-BUG
power meter
such as a ‘GLOW-BUG’ household electrical usage meter (Fig. 9.2), through which

such objects are positioned as artefacts of broader inequitable socio-economic rela-
tions. In making these shifts, we are able to bring into sharper view the often less
visible ways in which intergroup power relations texture poverty at the personal
level in everyday life.
In considering such shifts, let us consider Greg’s account of the GLOW-BUG
and how this device regulates electricity usage in his household. By way of further
context, the GLOW-BUG is a prepaid electricity device intended as a last resort for
consumers with a bad credit history. The prepay costs of power are higher than the
rates charged to post-pay electricity users. Greg’s use of the image in Fig. 9.2 when
talking about his use of electricity positions the device as a metonym for hardships
he endures. Inadequate funds mean that Greg must practice restraint in his everyday
use of electricity, which then results in him having to choose between darkness or
living in a cold, damp dwelling. Initially, Greg begins by talking about how:
It’s just too expensive with running a 2000 watt heater for a few hours. You’re paying near
to 30 bucks a week… If you’re not keeping an eye on it, it could be 35 bucks a week… Make
sure you don’t have the heater on because you can use a 2000 watt heater for an hour and
that will be all your light usage for 24 hours…
Greg then invokes the GLOW-BUG to exemplify how his practices of rationing and
vigilance reflect the exacerbation of constants that have come into his home with
this device. The GLOW-BUG is presented as an unwelcome and overly controlling
addition to the household:
You know that you can’t deal with it on GLOW-BUG… It’s just a pre-pay phone card type
of thing… And you put a minimum of 20 bucks, it costs $1.50 to put in every time… If you
get below $11.00 they cut you off… They’ll give you a warning and some stupid lights...
When it’s green, it’s fine. When it’s orange, you’re power’s low. It’s going to be off in two
days. When it turns red your power’s going to be cut off at 12 o’clock… It drives you a little
bit nutty...
Greg pitches his account at the level of everyday experience. He anchors his situa-
tion in relation to the electrical meter, his need for restraint, and the stressful and
unhealthy circumstances in which he resides. Through this account, we can see how
his use of the GLOW-BUG involves much more than a simple consumption prac-
tice. The extent to which this object intrudes on his everyday life is dehumanising in
that the GLOW-BUG regulates lighting, heating, and when householders go to bed.
This household object has become an unwelcome companion that constantly
reminds Greg of the hardships, stress, and anxieties of poverty. Greg’s account also
offers an everyday reference point to step out from in our analysis to consider fur-
ther how his situation came to be.
Our orientation towards referential generalisation attunes us to the GLOW-BUG
being more than an isolated inanimate object in Greg’s home. To understand how
this object and Greg’s practices of restraint came into being, we need to look at the
underlying intergroup and institutional relationships that manifest in his home with
this device. This focus is important because the GLOW-BUG is part of a larger
societal whole. The very existence of the GLOW-BUG comprises more than some
objective effort to meet a specific consumer demand. There is a direct relationship

between Greg’s everyday experiences of restrained power use, the partial privatisa-
tion of New Zealand state-owned electricity companies, and the investment prac-
tices of more affluent groups seeking financial returns from such devices. Also
implicated is the rise of penal welfare, which has resulted in reduced welfare sup-
port to pay for increased electricity prices. In this context, the GLOW-BUG is
knowable and takes form through exploitative relationships between more well-
heeled investors, the partially privatised electricity company, and consumers such as
Greg. We read the meter as an artefact of extractive social hierarchies through which
investors demand financial returns from power companies that extract these returns
from people such as Greg. These relationships are central to the network of involve-
ments or ‘referential whole’ within which the meter has emerged as a socio-political
object (Heidegger 1927/1973). In presenting and talking about such objects, partici-
pants also locate themselves within the context of broader social structures, inter-
group relations, and their agentive everyday practices of survival.
A focus on referential generalisation exemplifies the importance of not simply
moving from a consideration of specific experiences and objects to theoretical
abstractions. Scholars can also resituate everyday objects (GLOW-BUG) and asso-
ciated practices (turning off the heater) by considering the inequitable intergroup
and socio-economic relations that give birth and utility to such phenomena. Working
referentially, we can interrogate the social milieu through a focus on everyday expe-
riences, objects, and restraints that inhabit society today. We can explore how depic-
tions of, and references to, such objects and practices work to invoke socio-economic
hierarchies that texture the lives of people in need. The re-telling of the relational
origins and significance of such everyday objects invoke a labyrinth of social forma-
tions and practices that stretches out beyond the specific object (Miller 2010). As
Fine (2006: 94) writes,
…exemplars of social research that both sharpen and stretch across levels of analysis,
interrogating the movements of power across history, structure, social relations and lives,
and the theoretical understandings of the webbing that connects… In these works, no unit
is too small to see the fingerprints of the world.
In the present context, the GLOW-BUG is a material fingerprint that comes to solid-
ify or materialise aspects of an inequitable social order currently shaping everyday
lives in poverty. The GLOW-BUG exemplifies how, in inequitable and exploitative
societies, wealthy people become implicated in the hardships of less fortunate
citizens.
Ultimately, referential generalisation involves efforts to bridge the personal and
societal in the conduct of everyday life. This approach involves efforts to extend
present knowledge of how the everyday objects and practices that populate people’s
lives reflect broader intergroup relationships in society. This is important because
everyday hardship does not occur in a relational vacuum separate from the rest of
society. Everyday lives in poverty are shaped by the actions of more affluent groups.
As such, we would argue that referential generalisation from artefacts such as the
GLOW-Bug meter allow us to demonstrate how the poverty experienced personally
by our participants is inherently relational in nature (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017).

Further, through referential processes of generalisation we do not seek to establish
cause and effect relationships. Rather, we seek to resituate our participants’ every-
day lives historically and socio-economically so that we can understand how such
situations of adversity came to be (Becker 1998). This is about taking seriously the
idea that artefacts from everyday life are products of history and the intergroup
relationships that forge it. Briefly, objects such as those considered in this chapter
can be understood in relation to the context of their invention and use within par-
ticular lifeworlds.
Further, by immersing ourselves within the perspectives of our participants and
their accounts of everyday practices of restraint that take form around particular
objects, we can develop substantive knowledge about the implications of broader
socio-economic relations in shaping everyday poverty (Jahoda 1992). We can also
highlight targets for change such as the operation of New Zealand’s partially priva-
tised power companies, and how these entities exacerbate hardship for people like
Greg. Such exemplars afford resources for proactive change activities such as lob-
bying people in positions to influence such intergroup relationships. This raises the
importance of empathetic generalisation as a basis for advocacy and social change.
Empathetic Generalisation
Referentially, we live in a world where Arnold Abbott, a 90-year-old WWII veteran

can be arrested in Fort Lauderdale twice in a week for feeding homeless people. You
might think, surely this is a case of isolated lunacy. Well no. Across the USA, over
70 cities have passed ordinances that criminalise feeding homeless people. You
might ask if this is just an American initiative. Again, no such policies have spread
out from the USA like a pandemic and have infected city authorities around the
world (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). For example, in New Zealand conservative politi-
cians regularly try to introduce ordinances to ban homeless people from city spaces
and to stop others from helping them. Some New Zealand business owners even
hose homeless people down with cold water in the dead of winter as a means of
moving them on.
What we refer to as empathetic generalisation is central to our efforts to chal-
lenge such denizenising practices by lobbying decision-makers using images pro-
duced by our participants. As such, central to processes of generalisation for us are
issues of praxis that reflect our desire to not simply engage in poverty tourism
(Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Getting involved and trying to help people at risk of
further displacement is also necessary in order for us to avoid perpetuating the
extractive and exploitive relations central to the ‘ruling psychology’ of our times
(Seedat 2017).
Many of our efforts at empathetic generalisation are designed to reduce the social
distance between groups and to promote more humane responses to poverty and
homelessness (Hodgetts et al. 2011). What we refer to as empathetic generalisation
also resembles aspects of what Fine (2006) has termed provocative generalisability
and Seedat (2017) terms witnessing. For us, this work involves provoking domiciled
readers, for example, to recognise and feel some affinity with the everyday experi-
ences of homeless people, to consider issues of fairness and inequality, and to imag-
ine different responses to homelessness.
In this context, we engage in referential generalisation is a dynamic and engaged
research practice. In one sense, referential generalisation occurs when participants
create memetic objects that establish some recognition of the general common
ground we share as human beings (Delmar 2010) despite our positioning as home-
less participants and domiciled researchers. Through being presented with partici-
pants images of their everyday lives we can come to empathise with them as fellow
human beings with their own stresses and frustrations. As scholar activists, we also
utilise processes of empathetic generalisation in presenting participant images to
decision-makers as part of broader efforts to stimulate the emotional intelligence of
decision-makers. Such action requires a reduction in the social distance between
homeless people and decision-makers through the establishment of some common
ground from which the in-humanity of many punitive responses to homelessness
can be recognised, challenged, and changed. Let us provide a more concrete exam-
ple of such work.
Reflecting the overlapping nature of our three forms of generalisation, we drew
on aspects of theoretical and referential generalisation in our efforts to promote
empathetic generalisation. By way of background to the example to follow, two of
us were asked to speak to a city council about proposed measures to ban homeless
people and regulate how people rendered assistance to them. We wanted to reframe
the conversation by ensuring that our dialogue was informed by the experiences of
participants in our research. This involved presenting simple questions related to the
everyday practices that populate homeless lifeworlds and then showing homeless
people doing these ‘normal’ things in extraordinary situations (see Fig. 9.3). The
point of this exercise was to disrupt a punitive mind-set that was dominating official
narratives at the time and to enable these decision-makers to recognise homeless
people as human beings. We did this through depictions of them doing the very
things we all do each day, which the audience would likely recognise.
Our effort as scholar activists involved the use of the materials presented in
Fig. 9.3 to lobby city councillors when they considered a ban on homeless people
from the Auckland CBD.
The questions and pictures in Fig. 9.3 worked together much like music and lyr-
ics to promote a shared emotional experience that is somewhat unique to each mem-
ber of the audience. More broadly, these materials functioned to retexture the
meeting space from a setting for planned exclusion to a setting for human inclusion
in response to homelessness. The use of these questions and images worked to build
a sense of familiarity and recognition that reduced the social distance between the
city council audience and the homeless people depicted. This involved using partici-
pant pictures of homeless people engaging in the same everyday practices of sleep-
ing, eating, and socialising as members of the city council audience. The difference
is that homeless people engage in these domestic practices in public spaces.
Fig. 9.3 Questions and images from a workshop with city councillors
Presenting participant pictures in this way functioned to opened up a liminal space

(Watkins and Shulman 2008) in which we could encourage councillors and their
staff to pause for a moment, witness homelessness more from the perspective of
homeless people, and then to reflect and think differently about how they might
respond. We encouraged the audience to share in the everyday practices of street
life, however vicariously, and in doing so to recognise the difficulties faced by
homeless people (Watkins and Shulman 2008). We worked not only to promote the
recognition (Delmar 2010) among decision-makers of the humanity of homeless
people, but also to cultivate recognition that more humane responses to homeless-
ness are warranted. As a result, initial plans to ban homeless people from the central
business district and to regulate domiciled people who support homeless people
were put on hold.
The current English meaning of the term ‘sonder’ is relevant to understanding
what went on in this liminal space. Sonder is central to our understanding of empa-
thetic generalisation. Sonder refers to the personal realisation of the richness of the
existence of other people. It invokes the insight that like each of us, other people are
living lives as rich and complex as our own. We all share a complex humanity.
Sonder also invokes the idea that all of our lives are occurring all at once, often
oblivious of each other. It is this obliviousness to the realities of homelessness that
we sought to rupture in the minds of our city council audience. As noted in The
Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Koenig 2014), Sonder is:
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own -
populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness - an
epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground,
with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in
which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur
of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
To sonder requires a person slowing down and take more time to think about people
affected by issues such as homelessness, and in ways that render homeless people
more familiar and socially close. In cultivating sonder, we worked to promote in our
city council audience a sense of shared humanity towards urban strangers, from
which humane responses could be developed. In the context of scholarly consider-
ations of generalisation, our promotion of Sonder epitomises the centrality of issues
of praxis and action, and efforts to improve the everyday circumstances of people
living in poverty. This exemplar also demonstrates how small acts that cultivate
empathy, recognition, and witnessing through the creative use of visual research
artefacts can have larger and positive consequences for people on the margins of
society.
To be clear, we do not see such efforts at promoting sonder and empathy building
as solely individual level interventions. We also engage in efforts to build empathy
through a range of media advocacy activities (Hodgetts and Chamberlain 2014)
designed to contribute to the reshaping of the broader structure of feeling (Williams
1977) in society that shape institutional responses to poverty and homelessness.
This broader focused work also involves using participant pictures to re-humanise
people in need and to increase understandings of the structural causes of poverty
among more affluent groups in society. This is important because how populations
and governmental organizations understand poverty often shapes how they respond.
For example, if poverty is seen as resulting from personal laziness then responses
often adopt a penal approach to welfare that targets laziness using a raft of punitive
technologies of control (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Conversely, when poverty is
seen as the result of structural inequalities that benefit a few affluent people at the
expense of many other people of more modest means, then the targets of change can
be shifted to social structures.
Our efforts to promote sonder and empathy at individual, institutional, and soci-
etal levels have synergies with recent work by Seedat (2017) on the centrality of a
dialectical humanistic ethos in South African psychology and society. This involves
embracing notions of witnessing, emotional immediacy, consciousness raising, and
social justice. Also central to Seedat’s (2017) approach to developing more humane
and engaged approaches is the enabling of people to see themselves again “…as
caring and compassionate social actors…” (p. 523). For us, such work also involves
developing human-centred ways of knowing poverty and homelessness that seek to
challenge the inequitable social structures that shape the everyday lives of people
affected.
Conclusion
This chapter has drawn on insights from several research projects exploring urban
poverty and homelessness in partnership with the people concerned (Hodgetts et al.
2011, 2014, 2016a, b; Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). A core goal in this chapter has
been to exemplify our evolving approach to researching poverty in everyday life and
beyond. Our impressionistic orientation is designed to enable us to link structural
changes in society with the hurt and hardships experienced in a growing number of
daily lives. Central to this approach is the assemblage of a series of fleeting glimpses
produced by research participants into an impression of a larger social totality.
Drawing insights from seminal scholars of social life, including Georg Simmel,
Walter Benjamin, Marie Jahoda, and Max Horkheimer, we have explored the
broader societal significance of the scenes, experiences, and relationships invoked
by our participants through careful reflections on these fragments of everyday life.
Like impressionist painters, we explore the general or societal through the particular
or everyday (Davis 1973; Horkheimer 1941; Simmel 1903/1997). This approach
enables us to see hardship and homelessness as fundamentally relational elements
of history and the present social milieu.
In adopting an impressionist orientation, we are intentionally breaking from rule
governed approaches to qualitative research such as discourse analysis, grounded
theory, and thematic analysis. Proponents of these approaches have dominated dis-
cussions of qualitative research in psychology. Such qualitative approaches have
also become very popular, in part, because they offer the illusion of certainty through
procedure that is very familiar to psychologists. These approaches do offer a set of
procedures for beginning scholars to ‘learn how to do analysis’ and to develop less
tangible tricks of the trade (Becker 1998). However, such approaches can also stifle
creativity and reduce social analysis to a highly governed set of procedures. Central
to these more established approaches—which in many respects constitute a salon of
qualitative research in psychology—is the assumption that if one follows set proce-
dures rigorously and employs ‘the correct steps’ then one can generate a plausible
and in some cases even replicable analysis. We do not share this worldview.
Rather than conducting micro-analyses of specific visual or verbal texts follow-
ing a rigid set of coding strategies, our impressionistic analyses rely on our own
experiences, creativity, instincts, and humanity of scholars. Our approach embraces
the need for scholars to develop as virtuosos who are less rule governed (Flyvbjerg
2006). It necessitates following hunches more than someone else’s recipe for analy-
sis. This is why we have not outlined detailed procedures for producing an impres-
sionistic analysis. We have also resisted offering a recipe for analysis because far
from constituting a set result, the impressions we construct of everyday poverty
remain incomplete, partial, and open to further interpretation and development.
In addition to focusing on the substantive issue of poverty, we have also focused
on issues relating to the communicability of everyday experiences of adversity. We
have illustrated how research participants experiencing poverty actively reconstruct
and invoke hard and emotionally textured everyday experiences that remain entan-
gled within the grim actuality of being homeless or without sufficient funds to heat
and dry one’s modest dwelling. In order to help us understand what poverty is like,
our participants provide creatively adulterated metonymic artefacts that come to
resemble and stand in for their situations and experiences in general (cf., Benjiman
1933/1978, 1940/2002, 1982). These objects offer selected slithers of everyday life-
worlds that point to, but can never fully capture experiences of poverty.
Correspondingly, we must go beyond viewing these artefacts as discrete units of
data that hold set meanings in order to explore the structural and intergroup ele-
ments of poverty today. We move from these artefacts to consider the influence of
more affluent groups in society in intensifying hardships enacted by people living in
poverty. Along the way, our approach to such materials positions our participants as
artisans in their own right who create memetic objects to render their experiences a
little more tangible to us. This is also because for us poverty research is not simply
a spectator sport. Central to efforts to generalise from what participants’ show and
tell us are our efforts to encourage different audiences to recognise the appropriate-
ness of humane, understanding and inclusive responses to the human misery that
comes with societal inequalities, poverty and homelessness.
Briefly, our approach involves developing impressions that gain broader rele-
vance when we shift our gaze out beyond the experiential level of daily living and
onto the socio-economic relations that suffuse local settings. This is a crucial inter-
pretive shift that can reveal the threads of inequitable relations that are entangled
within the everyday lives of our participants (Hodgetts et al. 2014). Such an approach
is particularly applicable to psychological scholarship on the conduct of everyday
life, which asserts that human action exists simultaneously in both personal and
communal life (Hodgetts et al. 2018). As scholars of the quotidian, we see our role
as one of developing impressions of the underlying societal significance of local

events for a society in motion (Simmel 1900/1978/2004). We do this by capturing
fleeting moments through the use of visual methods in order to consider the social
formations and structures at play in shaping these particular scenes. Often fleeting
memetic images of everyday situations afford anchor points for developing impres-
sions of the broader phenomenon of poverty and homelessness that are reproduced
in local scenes. The resulting analysis is a play on the taken-for-granted, which
documents and interprets as a means of de-familiarising harmful societal arrange-
ments that are often normalised and taken-for-granted in society today.
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Part III
Transformative Lines of Situated
Generalization
Chapter 10
Generalizations in Situated Practices
Ole Dreier
The chapter addresses basic issues about generalization from the perspective of
Critical Psychology. It is framed by a critical analysis of the mainstream notion of
generalization in psychology because psychologists are educated in this notion and
constantly confronted with it in the research literature and in discussions, reviews,
and evaluations of their work. This complicates the development of an alternative
notion of generalization which does not, implicitly or explicitly, take over key fea-
tures of the mainstream notion. The purpose of the chapter is to present such an
alternative conception of generalization in Critical Psychology by focusing on its
key characteristics, accomplishments, issues, and revisions. Human beings are theo-
rized as participants in structurally arranged, situated social practices. Their psycho-
logical processes unfold in, and hang together with, their participation and conduct
of everyday life in such social practices. So, their psychological processes are
always affected by being directed at and part of situated nexuses in subjects’ lives in
social practices. We must, therefore, generalize about subjects’ psychological func-
tioning in situated nexuses. But, while it is necessary to establish generalizations in
capturing concrete nexuses, it cannot be the sole purpose of research. We must
capture how general and particular aspects hang together dynamically in nexuses
and how their situated composition affects the qualities and status of the aspect or
problem we study. Case studies offer unique possibilities for accomplishing this
which is briefly illustrated by an example. It is, finally, argued that grasping phe-
nomena and problems in situated nexuses of social practice is necessary in basic
theorizing as well as in knowledge-based expertise and professional interventions in
subjects’ problems in the nexuses of their everyday lives. Like most discussions on
generalization, this chapter focuses on empirical generalization though critical
issues about conceptual and theoretical generalization also need to be addressed.
O. Dreier (*)
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
e-mail: ole.dreier@mail.dk

