Welcome to the Center for Indigenous and Cultural Psychology (CICP)
I am grateful for this opportunity to lead this organization and have to thank the previous Directors for their trust. It is with great honor that I take this position and I hope that together with CICP’s team of researchers we are able to increase our understanding of modern-day Indonesians. The study of Indonesian people has a long history and it comes to no surprise that some of the most important work on culture was conducted in Indonesia. Clifford Geertz’s for example, one of the most influential anthropologists wrote about the Javanese religion. Benedict Anderson the author of the seminal work “Imagined Communities” was also intrigued by Javanese culture and produced a book about the topic.
At CICP we also focus our investigation on the Indonesian person using a psychological approach. We aim to understand more about the feelings, motives, beliefs, and thoughts of modern-day Indonesians through interviews, surveys, and analyses of social media data. Such research is particularly relevant at a time where Indonesia continues to experience social change. Under this context, we hope that our team of researchers at CICP will illuminate an understanding of the mind and behavior of Indonesians.
Warm Regards,
Haidar Buldan Thontowi, S.Psi., M.A., Ph.D. (cand)
Director of the Center for Indigenous and Cultural Psychology