Draft:Arnold Groh



Arnold A. Groh (born 15 April 1960) is a German psychologist, linguist, semiotician and literary scholar. He is president/director of the research institution and non-governmental organization Structural Analysis of Cultural Systems (S.A.C.S.), and scientific director of the Institute for Cultural Diversity Studies. He teaches at the Technical University of Berlin as associate professor.

Life
Groh graduated from the University of Bielefeld with degrees in psychology, linguistics, and literary studies. In 1997, he earned his PhD in psychology at the University of Bielefeld as well, where he also prepared the DOBES (Documentation of Endangered Languages) project which was then realised by the Volkswagen Foundation. In 1994, he became research assistant at the Semiotics Research Centre of the Technical University of Berlin, where he received a semiotics degree in 1996. Since 2001, Groh has also been psychological expert in various law cases at German civil courts. From 2003 to 2005, he was visiting professor at the department of Social and Econiomic Communication of the Berlin University of the Arts. Besides teaching at the Humanities Department and at the Institute of Psychology of TU Berlin, Groh has also been lecturer at the Free University of Berlin (2006), Humboldt University of Berlin (2007, 2014-2015), University of Lübeck (2022-2023), as well as at a number of further universities. Im 2011, he did his habilitation at TU Berlin. Groh has been academic guest and external assessor at universities in India, Africa, and Latin America. In the 1980s, Groh started to do systematical research not only in indigenous contexts, but also on field research methodology itself. In the 1990s, he became involved with the United Nations, first as representative of the Semiotics Research Centre and later as head of S.A.C.S., participating in climate change and indigenous rights related conferences. In particular, Groh contributed to sessions of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in preparation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as to sessions of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. From 1997, he also worked with Holocaust survivors in Yiddish Roundtable sessions at TU Berlin. Arnold Groh is married and has two adult children.

Work
In his extensive fieldwork, Groh has worked with indigenous peoples in South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with a focus on implementing indigenous rights and seeking to understand the mechanisms of culture. His applied projects also pertain to culture-environment interaction, like his approach of replacing fog-catching nets with more efficient trees to collect drinking water in arid regions. Notably, Groh has accomplished to explain cultural change and progress with a synthesis model based on cognitive approaches. Among his numerous publications, he presented a critical analysis of “Marketing &amp; Manipulation” (2008), analyses of the intra-, inter-, and trans-cultural processes of globalisation (e.g. Globalisation and Indigenous Identity, 2006; Theories of Culture, 2020), and minimally-invasive field research methods (cf. Research Methods in Indigenous Contexts, 2018) that are relevant to all visitors to indigenous peoples, as they are aligned towards the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Research areas
Groh&#39;s research areas include psychology (cultural psychology, cross-cultural psychology, perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, hemispheric functions, script-brain interaction, time structuring, the psychology of advertising), cultural studies (theories of culture, globalization, cultural mechanisms, cultural change, loss of culture, cultural dominance), communication, Yiddish, field research methodology, tourism, and body semiotics. Groh understands culture as the result of human interaction; in consequence, psychology is a necessary prerequisite to tackle e.g. the problems that are dealt with at the UN, which would be insufficiently addressed on the phenomenological level only, be it by lawyers, climatologists, economists, or political scientists.

Selected publications

 * Theories of Culture (2020). London and New York: Routledge.
 * Identidade cultural e o corpo (2019). Revista Psicologia e Saúde, 11, 2, 3-22.
 * Die Widerspiegelung von Körperlichkeit in der Entstehung des Alphabets (2018). Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 40, 3-4, 63-82.
 * Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los derechos de los pueblos indígenas: una herramienta para combatir las desigualdades entre pueblos indígenas y la sociedad globalizada (2018). Revista Latinoamericana de Derechos Humanos, 29 (2), 15-38 (DOI: 10.15359/rdlh.29-2.1).
 * A Tool for Assessing Globalisation Affinity Among Groups of Specific Cultural Backgrounds (2018). Journal of Globalization Studies, 9, 1, 38-47 (DOI: 10.30884/jogs/2018.01.03).
 * Research Methods in Indigenous Contexts (2018). New York: Springer (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-72776-9).
 * Culture, Language, and Thought: Field Studies on Colour Concepts (2016). Journal of Cognition and Culture, 16, 1-2, 83–106 (DOI: 10.1163/15685373-12342169).
 * The Impact of Mobile Phones on Indigenous Social Structures: A Cross-cultural Comparative Study (2016). Journal of Communication, 7(2): 344-356 (ISSN 0976-691X).
 * Tourism and Indigenous Communities: Implementing Policies of Sustainable Management (2012). In: Fongwa, E. A. (ed.), Sustainability Assessment: Practice, method and emerging socio-cultural issues for sustainable development. Saarbrücken: SVH, pp. 168-183.
 * Culture, Trauma and Psychotherapy (2009). In: S. Madu (Ed.): Trauma and Psychotherapy in Africa. Proceedings of the 5th African Conference on Psychotherapy (Chapter 4). Limpopo, South Africa: University Press, pp 32-42.
 * Marketing & Manipulation (2008). Aachen: Shaker, 2008. (ISBN: 978-3-8322-7018-6)