178 O. Dreier
Generalization in Mainstream Psychology
Mainstream psychology is a science of variables (Holzkamp 1983, 2013a). Its

knowledge rests on isolating and defining a set of independent and dependent vari-
ables and on examining whether the independent variable produces the dependent
variable. For instance, whether being exposed to certain stimuli produces depres-
sion, anxiety, or what have you, or whether being exposed to a certain therapy is a
cure of depression, anxiety, or what have you. Variables must be well defined in the
sense of clearly delimited from other variables and phenomena—though some vari-
ables are so broad that they really are ill-defined, e.g., depression, anxiety, and cure.
The ordering of variables in a study, hence, separates and isolates them from other
variables and phenomena. Thus abstracted, the causal relation between independent
and dependent variables is examined. The findings from such studies are fixed,
causal relationships between abstracted variables. They display an isolated general-
ity of fixed causal links between independent and dependent variables which is
immutable and even unaffected by the changes it may be claimed to cause. A com-
plex set of such well-defined variables is construed by carrying out many studies on
different variables. The causal scheme of variables is also elaborated by introducing
moderator and intervening variables.
Findings are generalized by calculating the response frequencies in the study
population of being exposed to the independent variable. A mean response is con-
structed which, strictly speaking, represents no particular person. It is given a name
and treated as the general result. Variations in responses from the mean value are
considered random. We are, thus, offered an abstract generalization of variables in
relation to which individual responses in the sample population are seen as random
variations. These variations are viewed as inessential particularities though further
studies may turn some into subtypes of a similar abstract kind, e.g., different types
of anxiety or depression susceptible to different treatments. The generalization of a
finding also depends on the representativity of the research population in relation to
the population at large so that the study may be claimed to represent what could be
found in the population at large. The generalization is thus claimed to hold for the
population at large as the most widespread response, phenomenon, state of affairs,
etc. Yet, what is most frequent and widespread may be a passing, historically shift-
ing and superficial affair while other crucial phenomena, now found infrequently or
singularly, may hold the potential to become a better or more adequate response or
state of affairs (Haug 1981). Moreover, the current frequency of a response or state
of affairs does not tell us how other, better or worse, responses or states of affairs
may be brought about.
Smith (1990) argues that the isolated, experimental setup creates a special kind
of extra-local knowledge which appears less doubtful because it seemingly stays
clear of all the bracketed influences and is supported by the power of the institu-
tional epistemology and standpoint of science. Subjects confronted with such extra-
local knowledge experience it as a reified expression of their own powers. They are
held to be subsumed under these reifications or to subsume themselves by
10 Generalizations in Situated Practices 179
interpreting themselves with these abstractions. Such knowledge is tailored to gov-

ern and control populations (Holzkamp 1983).
General, empirical concepts in mainstream psychology are constructed by
assigning names to generalized, abstract variables. Such empirical concepts, thus,
refer to abstract elements containing their own essential properties. This introduces
an elementarism and essentialism in the conceptual vocabulary of mainstream psy-
chology. The functioning of the human psyche is then conceived as a causal inter-
play between mutually independent, elementary essences. Mainstream psychology’s
conception of the environment is also elementarist because it studies how isolated
stimuli affect dependent variables while other properties of the environment are
bracketed.
However, generalized relations between many concepts—that is, theories—are
too complex to investigate directly with a methodology of isolated, well-defined
variables. Instead, researchers must make them up in their interpretations (Holzkamp
1981) or stipulate them as their beliefs. The foundation of theories, hence, remains
arbitrary and not historically founded (Holzkamp 1983).
There are many reasons to move beyond such an impersonal and decontextual-
ized notion of knowledge. Instead of variables and their interrelations, we must
grasp concrete phenomena and their interrelations as aspects of the lives of indi-
vidual persons, e.g., not as a specimen of an abstract category of disease or anxiety
but as the diseases or anxieties of persons in their lives. General mainstream find-
ings and concepts offer an abstract and reduced grasp of concrete issues and phe-
nomena deprived of their individual and situated qualities and dynamics. Particular
individuals and local practices are relegated to the background and must subsume
themselves under these generalizations. Individuality and locality are then turned
into arbitrary variations in a playing field of general, causal variables. This is espe-
cially problematic in psychology which, in theory and practice, primarily deals with
concrete individuals and local practices. Becoming a recognized mainstream sci-
ence with general laws about general variables stands in the way of psychology
becoming a truly concrete science.
Generalization in Critical Psychology
Holzkamp developed a basic approach to generalization in Critical Psychology

which he published between 1973 and 83 and which draws on his previous work on
theory and experiment in psychology (Holzkamp 1981/1964). This approach
replaces the study of causal relations between delimited variables in an isolated situ-
ation, which are generalized to a population, by something radically different. The
basic methodology of a research discipline must capture the crucial characteristics,
relations, and dynamics of its subject matter. On the background of a collaborative
reconstruction of the psycho-phylogeny of the emergence of the human species, he
insists that psychology must acknowledge the basic fact that human beings live in a
society by re-producing and changing their social conditions as their possibilities of
180 O. Dreier
living. Their potentials for doing so constitute a species-specific, societal nature of

human beings with psychological potentials for understanding and handling their
social conditions by taking part in social practices. Psychology must, accordingly,
grasp how the scope of action possibilities of individual subjects in their immediate
life situation is mediated by the structure of meaningful conditions in the society
they live in. It must comprehend how subjects grasp and handle their mediated
scope of possibilities from their first-person perspective in their immediate, local
situation (Holzkamp 1983). Mainstream psychology is bound to miss such social
qualities of individual psychological functioning because it studies variable-shaped
response frequencies of populations to isolated conditions.
This conception aims at grasping individual subjects. They are not regarded as
causally determined by their conditions as independent variables and their individ-
ual characteristics and differences are not seen as random variations on mean val-
ues. The conditions of individual subjects constitute a scope of possibilities which
they may relate to and realize in various ways. How they do so, depends on the
needs, interests, abilities, and reasons which they develop in relation to their scopes
of possibilities. From the perspective of individual subjects, their experience of their
scope of possibilities highlights the meaning of these possibilities and their reasons
for realizing them given the abilities, needs, and interests they develop by living in
relation to them. Relations between social conditions and individual activities are
not causal but relations of possibilities and reasons. We must, therefore, generalize
about the scopes of possibilities and reasons of individual subjects. Subjects sharing
important social conditions exhibit important commonalities in their scopes of pos-
sibilities and reasons. They may be grouped into an empirically generalized type of
scope of possibilities and reasons. This approach to generalization is inspired by
Lewin’s (1981) view on generalizing from this case to that typical case.
When a generalized, typical scope rests on its members having common possi-
bilities for realizing general societal conditions, commonality between members as
opposed to inequality between them becomes the core issue. This corresponds with
a socialist view on the distribution and differences between members’ scopes of
possibilities. Individual differences are grasped and valued in relation to the societal
structure of possibilities rather than to the population. Differences between indi-
viduals are then not random variations in a population but linked with social differ-
ences in their scopes of possibilities which may be changed in the course of
increasing their joint command over societal processes and resources. Their mental
processes are also not only grasped as potentials for their way of living but as
affected by it. It is a social conception of individuality, of the social lives and func-
tioning of individual subjects. Comparisons between them are grounded in the
structure of possibilities in a society instead of in attributing different, fixed indi-
vidual properties to them which are claimed to cause their peculiar behavior such as
mainstream notions of personality traits. This conception implies a social critique
geared at reducing inequalities and strengthening commonalities.
Established types of scopes of possibilities may be examined in research projects
on exemplary practices. A type may be contested or revised if subjects do not fit into
it as assumed. Individual subjects may also consider themselves members of a type
or not by comparing their scopes and reasons with those captured in the type. Such
comparisons may broaden and develop their knowledge of self and others and guide
their ways of living and dealing with various issues. Still, individual members of a
type are not identical. They are more or less similar cases of a typical scope of pos-
sibilities grouped due to widespread commonalities but different in other respects.
The generalization of a type is an approximation and our knowledge of individual
subjects is skewed and abstract if we only consider the commonalities but not the
differences.
Any kind of generalization requires a basic frame of comparison. In mainstream
psychology, it is a population with general means on isolated variables whereas, to
Holzkamp, the overall social structure is the general frame in relation to which com-
monalities and differences are defined. Individual subjects on similar positions in
the overall structure then face similar scopes of possibilities mediated by it. And
individual subjects in similar local situations associated with a social position face
similar scopes of possibilities mediated by it. Holzkamp holds a nested view of
social structure in which individual subjects are grasped as affected by and address-
ing the overall social structure in position-specific and locally mediated ways. But,
as we move closer to individual subjects in particular situations, the analysis
becomes more complex and the approximation becomes looser or holds fewer
members.
In his early work on sensory knowledge, Holzkamp (1973: 268) states that indi-
vidual subjects may perceive phenomena as they appear in their immediate situation
or comprehend how these phenomena are mediated by the social structure. Individual
knowledge then involves a crucial move beyond the appearances in the immediate
situation and critical reflection—in comprehending the essential connections and
totality—is a necessary step towards knowledge. The immediacy of situated percep-
tion is superficial, illusory, and uncritical and distance is a requirement for compre-
hension. But comprehending the overall structure is a wide-ranging affair and hard
to define in its totality—especially as an individual accomplishment. To Holzkamp,
any local grasp of the overall structure is partial because it is afforded by a particular
location and perspective on the social structure. The particular aspects visible in the
situated perspective on the social structure refer to a comprehensive totality beyond
the situated grasp. The situated perspective must then be complemented by other
views from other locations. In passing, Holzkamp mentions that changes of loca-
tion—through the subject’s activities and/or movements of the objects of knowl-
edge—may increase the adequacy of knowledge.
While Holzkamp insists on grasping a local situation by capturing its mediation
through common features in a social structure, its other local sources and aspects
and its particular composition fall out of focus. This is the drawback of the require-
ment for distancing in obtaining knowledge. But if the local sources are not
involved in obtaining knowledge, it becomes, strictly speaking, impossible to show
that the overall mediated aspects are most important in local situations. They must
be assumed to be so. And their particular, local status and meaning cannot be deter-
mined without studying their situated meaning in the composition of the local situ-
ation. A generalized type then offers individuals a basis for comparing
182 O. Dreier
commonalities and differences between their scopes, but not their concrete compo-
sition and dynamics.
After 1983, Holzkamp elaborates his notion of generalization in two respects
which expand his view on individual subjectivity while maintaining that individual
lives primarily are mediated by the overall social structure. In the first elaboration,
he argues that we must define the pattern of individual subjects’ reasons for action
in relation to their scope of possibilities in a particular position/situation (e.g., 1986;
see also Markard 2010). Subjects hold patterns of reasons because they relate to
their complexly structured scope of possibilities as well as to their complex set of
needs and interests, abilities, and cognitive and emotional processes in rela-
tion hereto.
A typified general pattern of reasons in relation to a general scope of possibilities
for subjects in a similar position/situation offers individual subjects a richer, more
valuable knowledge. But establishing such a type is more complex because we must
capture and match the complex structure of meaningful societal scopes of possibili-
ties with the complex pattern of subjective reasons. It becomes less likely that we
can define a generalized type of scopes/reasons precisely and with a close fit
between individual members. While subjects already relate to their scopes of pos-
sibilities in varied ways, adding their patterns of reasons increases the variability
and complexity. A subject’s pattern of reasons may not even be so stable, unvarying,
and general.
Holzkamp’s last elaboration and revision of his conception (2013b) is triggered
by the insufficiency of anchoring subjects in an immediate situation within a social
structure. Subjects are involved in conducting their everyday life and phenomena
and problems must be studied as they appear in particular scenes of their conduct of
everyday life. Scenes are, so to speak, situations anchored in subjects’ concrete
conduct of their everyday lives. Subjects’ localities and activities then come more to
the fore. Studying common problems in particular scenes may establish links to
other subjects through typification. Holzkamp views scenes and the conduct of
everyday life as affected by the mediated influence of the social structure therein.
He also suggests studying how a problem—say, about learning in school—is
affected by a subject’s conduct of everyday life in other social contexts. But he did
not manage to complete his work on the conduct of everyday life. Thus, he did not
go much into a subject’s conduct of everyday life as a complex whole or into how
the composition, dynamics, and issues of the conduct of everyday life are embedded
in the social structure of everyday life.
Comprehending Subjects in Situated Nexuses of Practice
This section presents how I continued developing the conceptual approach of

Critical Psychology including the approach to generalization arguing that general-
izations are part of complex, concrete nexuses of practice (e.g., Dreier 2007, 2008,
2015, 2016, in press).
Picking up the argument where Holzkamp’s work ended, concrete situations and
scenes are part of a social practice in a local social context and affected by it. They
must be grasped accordingly. And these social practices in social contexts are part
of the overall social practice of a society through which this society and the life of
its members are re-produced and changed. Indeed, the complex practice of a society
is divided into many social practices in different social contexts which hang together
in that way. This hanging-togetherness constitutes the structure of practice of a soci-
ety. How they hang together, rests on the socio-material arrangement of the struc-
ture of practice of a society which also involves arrangements of pathways and links
and access or exclusion between contextual social practices as well as arrangements
of the practices in these contexts. We can, hence, not comprehend an aspect of a
societal practice, context, scene, and situation as an isolated element or stimulus.
Instead, we must grasp how it is involved in a particular social practice that hangs
together in a particular way. Its qualities and meaning do not adhere to it as an iso-
lated element but are affected by the composition of the social practice it is involved
in and its particular status in it. Likewise, aspects of the overall social structure gain
a particular meaning for participants in the practice of a local social context depend-
ing on how these aspects are involved in its arrangements and composition. To assist
us analytically, we, therefore, need a concept about such hanging-togetherness. I
call it the nexus of a society, a social practice, a social context, etc. Other related
concepts are insufficient because it is too ambiguous whether they merely stipulate
that certain aspects are linked, connected, related, or that they also hang together, in
the sense that they always are aspects of a nexus of social practice and cannot exist
and go on outside any nexus. Moreover, nexuses of social practice are dynamic
because they are re-produced and changed in practice and because they hold inter-
nal tensions and contradictions. Their composition and the status and power of par-
ticular aspects then fluctuate, vary, and change and some aspects cease to matter
while others emerge.
As embodied beings, individual subjects always are situated in the nexus of a
local social context (cf. Valsiner 2015: 235) and live by taking part in re-producing
and changing social practices. A person’s life and psychological functioning then
always hangs together with the world and in the world with its arrangements of
social practice. Persons survive and develop by hanging together with the world in
contextual social practices. They must, therefore, be theorized as participants in
social practices. A basic approach to persons cannot focus only on persons and situ-
ations as usually seen in psychology. Their activity as ongoing participation in the
social practice of a local social context must be added as a third dimension.
Moreover, their psychological processes are not linked with an isolated stimulus but
directed at their ongoing participation in the nexus of social practice of this context.
And their psychological processes do not function as mutually separate elements
but are combined and configured as aspects of their participation in the situated
nexus of this ongoing social practice. The anti-elementarist and anti-essentialist cri-
tique of the methodology of mainstream psychology is, thus, founded in a matching
view on individual psychological functioning. Furthermore, as a participant, what a
person can do and does is rarely only up to, or only matters to, him- or herself but
184 O. Dreier
also, though not in the same way, to the other involved participants. Participants’
possibilities, and the cooperation and conflicts between them, thus depend on each
other and hang together with the contextual arrangements and structures
(Højholt 2016).
When we study persons in a local social context—and in its situations and
scenes—we must, hence, consider the purposes and socio-material arrangements of
the social practice of this context with the distribution of positions, responsibilities,
and tasks between the participants. In doing so, we take the nexus of this contextual
social practice as our starting point and important source of knowing the participat-
ing subjects and we contextualize their different powers and scopes of
possibilities.
On this background, we can study subjects’ experiences, states of mind, con-
cerns, stakes, understandings, and stances in relation to a situation/scene in the
social practice of this context. We can analyze how subjects configure their experi-
ences and participation and what their concerns and stakes, understandings and
stances hang together with in the social practice of this context. We can also inves-
tigate how the nexus of practice in this context affects the meaning of a particular
phenomenon or problem for a subject, how he or she experiences it as well as his or
her possibilities in relation to it. In doing so, we grasp subjects in the dynamic nexus
of a local, contextual practice.
By taking the typical arrangement of certain contextual, social practices—e.g.,
therapy sessions, classrooms, work places, families—as our starting point, we can
identify similarities and differences between the concrete practices we study, estab-
lish typified generalizations of the subjective phenomena and problems therein and
analyze how and why they differ in certain respects. We can also grasp whether and
how subjects are aware of and relate to the general aspects of the typical arrangements.
But subjects do not live by all conditions around them. They pick out and realize
some possibilities—not all and not the same. Individual life is a selective affair.
Social practice is so rich and complex that individual subjects must respond and live
in selective ways. Because their conditions hang together, they must pick up other
possibilities later. Individual knowledge is also selective. It highlights, extracts and
configures some aspects while setting aside others—even when subjects seek to
grasp the connections between partial knowledges in a more comprehensive grasp
of the nexus of historical practice (Holzkamp 1973: 373). In fact, knowledge is not
a part–whole relationship because knowing everything is a contradiction in terms.
We can always ask what is not attended to, set aside, or ignored. Some of these
aspects may be picked up later and this may lead to reconsiderations and changes in
a person’s knowledge and participation. But individual knowledge is marked by
degrees of uncertainty, obscurity, by not quite understanding and being aware of
understanding only to some degree and in some respects. Critical questions must,
therefore, be asked about what is not attended to and ignored.
Moreover, in complex social structures of practice, subjects live by taking part in
more than one social practice and context. In the course of their activities, they
move into other contexts to take part in other practices. What was said above about
their participation in the social practice of a context must then be considered again.
But taking part in other social practices/contexts has other meanings and involves
other possibilities for subjects. They do so for other reasons and it involves other
problems. If a common problem is involved, it is a similar problem and not an iden-
tical one. It is affected by being part of another nexus so that it emerges and passes
in other ways with other possibilities and stakes of dealing with it and another
meaning to the subject. Problems are part of different nexuses in diverse contexts.
Furthermore, in other social practices/contexts, persons often take part with other
co-participants.
Subjects’ participations in different social practices/contexts affect their general-
izations. They get to know other things and other aspects of a phenomenon/problem
in other practices/contexts, including what it hangs together with in these other
practices/contexts which creates other possibilities for dealing with it. They may
learn why a problem is similar or different in other nexuses and which aspects of
these nexuses are particularly important in this respect. They are, in short, afforded
a more differentiated and diverse basis for generalizing about it.
When different social practices/contexts afford diverse sources of knowing, per-
sons must find out which sources they trust, appropriate, and use to reconsider their
understandings or let pass them by and disregard. They may also seek to grasp the
connections between various partial knowledges in a more encompassing compre-
hension. The more comprehensive and differentiated basis of knowing and general-
izing confirms, revises, and expands their knowledge from former contexts and their
understanding of what is common/general. This view on developing a more sub-
stantial knowledge contrasts with the notion that we must gain distance from imme-
diate situations to rise above the superficial appearances of what is taken for granted
and acquire deep knowledge. Rather than simply being at a distance, subjects are
somewhere else with other arrangements and sources of knowing which matter pre-
cisely because they offer other possibilities of knowing. These other sources must
then be compared, confronted, and combined into a revised, more comprehensive
understanding.
Finally, subjects may try to find out how a certain phenomenon or problem
unfolds and is dealt with in other similar social practices, say, in other families than
their own. How and why does it unfold, and is dealt with, differently in similar
practices? What can a participant in such a local practice learn from other similar
practices? Is a way of dealing with a phenomenon or problem typical of a certain
social practice? What do the various instances then have in common? And how do
these commonalities hang together with other aspects of the nexuses of this typical
social practice?
Because persons live by taking part in several social practices/contexts, it is
insufficient to consider how their experiences, concerns, reasons, etc. in the social
practice of their present context are mediated by the overall social structure. Their
experiences, concerns, reasons, and participation here are also mediated by their
experiences, concerns, reasons, and participation in other contexts. In fact, persons
living by taking part in several social contexts/practices must pursue many concerns
in their personal trajectories of participation across several social contexts/practices.
These pursuits depend on the structural arrangement of access or exclusion, available
186 O. Dreier
positions as well as the places and time intervals of social practices are part of the
structural arrangements of social practices. Persons also take advantage of relevant
differences between the purposes and scopes of those practices for their pursuit of a
certain concern. Such pursuits in trajectories of participation offer important oppor-
tunities for learning and generalizing.
But their pursuits in trajectories are involved in a more general personal effort.
Living in a complex structure of social practice, subjects must seek to conduct their
everyday life in order to get done what they must do and what matters most to them,
take care that their life does not fall apart in the complexities and contradictions of
social practices, and establish an everyday life with the qualities which suit them
best and which they treasure most (Dreier 2008, 2016; Holzkamp 2013b). They
must also arrange their conduct of life in relation to the socio-structural arrange-
ments for how everyday lives may be lived across times and places. Individual sub-
jects’ participations in various contexts are, thus, involved in their conduct of
everyday life across them and so are the various situations and scenes. Subjects’
participations in various contexts, scenes, and situations, hence, gain a particular
status and meaning for them. Their concerns, stakes, reasons, and problems in rela-
tion to various contexts hang together in their conduct of everyday life and must be
grasped on the background of their status in its dynamic and contradictory nexus.
How they deal with them in particular social contexts is, thus, mediated by their
conduct of everyday life and its pursuits across contexts. In short, the way individ-
ual subjects conduct their everyday life frames how they address possibilities and
problems, learn and generalize.
When social practices change, subjects encounter these changes in their every-
day life and may be challenged to maintain their present conduct of everyday life or
change it in some respects. In changes of social practice, some aspects lose, increase,
or change their significance while others arise or replace them and their composi-
tion changes (cf. Juul Jensen 2013: 188). They then hang together in other ways
with a changing dynamic of re-production and further changes. In the process, par-
ticipants’ possibilities change and so do their understandings of these practices and
of themselves, their problems, concerns, and reasons in them. Changes of social
practice may be brought about by mediated influences from elsewhere, by events
impinging on this practice, by the accumulated effects of many minor alterations, by
participants’ pursuits or by a mixture or sequence thereof. It, therefore, varies to
what degree participants see these changes as outcomes of their purposeful efforts
or as occurring without their doing so that they are exposed to them and must
accommodate their participation. Like the dynamics of re-production of social prac-
tices, their dynamics of change is characterized by tensions, ruptures, and contradic-
tions and by ensuing conflicts between the participants. This affects participants’
understandings, concerns, and pursuits so that the course of changes may become
more erratic. Issues of change may become objects of struggle between participants,
including struggles to find each other again in more concerted pursuits and under-
standings. Furthermore, changes in social practices and in participants’ lives therein
are open-ended. Their processes, phenomena, and problems reach no finite end-
point and complete definition and participants’ understandings and knowledge
about them remain incomplete. In analyzing change processes, we must, therefore,

consider what is not drawn on, set aside, sidestepped, avoided, or ignored—as well
as the consequences thereof for what takes place.
Generalizations in Situated Nexuses of Practice
A core claim in this chapter is that whichever phenomenon or problem we study, it

