The Bounded Indeterminacy of Tradition

Abstract

In this chapter, I will elaborate some reflections on Valsiner’s concept of bounded indeterminacy because I consider it to one of the main concepts that reveal the genetic-cultural heritage, as well as the significance of Valsiner’s work to the contemporary cultural psychology. The concept of bounded indeterminacy clearly dispels Jaan Valsiner’s semiotic-cultural psychology from the dichotomy of a self-sufficient self, on the one hand, and from a sovereign environment external to the self, on the other hand. Equally, the concept marks Valsiner’s psychology as one that denies linear causality, offering as a counterpoint a path that points to the human life’s bidirectional personal-cultural relationship, which anchors itself in its own human meaning-making. One of Valsiner’s perspective resonances is to give semiotic-cultural psychology the possibility to establish an integrative dialogue with the notion of tradition, in the hermeneutic sense of Hans-Georg Gadamer, as a part of the process of formation and transformation of the symbolic field of action that is culture (Boesch, 1991).