Morality from a Cultural Psychology Perspective 25 MORALITY FROM A CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

One of the many possibilities of understanding culture is proposed by Clifford Geertz who understood culture as “a system of control mechanisms— plans, recipes, rules, instructions ... that guide behavior”(Geertz, 1973). This opinion is based on the assumption that “man is exactly the animal that is the most dependent upon such control mechanisms that exist outside the skin” (p. 44). But these control mechanisms (rules systems) are not only “outside the skin”, they are also located in the heads of people. Hence, culture also represents “shared” knowledge and/or meaning systems which consist of theories about what a good person is (personhood), about nature, society and the meaning of life (religion) or its embeddedness in a transcendental sphere or cosmos. These rule systems are partly implicit, partly explicit. This means that sometimes they can be learned or reconstructed directly in the social situations, but at other times they are hidden and thus have to be explicated. Only humans have explicit rules, only humans teach them intentionally. Morality is one of these rule systems (control mechanisms), and it is—as we will see—a unique one. Morality is not only a central aspect of culture, but also unique to humans. Some consequences of this conception can be deduced easily: The relationship between culture and morality is intrinsic; morality is a constitutive feature of the culture concept as well as of concrete cultures; culture cannot be defined or investigated without heeding morality. But morality can also not be understood without reference to the culture concept. Secondly, cultural rules complement natural laws in explaining and understanding human activities (behaviors, cognition, affects). Finally and most important: The study of morality necessarily leads to a perspective that conceives of psychology as a primarily cultural science rather than as a natural science.