always exists in situated, dynamic nexuses of practice where it hangs together with
varying other aspects. These nexuses are its everyday realities and their situated
composition and dynamics affect its qualities and meaning and the subject’s experi-
ences, concerns, and possibilities in relation to it. Concepts guide us in capturing
nexuses and certain aspects thereof by identifying general aspects as non-identical
commonalities between nexuses. However, the purpose of our work is not just to
sum up generalities but to capture how general and particular aspects hang together
concretely in a nexus and how this affects their meaning and dynamic. In doing so,
we seek to comprehend nexuses regardless of how widespread or frequent they are.
Qualitative case-studies possess obvious advantages in acquiring such knowl-
edge. Cases represent different, concrete nexuses with different qualities, meanings,
dynamics, and possibilities of an investigated phenomenon or problem. If we make
it our purpose to capture only what these cases have in common (Valsiner 2015:
237), our analysis illuminates generalities but discards differences between them.
We then miss the chance of coming to know how a general phenomenon or problem
hangs together with varying other aspects in nexuses and how these varying nexuses
affect the general phenomenon or problem and subjects’ possibilities of dealing
with it and changing it. By studying these nexuses, we also gain a richer conception
of the commonalities of the phenomenon or problem which is not identical in dif-
ferent nexuses and cases. Indeed, cases show how the phenomenon or problem may
vary and why. They provide different exemplars of a common phenomenon or prob-
lem and of what may affect its qualities and the possibilities of addressing it and
changing it. The singularity of cases, nexuses, phenomena, and problems is then not
erased but grasped as a varying dynamic composition of general and particular
aspects across cases.
In my book Psychotherapy in Everyday Life (2008), I presented, in detail and at
length, a case study of a family referred to therapy with a 12-year-old daughter suf-
fering from anxiety attacks. Guided by the general conception of anxiety as an
anticipated—but sometimes displaced—response to losing control and being unable
to handle situations and events (Holzkamp 1983), the girl’s anxiety attacks are ana-
lyzed in the nexuses of the social contexts/practices where they occurred. There are
obvious differences between how her anxiety attacks emerge and pass off in these
different nexuses. Her experiences and feelings of anxiety also differ as do her chal-
lenges and possibilities of addressing and overcoming these attacks, say, at home, in
school, in sessions, and when she is out and about in other places. In these contexts,
her anxieties hang together with different other aspects and there are different things
188 O. Dreier
at stake for her in dealing with being terrified and seeking to overcome the attacks.
In school, she is, for instance, terrified of being harassed by the other children if
they find out that she suffers from anxieties. So, she seeks to avoid attacks by not
going to the toilet because she cannot stay behind its closed door, by withdrawing
socially to avoid other children witnessing her attacks, etc. This conflicts with the
increasing importance to her, and to her developing conduct of everyday life, of
having friends and being part of communities of children and this conflict affects
her self-understanding and how she sees herself able to deal with her anxieties. As
a consequence, she increasingly withdraws and spends her time after school at
home. Her parents find it difficult to practice indirect care for her and her anxieties
when she is in other places without them. They then concentrate on their direct care
for her and her anxieties at home. Here they do what they can for her to avoid
attacks, for instance, by accompanying her to the toilet, to the basement and in the
lift and by bringing and fetching her when she is going places. But none of this
helps her overcome her anxiety attacks. She, rather, becomes more dependent of her
parents and hangs around more at home in a docile, self-depreciating, and dissatis-
fied manner.
How do the girl’s experiences and understandings of her anxieties and the ways
in which she tries to overcome having attacks change in her participation in and
across her situated nexuses of practice? At the beginning of therapy, she experiences
her anxiety attacks as gushing forth in her unpredictably and uncontrollably due to
an incomprehensible personal weakness so that she finds it difficult to do anything
other than to try to forestall and avoid them. She gradually realizes that her anxiety
attacks hang together with what she may run into, how she can handle and get out
of difficulties, and how others may help her or make them worse in the nexuses of
her social practices. She also pays more attention to how her attacks limit important
possibilities and pursuits for her and considers what it may take to re-open them.
Her understanding of her anxiety attacks, thus, changes from a personalized notion
of an internal characteristic, operating as an uncontrollable cause of her behavior, to
realizing that her anxiety points beyond herself into her participation in various
nexuses and arises for more or less understandable reasons therein. This under-
standing is consolidated by her attempts to do something about her anxiety attacks
by finding out what they hang together with, finding other ways of addressing these
problematic nexuses and finding and becoming able to seize suitable opportunities
and events for overcoming having attacks. This gradually evolves into becoming
able to make situated analyses of her anxiety attacks, their varying nexuses, and
what it may take to avert and overcome them. These situated analyses are guided by
her understanding of what her various anxiety attacks have in common.
This change process is promoted by what the girl learns about her anxiety prob-
lem by comparing its situated occurrences and qualities so that their commonalities
as well as why they differ in different nexuses stand out more clearly. That leads to
a richer and more coherent understanding of her anxiety which is more explicit
about what she must consider and take advantage of in dealing with it and overcom-
ing it in various nexuses. So, her understanding of her problem changes as she
changes her awareness of how and where she may change it and reappreciates and
discovers possibilities for overcoming it without getting stuck in insurmountable

challenges and conflicts. Her motivation to overcome her anxiety attacks also devel-
ops along with her understanding of her concerns and possibilities. She directs her
pursuit of these changes at the practices she is most concerned to participate in and
these pursuits are guided by the challenges and conflicts these practices hold for
overcoming them. Still, like all knowledge of persons in social practice, her under-
standing of her anxieties remains marked by degrees of uncertainty and obscurity.
And, although she gradually overcomes her crippling attacks, she will, like any
human subject, always be able to respond with anxiety in future situations. But
mostly anxieties do not stand in the way of living and developing. They assist sub-
jects in identifying what they need to address in order to get on with and develop
their life. Finally, other similar cases reveal other concrete nexuses of such anxieties
than those sketched above. By comparing such cases, we may gradually map vari-
ous nexuses which are important in generating and overcoming such anxiety
problems.
The Status of Generalizations
Like many other disciplines, mainstream psychology is based on a procedure of

separating and isolating variables—but not of connecting aspects and capturing how
they hang together in concrete nexuses of practice. The systematic procedure of
abstraction and isolation leads to an abstract elementarist and essentialist grasp of
phenomena and their properties. It promotes a particular view on general knowl-
edge. We may call it a culture of extracted generalization. Because this procedure
cannot investigate complex topics and nexuses directly, it must gather piecemeal
knowledge of relations between abstracted variables from separate studies as mutu-
ally independent pieces to a puzzle, or the pieces must be combined arbitrarily in the
researcher’s interpretation. Such mainstream knowledge is geared for use in govern-
ing populations. The generalization of a variable rests on its calculated mean value
in the normal distribution of the research population, and it is taken to hold in gen-
eral in the population as whole. A similar downsized knowledge is assumed to hold
in governing a sub-population with specific conditions, problems, etc. or as the
general response of a particular individual to a certain independent variable.
Science is, indeed, mostly conceived as addressing and characterizing what is
general. It is work in general terms on a general subject matter (Ruben 1978).
Particularities and singularities are of little concern or discarded. Even researchers
insisting on the need to analyze cases argue that the purpose of case analyses is to
identify and extract a general attribute (Valsiner 2015) or a general set of attributes
(Tateo 2015) from these cases. But, it is unlikely that different cases hold a com-
pletely identical attribute or set of attributes. Valsiner (2015) and Holzkamp (1983),
hence, focus on close similarities as non-identical commonalities but do not pay
much attention to the co-existing differences and to what produces the varying con-
stellations of similarities and differences. Some attributes may also be missing in
190 O. Dreier
some cases, or replaced by others, and “attributes” really are aspects of nexuses in
contexts of practice where they are affected by being linked in varying and changing
ways. That is why we must study concrete nexuses and how aspects thereof hang
together in varying and changing ways. Because mainstream generalizations are not
conceived in this way, we face difficult reconsiderations of whether a particular
generalization can be upheld or how it must be modified to hold as a common aspect
of concrete nexuses.
Wittgenstein even warns against putting all stakes on strict generalizations
because clearly delimited generalizations are thin or not always evident. In our lan-
guage, he argues, concepts represent co-existing similarities and differences of het-
erogeneous elements displaying family resemblances (1953: § 66 and 67). Common
aspects are then not identical but similar and co-exist with differences so that con-
cepts refer to non-identical cases of resemblances in “a complicated network of
overlapping and criss-crossing similarities” and differences (ibid.: § 66). No fixed
set of necessary and sufficient conditions then determines membership of a concept.
Rather, as Medina (2003: 660) puts it, “we treat all kinds of different things as the
same although they are not strictly identical in any respect; that is, in our categoriza-
tions different things are treated as instances of the same category even though there
is no aspect (or set of aspects) that they all have in common: many different kinds
of activities are called games and many different kinds of artifacts are called chairs;
and we can always add new items to the list of things that fall under these concepts
(we can always invent new kinds of game and produce new kinds of chairs).”
The abstract variable-based knowledge affords a thin grasp of concrete phenom-
ena because it discards particulars, concrete nexuses, and what matters therein for
the allegedly general aspect. As a result, we find a loss of worldliness in psychology
because it does not conceive phenomena through their links with the historical
structures of the world with their structures of meaning and possibilities
(Holzkamp 2013a).
The state, institutions, and companies delimit what they hold themselves account-
able for, and responsible for in relation to the population, by referring to knowledge
about abstract means in a normal distribution of general variables. Research-based
expert practices also rely on such knowledge to legitimize their expertise and its
conduct in practice. The abstract knowledge then delimits what experts focus on and
are held accountable for in the expert systems. It particularizes their notion of prob-
lems and their responsibilities to particular, abstract general issues as opposed to
concrete problems in nexuses of everyday life. The new public management sys-
tems accentuate this by delimiting the accountability of particular service units and
dividing accountabilities between units more strictly and, thus, leaving more to
people themselves. Furthermore, this form of knowledge and expertise does not
include what produces variety and singularity in the problems which subjects pres-
ent. How subjects conduct their everyday lives with others in their nexuses of social
practice and how their problem is involved therein and affected thereby also fall
outside this form of knowledge as do the ambiguities of everyday living.
Consequently, experts must apply pieces of abstract, variable-based knowledge on
subjects’ complex problems in the nexuses of their lives—or subjects must
internalize and apply this knowledge on themselves. This creates uncertainties,

doubts, and a need for personal reinterpretations as well as for bending knowledge
and procedures and adding additional personal hunches, ideas, and typifications.
The, rarely addressed, problem of a blurred or, strictly speaking, absent transfer and
application of such expert knowledge and advice calls the officially assumed mode
of working into question. But this state of affairs is easily taken for granted when the
general knowledge base offers a constructed, non-personal mean value in a normal
distribution where the positions of particular individuals are reduced to arbitrary
variations. That an intervention sometimes does not work as prescribed, or that it
only works poorly, is then to be expected and lies beyond the accountability of the
expert. Such differences are then not used to learn more about the concrete nexuses
and qualities of the problem for subjects. What is more, variety and singularity must
not only be considered between individual subjects in a population. Non-arbitrary
differences and variations are also seen when the same subject moves into other
social contexts/practices with other nexuses and when these nexuses and the subject
and his or her conduct of everyday life change.
The same notion of abstract knowledge and expertise is applied on the conduct
of expert interventions which are seen as strictly specified, generalized procedures
to be adhered to in dealing with a generalized problem regardless of the targeted
concrete subjects and nexuses. But experts, actually, intervene in subjects’ conduct
of life in the nexuses of their everyday lives (Dreier 2011, 2015). Knowledge about
the compositions and dynamics and the meanings and possibilities of the nexuses
and conducts of everyday life are, hence, crucial for interventions and for how sub-
jects use them in their everyday lives. Such knowledge informs subjects about
which nexuses matter for how they experience a problem and deal with it. It assists
them more comprehensively in identifying which aspects of concrete nexuses offer
possibilities for changing a problem or for sustaining a particular state of affairs.
Indeed, because problems are part of subjects’ conduct of everyday life in concrete
nexuses, this conduct and these nexuses must often be changed in order to resolve a
problem. Such analyses and change processes are open-ended because subjects’
concrete nexuses and problems change, with or without their contribution.
In short, we need knowledge about the everyday realities of living, experiencing,
and changing in social practice and about how general aspects are present and mat-
ter in varying ways therein. This is clearly different from a map of variables in a
population. Knowledge about how things hang together in nexuses and about their
varying and changing dynamics and composition lets subjects learn from common-
alities as well as differences between them in their nexuses of social practices. They
may learn about their common practice and problems from their different perspec-
tives, understandings, possibilities, concerns, etc. And they may learn how their
differences and commonalities hang together in their respective scopes of possibili-
ties in the nexuses of social practice and, thereby, establish a basis for changing their
joint practice. It may also become clear how the singularity of individual subjects,
and of their problems, is grounded in the complexity of their lives in their nexuses
of social practice (González Rey et al. 2018).
192 O. Dreier
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Chapter 11
Situated Generalization with Prototypes
in Dialogical Teaching
Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck
Introduction
This chapter theorizes situated generalization through discussing the practical case
of a PhD course we held in 2017 called “The Psycho-Politics of Self-Exposure.”
The course is seen as performing generalizations, and our rendering of it is itself an
attempt to generalize, that is, to model it as prototypical of dialogical teaching.
We are among the many researchers who try to integrate research and teaching.
The ideal goes back to Plato and to various degrees, all university administrations
pay lipservice to it. Often it is simply the demand that the most recent textbooks are
used in teaching, and the experience that researchers learn, in a vague sense, from
engaging with students. More ambitious versions, however, point to possibilities for
teaching to be (seen as) part of the broad range of practices that perform research,
especially when research is about education, or more widely, human development
(e.g., Davies and Gannon 2006; Haug 2003; Liberali 2009). Our aim is to continue
this more challenging route. We explore concrete processes of production and gen-
eralization of scientific knowledge across contexts of research, teaching, and other
practices, which are partly overlapping, and partly engaged in exchange. In these,
participants from multiple positions adopt standards and standpoints derived from
and referring to multiple practices and are invited “to speak, to think, to matter, to
care”—as one participant put it, quoting another—in ways that allow for generali-
ties to emerge, which are at once findings and lessons learned.
This text models the PhD course as prototypical, that is, represents it and sug-
gests it as relevant for a (thus) generalized kind of practice called “dialogical
teaching.” The construction of a prototype (as situated generalization) is a process
with different (nonlinear) steps or actions. Among these are comparing and relating.
M. Nissen (*) · L. L. Mørck

Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: mn@edu.au.dk; llm@edu.au.dk

196 M. Nissen and L. L. Mørck
We rearticulate dialogical teaching by relating it to other “types” of practice, with

which our readers are (hopefully) already familiar. We aim to show, too, how this
comparative articulation was already part of how the involved participants reflected,
framed, and performed it. On the one hand, the prototype emerges as different from
other, more conventional kinds of teaching. On the other hand, also through simi-
larities and differences to models that have inspired it and are taken as legacies.
In our case, through a series of PhD courses, we have developed a dialogical
method that, at first, took inspiration from the “reflecting team” method in psycho-
therapy (Andersen 1991). As we will unfold below, the reflecting team is a special
way of orchestrating conversations. It was developed in a strand of psychotherapy
that sought to move away from “clinical” standards and notions of pathology, and it
has later been used in other practices such as teaching, supervision, and staff meet-
ings. What is special about our case is not the application of “this method,” the
“standard” itself, but our rearticulation of it as prototypical of dialogical teaching,
and as a way to generalize that fuses and connects research with teaching and
self-presentation.
Our empirical prototype of dialogical teaching involves challenging hierarchical
distributions between teachers and students and between theory and practice, and it
involves overstepping and problematizing disciplinary boundaries. It also involves
reflecting how standards are instituted, collectives constituted, and participants
interpellated. Since this was, obviously, connected to the topic of the PhD course:
self-representation and self-exposure, the course helps us highlight a reflexivity
which is, however, more generally pertinent to dialogical teaching.
Reflecting generalization includes reflecting who “we” are and how “we” are
constituted through processes of self-representation. So: who, "we" ? Would the
conventions of Academia require that we acknowledge, here, up front, the participa-
tion at our course of the famous researchers Emily Martin and Frigga Haug? Ought
we then categorize the two, as it is typically done, as “feminists”? Or is the point in
our prototype, rather, that we highlight the participation of Kristian Holte Kofod,
psychologist at the Copenhagen U-turn facility for young drug users (with whom
Morten collaborates), and even more of his former client Sebastian, as well as of
Martin Celosse-Andersen, former gang member and now apprentice in Line’s
research into gang exit processes? (But is that research still Line’s, then?) Then
again, what comes from thus categorizing those participants? Should we rather, as
would be also relevant, describe Kristian as film photographer, Sebastian as poet,
and Martin as co-researcher (and perhaps Frigga as cancer patient1 and Emily as
“bipolar”2)—and all of them as guest teachers at our PhD course? And in either
case, would that already imply the misrecognition of the students, who are usually,
at most, referred to (as we just did above) as “participants”? Is that problem solved
or aggravated if we mention by names Ana Đorđević, Mille K.B. Keis, and Ida
B. Lundgaard because they were the ones who contributed with dialogical
Cf. Haug (2004).

1
Cf. Martin (2007).

2
11 Situated Generalization with Prototypes in Dialogical Teaching 197
p resentations at the course, as well as provided “data” to this text by writing the
“Letters to Us” which became the final teaching-learning-research activity of our
course?3
There is no end to such questions—we mention just a few of them to illustrate
the point that, with this text, we are at once performing and modelling the self-
representation that our course was about and which we wish to highlight here as an
aspect of generalization.
Prototypes
We authors have a long-standing yet recently revived collaboration on the method-

ology of prototypes (Langemeier and Nissen 2004; Mørck and Nissen 2005; Mørck
2006; Nissen 2004, 2009a, b, 2012, 2015). Prototype is a key term in the theoretical
approach that binds together the different aspects of generalization, which we dis-
cuss on the following pages. The approach builds on an epistemology of practice
that has evolved in many forms and places since Kant, Hegel, and Marx. We have
learned about it mostly through such partly overlapping traditions as: (a) the
German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology (GSCP) that continued the socio-
cultural-historical psychology which began with Vygotsky, radicalizing its ideology
critique; (b) the philosophy of practice proposed by Uffe Juul Jensen; (c) the “social
practice theory” articulated by Stuart Hall, Jean Lave, and others. However, we take
up these traditions recognizing that (like all cultural traditions) they emerged and
continue to evolve in dialogue with other traditions. Thus, pragmatism, interaction-
ism, post-structuralism, actor-network theory, and phenomenology are all visible
and important references. In particular, the whole field of science and technology
studies becomes relevant as we seek to understand research and teaching as
practices.
The concept of prototype itself is borrowed from the Danish philosopher Uffe
Juul Jensen (1987, 1999). Jensen continued the Marxist tradition of an epistemol-
ogy of practice, from the Theses on Feuerbach, through Bachelard’s work on
abstractions as industrial process and Bloch’s concepts of hope and concrete utopia,
and on to Wartofsky’s theory of tools and models as artifacts embodying concepts
(1979). But he took inspiration also from Wittgenstein on the practices of language
(in which a concrete instance may work to signify a generality), and Latour’s dis-
cussion of prototypes and inscription devices for scientific theories (1987). Our
main agenda with the concept of prototype, as we shall unfold below, is to situate
and temporalize generalities as aspects of, tools for, and models of and for practices;
to think the situatedness of proto (“not yet” or “ultimately preceding”) along with
the abstraction and generalizing relevance of type.
3
We decided that all participants write a text to “us” all in which he/she reflected on his/her experi-
ence and what he/she took from it. This idea was derived from narrative counselling and taught us
by Mille Keis.
As Dreier (2008) argues, qualitative studies need a different conception of gen-

