Transitions. Development through symbolic resources
What do young people do with the novels they read, the films they see, the music they hear and sing? How do these cultural products act as 'symbolic resources' in the process of development? And what can we, as researchers, learn by studying people's uses of fiction? This monograph approaches development through the study of transitions and the processes of exploration that follow ruptures in people's lives. Specifically, it examines young people's symbolic responsibility as they have to choose among the wide range of cultural products societies exposes them to. The book thus examines the books, films and music that young people mobilize when they need to redefine their identity, learn informal know-how, or have to confer meaning to what happens to them in transitions. The book has a theoretical scope. It draws on cultural psychology and psychoanalysis to formulate the importance of semiotic mediation in thinking, feeling and acting. Its main contribution is to propose a model for analyzing uses of symbolic resources, such as books and films, in everyday life. It thus shows how uses of symbolic resources can enable new forms of experiences and conduct. It finally highlights social and personal conditions that might facilitate or hinder developmental uses of symbolic resources. The book, based on in-depth case studies, is addressed to scholars, professional and students in the fields of youth, culture and the media, cultural and developmental psychology, and life-long education.
Review symposium: Symbolic resources in dialogue, dialogical symbolic resources
Uses of symbolic resources can be seen as dialogical processes: they take place in a cultural world constituted by semiotic exchanges; they can lead people to interact; and as artefacts, they contain echoes of many other voices. The article proposes to consider traditional Talmudic study as a paradigmatic dialogical situation, in which scholars learn to use traditional texts as resources to address problematic issues. The article then examines secular literature or philosophy classes, in which students learn to reason about texts as well. An analogical reading enables reflection on the institutional, interpersonal and psychological conditions that would enable students to turn literature or philosophy into symbolic resources to address issues they face in their everyday life. A methodology for studying such issues is finally sketched.