Bill Gabrenya, Editor
As I write this editorial, it is an April Sunday in Palm Bay, Florida -the
sky is a bright, cloudless blue, there is a gentle, warm breeze coming off
the ocean to the east, the gardenias are in fragrant bloom, and my vegetable
garden is producing its best-ever crop of Chinese snow peas. The only sounds
are birds singing, children playing, and my fellow suburbanites mowing their
lawns. Meanwhile, the world outside is disintegrating in all ways at once.
There are 90 more bodies to dig out in Oklahoma, 2,000 people were just
slaughtered in Rwanda, the Japanese are being gassed in their own subways,
the Russian Army is mopping up in Chechnya, and food is running out, again,
in Bosnia. Heaven knows what is going on in my natal village, Cleveland,
Ohio. If such a discordant picture isn't deeply troubling to a social scientist,
I can't imagine what would be.
Kurt Lewin and others of our ancestors have placed upon us the obligation
to use our social sciences to do something about this mess, but I can't
say much has been accomplished. However, if I can find a theme that runs
through several of the articles in this issue, it is the contribution of
(cross-)cultural psychology to understanding and perhaps influencing great
events: the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the formation of the European Union,
and the macro- economic trends of the Pacific Basin. New IACCP member Mary
Nishio has contributed her analysis of the Japanese psychological response
to the earthquake, and regional representatives Yoshi Kashima and Hector
Grad have written the first two in what I hope is a four-year sequence of
regional rep reports. Both representatives write of the political/economic
situations in their regions, and the ways cross-cultural psychology might
find its place in these events.
Outside this theme, but also of great interest, this Bulletin includes
the second of the Megareview articles (Kwok Leung), an introduction to the
new teaching section (Harry Gardiner), and a variety of reports (the Bulletin
Reader Survey, ICP, the Merida conference, ARTS, INFORUMs). I would like
to call your attention to several action items in this issue:
Cross-Cultural Social Psychology Newsletter All of Vol. 1 (1967) All of Vol. 2 (1968), except No. 9 Vol. 4 (1970), No. 4 Vol. 6 (1972), No. 1 Cross-Cultural Psychology Newsletter Vol. 6 (1972), No. 6 All of Vol. 7 (1973) All of Vol. 8 (1974-'75), except No. 6 Vol. 10 (1976), No. 2 Vol. 11 (1977), No. 3, No. 6 Cross-Cultural Psychology Bulletin Vol. 16 (1982), No. 1 Vol. 17 (1983), No. 4 Vol. 18 (1984), No. 1, No. 4 Vol. 19 (1985), No. 1
The IACCP has joined tens of thousands of other organizations by staking out some cyberspace on the World Wide Web. The WWW is a semi-interactive Internet publishing system that is, in my opinion, the second useful thing to come of the Internet, the first being E-mail and news lists. As I mentioned in my March editorial, the Publications Committee is discussing the idea of publishing the entire Bulletin on the Web; comments on this idea should be sent to Peter Smith and myself. The IACCP "home page" can be found at http://www.fit.edu/ft-orgs/iaccp/ A final note. I have sensed some confusion recently about the status of IACCP publications. To set the record straight, the Bulletin is published by the IACCP, printed and mailed by Sage, and designed by Florida Tech's University Publications ©IACCP. The Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, on the other hand, is published, printed, mailed, and designed by Sage but ©Western Washington University.