erality than the one that dominates psychology and most social sciences; we must
elaborate how we produce a different kind of knowledge and show which concep-
tion of generality and role for generality this knowledge involves. Dreier conceptu-
alizes the relation between the particularity and generality of knowledge in relation
to his empirical research about learning and psychotherapy in everyday life. He
articulates how a conception of generality can be an integrated part of a situated
approach to the study of persons in social practice, arguing that we need to consider
the uses and users of research in our conception of research, knowledge production,
and generalization (Dreier 2008: 188).
This was part of an effort to develop GSCP as a “science of the subject,” that is,
a science of and for, rather than about, the subject. Before Dreier, Holzkamp sug-
gested that critical psychology as a subject science generalizes from single cases
and the subject’s perspective in the “first person” (Holzkamp 1983a; Schraube et al.
2013). But how is that done, more specifically? Too often, this methodology is read
as a version of traditional qualitative hermeneutics that remains within the dichot-
omy of idiographic and nomothetic sciences since generalization and objectivity are
only viewed as the (more or less justified) sanctioning of perception and communi-
cation within research. We suggest reading instead Holzkamp’s methodology of
generalization as continuous with the Vygotskian theory of generality in human
practice as based on artifact-mediation: the artifact is the primary practical form of
abstraction that generalizes action possibilities (cf. Holzkamp 1973). In GSCP, it
becomes clear that this is not merely a “technical” issue, but part of a wider project
of transforming not only understanding, but also, in the same process, practices, and
everyday life. Here, verallgemeinern means both generalizing and expanding since
it is a reflection of the mediatedness of our lives through the social conditions, the
cultural artifacts, and thus the forms of meaning that we have in common—a reflec-
tion which becomes relevant as we set out to change them.4
Understanding this identity of generality with social change requires a deeper
appreciation of the epistemology of practice. The first part of this argument we can
trace on Marxist territory, beginning with Jean Lave (2011). Lave argues for an
alternative to conventional beliefs about abstraction, the vehicle of generalization.
From a social practice theory position, she conceptualizes the processes of “rising
to the concrete” with a reference to Stuart Hall (2003):
That this apparently paradoxical phrase stands in contrast to conventional belief in the value
of ever-greater abstraction is no doubt intentional. The notion “rising to the concrete”
acknowledges the historical, relational character of changing social life, and hence the need
for efforts to craft historical, relational understandings that are at once empirical and theo-
retical. (Lave 2011: 155)
Lave’s use of this term echoes not only Stuart Hall’s but also Ilyenkov’s reconstruc-
tion of Marx’ dialectics (Ilyenkov, 1977, 1982), which has been widely taken up in
the socio-cultural-historical tradition.5 Abstractions are not endpoints but tools,
Similarly “political” reading of the Vygotskian legacy can be found in Stetsenko (2017).
4
Thus not only by Holzkamp, but, notably and most famously, in Dawydow (1973).
5
whose utility and implications are realized as, rising to the concrete, they provide
possibilities of thinking and doing that had not been immediately reflected in the
“sensuously concrete” everyday experience. Through this process, concepts medi-
ate and reconfigure experience into the “thought concrete” (Gedankenkonkretum),
which Lave—again building on Hall’s reading of the Marxian tradition (through
Althusser)—calls a “practice problematic.” Exploring a practice problematic is
reconstructing theory by rising to the concrete to understand contradictions and
conflicts in practices undergoing or calling for change—a change that is radical
enough for theory to be relevant. This is one way to read the epistemological con-
cept of “revolutionary practice” in Marx’ Feuerbach Theses (2018):
III. The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing for-
gets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator
himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is supe-
rior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or
self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
We quote Marx’ Feuerbach Theses because it is probably the most important single
text in philosophies of practice. Written at the watershed that asserted dialectics as
a reflection on practice, its few pages contain important resources for anyone who
wishes to educate educators and reflect on self-change. But of course we should not
restrict ourselves to the Marxian legacy. Among the many issues that have been
taken up in what is sometimes dubbed “post-Marxism” are two which have informed
our ways of thinking about generalization. Both issues are also present, if not always
prominent, in the development of GSCP and social practice theory.
Praxis, Standards, and the Singular
The first issue is with the singularity of practices and their agent-subjects, the “I”s
and the “We”s. Our way of working with situated generalization involves many dif-
ferent people, participating from different positions, and contributing to, applying
and recontextualizing prototypes in and across very different research projects and
interdisciplinary research practices, which, in turn, seek relevance in different prac-
tices that are not designated as “research,” and even beyond any preexisting prac-
tice. This implies an onto-epistemology of practice, which not only suggests an
(ever contested) notion of a universal practice, or “praxis” in the terminology of
Bernstein (1971), but also a plurality of “practices” that can and should be distin-
guished both as kinds (i.e., as enacting different standards) and as singulars, situ-
ated in time and space, performed by (thus recognized) singular collectives. In this
article, dialogical teaching is conceptualized as a kind of practice, articulating
standards of democratic dialogue, thinking, listening and care, situated and per-
formed in a singular collective, our PhD course.
In each practice, praxis forms a crucial ethical horizon: the overall process in
which we humans reproduce and develop our conditions and the forms of our lives
and activities. This horizon is important here, not only as the ethical yardstick of
generalization (which is itself continuously developed and contested, not least when
singular practices and collectives are struggling for recognition), but also as the
“universal labor” (allgemeine Arbeit) which, since Marx (1999—revising Hegel’s
concept of “spirit”), has been a way to determine what research is about. Research
is itself a kind of practice, and, just as with other kinds of practice, our ethical and
theoretical goal here is to think about the relations between the particular kind of
practice, i.e., the particular standards, and the overall praxis, which is not just an
abstract category (not just “practice”), but itself a living process. This part of our
argument remains within a Hegelian articulation of the Marxist tradition.
But the opposite movement, that of designating, delimiting, and recognizing sin-
gular practices, as performed by singular collectives, requires a more thoroughgo-
ing development of Marx’ social theory. Singular collectives were never theorized
properly in the Marxist classics, keen as they were to overcome Hegel’s “statism.”
Right from the beginning, Marxism struggled with the often disastrous implications
of how singular collectives (such as states, parties, or families) were constituted,
including, not least, those constituted by Marxists. Only very gradually, a strand of
theory emerged that would suggest concepts to grasp such processes of constitution,
mostly by going back to Hegel’s concept of recognition, and using it to rethink
“ideology.”6 In research, this implies that (a) “rising to the concrete” is not only the
meeting of “theory” with (revolutionary) “practice,” but also the collaboration or
“joint venture” of one (more or less institutionalized but) singular practice (one of
research) with another (one of, e.g., teaching or social work); this “joint venture” is
then itself a singular, dialogical, or hybrid practice that takes up standards (general-
izations) as “references” and transforms them by so doing; and (b) individual and
collective agent-subjects are engaged in struggles for recognition through which
they are constituted as self-reflecting subjects, mediated by the standards or gener-
alities that are referenced and transformed in these “ideological” processes to which
research contributes.
exts and Model Artifacts as Technology and References

T
in Situated Generalization
The second issue concerns how to think of texts and other artifacts as mediators and
co-constructors of knowledge. It is the “new materialism” and “actor-network”
approaches in science studies that have generally explored the implications of tech-
nologies as not simply means to the ends given by human agents, but as carrying
material constraints and as co-configuring ends. Although this materialism was
6
For example, Žižek (2004), Balibar (2016), and Højrup (2003). In GSCP, the problem was
addressed to some extent in Dreier’s work on local action contexts (Dreier 2008), and the works of
Wolf Haug and colleagues on ideology (Haug 1979).
already implied in Hegel’s “cunning of reason” and Marx’ dialectics of the forces
and relations of production, the Modernism inherent to Marxism often occluded the
most radical implications, especially when these apply to social science itself. These
were not least pertinent to the understanding of text. Reflecting text as a technology
implies a historically situated conception of meaning as continuously reconstructed
with signs or signifying artifacts. This means taking seriously the genealogies of
discourse, and it means working on texts in an affirmative or immanent critique that
deconstructs them and rearticulates their contradictory tendencies as relevant to
contemporary problematics. It also means widening the field of “discourse” to all
those model artifacts that embody meaning. This includes of course those that are
specialized as signs and thus require but also potentially transform conventions, the
“tertiary artifacts” in Wartofsky’s term (1979), such as text or money. But it also
includes the more general interchange of enactment and display in performance, as
this evolves into and mediates through the processes of subjectification and objecti-
fication that characterize human practices. These aspects of texts (and other inscrip-
tion devices or technologies) are often ignored in the traditional methodologies that
standardize (even qualitative) research; but they become relevant the moment we
endeavor to develop our research through dialogue or “joint ventures” with other
practices. Dialogue calls forth the intertextuality of our texts with a multitude of
other texts written in other genres, as well as with other media of modelling, e.g.,
aesthetic or performative, etc.7
The “industrial” concept of prototype points our attention to how a thing may be
produced as a model for practices of production and practices of use, working in
conjunction with historically emerging infrastructures of blueprints, texts, etc. At
the stage of “prototype,” it is not yet “black-boxed” and separated from the histori-
cal situation of its emergence. It is singular; yet it visibly carries the contested hope
for a wider relevance in a world to come. The singular model artifact suggests a
standard, a generality that is specific, yet ethically deserves a place in the world, in
praxis. At the same time, it thereby mediates and shapes the precarious recognition
of the individuals and collectives who produce it and use it.
Thus, the concept of prototype points to generality as the standards of situated
singular practices and collectives, objectified and recognized with model artifacts
that suggest a wider relevance for other practices and collectives—and on the hori-
zon of praxis. And it points to how such prototypes, mediated by such models, are
taken up as references in other situated singular practices, and reflected and trans-
formed in the process (rather than taken as rules and regulations for reproducing the
practices as putatively identical, as in standardization; cf. Nissen 2016).
7
Cf. e.g., Bakhtin (1988), Martin (2007), Rancière (2013), Smith (2005), Stiegler (2013). In GSCP,
this is first of all taken up in the “memory work” of Frigga Haug and her colleagues (Haug 1999,
2012)—as we shall see.
Rearticulating Teaching as Dialogical
A university post-graduate teaching experiment provides a useful and challenging

case to consider since it is at once (a) a particular kind of practice, a standard real-
ized—and problematized and perhaps transformed—in a singular collective (mod-
elled here for a general relevance), and (b) the performance of research itself.
The problematization of “teaching” standards constituted the collaboration at our
PhD course. Thus, Ana Đorđević, one of the participating PhD students, reflected
about the difference between our dialogical way of teaching and the standards of
teaching she knew from Serbia, in her “Letter to Us”:
How often research is done within the community, where participants’ sayings (sugges-
tions, comments, reflections) are treated equally legitimate? My professors [in Serbia] have
never taken a note while I or other students were speaking. This has left a remark on our
education and our practice as psychologists; we have learned to ask for instructions rather
than think on our own.
By contrast,
This course has given me the opportunity to speak and to think. Because, it matters what do
I have to say, and it matters what everybody says. It matters to “us,” it matters to our
research, to people we are doing research for and for the practice we want to improve or
develop. It is astonishingly liberating to speak and to listen without being evaluated for
what you said or how you understood something. Everything matters.
Ana’s praise is of course welcome, but our reason for quoting it here is that the
rupture she identifies articulates the hope that defines our dialogical teaching experi-
ment as prototypical: that it matters what everybody says, teachers make note of
students’ utterances, and this is related to identifying the community of teachers and
students as one of “research.” In particular, this “astonishing liberation,” this recog-
nition, is connected with no longer asking for instructions, and no longer “being
evaluated.”
Now, this emancipation could be identified as simply “non-scholastic,” as the
emancipation that comes from simply rejecting teaching. In our theoretical tradi-
tions, we have famous examples that many readers take to confirm such a complete
anti- or non-teaching as ideal. Holzkamp used the Pink Floyd song-title “We don’t
need no education” for a provocative critique of the idea of “teaching for peace”
(Holzkamp 1983b); Lave’s “situated learning” ignores teaching almost completely
as relevant to understanding learning; Rancière’s “Ignorant Schoolmaster” (1991);
and Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1996) seem to reject any preexisting
knowledge to be transmitted. Doing away with teaching could then be either thought
as a general utopia (as in Christie 1971), or—more cynically—it could be viewed as
the elitist, scholarly but non-scholastic practices that, for a tiny minority (e.g., at
PhD courses: “master classes”), may become accessible after decades at school.
But that is not how we suggest to see it—and it would not be a very deep or pro-
ductive way to read those theories. Rather, what we propose is a rearticulation and
a reconfiguration of teaching as a version of “the education of educators.” More
precisely, inspired by these references and others we can articulate dialogical teach-
ing as the democratic reappropriation of standards that have been institutionalized

as knowledge: their reassertion, resituation, and development as prototypes.
In this way of thinking, a recognition of participants is attempted, at two levels.
The first and easiest is the acknowledgement of the learning subject who does not
simply copy or assimilate knowledge but appropriates it as relevant to her own
activities and the sense it makes to her. This level is easy, because, although it con-
tradicts assumptions made almost universally in the institutions of education, in
which we routinely sanction the correct mimicking of knowledge by students, the
psychological recognition of the learning subject has been mainstream educational
psychology at least since Piaget; and the abstract utopia (Bloch 1995) of adapting
teaching to learning is ubiquitous. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this abstrac-
tion. But it is when we rise from this abstraction to the concrete “practice problem-
atic” constituted on the contradiction of this recognition with that sanctioning of
knowledge, that it becomes a richer and more challenging generalization. This is
what addresses the contradictory “practice problematic” of dialogical teaching. And
it takes us to the second level of recognition, and thus to what really distinguishes
the theories mentioned from mainstream cognitive psychologies.
Why do Ana’s teachers never take notes when she and her fellow students speak?
Should they not—having read Piaget or his followers, and doing their job as profes-
sionals—be interested in their speech as expressions of student’s processes of learn-
ing? One way to answer could be to point to the assumptions underlying the
authoritarian structure of educational institutions. Ana’s teachers are only interested
in so far as students’ speech confirms or deviates from the “knowledge” that defines
the teaching as an institutional practice, and it is the students who are responsible
for representing their appropriation of knowledge as if it were a mimicking. Teaching
is usually divided between the examinations in which that responsibility is assumed
and confirmed ritually, as a visible process of submission and subjectification, and
the teaching sessions in which it is then implicitly assumed to be sufficient for
teachers (even teachers who have read Piaget) to present “knowledge.”
Yet, that same division also opens to a tragic utopia to emerge in teaching. For as
long as the “moment of truth” of the examination can be ignored, repressed, or
bracketed, it is possible for the democratic assumption that is also underlying teach-
ing to become visible. The conversations in the classroom can be seen to assume
(ever since Socrates) a certain “equality of intelligence” (Ranciere 1991) between
teachers and students, as students are invited as partners in a dialogue that aims for
everybody to make sense of “knowledge” (cf. also Davies 1990; Haug 2003). This
spark of equality is usually extinguished in the “harsh reality” of the examination.
But this is where our theorists of democratic learning can help us. Not so much as
the suggestion to simply get rid of examinations, but more fundamentally as the
question of how the underlying institutionalization of “knowledge” may be prob-
lematized so that the utopia of a more democratic, dialogic teaching may be gener-
alized in a situated way; with Lave’s words rise from the abstract and be concretized
in a more substantial recognition of participants.
First, the Freirean legacy is to resituate teaching in processes of sociocultural
change and political struggles. This generalizes the issue of relevance, of making
sense of meaning, as common to all participants since co-constitutive of new theo-

ries and new practices. Teachers learn from students because students’ work of
resituating and recontextualizing is not only their individual learning, but at the
same time the production of prototypes. This implies that the “other” practices in
which those prototypes claim a relevance—those other practices in which the stu-
dents participate—are included into the field of vision. This is a crucial point for
constructing a prototype of dialogical teaching: not only for challenging the authori-
tarian structures of the dominant system of teaching, but also for revealing the cre-
ative potential of human relationships in a dialogical space. Second, resituating
knowledge is deconstructing texts; it is unfreezing texts from their status as docu-
ments that objectify the “ruling relations” of sanctioned knowledge (cf. Smith
2005). Certainly, reading them is to reproduce their theories, thus to raise their
abstractions, their germ cell concepts, to the concreteness of practice problematics
(as Dawydow 1973, would have it); but it is also thereby to identify the contradic-
tions implied in those concepts, to reconstruct their precarious relevance, and to
rearticulate their meaning. Third, these are processes in which we are all partici-
pants, as “apprentices to our own changing practice” (Lave 2011: 2), learning
through being granted positions that are recognized, perhaps as legitimately periph-
eral. In these hybrid processes, we all meet on neutral ground and in movement
(Nissen 2015) and create a “boundary community” across different overlapping
communities of practice (Mørck 2006), even if we also keep reenacting positions
that can and should be problematized. Fourth, our performances and products
become the artifacts that objectify and mediate ourselves, that is, our recognition as
individuals and as collectives, partly on yardsticks that are already institutionalized
(e.g., this text counts as a peer-reviewed international publication; the students
received diplomas), but partly also as wagers of new standards. And finally, fifth,
this highlights the performance and the ongoing reconceptualization of care that is
involved, as human cultures and lives are addressed and created anew in the con-
verging ethics of education and of generalization.
In the following, we will attempt to show how these aspects of the prototype of
dialogical teaching, and of situated generalization, play out in our experiment with
“reflecting team” as a way of doing a PhD course.
“ To Think with”: The “Reflecting Team” as Dialogical

Teaching
It is quite common at PhD courses to arrange, in addition to teachers’ lectures, pre-

sentations by students, either of texts that form the syllabus, or of students’ own
projects. The “reflecting team” format led us to revise this form in favor of inter-
views. We have not (yet?) gone as far as to cancel teachers’ lectures altogether—
especially since this is one of the most obvious expectations shared by students as
well as guest teachers—although we have moved in the direction of using the inter-
view format for teacher presentations, too. But the students who present their
research all do it in the format of an interview. More specifically: one teacher has
communicated in advance with the student about her project and possible ways of
presenting it. They decide together roughly which issues will be discussed, and
which materials may be relevant for participants to study in preparation for the ses-
sion, some of which may be useful to present live at the session (e.g., video mate-
rial). At the session, the teacher interviews the student. At certain points, the
interview is interrupted as we shift to the reflecting team, which is the rest of the
participants (students, teachers, and co-researchers). These then discuss the inter-
view among each other, while interviewee and interviewer listen silently. When the
interview is then resumed, it may reflect on issues raised by the reflecting team, but
not address the team directly. No questions and answers!
In our experience, it takes some insistent moderation to discipline this unconven-
tional format. But the interview has the advantages that: (a) the student does not
build up so much anxiety about presenting; (b) the interviewer can modify the pre-
sentation to be more accessible (as representative of the audience), and (c) the ques-
tions represent and perform the theoretical approach as well as its relevance to lived
researcher experience. Further, the point of orchestrating the session on two sepa-
rate discussions (interview and reflecting team) is to highlight reflection and to
avoid the attack-defense sequence of the traditional Q&A.
The Collective Work of Reference Transformation
In the first instance, the process of reference transformation can be said to be clearly
represented. The interview format de-textualizes, resituates, and collectivizes pre-
sentations, that is, it highlights the ways in which the interviewee’s utterances are
continuously reflected as relevant, or in need of clarification, explanation, etc., and
it also performs and demonstrates their double contextualization in the experience,
activities, and projects of both interlocutors. The reflecting team stages and high-
lights the distance of speaking from listening: listeners’ reflections are emphasized
as such and contextualized: it becomes acceptable—in fact, it is encouraged—to
“witness” the interview through one’s own interests.8 Thereby, conversely, the inter-
view is externalized and “exotisized” (e.g., “is that how what I said was heard!”).
This redistribution of responsibilities for what is said and heard works—especially
when it stands out as an unusual conversation format—as a collectivization of
accountability. This, in turn, allows for the collective work of reference transforma-
tion to appear and to be prioritized, the co-construction of models and the various
ways in which it transforms statements taken from the experience in one practice or
from certain texts.
Mille B. Keis, another PhD student participant, explains in her “Letter to Us”:
This is discussed in White’s notion of outsider witnessing (2007).

8
One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the course was the “hacking” of the usual
project presentation format with inspiration from the reflecting team, and it made a differ-
ence to me in several ways in relation to presenting my project. (…) In preparing my pre-
sentation and the accompanying paper, I felt more able to experiment with the format and
purpose. Instead of (the more usual way of) having to present an argument, which would
then be “tested” and discussed, the purpose of this paper felt different. I wanted this particu-
lar paper to provide a starting point for joint conversations, to be an invitation to collabora-
tive thinking instead of a performance of the strength of my approach and argument, and
this shift in purpose created a different kind of space for the exploration of my own ques-
tions, interest and concerns.
Notably, the collectivization of thinking as collaborative does not foreclose Mille’s

intended learning; in her own account, it is in fact quite the opposite: shifting to col-
laborative thinking is what opens the space for her to explore her own questions,
interests, and concerns. This could be because this self-reflection is no longer stan-
dardized, that is, no longer monopolized by the standards of institutional knowl-
edge, no longer preoccupied with being “tested,” with showing “strength,” etc. This
is not because Mille is not worried about academic recognition, but because what is
being “presented,” the models that we create through the conversation and the ways
they relate to the data (Mille showed us a YouTube video) are not models that speak
of her “academic achievements” so much as shared models, and models of how her
academic self could become part of our collaborative research.
Similarly, the distance of the listeners can be seen to have paradoxically facili-
tated a closer encounter:
Listening to the listeners’ thoughts and comments without having to respond directly or
provide an answer enabled me to attend more carefully and think about their comments—it
felt more like a ‘thinking with’, as opposed to a ‘thinking against’ each other. This kind of
response, the ‘thinking with’, created a different atmosphere and made it more possible to
share questions about my project where I feel unsure or worry about something. I think this
‘thinking with’ requires a sense of care or of being cared for, which in turn makes it possible
to expose some of the sore, soft spots in my process (a care I experienced as being present
at the course). A process organized around a ‘thinking against’ would have made a covering
of these soft spots more likely and invited different kinds of responses, maybe resembling
the spiky, defensive encounter between a hedgehog and a dog.
And, in general, Mille concludes:

