theory to social behaviour in their own societies (Sinha, 1997, 1998). Indeed, even
where research is explicitly interested in the role of culture in social psychological
functioning (as in cross-cultural psychology) those in developing countries have
identified a number of problems in the logic and practice to such work. For example,
Misra and Gergen (2002) argue that it often entails reducing cultural processes to
crude dimensions of comparison, the construction and meaning of which is shaped by
western researchers. As they continue, the wider implication of this practice is that
work conducted in developing countries remains ‘within the assumptive network of
mainstream psychology’ and so remains an ‘ancillary enterprise’, checking the
validity and local limitations of theories developed in the west (p. 409). In the light of
such trenchant critiques it may be concluded that the discrepancy between the image
of collective phenomena conjured up in mainstream social psychological theory and
the reality of the Allahabad Mela is yet further evidence of the irrelevance of western
theory for developing societies.
However, it should be noted that although those in developing societies have
been particularly prominent in highlighting the cultural limitations of (western)
mainstream theory there are many in the west concerned over the distance between
our theoretical assumptions (and the research methods they engender) and the
complex realities of the social phenomena with which they are faced. Just as the
individualism of mainstream theory fails to do justice to the cultural particularities of
non-western societies so it also fails to do justice to the collective phenomena found
in North American and European contexts. This means that many working in the west
may also experience the dilemmas faced by those in developing societies: either they
view certain phenomena through a theoretical prism that distorts the issues at hand, or
they must simply ignore such phenomena all together.
3
Convention