GLSD3201 Cultural Psychology and Globalization
| Course | GLSD3201 Cultural Psychology and Globalization | ||
| Class Time | Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 09:30 – 12:15 | ||
| Teacher | Professor Karim BETTACHE | ||
| Course Description | How free are we? Do we make decisions based on our individual motivations? Or is our behaviour the result of outside forces such as culture? Psychologists are split on this question: To what extent is our behaviour really our own, and to what extent is it driven by culture? In this course, you (a) learn about cultural influences that shape our psychological processes, (b) what happens when people from different cultures meet one another (globalization), and (c) what happens when multiple cultures combine within a single individual (multiculturalism)?
The course will focus on sensitive but essential topics central to the psychology of globalization, such as colonialism and how it shaped our psychological understanding of ourselves and others; how racism and stereotyping are psychological phenomena that interfere with successful globalization today; or how cultures’ different set of moral values often conflict with one another.
This course is an introduction to cultural psychology and focuses on how it is relevant in an increasingly globalized world. The first part of the course will introduce students to some fundamental concepts and findings in the field of cultural psychology. The second part of this course will apply this body of knowledge to our era of rapid globalization, one of the most important developments in the twenty-first century. |
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| Course Outline/Syllabus | Download | ||
| Prerequisite(s) | — | ||
| Remark(s) | — |
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Professor Karim BETTACHE acquired his BSc and MSc in psychology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and his Ph.D. in psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow for the cultural psychologist Professor Chi-yue Chiu and as a lecturer for Monash University. Currently, he works as a Professor for the Master’s in Global Political Economy Programme at the Faculty of Social Science, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He specializes in cultural, political, and social psychology. His work attempts to connect individual psychological phenomena (e.g., racism) to broader sociopolitical and historical developments of human societies (e.g., colonialism or capitalism). Hence, his work strongly overlaps with a multitude of social sciences such as sociology and the political sciences. |
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