I experienced the creation of a collective process and a sharing of authority, leaving a more
hierarchical organization. I also just read Ana’s letter to us, and her highlighted words ‘To
speak, to think, to matter, to care’ also really resonated with my sense of what took place at
the course.
Of course, we are not suggesting that simply applying the “reflecting team” as stan-
dard method constitutes a wonderfully democratic revolution of teaching. What we
are doing here is rearticulating the reflective team method as a collective process of
sharing authority, of creating dialogical spaces to listen, to speak, and to think with
each other (as opposed to thinking against each other). Our claim is that such dia-
logical spaces can produce feelings of mattering, of collective care, precisely by
highlighting how the learning of each person unfolds as contributions to a collective
practice of research; in other words, by facilitating a reflective witnessing and co-
configuring of the ongoing processes of objectification and subjectification, which

at once produce research and learning. With this rearticulation, we perform as well
as illustrate the processes of situated generalization, as “teaching” and “reflecting
team” are conceptualized with reference to our theories and to this singular practice
appointed prototypical of a kind of dialogical teaching.
Generalization Through Widening Relevance

and Deconstructing Texts
Generalization is a movement of expansion carried by model artifacts. In dialogical

teaching, this means deconstructing texts and widening their relevance. Let us dis-
cuss a particularly acute issue of relevance that we encountered at our PhD course.
Ana Đorđević’s experience of emancipation at the course cannot be separated
from the Serbian Vergangenheitsbewältigung9 and the struggle to overcome identi-
tarian ideologies in former Yugoslavia in which her research was situated. When her
research was presented and discussed through interview and reflecting team, our
main focus was not the theories and methods of the teachers’ research (the curricu-
lum), nor was it to monitor and guide Ana’s ability to represent that knowledge, or
her application of it. Our focus was Ana’s research as this formed part of under-
standing and transforming the ways that collective and individual identities were
constructed and recent history was written and rewritten in Serbia. We were hoping
that some of the questions and concepts we could derive from references such as
Frigga Haug’s collective memory work, or our own work on collective subjectivity,
might prove relevant; but we also knew that these would be recontextualized and
revised in the process. The Balkan Wars of the 1990s is a challenge to any work on
collective remembering or collective identity, as well as a strong nodal point of its
relevance. After more than two decades, it is still crucial to understand what
happened and how we may learn from it. Further, Ana presented us with the very
contemporary issue of the practices of remembering, for which her own personal
narrative was relevant. She had sent us a document called “Meeting with Sarajevo,”
in which she “walked us through” her first visit to the city, which “turned out to be
the most important personal experience in shaping [her] professional identity.”
The best description of my first impression of Sarajevo is “the city of memory,” “the city of
history.” It took me by surprise to realize how many places in Sarajevo have significance
related to the siege that happened 20 years ago. (…) It was deeply touching and insightful.
The history of Sarajevo, the trauma that the city had survived, has become the core of its
identity. (…) This was also my first experience with the terrors that a group which I belong
to had provoked (I visited this gallery: http://galerija110795.ba/). Even though I have had
some general knowledge about the war in Bosnia, nothing could have prepared me enough
9
German term for the movement of “dealing with the past,” which grew and became significant
from the 1980s and on.
for this meeting.10 It was something between me and my group, something I could not
explain, that goes beyond empathy with the victims. I felt guilt. The insight hit me hard,
when I realized that belonging to a group of Serbs was deeply embedded in my identity, so
deeply that I felt collective guilt for the crimes that were committed by criminals, but in the
name of Serbia, my homeland.
The guilt professed in the document—itself as a feeling of the past, belonging to a

decisive moment in Ana’s development—appears as a problem to be explained.
Ana’s guilt was at once part of the impetus and the object since it seemed to be itself
another expression of the Serbian collective identity that had played such a serious
part in the atrocities. But, although, obviously, Ana did not herself participate in
these atrocities, it was far from obvious that the point was to finally purge her of that
guilt, as an irrational remnant of a tribal part of her identity, in order to welcome her
as a citizen of a universal multicultural community of scholars. The relevance of our
analysis of Ana’s guilt formed part of the Serbian Vergangenheitsbewältigung, in
which it is indeed an option to construct such an opposition; but it is not the only
option, and not the most fruitful one. The point, rather, was to understand “collec-
tive identity” in ways that might help a different kind of self-construction to emerge,
in which Ana’s guilt could be rearticulated as reasonable and as part of a struggle for
constituting political community in new ways. By sharing it as part of her research
and dialogical teaching, personal experiences and feelings matter; they become
legitimate parts of reflective dialogical teaching and research that we all can learn
from, just like when Frigga and Emily performed their personal and lived experi-
ences, and self-representations in their dialogical presentations of their research
(Fig. 11.1).
Ana’s guilt pointed to an urgent current issue that, as such, highlights a universal
aspect of praxis, present in any particular practice, and, thus, an aspect of general-
ization: its situated and contentious historicity. When conventional forms of (uni-
versity) teaching neglect this aspect in the interest of reproducing knowledge, it
becomes a problem of “transfer.” But situated generalization is never simply trans-
fer. It is a reflection of the fact that we are engaged in (“micro”) practices that
always already form part of (“macro”) movements and struggles. With the “reflect-
ing team” format of dialogical teaching, it became easier to see, in this case, that we
were and are all, through or self-presentations—even if only for a while—partici-
pants in developing prototypes for engaging with the burning contemporary issue of
identity politics.
Ana had forwarded an article from her field using concepts from Moscovici’s
social representation theory, Tajfel’s social identity, Middleton’s collective remem-
bering, and Bruner’s narrative psychology (Kuzmanic 2008)—references that were
more or less known to teachers and other participants, and which seemed well-
chosen for the issue. The intertextual relations between those theories, and the theo-
ries that we read together at the course, were only reflected and developed in
For example, see (October, 2018): https://www.google.rs/search?q=Ron+Haviv&espv=2&sourc

10
e=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW3ui9xLXTAhXGnBoKHbeMATgQ_AUIBigB&bi
w=1600&bih=721#tbm=isch&q=Ron+Haviv+Bosnia.
Fig. 11.1 Watch the Sniper
glimpses. It may well have been useful to pursue this more than we did. But, in any
case, from the beginning, the widening of relevance which resulted from engaging
with Ana’s project as something more than a case of application of the course syl-
labus, also revealed the limitations of that syllabus. The question was not so much
whether Ana was able to use our texts for her case, but rather, whether and how our
texts could contribute to Ana’s project. This meant that they were inserted into a
landscape of other relevant texts.
Of course, the syllabus was the sanctioned set of textual artifacts carrying and
signifying the knowledge that institutionally defined our course. We teachers were
accountable as custodians of that knowledge, overseers of the correct reading of the
syllabus. It might then seem a reasonable expectation that our “teaching” should
inform students how we intended to sanction their reading as correct.
By contrast, the reflecting team stages conversations in which the interlocutors
are all positioned at a distance to syllabus and other texts. What participants say may
refer to texts (among other artifacts, experiences, etc.), but the interview and the
reflections situate those texts as references deployed when relevant; and referencing
does not assume an identity but designate tools and objects for a collective under-
standing in which we are equally participants.
The widening of relevance, however, does not mean that texts are endlessly mal-
leable to diverse purposes. Far from it, when we refer to “deconstruction”—sug-
gesting a continuity of (this version of) dialectics with Derrida’s approach to
theory11—we assert the (at least potential) relevance of theoretical work.
11
Derrida’s objections to dialectics were primarily to its institutionalized form and the sanctifica-
tion of certain teleologies it seemed to him to imply. Cf. Jameson (2009). Incidentally, Haug
(1999) also referred to deconstruction, albeit without explicitly mentioning Derrida.
Deconstruction can be taken as a term to signify that theoretical texts construct

contradictions—différances—even as they build coherence and define unitary
meaning. In order to harvest their potentials, they must be deconstructed. This
means, on the one hand, a “symptomal reading” of their timeliness, their intertex-
tual position, their projects and ideological workings, and how these various “func-
tions” are realized in textual form. On the other hand, it means teasing out how their
terms and arguments signify conceptual contradictions to address those “functions,”
and how they displace, multiply, and transform them by so doing.
Thus, the problem of Ana’s guilt pointed to issues of belonging that could raise
questions to aspects of Haug’s texts on memory work. If the concept of “groups” in
Ana’s social psychology references seemed strangely abstracted from concrete
institutions and collectives, this abstractness also casts a light on how Haug (1999)
and her coworkers report on their memory work using the pronoun “we.” The “we”
performs the subject-position of their research as the self-representation and self-
overcoming of a collective of feminists doing “subject-science.” In distinction from
the late Holzkamp’s emphasis on “je Ich”—“each I”—Haug’s “we” insists on a
collective subject of knowing; in that sense, it concurs with the “we” and the episte-
mological position of this text. But it also remains curiously vague in terms of how
it is situated and constituted in relations to the institutions, movements, etc. of its
time, let alone its internal power structures. For instance, can Haug’s references to
Gramsci’s notion of the “organic intellectual” be taken to suggest a relevance for
German feminism in the 1980s of a prototype from the Italian labor movement of
the 1920s—even though the memory workers were all intellectuals, whose main
project was in fact a major expansion of the Marxism of (pre-WW2) labor move-
ments? If they can, how does this imply a transformation of the concept itself?
Thus, in short, generalization can be said to be achieved through the contradic-
tory unity of widening relevance and deconstructing texts.
Movements and Artifacts on Neutral Grounds
In her “Letter to us,” Frigga explained

how much the individual cases touched me, even if I had no experience in the same field,
how committed everyone listened and composed new and without difficulty formed a
reflecting team, that is, turned from listeners of everyday questions into research compan-
ions for a generally better result, thus turning an individual into a collective problem […]
that then loses its boring or irresolvable character, because together we realize that they are
ours and that what matters is that we move together to change something.
Moving together to change things is, however, itself a complex, contradictory, medi-
ated, and mobile process. At the course, most—if at no single point all—of us were
gathered and present in a room, focusing on matters of self-representation and self-
exposure in research, matters which were present in the form of verbal utterances,
power point slides, videos, texts (and even in one case as tattoo and tight muscles).
The distribution of positions—central or peripheral, or simply talking or listening,
etc.—could, to some extent, be witnessed directly as immediate presence. The

reflecting team was a form we used to orchestrate and modify that immediate activ-
ity and the collective we made of it. This helped us both see and perform the “edu-
cating of the educators” as research companions, for instance, when Frigga Haug
learned about—and contributed to rearticulating—the problems of gang exit in
Mørck and Celosse-Andersen’s case (Mørck and Celosse-Andersen in press), or
when Mille Keis, on the background of her experience with narrative counselling,
changed her role from student to instructor for the writing of “Letters to Us.”
Yet for the real movement of generalization to be detectable, we must zoom out.
Not by imagining people transferring and applying mental schemata or standard
procedures, nor simply by acknowledging that people move between places, but by
reinserting our small and momentary—if itself complex—collective of conversa-
tions into wide and long-standing landscapes of practices (within praxis).
Emily Martin was interviewed on (the background of) her Bipolar Expeditions
(2007) and her more recent ethnography of experimental cognitive psychology. We
had emailed her some questions about the distribution of the ir-/rational between
(the social uses of) psychiatry and psychology, and about the relevance of
Wittgenstein’s critique of psychology, which she drew on in her current work. As
Emily had found, this discussion reaches back to the bifurcation of psychology from
anthropology in the early twentieth century. Now it was reconfigured by serving as
reference in the encounter with GSCP—which, in continuity with the Vygotskian
tradition, had kept the same discussion alive in other forms—and also by the empha-
sis on self-presentation at our course. That recontextualization opened to new ques-
tions. In her “Letter to us,” she writes:
When I got the advance questions from Morten and Line it really made me think. The ques-
tions were so challenging I didn’t come with answers, but with questions for them.
Again, the point is not to boast of our “good questions,” but to highlight the ways
that our generalizations established and reflected connections to a collaborative
work on questions that we have in common—a work that stretches far back in time
and have wide implications, but which also constituted our interactions at the course,
reconfigured our positions, and, in turn, transformed those questions and references.
We are not sure how these questions have evolved in Emily’s work since then, but
one good place to look is probably her forthcoming book.
A little further down, she goes on:
As I continue to work on my next book, somehow the course gave me a new procedure,
which is actually a very old-fashioned one. I now have a large cork bulletin board and stick
pins. I am going to think of what I write as ‘snippets’ without worrying about how they fit
together. Then I will print them out on different colors of paper and cut them up and pin
them on the board—just like the cops on TV crime shows do it. Somehow, this feels very
liberating—non-linear production of text where the connections emerge when presented in
another medium. […] [The] course made me appreciate the value of combining different
media and the power of seeing your thoughts materialized in something tangible.
What “somehow” inspired Emily’s way of working on her book was probably not
just our reshuffling of the constellations of artifacts and activities of teaching, but
also our discussions of aesthetics, affectivity, and identity in the projects of Ida B
Lundgaard and Tiyasha Sengupta. Again, our argument is not that Emily was helped
discovering “the great new method” of writing with stick-pins, boards, and colors.
But if we zoom out, we can locate these discussions as part of a broader movement
to which Emily had already contributed, of acknowledging the various materializa-
tions of thought in something tangible (e.g., Martin 2014) as mattering, and as
powerful.
Prompted by Ida Lundgaard and others, we would emphasize that, in the process
of generalization, tangible materials matter beyond embodying a pre-formed
thought. When standards are materialized as models, rather than as thought, they are
challenged, constrained, and expanded by the material and sensuous qualities and
requirements of the model itself.
Ida writes in her “Letter to Us”:
I am thinking of how I write, and that I find it difficult to make a linear structure. That I
prefer to think of my writing as a lump of clay I form with my hands. That I start throwing
a casual raw lump at the table and then I start to model and shape; that this is the way I
prefer to work on shaping new thoughts.
Her metaphor at once performs and addresses the way that even text, as material
artifact, carries this aesthetic quality of speaking to us sensuously, more than what
we thought we had written. Using Rancière’s concept of the “aesthetic regime”
(2013), we can thus appreciate how prototyping is a work on “distributions of the
sensible,” of shaping neutral ground as “dissensus” between clashing regimes of
sense, and thus forming “boundary community” (Mørck 2010), through the rela-
tional aesthetics of artworks that work as “invitations to live in a shared world”
(Bourriaud et al. 2002).
Recognizing Ourselves
Are the power differentials in academia present when, in the previous section, we
make sure to quote the most famous participants as reporting how they, too, learnt
from this? Of course they are. We can’t dream away power differences and struc-
tures; but we can work on them. Part of how we do this is through constructing
ourselves collectively and individually. Above, you can directly see these power
flows in play since this text is itself among the artifacts that mediate and co-
construct them.
Our main point is democratic in the Rancièrian sense (1999) that we are trying to
rearticulate teaching in a way that recognizes students as equals in the premises and
processes, and not just the end results, of the practice. Those who were before
counted in as learners to be monitored and assessed, but counted out as co-producers
and assessors of knowledge, are now re-articulated as the “true people,” the agent-
subjects of “moving together to change things.” Nous sommes tou(te)s étudiant(e)
s12: we all identify as “students” (or, with Lave 2011, as “apprentices”). As such, we
are all emancipators of this more general and more promising collective practice of
prototyping.
This text is itself written as a bid for such recognition. If it is not just another
fetishized bit of knowledge, neither is it simply an expression of an emancipation
already accomplished. It is an argument, a move in a negotiation, a political inter-
vention: “Politics is the art of warped deductions and mixed identities. It is the art
of the local and singular construction of cases of universality” (Rancière 1999: 139).
What we want to accomplish through your reading is thus a Verallgemeinerung,
generalizing in the above-mentioned, at once epistemological and ethical sense.
That is a precarious struggle, since we are doing this within the academic institu-
tions, which are still—and, with New Public Management, even increasingly—
largely structured in the ideology of reproducing sanctioned knowledge.
In her “Letter to Us”, Mille Keis described how this distributed sense of knowl-
edge and shared authority resonated
…with a more general concern about the importance of care and mattering, which has
grown out of various encounters, where I have sensed or felt the effects of the presence/
absence of care and mattering. Some of these experiences have been vicarious, e.g. through
reading the works of Annemarie Mol, Carol Gilligan and Sara Ahmed, whose works all
contain a contagious curiosity about people, practices and power relations. At the same
time, their works contain a sensitivity to what might “dull” this curiosity, to what might
make it more difficult to see, listen and learn from ourselves and each other, and how we
might resist this process of “dulling”, both in our research processes and in life. An example
of this is the Listening guide developed by Carol Gilligan, which “…tunes our ear to the
multiplicity of voices that speak within and around us, including voices that speak at the
margins and those which in the absence of resonance or response, tend to be held in
silence” (Gilligan 2011).
Quoting Mille Keis quoting Gilligan is a way of recognizing her as academic par-
ticipant. Our writing of letters—on Mille’ suggestion and under her instructions—
was a deliberate form of self-presentation. Like in auto-ethnography (Ellis 2004)
and feminist standpoint theory (Harding 2003), presenting (and thus “objectifying”)
the individual self, even with its flaws and dullnesses, does not generalize by diag-
nosing pathology, but by struggling for a more inclusive recognition of human lives.
The individual case is then an expansion of the prototype, rather than idiosyncrasies
to be weeded out.
Thus, our own (the authors’) Letters to Us were both concerned with our bad
conscience about not being quite able to appreciate the richness of the course we
were supposed to run. Morten complained of “not knowing people well enough”
and even: “I always scratch surfaces”; Line wrote of her “feeling of stress [that] was
mainly connected to the chronic feeling of being behind in [her] academic research
life.” But our main narratives were both of excitement and relief. The superficial
generalizing transfer, which always threatens to substitute for a proper process of
12
That is “We are all students.” Nowadays people know this move from the “Je suis Charlie” and
later “Me Too” movements. Rancière (1999) discusses the call “We are all German Jews” in the
student movement of May 1968 in France.
prototyping, could have been held up as personal shortcomings or errors (inducing

further stress). Instead, they were recognized as pressures on how academic every-
day life is presently organized. The self-presenting narratives of the other Letters to
Us revealed in similar ways this process of generalizing by objectifying feelings as
expressions of the recognition of participants as the students that we all are.
However, beyond Rancière’s focus we should note how such a recognition is also
an interpellation and thus a subjectification as participant of an emerging collective.
This text models and seeks recognition also of “us,” of the singular collective con-
structed at our PhD course, in a specific form which is not least characterized by the
power differentials implied in authorship. Although of course this collective is—and
here recognizes itself as—complex, emergent, and contradictory, it inevitably also
constructs a unity. If nothing else, you, the reader, must approach this text herme-
neutically, by moving between the whole and the parts of the argument, assuming
some coherence here to be found (even if you then go on to deconstruct). To the
extent that this text still, or again, works to model and revive “us,” it both performs
and designates “us”—the singular “we” who move together as a way of teaching—
in a way that should be reflected and problematized. Rancière moves beyond
Foucault’s negative ethics of “refusing what we are,” since, although such dis-
identification is crucial (we are no longer traditional teachers, we are all “students”),
it is itself a particular construction of a generality that is both a (negative) form of
the empty equality of “the people” and given a particular (positive) form in the
struggle. We then propose one more step in which we seek to identify the place of
that form in the constitution of an emancipatory collective. The point is, this should
itself be reflected as an “ideological” form, as a form of discourse that reproduces
collectives and participants by making their “common sense”—even if it sees itself
as ever so emancipatory and ethical. Reflecting is already problematizing, decon-
structing. It assumes the form of open-ended questions. Thus, are we proposing a
sense in which Mille’s preoccupation with Mol, Gilligan, and Ahmed should be
subsumed to our project of articulating Derrida as contributing to dialectics as an
epistemology of practice? If so, how does this interpellation of Mille also challenge
and expand our project and thus our collective?
Generalization as Ethics: The Presence of Care
This takes us to the conclusion of our argument. Echoing and referencing Ana’s let-
ter, Mille writes of sensing or feeling the effects of the presence/absence of care and
mattering. Listening to marginal voices within and around us is a struggle for rec-
ognition in which self-presentation forms a part; but this is also a rearticulation and
a performance of care that can be felt.
In our reading, care is the core concern of the “reflecting team” we have tried to
learn from, much more than the technicalities of conversation formats. In general,
we suggest this as an important ethical aspect of how to read and rearticulate meth-
ods of social work.
The concept of care itself is complex and rich. The idea that we all basically
strive and struggle for agency through participation in praxis (Handlungsfähigkeit)
derived ultimately from the Spinozan legacy in the Marxist tradition taken up in
GSCP. This implied a notion of praxis as “Vor-Sorge,” a proactive care for our con-
ditions of life. It is quite possible that the phenomenological influence (on the late
Holzkamp and thus many of his followers) has tended later to push GSCP ethics in
the direction of an emphasis on individual autonomy, and that this is connected with
thinking of generalization more narrowly as communicative representations of the
“first person perspectives” of individual subjects. Our emphasis rather on general-
ization as prototypes is connected with an emphasis on care and ethics as collec-
tively and politically, contentiously constructed (cf. also Mørck in press, Nissen
2009b). Mørck (in press) argues for a social practice ethics, where we as researchers
reflect the implications of research practice for the involved and reflect how it makes
a difference in the world, especially in relation to processes of humanization of
people from the margins. Recent scholars such as Mol (2008), Stengers (2010),
Raffnsøe (2017), and Stiegler (2010) are also useful references here, not least when
we include the ecological dimensions of the relations of mutual presupposition
between praxis and life more broadly.
In the school, care (for “well-being,” moral education, etc.) has always been
present as concern, even if increasingly external to the core practice of teaching.
The more knowledge is decontextualized, the less it appears integrated in cultures
and ways of living. A certain style of writing, posture, etc. is no longer as integral to
performing the habitus of an educated class as when Bourdieu wrote his famous
“Distinction” (1984). This development has formed part of a precarious democrati-
zation of education, but it has also marginalized and psychologized care, separated
it from learning. Rearticulating teaching as dialogical is reconnecting it to praxis
and to lives, thereby generalizing its scope beyond the growing gap between tech-
nology and existence.
The institutionalized ethics of research, which we know from university ethical
boards, also suffer from the same externality. The various formalized procedures in
which the rights of its various stakeholders (authors, sponsors, subjects, users) are
inscribed have little to do with the content of research and its generalizations, as if
that were itself without implications. A more substantial kind of research ethics
evolves from aligning with social movements that challenge and co-create knowl-
edge itself by involving (recruiting, recognizing, interpellating, and caring for) mar-
ginalized voices (Thorgaard 2010). We tried to perform this at the course by
involving our multi-positioned co-researchers in the sessions that dealt with our
own research projects, in order to display, enact, and problematize them as joint
ventures.
The view of situated generalization that we propose implies that to generalize is
to assume and perform ethical standpoints. Each time a prototype suggests its
expanded relevance, on the horizon of praxis, new marginal voices are heard, new
communities imagined, and participants from the margins are invited to change
position. By the same token, ethics is situated, meaning it must be reconstructed
each time. The dialectics we take up as an epistemology of practice only arrives at
the teleology of its self-overcoming movement by reflecting on itself (as “revolu-

tionary practice”), in what Jensen (1999) calls a “philosophy just in time.” Perhaps
the most radical generalization is the one that urges us to recognize non-human
“voices” (Stengers 2010), not—in our reading, at least—as the claim that all things
should be granted subjectivity, but rather as the care that reflects how things matter
beyond who we think we are. Ecological sustainability requires us to include in our
cosmopolitics the ways in which our reconstitutions of “us,” our “self-changes,” are
mediated through matters and concerns that situate our lives in a material world we
wish to sustain. This ecological expansion is thus a key aspect of situated general-
ization: the ongoing movements between practice and life, between articulating
standard and standpoint (Nissen 2016), that can lead to a re-cultivation of the social
technologies implied in or performed through our (even ever so “humanistic”) con-
cepts. Such cultivation does not elevate concerns and care to abstract-universal prin-
ciples; it is itself a sociocultural individuation, a construction of
singular-but-generalizing prototypes, and with it, “we” care for “us” and for each
other in ways and by routes we explore by walking them.13 This is why it can be
felt—as the open-ended affectivity of a liminal encounter (Stenner 2018)—in the
same moment that it reaches beyond the concerns of the particular practice and its
specific standards.
It is our—deeply felt—hope that our experiment with the “reflecting team” as a
way of doing a PhD course, through the prototypical model of dialogical teaching
we have made of it here, may not only inspire readers to do something similar, but
help you reflect on the singular circumstances and traditions that situated what we
did with countless differences from your situation; and even that it may become one
small path per aspera ad astra, one more venue for the blues hope of recultivation
of a university that currently suffers so greatly from governance by meaningless
standards (Stiegler 2015).
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Chapter 12
Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical
Strategies of Situated Generalization
in Psychological Research
Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube
Generalization is a key process of any scientific activity. It turns explorative activi-

ties into scientific investigations by engaging in overcoming one-sided, distorted
ways of thinking and enables us to develop sound knowledge. However, it is not just
a process within the sciences. It can be found anywhere in human life. Generalization
is a process which permeates the entire practice of everyday living. Although so all
around, it seems to be a quite mysterious process. The writings on the topic are often
heavy reading; abstract, hard to follow, moving around in their own epistemic
universe and not long after the first strenuous sentences, one does not feel like
reading on. That is a pity because generalization is a crucial activity for any viable
human life and can be a fascinating process. Generalization is about discovering,
imagining, understanding, and transforming the world and, within psychological
science, it refers to oneself and others, and to the world of our experiences, actions,
and their implications.
To a certain extent, the difficulty lies in the nature of things. Generalization is not
a fixed procedure, but an ongoing process you have to rethink continuously,
depending on the phenomenon, the content, and subject matter of the investigation.
There is no one-way, solid path of scientific generalization. Again and again, we are
entering unknown territory in which we have to find our own new path. That is
difficult and challenging.
However, there are also a few basic principles, analytical strategies, which can
guide the process of generalization so that we may find the path easier and more
secure. This is what this chapter is about, with focus on psychological research.
Since the process of generalization depends on the problem and subject matter of
the investigation, generalization works quite differently in psychology than for
P. Busch-Jensen · E. Schraube (*)

Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology,
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
e-mail: peterbj@ruc.dk; schraube@ruc.dk

222 P. Busch-Jensen and E. Schraube
example in biology, physics, sociology, or anthropology, even if there are definitely

similarities.
Generalization is a human act. More precisely, an act of thought and transforma-
tion. It is about thinking things through their internal relations, a process of gaining
knowledge and elucidating the world, including human life. Generalization is con-
cerned not just with itself. It is not just a question of how to achieve to work scien-
tifically, but it is related to the questions and problems in the world and to
understanding and dealing with them in a more accurate, careful, and deliberate
way. It is a process engaged in expanding human agency and forming future society.
Generalization in psychology refers to the world of the psyche, to phenomena
such as experience, emotion, thought, and action. Psychology is quite a new
discipline and up to now, it does not agree on a common scientific conception of the
psyche. However, there are good arguments in favor of understanding psychological
processes as characterized by a few common distinctive features. Each human being
is unique. In psychological research, we are irrefutably confronted with the
singularity of each human being which distinguishes him/her from all others.
Furthermore, human beings live their lives in the world, a life which is in constant
change. A convincing conception of the psychological processes therefore builds on
the subjectivity, contextuality, and processuality of psychological phenomena. As
Jaan Valsiner emphasizes: “We need to come to terms with the uneasy recognition
that it is the personally unique subjectivity that is objective in psychology” (2014: 6).
The central question of psychological generalization is therefore: How can we
achieve generalization, objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the
uniqueness, individuality, and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena?
This question is at the center of this chapter and we want to show in particular how
psychological generalization on the basis of the subjective givenness of psychological
phenomena can be done.
At first view, the question may sound like an unsolvable contradiction. However,
as soon as we realize that humans are social beings, living together with others in a
shared, common world, a possible way to work with the contradiction emerges. The
general world is part of the particular human being and the particular human being
is part of the general world. Accordingly, the world resonates in the individual
subject. As the philosopher Günther Anders explains:
As everybody else, I am a barometer, from which I can read, in fact permanently, the
weather condition of our time. I repeat: Everybody is such a barometer. Everybody carries,
by the fact of her/his existence, around a piece of the present world, free available material,
from which she/he can always draw, not so much to recognize him/herself, but rather the
world of today and the world she/he is together with . . . All yours, all what can happen to
all of you, can also happen to me; all your possible reactions or deficits of reactions can be
read from me – in short: who is looking into oneself is also finding the others and the world.
(1965: 75, translation by the authors)
We build on a notion of psychological generalization which does not abstract away

human subjectivity and difference but understands it as different manifestations of
the same relationship. Based on such a conception of situated generalization, we
present a variety of basic analytical strategies of zooming in to zoom out, and of
12 Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical Strategies of Situated Generalization… 223
zooming out to zoom in. Before we elaborate on these strategies, we take a critical
look at different forms of scientific generalization and describe in more detail
common features of psychological processes and the specific challenges of situated
generalization within psychological research.
rom Thinking in Frequency to Situated Knowledge: Typical

F
Forms of Scientific Generalization
Because we live our everyday life together with others in a shared world, general-
ization and the internal relationship between the subjective and objective, the par-
ticular and general, are inherent aspects of everyday life: talking, thinking, acting,
living. Cooking for a group of friends, for example, involves a generalized way of
thinking about our friends. Such as, how many will come? What might they enjoy
eating? Is there something we should talk about? However, not only the everyday
activities and social relations are entangled in processes of generalization, also the
material objects and technologies in our everyday life are a result of processes of
generalization and embody generalizations. A bicycle, for example, embodies quite
detailed generalized knowledge about the human body and its specific characteris-
tics including general notions about the cyclist as a person and the environment she/
he will bicycle in.
In the practice of everyday living, we do not notice our generalization activities
much. In a way, they are secondary, they only matter if they do not work. If we cook
fish for our friends, for example, and one of our friends does not like fish, we are
confronted with our neglect, the fact that we have not thought carefully enough
about the general food preferences of our friends. The dilemma may be resolved
quite easily by apologizing and, if possible, by changing the practice and trying to
expand the general so that it integrates the particular. The crucial issue of everyday
generalizations is that they work. Whether they build on correct and sound
knowledge might be relevant, but it is secondary. Within scientific generalizations,
it is the other way around. Its central aim is to move from opinions, preconceptions,
and prior knowledge to correct, sound, and socially relevant knowledge. The societal
trust in science builds on the premise that scientific research is taking care of
developing not one-sided, knowledge driven by particular interests, but accurate,
reliable, and general knowledge for the common good.
To achieve this purpose, major forms of scientific generalization build on quan-
titative approaches of generalization in frequencies and the questions of how often
an instance occurs in a given context. Such an approach seems to make perfect sense
because numbers promise accuracy and secure knowledge. The methodological
strategies of frequency generalization build on measuring the phenomena in their
relations and on the idea that generalization is not possible from a single case. This
latter principle refers to the problem of induction and the notion that it is logically
untenable to conclude from a single case to many or all cases (or from unknown to
known, or from particular to general propositions). If, for example, one student in
an educational program suffers from stress, we cannot conclude from the single
student that many or all students in the program suffer from stress as well. Therefore,
the research design is usually based on representative samples which aim to
adequately reflect the population as a whole so that the findings of the sample can
be “generalized” to the population. Within the vision of generalizing in frequencies,
this form of concluding from a representative sample to a more general population,
category, or class is understood as generalization. Major traditions of psychological
research build on frequency generalization as the basis of evidence and the central
practice of developing knowledge and apply it in various forms especially in
classical experimental settings as well as surveys with questionnaires.
The exploration of frequencies can definitely help develop relevant and soci-
etally important knowledge (for instance, about the frequency of stress in a certain
population). However, as a general epistemic approach in psychological research, it
would be too narrow and one-sided. Usually, the results require further and more
in-depth psychological investigation to explore the phenomenon in its relevant
contexts (e.g., why and how persons of a certain population develop stress). An issue
which refers to a fundamental problem of generalization in frequencies: the
methodological strategies do not really fit the nature of psychological phenomena.
Psychological processes are only in a very limited way accessible via numbers. In
fact, epistemic strategies of measuring can reduce and even distort psychological
phenomena beyond recognition and the possibility of grasping human subjectivity,
experience, and action dissolves in thin air.
Since the 1960s, the problem of a too narrow, particular, and fixed conception of
generalization and ways of developing scientific knowledge has been widely
discussed in psychology, including the need for a fundamental epistemic renewal of
psychological research practice (Chimirri and Schraube 2019; Gergen 2015;
Holzkamp 2013b, c; Teo 2009; Valsiner 2019). In response, an epistemological shift
from a god’s eye view toward situated knowledge has crystallized in psychological
theory of science and the understanding of the practice of developing scientific
knowledge. A major line of modern science builds on the assumption that the
researcher, as Svend Brinkmann explains, “is an isolated knower, who stands
outside the world and aims to represent it correctly. True knowledge, on this account,
means correct representation” (2012: 32). Such a representational notion of the
production of knowledge from an external, abstract, and universalist perspective,
disconnected from specific historical and societal relations, is challenged today.
Scholars realize that their research activities and practices of developing knowledge
do not occur in a social vacuum, but are rooted in the world, a world involving other
human beings as well as societal relations, culture, technology, politics, and nature.
They realize that, through their research and production of knowledge, they not only
participate in the creation of the social world, but also view the social world in turn
as affecting their research practices, including their theories, concepts, methodologies
as well as their own thoughts, ideas, and conduct of everyday life (O’Doherty et al.
2019; Schraube 2015; Schraube and Højholt 2019, Chap. 1 in this volume). In the
words of Brinkmann:
Knowing is not something that simply happens – as if we were able to magically represent
the world ‘as it is’ – but rather . . . an activity. Knowing is something people do, as part of
their lives. . . . We need to desacralize knowledge and admit that if knowing is a human
activity, it is always already situated somewhere – in some cultural, historical and social
situation. (2012: 32)
Science studies substantiate this epistemological shift and argue for an understand-
ing of scientific research and the production of knowledge as an inherently worldly
situated, embodied, and socially and culturally constructed process (Knorr Cetina
1999; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Hess 1997). As historian of science Donna
Haraway explains: The “view from above,” the isolated, disconnected, and infinitive
vision is no longer convincing: “Only partial perspective promises objective vision”
(1991: 190). With the term situated generalization, we refer to such an embodied
conception of scientific research practice which roots itself in its internal relations
to the world and in the particular socio-historical contexts, everyday practices and
subjectivities in which the production of knowledge actually unfolds.
If we assume generalization not as a fixed procedure, but as a situated process
dependent on the particular problem, content and subject matter of research, the
question concerning the particular psychological subject matter emerges. Even if
psychology as a science still does not agree on a shared vocabulary of what
psychology is actually about, there are, as mentioned above, well-founded arguments
for a few basic general characteristics of psychological phenomena: they are given
subjectively, exist in context and are in constant change. Since these assumptions
about the general texture of psychological processes are crucial for elaborating
analytical strategies of generalization, we will now take a closer look at them.
eneral Dimensions of Human Subjectivity and Challenges

G
of Situated Generalization
Psychological phenomena, such as experience, emotion, thought, and action, are

given in a specific form of existence: subjective and first-person. On the one hand,
human experiencing, feeling, thinking, acting with and in the world are always
socially and materially mediated processes (through language, others and the social,
cultural, and technological world); on the other hand, they are always someone’s
processes. They exist only from the point of view of a subject that has them, and in
this sense in a subjective, first-person mode (for a detailed discussion of the concept
of subjectivity, see, e.g., Holzkamp 2013c; Schraube 2013; Teo 2017; Zahavi 2008).
Therefore, the personally unique subjectivity is objective in psychology, and we
have to come to terms with it as the foundation of our processes of generalization
and developing knowledge.
The conception of persons and their psychological processes as active subjects is
not new in psychology. From the very beginning as an academic discipline, we can
find lines of thought describing the active human subject and its experience in
relation to other human subjects in the world as the basic subject matter of
psychology (e.g., John Dewey, William Stern, Wilhelm Wundt). During the twentieth
century, psychologists increasingly realized that persons as active subjects are not
just experiencing subjects, living in a world, but also acting subjects, making their
own world on the basis of their experience and action, who in turn are re-making
themselves. They realized that human subjects live in a society created by humans
and, based on systematic analyses, they described how psychological processes
unfold in everyday context and how the investigation of the various layers of the
internal relationship between subjectivity and society is crucial for developing
psychological knowledge and for understanding human experience and action,
including its implications (e.g., Gergen 2009; Harré 1979; Holzkamp 1983, 2013a;
Leontyev 1981; Vygotzky 1978). Generalization in this perspective involves both a
reflection on how we as active human subjects participate in creating the world as
well as a reflection on what this world means for us, for our subjectivity and agency.
Furthermore, they realized that human subjects are situated not only in space but
also in time. They are societal, but also historical beings. As living beings, human
subjects and psychological phenomena are in constant change. “I” am never the
same. For instance, “my” experience of something in this moment is different from
“my” experience 5 min ago. As Valsiner emphasizes:
Psychological phenomena are transient. A thought crosses my mind (and vanishes), I feel
happy at the sight of a beautiful scene, and so on. Here is the problem – which is also the
solution – the psyche is profoundly constructive. It cannot simply repeat what has been expe-
rienced before – it necessarily adds a new nuance of the novel moment. Consequently, it
created many different forms of thinking and feeling, all of which may disappear. (2014: 8)
Because psychological processes are constantly in flux, we are confronted in our

research with the challenge to grasp the phenomena not only in their unique,
subjective givenness as well as their internal relationship to others and the social
world, but also in their constant socio-historical processes of change.
Acknowledging the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of both the researcher and
the research persons entails that the researcher is not separated from the research
process. On the contrary, the researcher as a subject is affected by his/her own
research. The intersubjective mode of psychological inquiry implies that not only
the subjectivity of the others, but also the subjectivity of the researcher has to be
involved and can be seen as part of the empirical material to be examined. In this
sense, psychology as a science of subjectivity develops theories and methodologies
not about others, but for “us” in the sense of the “common good.” The aim is to
clarify and constructively work with conflictual experience, agency, and the practice
of everyday living.
Since psychological phenomena are given subjectively, psychological general-
ization is only possible from and through single cases. Hence, we must expand the
conception of generalization toward a qualitative stance. As Valsiner explains:
instance – each and every new experience – within the life space of the single case. . . .
While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we operate through general
principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments . . . Generality is in singu-
larity. (2015: 233)
Psychological processes are subjective, particular, and unique, but at the same time
recognizable. Through my personal experience, I am connected with other people in
real terms because experiences relate in their general dimensions to the objective
world and its fabric of possibilities, limits, and problems for our actions (Dreier
2007). In such an intersubjective context of experience, subjective experience
becomes objectifiable and generalizable as individual ways of participating, dealing
with and realizing societal possibilities and limits of experience and action.
However, since we are not able to see immediately how subjective everyday
experiences relate to general societal possibilities and limits of action, the task of
psychology as a science is precisely to analyze this internal relationship and to
carefully trace the phenomena in their connections.
Taking point of departure in specific problems, questions, and dilemmas in
everyday experience, situated generalization is a world-oriented way of reflection.
It is an ongoing process of shedding light on human experience and actions (and
their implications) in their connections as a way of analyzing, working with, and
bringing movement into the problems and practices. It is a process not just oriented
to persons but to the world, and what the world in its relevant aspects means for
human experience, action, and conduct of everyday life.
We are now prepared to return to our question of how to achieve generalization,
objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the uniqueness, individuality,
and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena. Situated psychological
generalization attains scientific objectivity not by disarticulating the subjective
dimension of human life, but rather through the generalization of the subjective.
Zooming In to Zoom Out: Zooming Out to Zoom In
Situated generalization is a scientific activity which permeates the whole research

process. Starting from the questions, concerns, and problem-formulation of the
research project, it includes the development of the theoretical and methodological
framework, the concepts, methods, and collection of material the investigation is
based on the empirical exploration, analysis, and interpretation as well as the
presentation and discussion of the produced knowledge and insight. In all these
elements, the question concerning the particular and the general is at stake including
the concern to overcome one-sided and distorted ways of thinking. The
epistemological principles and analytical strategies of the generalization activity
depend on the specific content and element of the research process. However, we
can identify a basic two-sided analytical movement relevant for the whole process
of psychological inquiry: Zooming in to zoom out and zooming out to zoom in. This
methodological imagery refers to two fundamental analytical dimensions of the
research process. First, a phenographic dimension which includes a detailed
description of the phenomenon (therefore phenographic) and second, a

phenoconstructive dimension which includes a critical, constructive, and trans-
descriptive analysis of the phenomenon. The imagery does not point to separate
ontological entities, but articulates analytical movements, both based on a notion of
the particular and the general (such as subjectivity and context, agency, and
structure) as inextricably interwoven. Thus, the difference between zooming out to
zoom in and zooming in to zoom out merely concerns differences in what aspects are
analytically foregrounded and/or bracketed. Zooming in zooming out intends to
transcend separating, detaching, isolating, and dividing scientific research practices
and aims to understand the psychological phenomena in its relevant connections. It
is an imagery which invites us to consider the generated knowledge as sound and
trustworthy, but always as partial, as valid, but never as final or universal.
Zooming Out to Zoom In on Human Subjectivity and Agency
Based on an understanding of human subjectivity as contextual and situated in the

world, the imagery zooming out to zoom in transgresses individualistic narratives
such as “subjectivity-is-inside” and corresponding visions of looking inside people
and suggests to investigate psychological phenomena by looking with people and
around them. We will explain this analytical movement now in more detail.
Imagine you are reading the local newspaper. On the front page is a story about
a local school teacher, who has just been caught producing and selling hard drugs in
your neighborhood. If for a moment you were to feel a sense of outrage and mumble
“Good thing they caught the bastard,” it would not raise many eyebrows. Even so,
that very same evening you might watch an episode of the TV series, Breaking Bad,
and hold your breath, when Walter White, a chemistry teacher producing and
distributing hard drugs in his neighborhood, is almost caught by the police, and
gives a sigh of relief, when he escapes.
The difference between these radically different responses to a relatively similar
phenomenon is not only remarkable, it is also highly interesting. And even though
you might not have seen Breaking Bad, the point of the example is surely familiar.
TV series, movies, stage plays, novels, etc. invite us to perceive the actions portrayed
from the perspective of the acting subjects, and somehow this tend to make a huge
difference in the way we perceive things: our judgments, sympathies, worries, and
excitements. This is also why a movie might end with a seemingly trivial action like
someone doing the dishes. However, this particular dishwashing incident provoke a
tear in our eye. From watching the movie, we know that it is saturated with meaning
and communicate a complex story of, for example, personal redemption and self-
recovery, a chance to return to life after a great loss, sorrow, tragedy, or illness.
Social phenomena that might seem trivial, strange, or even indefensible from an
isolated and detached perspective, often transform into something more complex,
important, recognizable, and understandable, when we are invited to see how it is
actually lived, felt, made sense of, and accomplished by three-dimensional human
beings engaged in their everyday life. Therefore, whether law-abiding hero or

hardened criminal, the protagonist of stories usually gains our sympathy.
We can see here how engaging in first-person experience and action embodies a
quality that in radical ways differs from more detached observational perspectives.
This quality seems to be related to a basic theoretical principle in the creation of art:
the art of mimesis. The origin Greek term means “imitation” (though in the sense of
re-presentation rather than of copying). Plato and Aristotle mainly spoke of mimesis
as the re-presentation of nature. TV series, movies, stage plays, novels, etc. allow us
to do the same with human existence: they provide us with an opportunity to
“imitate” the life of others, by walking, for a while, in someone else’s shoes.
Interestingly, this opportunity—to see the world from other people’s perspectives—
tends to enable understanding and even affection with people, whose life we do not
know about, and whose actions we might otherwise find strange or wrong. The
active ingredient, in fact, is the opportunity to see likeness in the otherness. Within
the relationship of likeness and otherness, we can find a central dimension of the
question of how the particular is related to the general.
Even though most of us cannot imagine ever marrying our mother, or killing our
beloved, Shakespeare and Homer offered literary journeys that slowly turned such
incomprehensible deeds into comprehensible outcomes of reasonable human
activity. The tragic fates of Othello and Oedipus were thus stories of a wider human
tragedy; namely the fact that the intent to do right and good is not a safeguard to
wrongdoing. As Zach Beckstead, Kenneth Cabell, and Jaan Valsiner note: “Great
novelists who describe the dramas in the lives of their invented characters – always
particular single cases! – are appreciated precisely because they intuitively trigger
generalization tendencies in their readers” (2009: 66).
Like numerous works of art, Shakespeare and Homer turned something appar-
ently inhuman into parts of human reality by making the reader suddenly contem-
plate if—in the same situation and life circumstances—he or she might not, in fact,
have done the same. The underlying story is about human subjectivity and how,
even in its most particular forms, it relates to more general dimensions of human
existence, namely generally recognizable reasons for action, pertaining to recogniz-
able human dilemmas and concerns. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel once elaborated on this argument when he posed the question Who thinks
abstractly? and noticed: “A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the com-
mon populace, he is nothing but a murderer . . . This is abstract thinking: to see
nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul
all other human essence in him with this simple quality” (1808/1966: 116).
According to Hegel, abstraction from the concrete is in fact an abstraction from
knowledge since most tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and
wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. Real thinking, Hegel therefore argued,
is the movement from the abstract to the concrete.
The philosopher Gilles Deleuze presented a similar argument. “The true opposite
of the concrete is not the abstract, it’s the discrete,” he explained (1978) drawing on
the etymology of these concepts, where the concrete comes from the Latin for
“grown together,” while the discrete comes from the Latin for “separated” (see
Adkins 2016: 353). The point is that to identify the general in the particular, likeness
in the otherness, we must synthesize and connect events and actions, not isolate,
separate, and disconnect them. And to do so, we need to look with people and
around them, rather than on people and inside them.
he Key of Understanding Likeness in Otherness: The Concrete Life

