Conservativism: A Cultural-Psychological Exploration

The present work discusses the phenomenon of conservativism from a qualitative, cultural-psychological perspective. As such, the text breaks with current mainstream research about political ideologies wanting to assess a political culture within the simple administration of a questionnaire. The SpringerBrief will oppose such a perspective trying to assess how the conservative-minded person will structure space and time in peculiar ways. In the first part of the study, participants were invited to reflect about how they preserve or conserve meaning in various activities whereas the second part of the study tried to shed light onto how something preservable or conservable comes into being and what it actually makes it preservable. Here, an autoethnographic study revealed that something becomes meaningfully preservable when it satisfies multiple demands of the Self as well as of the environment. Readers will realize the insufficiency of the positivistic attitude analyzing conservativism from a simple quantitative perspective, and researchers are shown how political ideologies or cultures can be assessed ecologically something that has not yet been undertaken. This leads to an appeal for scientists to study the phenomenon of conservativism more wholistically.

Provides a step-by-step guide on how to assess political culture qualitatively for scientists and practitioners A concise model based on Boesch's Symbolic Action Theory to ethnographically assess and interpret a political culture A brief and concise interview schedule dialogically assesses political culture for scientists and political campaigners

Autorentext

Enno von Fircks is a Cultural Psychologist whose work bridges Cultural Psychology, Philosophy, and Developmental Psychology. As a Gestalt practitioner, lecturer, and tennis instructor in Germany, he integrates theoretical insights with practical, real-world applications, refining his ideas in dynamic, hands-on settings. He has authored over 50 articles and chapters spanning clinical, educational, organizational, and general psychology. Among his published works is a monograph in the SpringerBriefs series, edited by Jaan Valsiner and Pina Marsico, titled Conservativism: A Cultural-Psychological Synthesis. In 2024, he published a second monograph, Learning with William Stern: Personology for the Future, exploring William Stern’s Critical Personology and its transformative potential for holistic psychology, released by IAP. His ongoing projects include two edited volumes on Goethian science and its implications for psychology, as well as a French-language volume dedicated to cultural-psychological theories and methodologies for the francophone community.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Follow-up Study and Its Reasons: Shifting the Focus more to the Ecological Assessment of the Conservative Phenomenon.- Chapter 3: Results: Assessing the Preservation of Meaningful Activity at the Tennis Court.- Chapter 4: Results: Assessing the Meaningful Preservation of Academic Work.- Chapter 5: Discussion: Between Strengths and Weaknesses of Assessing Conservativism within our Action-Theoretical Scheme.- Chapter 6: Conclusion.