1: The Task of Sociocultural Analysis
2: Properties of Mediated Action
3: Narrative as a Cultural Tool for Representing the Past
4: Mediated Action in Social Space
5: Appropriation and Resistance
6: Epilogue
References
Subject Index
Name Index
James V. Wertsch is Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
"For all of us in psychology (cognitive or cultural) and education,
it's tempting to avoid hard to understand relationships for
example, between subjective agency and objective cultural tools,
internalization and appropriation, creativity and conventions.
Drawing on literary theorist Kenneth Burke as well as more familiar
Bakhtin and Vygotsky, Wertsch shows us why we can't either avoid
these issues, or resolve them neatly on one side or the other. With
rich
examples from teaching and curriculum, he simply won't let us off
the hook."--Courtney Cazden, Harvard Graduate School of
Education
"Jim Wertsch's Mind as Action carries the study of mind in relation
to its cultural, institutional, and historical contexts into
important new territory. Must reading for anyone interested in
sociocultural approaches to human nature."--Mike Cole, Laboratory
of Comparative Human Cognition, University of California, La
Jolla
"For all of us in psychology (cognitive or cultural) and education,
it's tempting to avoid hard to understand relationships for
example, between subjective agency and objective cultural tools,
internalization and appropriation, creativity and conventions.
Drawing on literary theorist Kenneth Burke as well as more familiar
Bakhtin and Vygotsky, Wertsch shows us why we can't either avoid
these issues, or resolve them neatly on one side or the other. With
rich
examples from teaching and curriculum, he simply won't let us off
the hook."--Courtney Cazden, Harvard Graduate School of
Education
"Jim Wertsch's Mind as Action carries the study of mind in relation
to its cultural, institutional, and historical contexts into
important new territory. Must reading for anyone interested in
sociocultural approaches to human nature."--Mike Cole, Laboratory
of Comparative Human Cognition, University of California, La
Jolla
In this compelling and complex book, psychologist and sociocultural
analyst Wertsch finds the linkage in human action, particularly in
"mediated action": the relationship between individuals and the
cultural tools that mediate their actions...Wertsch argues
persuasively that this method of sociocultural analysis can be
applied not only to the study of the human mind but to social
problems."--Readings
"The major task that Wertsch defines for himself in Mind as Action
is to examine why psychologists have had such a diminutive voice in
discussions regarding major contemporary social and political
events. He proceeds to argue that it is the antinomy between
individual and society and the associated opposition between mental
functioning and sociocultural setting that are impediments to
psychology realizing its potential. Wertsch urges that we
recognize
that these notions, which are typically placed in opposition to one
another, are but hypothetical constructs-interpretive tools-that
require constant scrutiny to determine their value relative to
the
limitations. Wertsch further proposes that key to the fruitful
conduct of human science is a focus on the dialectical relationship
between human agents and their cultural tools. It is in this
relationship that one can describe and interpret human
action."--Contemporary Psychology
"Wertsch (education, Washington U.) asserts that the human sciences
are dominated by a focus on the agent, and ignore the importance of
mediational means in human action. Drawing on the ideas of Lev
Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Kenneth Burke, he traces the
implications of mediated action for a sociocultural analysis of the
mind. Using a method of analysis that connects the various
perspectives of the social sciences in an integrated, nonreductive
fashion, he
looks at such mediated actions as stereotypes and historical
narratives."--Reference & Research Book News
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