T
in Common
The ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives, experiences, and
actions is crucial. Not only because it tends to turn judgment of persons’ actions into
something less straightforward and thus challenges our propensity to pass easy
judgment and suggest oversimplified solutions to complex problems. But more
importantly, because the ability to relate people’s actions to lived circumstances,
concrete contexts, and recognizable concerns helps us see the situated intelligibility
of human experience and action. Understanding this situated intelligibility enhances
our ability to identify the socio-cultural genesis of problems and the diverse forms
of meaningfulness afforded by our shared reality. It is therefore a key to better
political and scientific solutions, interventions, forms of collaboration, and peaceful
coexistence.
With the concept of the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt describes how our ability
to experience otherness as likeness embodies invaluable qualities for life in common.
When reporting and contemplating the war crime trial against Adolf Eichmann,
Arendt concluded that Eichmann was not an amoral monster. Instead, he seemed to
perform evil deeds without evil intentions, simply because of his “thoughtlessness.”
A thoughtlessness connected precisely to an inability to see the world from other
people’s perspective and its resulting disengagement from the reality of his own
acts. Eichmann “never realized what he was doing,” Arendt wrote, due to an
“inability . . . to think from the standpoint of somebody else” (1963: 56).
Following this argument, one can wonder that it is usually not psychology or
scientific inquiry that challenges us to put ourselves in someone else’s place: to see,
feel, and think about the lived reality of psychological phenomena. Psychological
traditions that focus on individual mental faculties simply have very little to say
about what it is like to be a human being living with specific dilemmas, relationships,
necessities, challenges, and pleasures. Therefore, most of us have learned more
about other cultures, life situations, and the meaning of specific life circumstances
(e.g., what it means to have another age, gender, ethnicity, job, belief, economy,
upbringing, body) from movies and literature, than we have from scientific
psychology. We need to recognize the depth of this illogicality, its vast social
implications and the importance of correcting it (Busch-Jensen 2015b).
The art of mimesis demonstrates that to understand likeness in the otherness, it
is important to contextualize people’s actual sayings, doings, and relations in their
worldly lived reality since doing so enables us to relate human subjectivity in even
its most particular forms to more general dimensions of recognizably human
concerns. These concerns provide reasons for actions and hence make up the
building blocks of the intelligibility of psychological phenomena. It is therefore a

key task and obligation for psychology to identify these concerns and their lived
reality. However, this requires knowledge which is simply not methodologically
obtainable by abstracting away the situated aspects and contextual dimensions of
peoples’ actions in order to excavate a hidden a-contextual essence inside. Instead,
we need a genuine interest in peoples’ own perspectives, experiences, and actions in
relation to the phenomenon under scrutiny and a methodology of differentiation,
contextualization, and synthesis.
In order to zoom in on human agency and subjectivity, we therefore have to zoom
out on the situations, contexts, and relationships people participate in. We have to
study the contexts and situations in which the phenomena emerge, including
people’s engagements, concerns, and aspirations, in short: we have to zooming out
to zoom in.
The Phenographic and Phenoconstructive Dimension of Analysis
To study human subjectivity in its lived reality, the movement of zooming out to
zoom in includes, as mentioned above, a phenographic dimension of the analysis
and a detailed description of the phenomena under investigation. On the basis of a
person’s articulations of their particular standpoints and perspectives, phenography
engages in describing as precisely and completely as possible the particular subject
matter the research project is dealing with. It articulates the composition and
relevant dimensions of the issues at stake in a way so that anybody intensively
concerned with the topic will approve them as appropriate. Since one cannot
immediately see how the subjective, everyday experiences relate to general societal
possibilities and limits of action, dialogue and conversation represents an essential
medium of phenography and route to knowledge in psychological research. With
the words of Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann: “If you want to know how people
understand their world and their lives, why not talk with them?” (2009: xvii).
Talking with people and listening to what they are saying are crucial preconditions
of phenographic formulations. Phenography helps us to develop a common ground
for reflection and provides the material and substance for the further analysis. It
creates the basis for situated generalization by gathering and accumulating pre-
understandings and already familiar knowledge and by explicating relevant
constituents, connections, and contradictions of the phenomenon. With the concept
of phenography, we draw on the work of Klaus Holzkamp. He explains:
Phenography is . . . first and foremost concerned with clarifying and accentuating the rele-
vant dimensions of the subject matter for the purpose of improving intersubjective under-
standing of what we are talking about . . . The phenographic approach is to be distinguished
from the phenomenological approach as a philosophical method. While in “phenomenol-
ogy” – as inaugurated by Husserl and Scheler – philosophical statements . . . are accom-
plished by bracketing the natural worldview and by abstracting gradually and reductively
from everyday contexts, phenography refers to the unreduced reality of human life and
follows no wider objectives than just its descriptive clarification. (1978: 21f, translation by
the authors)
[Phenography] determines to what extent the material will be meagre and trivial or
comprises the wealth of experience and knowledge characterizing the conduct of everyday
life in its manifold relations to the world. Thus, “phenography” is a determining factor in
subject science self-understanding, and the extensive exchange of experiences within the
team of researchers and co-researchers is an indispensable basis for any productive subject
science research. (2013c: 340, translation by the authors)
While the emphasis of the phenographic dimension is on gathering and describing

everyday experience, thought, and action, the emphasis of the phenoconstructive
dimension is on reflexivity and on expanding and deepening the analysis and process
of generalization. It critically reflects on the descriptions, relates relevant theories
and concepts to it and explores more extensively, how the phenomena are connected
and are hanging together in everyday practice. Because of its systematic search for
connections, it refers in particular, as we will describe in a moment, to the movement
of zooming in to zoom out.
Understanding and Hanging-Togetherness
No understanding is just an accidental private happening, it is simultaneously an

expression of an actual worldly phenomena. That is to say, it is simultaneously a
gendered understanding, an economically formed perspective, a culturally embedded
perspective, an understanding from a particular social angle, etc. Furthermore, it is
the understanding of a particular epoch, of “my epoch” (Slunecko 2019: 5). Hence,
a subjective account and perspective does not simply amount to something
subjective. Rather, it constitutes a distinguished observational starting point. It is
“part of the world” in the sense that when people talk about their lives, they are also
talking about the world they and all of us live in.
Peoples’ thoughts, actions, and feelings are grounded in their everyday lived
reality. These reasons are human reasons and thus embody more general qualities.
However, to investigate them, the challenge we face lies in what we understand by
generalization and our inclination to apply the notion that generalization relates to
knowledge about fixed connections between isolated variables. The crucial challenge
and Archimedes point of research into general aspects of human subjectivity are that
the particular in the general, likeness in otherness, does not reveal itself as more or
less fixed connections between isolated variables. It relates to how things hang
together in social practice. As Theodore Schatzki explains: “Sociality . . . designates
the context-forming hanging-togetherness that constitutes human coexistence.”
Participation in such hanging-togetherness is thus what it is for a person to exist in
a condition of sociality (Schatzki 1996: 15). Therefore, the building blocks of
psychological generalization are not information or categorization but understanding
and connectivity.
To return to our initial example with the TV series Breaking Bad. The informa-
tion that Walter White is a man or a chemistry teacher does not explain his choices
and actions. Nor does the information that he is diagnosed with cancer, that he loves
his kids, or that he has no life insurance. There is no generalizable causality between
either of these isolated facts and the actions under scrutiny. Rather, it is the journey
into how these and other particular circumstances hang together in a particular way;
how they make up a particular life situation that makes Walter Whites’ actions
generally recognizable as intelligible and human. To understand human subjectivity,
experience and action therefore requires developing knowledge of the hanging-
togetherness of psychological phenomena (Dreier 2019; Schatzki 2002). What this
means is that psychological generalization is not simply about identifying or
categorizing phenomena as for instance gendered, ethnic, or in other ways structural
by constitution. It is not simply about measuring or listing informational components,
even of highly sophisticated theoretical nature. It is about situating actions in their
complex lived reality.
To make psychological questions, problems, and concerns understandable, we
continuously have to relate to human subjectivity by disclosing the meanings
ascribed by participants to the practice under scrutiny. We have to examine the
relevant details of the practices associated with the problems and qualify our
understanding of what these details and practices are, the dynamics of them and the
actions they are comprised of. And we need to examine the unknown terrains within
the details of social practices and people’s everyday life.
Depending on what problem we are studying, we might focus on tacit knowl-
edge, passions, and practical concerns that guide and affect peoples’ participation in
the practices under scrutiny; or the mastery, knowledge, creativity, reason-dis-
courses, coordination, and engagement afforded by the practice. What matter is that
we try to grasp the aspects of the phenomena that are hidden, unknown, silenced,
black-boxed, or just difficult to appreciate when seen from an immediate perspec-
tive (Busch-Jensen 2015a).
ooming In to Zoom Out: Unveiling Practice-Scapes

Z
and the Structural
Zooming in to zoom out engages in describing and understanding the intelligibility

of human action we might otherwise find strange or even despicable. As argued, this
incorporates indispensable qualities for life in common and establishes a vital basis
for psychological research and practice. However, zooming in on the situated
intelligibility of actions also carries some risks. Firstly, there is the potential
manipulative force of an enhanced organization of a stand-alone narrator-perspective
on social reality, which should always be addressed and confronted, since, otherwise,
it might invite us to overlook or ignore the experiences and perspectives of others.
Here, art and science must certainly differ. If not, the ambition to “see from the
perspective of the participants” risks being translated into a methodological
individualism, which finds no relevance of studying social facts and the particular
qualities of more collective phenomena such as groups, organizations, social forces,
or structural dimensions. Examining the details of a particular practice is a significant
part of psychological research. However, situated generalization requires an

analytical sensitivity to the fact that no activity happens in isolation. Neither
practically, socially, culturally, or politically. Therefore, the lived meaning of a
particular practice can remain undertheorized if viewed in isolation or just from a
single perspective. Secondly, there is a risk that the ambition to “see from the
perspective of the participants” is translated into a primary focus to describe and
understand, rather than critically analyze and discuss. However, the things we
encounter and the practices we engage in, in our everyday life, are always part of a
wider social reality of which we are partially unaware. This “unawareness” reduces
our agency and are furthermore part of the societal distribution of action privileges
and power relations. It is therefore vital to examine and address how situated
practice relates to its wider realities.
To grapple with the unavoidable partiality of perspectives, engagements, and
approaches, and to deepen the analysis, we have to extend our frame of zooming out
to zoom in with a complementary analytical movement of zooming in to zoom out.
The difference simply involves a shift of focus and a move toward social practice as
the concrete space in which human subjectivity and agency is lived. Social practice
connects the individual and collective, agency and structure, the particular and the
general. We will now present a few methodological strategies of unveiling social
practice, in particular multi-perspectival and cross-contextual analysis as spaces of
critical analytical work and reflection.
The Space of Critique
As a number of practice-studies have shown, everyday practice is rich with complex

situated processes of for example learning, development, collaboration, power
relations, or identity work. Even though these are vital dimensions of human
practice, many aspects of their dynamics are not directly visible. Hence, we need
sophisticated theories and concepts as tools that help us see, feel, and engage in how
people are continually shaping and re-shaping each other and the world, and in so
many ways learn and learn together in and about the world (Lave and Wenger 1991;
Busch-Jensen 2015a). This includes conceptions and analytical strategies for tracing
connections between the here-and-now of the immediate situation and the elsewhere-
and-then of other situations. Since through these movements, broader relations of
power, politics, and structure are made visible.
Zooming in on situated practice constitutes simultaneous movements of zoom-
ing out, that is empirical-analytical movements, that bring us closer not only to the
situated intelligibility of human action, but also to how situated actions relate to a
conflictual terrain of multiple connections, concerns, relationships, and perspectives,
in which people participate in inter-related contexts with distributed consequences
for and contributions from others. Hence, out of the movements of zooming emerge
the contours of a composite shared reality of connections and differences of
perspectives, abilities, and opportunities, which opens up a space of critique.
ulti-perspectival Practice Research as Intersubjective Tracing

M
of Connections
All activities and practices are involved in relationships and associations that extend
in both space and time and form a texture of social relations, dependencies, and
references. Our social world constitutes a terrain of multiple connections, concerns,
and perspectives, which again relate to wider societal configurations, for example,
divisions of labor, knowledge hierarchies, and distributions of resources. The study
of subjectivity in situated practices is also a study of more structural dimensions of
social life. Therefore, the question arises how to critically examine the more
structural aspects of the problem under investigation. We suggest multi-perspectival
practice research as a constructive epistemic frame for the situated study of structure
in the sense of explorative movements between perspectives and practices in a
horizon-widening fashion.
Tracing the connections between people and practices allows us to see the con-
nections between the here-and-now of the situated practicing and the elsewhere-
and-then of other practices. We need to uncover and examine this hanging-
togetherness in and between people and social practices to understand better how
the trans-contextual elements, relevant for our study, come into being, gain meaning,
are kept in place and/or are being transformed. In doings so, we are in fact engaged
in unveiling not only the conditions of the local accomplishment of practice, but
also the ways in which it connects to broader social landscapes, or more precisely:
practice-scapes.
Tracing the connections in practice-scapes is a form of zooming. However, it
does not imply putting the practice under the microscope. Rather, it relates to a
careful work of tracing how a given practice in numerous ways relate to other
practice as well. This work invites a form of mobile multi-perspectival practice
research that involves efforts of sequential re-positioning and ongoing dialogue
with empirical observations and theory, which help us carefully unveil relevant
dimensions and central constituents of the practice-scape the problem under
investigation is weaved into.
The Inter-connectivity of Practice
Just as any action in one way or another constitutes the resource for the accomplish-
ment of other actions, one practice constitutes the resource for the accomplishment
of other practices, forming complex nexuses of practices in space and time. These
nexuses stretch out more or less visible webs of connections, with both spatial and
temporal fabric, between people, contexts, and activities. Accordingly, human sub-
jectivity, experience, and action are rooted in complex fields of nexuses of practice,
both established by it and establishing it. This is why zooming in on a practice
simultaneously constitute movements of zooming out, demonstrating for example
how a “local,” “particular,” or “individual” problem relate also to more structural
dimensions of how practices are connected to each other in more general arrange-
ments (Chaiklin and Lave 1993; Nicolini 2013; Schatzki et al. 2001).
When we talk of structural phenomena as for example the state, inequality, capi-
talism, climate change, or new public management, we are, in fact, referring to how
certain practices and forms of action and organization have gained a durability
through complex forms of inter-connectivity. Their inter-connectivity gives them an
“object-like” quality; since they become weaved into aspect of our lives, we have
gradually learned to take for granted and thus find it difficult to imagine to be
without. This particular quality, however, is precisely an implication of how
practices become resources in the accomplishment of other practices and vice versa.
It is this aspect of social coexistence we refer to, when we talk of “social problems.”
The tightness connections may acquire through dispersion can make practices
hard to change since changing one practice might require changing numerous
practices as well. Structural phenomena are therefore always dynamic and
ambiguous since redirecting, adding, or cutting connections always involve change:
new possibilities, challenges, and risks. Hence, no structural phenomenon transcends
fully the local and particular. It is made, transformed, and kept in place in a texture
of ongoing situated actions and everyday practices.
Tracing Connections and the Question of the Structural
Methodological strategies for tracing connections between the particular and the
general can be found in various traditions of thought (e.g., Foucault 1997; Holzkamp
2013c; Højholt and Kousholt 2018; Latour 2005; Marcus 1995). In multi-perspectival
practice research, tracing connections refer to the fact that psychological phenomena
are processual and transient. The strategies of tracing are defined by the particular
problem the investigation is dealing with and can take heterogenous forms as well
as departures. The traced connections might be problem-based or task-related,
cultural, social, or political. They can be mediated by documents, feelings,
technologies, laws, politics, metaphors, job-tasks, commodities, etc. Furthermore,
they can be enabling or restrictive, more or less hierarchical or symmetrical.
Precisely because human subjectivity, experience, and action do not relate to
isolated parts but to how things relate to each other, the study of structure does not
have a bounded object of study nor a distinct perspective attached to it. We should
therefore refrain from thinking about the structural as a sort of overarching
framework or general law that give overall context to the study of a particular
psychological phenomenon. Rather, we should think about the structural as integral
to dynamic arrangements of situated practices.
Through empirical and theoretically movements of re-positioning, we see how
actions, practices, things, and understandings find different meaning and use in
various contexts and situations. Thus, the production of structural dimensions of
social life, emerge through a multiplication of manifestations. This is significant.
Firstly, because it invites us to imagine that similarity and connectedness to some
extent is demonstrated also in differences. Secondly, because it invites us to rethink
a number of frequently evoked analytical contrasts, e.g., between local-global,

agent-structure, and see them rather as emerging inter-connected qualities of
dynamic connections between subjectivity and social practice. What is required in
psychological research is therefore not an abstract theoretical awareness or an
overarching social framework. Rather, it is a sharpened sensitivity to and often
partially articulated awareness of (not always tangible) connections between specific
experiences, actions, sites, contexts, and people.
Of course, depending on what we are interested in, tracing these connections can
be done in many ways. We can trace a conflict, for example at a workplace, by
tracing its history and manifestations, the dilemmas of coordination it relates to and
its multi-perspectival stakes and meanings. We can trace things and technological
artifacts and examine the politics and materialized actions they embody and what
they do with human subjectivity; how they help connect and/or disconnect people,
knowledge, and practices; what divisions of labor they afford and how opportunities,
risks, and challenges are socially distributed in the process? We can trace concepts,
narratives, or metaphors to examine, for example, how and why certain dispositions
of action and thinking seem to saturate “the said as well as the unsaid” in or across
particular contexts. Or, returning to our initial example of Breaking Bad, we might
trace the situated hanging-togetherness and connections between a personal problem
(being diagnosed with cancer), socio-political arrangements (no free healthcare,
low teacher pay), private economy (no savings or private health insurance) everyday
concerns (wanting to support one’s family), specific skills and forms of knowledge
(knowledge of chemistry and how to produce hard drugs), specific cultural
circumstances (a widespread market for producing and selling hard drugs with high
profit and low risk), and the formation of a specific action-trajectory (becoming a
producer and seller of drugs).
What is important is the effort to see connections as anchored in dynamic
arrangements (also referred to by others as, e.g., assembles, nexuses, bundles,
figurations, networks) of situated actions and practices.
cientific Generalization as Critical Understanding

S
and Future Forming
Zooming in zooming out offers a frame for situated generalization in psychological

research to explore human subjectivity and how everyday experience and action are
related to general societal possibilities and limits of action. It goes beyond separating,
individualizing, and dichotomizing modes of scientific inquiry and critically
investigates the intelligibility of human subjectivity and persons’ conduct of
everyday life. The analytical movement builds on the notion that people’s expressions
are true in the sense that we can consider their activities and actions as intentional
and intelligible from his or her point of view and as, in principle, understandable.
Here, we can draw on the methodological principle of hermeneutics of faith (Ricoeur
1970), charity (Davidson 1984), or restoration (Josselson 2004) in contrast to

hermeneutics of suspicion. We can build on these notions not only to insist on an
inseparable inter-connectedness between human agency and societal relations, but
also because it relates to the methodological concern, to take people’s perspectives
seriously, to not subsume and push data into predefined categories, nor to let
theoretical preconceptions determine our analysis.
That said, tracing the intelligibility of human action does not mean to abandon
critical analysis. Just as working with hermeneutics of faith, charity, or restoration
does not exclude hermeneutics of suspicion. The question is how to combine them.
Recognizing the partiality of human knowledge turns critical thinking into a
necessity—and adds the researcher to the equation. It is a way of taking our own
limitations as well as the otherness of others seriously. However, relating critically
to empirical data is not the same as relating critically to the participants of the
research. On the contrary, the critical approach toward data forces the researcher to
reflect on statements and their meaning: their lived reality, intelligibility, and
implications. Not by evaluating their truthfulness by a reference to numbers,
frequencies, theory or methods, but by examining how they partake in making
actions, circumstances, and practices run together in ways that form particular
situations, problems, and opportunities.
Tracing the practice-scapes of possibilities and restrictions our data are part of
allows us to discuss not if they are true, but rather for whom and for what ends. The
way forward, in maintaining this space for critical reflection, is to decenter the
practice of critique and reposition the researcher. Mapping out social landscapes of
multi-perspectival experiences, understandings, concerns, and aspirations invite
critical analysis. It invites reflexive journeys of inquiry into how human perspectives,
actions, and practices connect to multiple contexts and arrangements of practices
that embody differences, dilemmas, and unequal possibilities for action. Critical
work is about carefully examining such landscapes and the concerns, needs, and
dilemmas participants ascribe to them: how action possibilities and restrictions are
distributed among its participants and what forms of intelligibility are recognized
and ignored, silenced, or privileged. This work is not grounded in subjugating
empirical data to theoretical conceptions, nor is it grounded in simply evaluating the
truth value of different knowledge claims, flanking our analysis with concepts such
as falsification, illusion, frequency, or ideology. Such an evaluative approach to
knowledge, not only constructs a questionable separation of questions of knowledge
from questions of power (Foucault 1997), it also spills into an evaluative approach
to differences of perspectives that is rarely productive, if we want to understand and
address political, social, and psychological problems.
All knowledge “speaks” from a particular engagement in the world. Neither
from nowhere nor from everywhere, but always from somewhere. Therefore,
analytical strategies of situated generalization have to denounce any claim to an
innocent epistemological identity and instead commit both to critique and self-
critique, and to a mobile positioning and decentered analytical standpoint. Equally
important, we must recognize that the truth about social affairs is not so much a
thing to be acquired as it is a way of keeping intersubjective inquiry going, which
make us better at recognizing connections, links, complexities, and differences that

matter to people. In this way, zooming in zooming out contributes to critical inquiry
in psychological research by informing and mobilizing human participation, agency
and the possibilities of forming future society.
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Index
A B
Abduction Baroque tradition, 146
irreversible time, 95 Biological organisms, 87
process of, 90 Brand schools, 31
Absolutization, 63
Abstracted variables, 178
Abstraction, 32–34, 56 C
abduction in irreversible time, 95 Caravaggio
AS-IF structures, 83 creative and reflective act, 154–156
distinctions made, 94 everyday life, 149–153
risk, 94 in Naples, 142–148
selection, 82 Cassirer’s model, 52
theory building, 89, 90 Childhood studies, 117, 118, 121
theory construction level, 94 Children’s generalization
Abstractive generalization, 83 characteristics, 115
Action research, 42, 45, 48, 51 declarative knowledge, 116
Activity theory, 67 defectological view, 116
Actor-network, 200 democratic knowledge, 116
Adult knowledge, 116 ethical-symmetrical co-research, 121–123
Agency, 42, 57 knowledge co-creation (see Knowledge
Analysis–synthesis process, 62 co-creation)
Analytical generalization, 6 political-educational emphasis, 116
Applied psychology, 51 procedural knowledge, 116
Argumentation, 141 researcher’s own positioning, 117
Aristotelian mode, 53 scientific concepts, 115
Art and psychology work, 141 scientific-everyday concepts (see
Artificial concepts, 65 Scientific-everyday concepts)
Artificial intelligence, 126 teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136
Artificial reconstruction, 150 Citizenship, 31
Astrophysics, 79 Clouds, 86, 87
Autocracy, 47 Collective memory work, 207
Auto-kinesis theory, 105, 106 Commensurability, 46

in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4
244 Index
Commission on Community Interrelations conduct of life, 186

