Integrating Cultural Community Psychology: Activity Settings and the Shared Meanings of Intersubjectivity

Cultural and community psychology share a common emphasis on context, yet their leading journals rarely cite each other’s
articles. Greater integration of the concepts of culture and community within and across their disciplines would enrich and
facilitate the viability of cultural community psychology. The contextual theory of activity settings is proposed as one means
to integrate the concepts of culture and community in cultural community psychology. Through shared activities, participants
develop common experiences that affect their psychological being, including their cognitions, emotions, and behavioral development.
The psychological result of these experiences is intersubjectivity. Culture is defined as the shared meanings that people
develop through their common historic, linguistic, social, economic, and political experiences. The shared meanings of culture
arise through the intersubjectivity developed in activity settings. Cultural community psychology presents formidable epistemological
challenges, but overcoming these challenges could contribute to the transformation and advancement of community psychology.