(CCI), 48–50 degrees of uncertainty, 184
Common causes efforts, 186
compound aspects, 27 historical practice, 184
concept, 28 knowledge, 185
construction projects, 27 personal trajectories, 185
contradictions, 27–29 phenomenon/problem, 185
families, 27 possibilities, 184, 186
general points, 26 problem, 185
historical, 26 pursuits and understandings, 186
participation, 26 social context, 183
political activities, 27 social practice, 183
practice comprises specific activities, 27 societal practice, 183
preliminary account, 26 subject participation, 185
schools, 27 subjects conduct, 186
social, 26 Critical Psychology from the Standpoint of the
subjective, 26 Subject (PSS), 118, 120–123
Communicative contradiction, 31 Cultural Historical Activity Theory, 10
Complex statistical models, 42 Cultural-historical research, 123
Complexive thinking, 65 Cultural psychology, 11, 141, 153, 154
Concept formation, 65, 124
Conceptual abstraction, 47
Conceptual thinking, 65 D
Conduct of everyday life, 9 Davydov, V., 62, 67–73, 75
Conflictual cooperation, 35 Declarative knowledge, 116
Construction, 83 Declarative knowledge products, 129
Contradictions Defectological view, 115
common causes, 27–29 Democratic education, 48
concept, 28 Democratic knowledge, 116
in school life, 29–32 Democratic majority dominance, 56
theory and praxis, 35–37 Destruction, 83
Cooperation, 35 Development, 24, 27, 31, 32, 37, 38
Creative and reflective act Dialectic generalizations, 129
Caravaggio, 154–156 Dialectical content, 32
Critical psychology, 24, 198 Dialectical ontology of generalization, 123
generalization Dialectical synthesis, 70
activities, 182 Dialectics
approach, 179 analysis–synthesis process, 62
conception of, 177 empiricism, 61
individual differences, 180 fragmentation, 61
issues, 177, 181 human consciousness, 63–67
local status, 181 nomothetic approach, 62
notion of, 182 nomothetic discipline, 61
phenomena, 181 promotion, 70–73
possibilities, 180 quantitative research, 61
scopes, 180 rationalism, 61
social position, 181 societal practice, 74–75
social structure, 182 theoretical generalization, 67–70
variable-shaped response, 180 Dialogical knowledge, 120
nexuses of practice, 182 Dialogical teaching
anti-essentialist critique, 183 generalization
composition, 183 artifacts, 207, 209
concrete practices, 184 as ethics, 214–216
Index 245
collective identity, 208 Ethical symmetry, 118, 119

deconstruction, 210 Everyday life, 9
interview and reflecting team, 207 Caravaggio, 149–153
memory work, 210 Everyday lives
praxis, 208 societal formation, 158
movements and artifacts, neutral ground Everyday/spontaneous concepts, 124
constellations, artifacts and activities, Evidence-based empirical work, 90
211 Evidence-based teaching, 35, 37
distribution of positions, 210 External similarities, 66
experimental cognitive psychology, 211
material artifact, 212
self-exposure, 210 F
self-representation, 210 (see also Field theory, 51
Prototypes) Field/topological psychology, 45
rearticulating (see Rearticulating teaching) Flexibility, 29, 35, 38
recognition Focus
academic participant, 213 abstraction, 32–34
ideological form, 214 and be flexible, 34–35
rearticulate teaching, 212 concepts, 33
self-presentation, 214 flexibly, 38
reflecting generalization, 196, 197 Frederick Taylor’s concept, 43
reflecting team (see Reflecting team) Frequency of occurrence, 54
self-exposure, 196
self-representation, 196
Direct and mediated experience, 141 G
Documentary approach, 154 Ganzheit
Dogmatism, 72 cell division processes, 89
Double negation, 83, 84 central role, 87, 88
clouds, 86, 87
eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, 87
E Gegenstand, 87–89
Ecological expansion, 216 and origins, 88
Ecological sustainability, 216 self-transforming, 87, 88
Elementaristic analytic conceptual variability amplification, 87
instruments, 85 Generalisation
Elementary generalization, 124 forms, 159
Emancipation, 61 overlapping of forms, 168
Empathetic generalisation Generalizable knowledge, 82
decision-makers, 167, 168 Generalization, 207
efforts, 167 action research (see Action research)
empathy building, 170 analysis, 23
memetic objects, 168 analytical strategies, 222
Empirical-analytical movements, 234 Caravaggio (see Caravaggio)
Empirical and mathematical rigor, 51 children’s (see Children’s generalization)
Empirical generalization, 3 concept, 42, 44
Enlightenment, 108–111 conceptual approach, 24
Epigenetic principles, 93 dialectics (see Dialectics)
Epigenetic variability, 87 exploration of frequencies, 224
Epistemic asymmetry, 121 general and processes, 1
Epistemic strategies, 4 human act, 222
Epistemology, 52 irreversible time (see also Irreversible
Ethical-symmetrical co-research, 117 time)
knowledge co-creation, 118–121 knowledge
mutual learning, 121–123 contemporary psychology, 91
246 Index
Generalization (cont.) Impressionist painters, 158

individual-based research tactics, 91 Impressionist social scientists, 158
individual-centered research tactics, 92 Impressionistic analysis, 163
Pavlov’s abstraction, 93 Incompatibilities, 29
single instances over irreversible time, 93 Independent/dependent variables, 178
William Stern’s view, 91 Individual-based research tactics, 91, 92
knowledge hierarchies, 1 Intelligent language teachers, 126
Kurt Lewin (see Kurt Lewin) Inter-connectivity of practice, 235
numerical, 3–5 public management, 236
of possibilities, 12 Internal relations, 66
post-generalizing approaches, 5–6 Internal social relations, 28, 29
process of, 82, 83 Intersubjective generalization, 11
psychological phenomena, 222 Irregular cases, 81
psychological research, 2 Irreversible time
shift and argue, 225 abstractions, 89, 90
simplifications, 23 breakthroughs and stagnation
single case domains, 79
axiomatic presentations, 81 (see Single conditions of, 92
case) elementaristic analytic conceptual
situated, 6–7 instruments, 85
social praxis (see Praxis) flow of, 79
status Ganzheit (see Ganzheit)
compositions and dynamics, 191 human conduct, 85
concrete nexuses, 190 human existence, 80
differences and variations, 191 human lives, 90
elementarist and essentialist, 189 movement, 87
general terms, 189 reality of research, 94
variable-based knowledge, 190 traditional scheme of abduction, 94
strategies of frequency, 223
unsolvable contradiction, 222
Generalization process, 152, 154 J
Germ cell, 68 Joint venture, 200, 201
German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology
(GSCP), 197
Gestalt level, 83 K
GLOW-BUG power meter, 164, 165 Knowledge co-creation
Grounded Theory research, 89 ethical-symmetrical co-research, 118–121
Group dynamics, 48 pedagogical for academic, 132–134
teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136
Knowledge hierarchies, 1
H Kurt Lewin
Hegel’s conceptualization, 71 action research (see Action research)
Historical vs. ahistorical approaches, 111, 112 community work, 47–50
History of psychology, 41 development, 42–44
Homogeneous corpus, 64 empirical projects, 47–50
Hormic psychology, 85 epistemology, 41
Human conduct, 90 generalization, 50–56
Human consciousness, 63–67 history of psychology, 41
Human subjectivity, 5 methodology and politics, 44–47
minorities, 56–57
philosophy, 41
I political action, 47–50
Idiographic science, 80 politics of research, 42
Imagination, 83 theoretical psychologist, 42
Immigrants, 45 theoretical works, 41
Index 247
L O
Language, 1, 10 Objective connection, 65
Lenin’s Philosophical Notebook, 66 Ontological symmetry, 121
Life space, 46 Operationalism, 62
Limit of movement, 36
Live laypeople models, 142
Local contexts, 93 P
Longer school days, 30 Particularism, 74
Penal welfare, 160
Person–environment relationship, 104
M Phenography, 231, 232
Magical-realist projects, 130 Phenomenology, 51
Mainstream psychology Philosophical thinking, 71
generalization Photography, 151, 155
arbitrary variations, 179 Political-educational emphasis, 116
disease/anxiety, 179 Positive publicity, 30
elementarism and essentialism, Post-generalizing approaches, 5–6
179 Poverty
empirical concepts, 179 artefacts, 172
phenomena, 178 dynamics, 158
variables and phenomena, 178 focus on everyday, 157
variations, 178 homeless people, 170
Marx’s concept, 68 human-centred ways, 171
Meaning-carrier, 105 personal experiences, 162
Meaning-user, 105 personal inadequacies, 158
Measurement error, 85 personal laziness, 171
Methodological strategy, 119 philosophical position, 158
Methodology cycle, 89, 90 qualitative approaches, 171
Mimesis, 229 qualitative research, 171
Mimetic objects, 159 questions and images, 169
Multi-perspectival practice research, 235 social practices, 158
practice-scapes, 235 societal aetiology, 158
Mutual learning, 121–123 stress of, 160
substantive issue, 172
theoretical abstractions, 159
N visual exercise, 159
Nanopsychology, 80 visual/verbal texts, 172
Naples, 142–148 Practice research, 13–16
National Socialist German Workers’ Party Praxis, 51
(NSDAP), 48 abstraction, 32–34
Naturalistic approach, 154 as common causes (see Common causes)
Naturalistic style, 141 concept, 26
Neapolitan aristocracy, 142 contradictions, 29–32, 35–37
Negation, 83–85 experienced and systematic development, 24
Neoliberal socio-economic systems, 164 generalization, 25, 26
Newtonian physics, 61 historical social practice, 23
“No action without research, no research human activity, 27
without action” principle, 41 social activity, 27
Nomological generalization, 3 subjective aspects, 24
Nomothetic approach, 62 subjective matter, 36
Numerical generalization, 3–5 Preschool children, 130
248 Index
Procedural knowledge processes, 129 dysfunctional intergroup, 164

Prototypes focus on, 166
abstractions, 198 GLOW-BUG, 165
concepts, 197 intergroup relationships, 166
dialogical teaching, 195 orientation, 165
GSCP, 198 problems, 164
post-Marxism, 199 socio-economic hierarchies, 166
practice problematic, 199 socio-economic relations, 167
praxis, 199 Reflecting generalization, 196, 197
singular practices, 200 Reflecting team, 196
situated generalization, 200, 201 interviews, 204, 205
standards, 199, 200 reference transformation, 205–207
theoretical approach, 197 Reflecting text, 201
Psychoanalysis, 63 Reflection of the fly, 105
Psychography, 10, 91, 92 Reflexivity, 12
Psychological epistemology, 3, 5–7, 9, 16 Reflexology, 63
Psychological generalization, 7 Representational vision, 5
Psychological knowledge, 2 Representationalism, 102–104
Psychological laws, 44
psychological life space, 56
Psychological production of knowledge, 13 S
Psychology, 108 Science-as-action perspective, 6
Psychology’s methodology, 84 Scientific concepts, 69, 124
Psycho-phylogeny, 179 Scientific development, 52
Public debate, 48 Scientific-everyday concepts
Pure theoretician, 51 characteristics, 127
dialectic generalizations, 129
emancipatory relevance, 127
Q generalization, 123–125
Qualitative methods, 89 imaginatively, 128
Qualitative nature, 90 magical-realist, 128
Quantitative research, 61 mereological perspective, 129
pedagogical praxis, 129–132
problematization, 125–127
R technical relevance, 127
Radical subjectivism, 109 vaguely present generalizations, 128
Radio channel, 30 virtually, 128
Realism vs. nominalism debate, 68 Scientific generalizations, 24, 117
Realistic policy, 50 Scientific knowledge, 4, 125, 127
Real-life concepts, 65 Scientific management, 43
Rearticulating teaching Scientific maturity, 52
boundary community, 204 Scientific objectivity, 5
deconstructing texts, 204 Scientific practices, 6
education of educators, 202 Scientific progress, 52
institutional practice, 203 Scientific researcher, 37
non-scholastic, 202 Secularized society, 36
practice problematic, 203 Self-generated goal orientations, 90
prototypical, 202 Situated generalization, 6–7, 222, 225
reconceptualization of care, 204 analytical movement, 228
situated learning, 202 challenges, 225–227
standards, 202 conduct of everyday life, 9
Reference transformation, 205–207 critical personalism, 9
Referential generalisation, 159 Cultural Historical Activity Theory, 10
accepts, 164 cultural psychology, 11
Index 249
dialogical teaching (see Dialogical Social change, 48

teaching) Social life of children, 30
empirical-analytical movements, 234 Social practice, 24
epistemological principles, 227 Social practice theory, 197–199
etymology of concepts, 229 Social process, 34
general qualities, 232 Social science, 42
generalization of possibilities, 12 Social science research, 41
hanging-togetherness, 233 Social space, 46, 56
human experience and agency, 12 Societal aetiology, 158
human subjectivity, 233 Societal practice, 74–75
intelligibility, 231, 238 Societal structures, 157, 158
interpretation, 227 Sociological meta-theory, 51
intersubjective generalization, 11 Sociometry, 49
language, 10 Sonder, 170
likeness and otherness, 229 Specimen of humanity, 150
likeness in otherness, 230 Spontaneous (everyday) concepts, 69
material objects, 11 Spontaneous activity, 105
observational perspectives, 229 Standard cognitive theory, 102
ontologically subjective reality, 9 Statistical inference, 4
phenoconstructive dimension, 232 Structural generalization, 6
phenographic dimension, 231 Subject matter of psychology, 106, 107
phenography, 231, 232 Subjective behavior, 56
practice, 13–16 Subjective connection, 65
practice-scapes, 238 Subjectivity
psychography, 10 generalization (see Generalization)
psychological inquiry, 227 human, 4, 5
psychological phenomena, 8, 228 social context, 2
psychological research, 237 topography, 5
psychological traditions, 230, 231 Subject-less psychology, 9
Psycho-Politics of Self-Exposure, 195 Subject–object relationship, 110
reflexivity, 12 Subject-psychology, 9
responses, 228 Substantial generalization, 6
social practice, 234 Synchronic profile, 92
space of critique, 234 Systematic scientific approach, 49
stand-alone narrator-perspective, 233
subjectivity, 8, 9
subject-less psychology, 9 T
subject-psychology, 9 Technical rationality, 37
synthetic investigation, 10 Teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136
technology and references, 200, 201 Teleological activity, 105, 106
theoretical conceptions, 238 Tertiary artifacts, 201
topological psychology, 10 Theater play, 131
unawareness, 234 Theoretical abstractions, 159, 161
Situated knowledge, 5 Theoretical concepts, 69
Situated learning, 74 Theoretical generalisation, 6, 62, 65–73, 126
Situated nexuses of practice abstractions, 162
advantage in dealing, 188 artefacts, 162
anxieties, 188 debates and abstractions, 160
conception of anxiety, 187 events and relationships, 160
motivation, 189 everyday life, 163
phenomenon or problem, 187 government agency, 160
possibilities, 188 impressionist approach, 163
qualitative, 187 interpretations of artefacts, 161
qualities, 187 methodology space, 162
Social asymmetry, 118 OECD nations, 162
250 Index
Theoretical generalisation (cont.) V

philosophical concepts, 160 Vector psychology, 45, 51
policies and practices, 162 Visual exercises, 159
Theoretical security, 36 Volition measurement, 43
Theoretical tools, 125 Von Uexküll’s theory, 104
Topological psychology, 10, 44, 51 Vygotsky, L., 62–67, 69–73, 75
Tracing connections, 236, 237
Transcendental illusions, 63
Tripartite system, 51 W
Welfare service map, 161
U
Units of analysis, 65, 71, 72 Z
Universalization, 125 Zone of potential estrangement (ZPE), 141,
Urban poverty, 160 142, 150–152, 154, 155

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Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15826

Subjectivity and Knowledge

ISSN 2523-8663 ISSN 2523-8671 (electronic)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

 iving Through Generalizing: Psychology of Desire

This book—Subjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study

specific features of the here-and-now states of being cannot be directly transferred

Aalborg, Denmark Jaan Valsiner

1 Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge – The Formation

Part I Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living

Part II Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological

8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art

Part III Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization

Erik Axel Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and

Ernst Schraube Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and

Psychological phenomena are furnished with an astonishing doubleness: they are

E. Schraube (*) · C. Højholt

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

c­ollaboration of different professions on a particular case. When psychological

chological inquiry and situates the processes of generalization in persons’ common,

 ajor Understandings of Generalization in Psychological

Within contemporary psychological research, we can distinguish three major

Numerical generalization (other common terms are generalization in frequencies

cussed in psychology, including the need for a fundamental epistemic renewal of

With an extensive body of theoretical as well as empirical work, Science Studies

Drawing on the epistemological shift toward a situated, subjectivity-based concep-

Traditions of situated generalization (also commonly described as substantial [e.g.,

The key to situated generalization is the notion that generality is in singularity. It

 ubjectivity, Everyday Life, and Psychological Origins

Psychology’s difficulty with systematically including the subjective dimension of

matter of psychology is ontologically subjective reality the epistemic objectivity of

No empirical reality is ever perceived just as such; instead, it is always perceived

However, the processes of reflexivity, distancing, and analyzing conditions do not

Within this perspective, to generalize implies not to disarticulate or abstract away

demonstrate how it could contribute to a substantial and necessary renewal of the

 he Practice of Situated Generalization: Outline

In Chap. 5, Jaan Valsiner undertakes an intellectual journey to the realm of gen-

psychologies and suggests the praxis-philosophical concept of teleogenetic collabo-

Schraube, E. (2013). First-person perspective and sociomaterial decentering: Studying technol-

E. Axel (*) · C. Højholt

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 23

Generalization as Necessary in Everyday Praxis

To understand subjective aspects of human action, we must take point of departure

Praxis as Common Causes

Contradictions in the Common Causes of Praxis

The quote by Taylor suggests that Hegel’s historical understanding of dialectics

Examples of Contradictions in School Life

Abstracting as Focusing in Context

Until now, we have stated that generalizing must be understood as an aspect of

perspectives, it becomes possible to ensure that the generalization is anchored in the

To Focus and to Be Flexible

Since we generalize in a continuous exploring process in a context where we do not

 he Historical Splitting of Experience into the Contradiction

We have focused on generalization, argued that it is in praxis, and demonstrated

The confirmed theories were considered so dependable that it would be possible

 eneralization as Flexibly Focusing on the Relevancies

We have presented an understanding of generalization as connected to subjective

Busch-Jensen, P. (2018). Skoleledelse: mellem konflikter og samarbejde. In C. Højholt &

My goal in this chapter is simple. I want to shed light on the not-so-well-known

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 41

Kurt Lewin’s Development as a Researcher: The Early Years

of Professor Lewin in the psychology of action and affection” in Psychological

iving Through Generalizing: Psychology of Desire

Aalborg, Denmark Jaan Valsiner

Part I Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living

Part II Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological

8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art

Part III Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization

collaboration of different professions on a particular case. When psychological

ajor Understandings of Generalization in Psychological

ubjectivity, Everyday Life, and Psychological Origins

he Practice of Situated Generalization: Outline

Generalization as Necessary in Everyday Praxis

Praxis as Common Causes

Contradictions in the Common Causes of Praxis

Examples of Contradictions in School Life

Abstracting as Focusing in Context

To Focus and to Be Flexible

he Historical Splitting of Experience into the Contradiction

eneralization as Flexibly Focusing on the Relevancies

Kurt Lewin’s Development as a Researcher: The Early Years

The Early Years in the USA: Methodology and Politics

he Later Years: Empirical Projects, Community Work,

Lewin and the Problem of Generalization

onclusion: Lewin, Minorities, and the Politics

Exploring Generalization as an Act of Human Consciousness

A Search for Theoretical Generalization

romoting a Dialogue on Dialectical Understanding

dvancing Dialogue on Generalization and Its Relation

What Does “Single Case” Mean?

Practice and Theory United—Focus on the Single Case

A Case Is Not a Thing But a System

Basic Processes of Generalization

Negation: From Single to Double

Abstractions in Theory Building: Inductive and Deductive

Pathways to Generalized Knowledge

General Conclusions: Abstraction as the Key to Knowledge

The General from the Perspective of Representationalism

Why Is There a Problem with Representationalism?