The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky

Description

L. S. Vygotsky was an early-twentieth-century Russian social theorist whose writing exerts a significant influence on the development of social theory in the early-twenty-first century. His non-deterministic, non-reductionist account of the formation of mind provides current theoretical developments with a broadly drawn yet very powerful sketch of the ways in which humans shape and are shaped by social, cultural, and historical conditions. This dialectical conception of development insists on the importance of genetic or developmental analysis at several levels. The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky is a comprehensive text that provides students, academics, and practitioners with a critical perspective on Vygotsky and his work.

Harry Daniels is the Director of the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (Bath) at The University of Bath, UK. He is also Adjunct Professor, Centre for Learning Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and Research Professor, Centre for Human Activity Theory, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. Harry Daniels is the author of Vygotsky and Pedagogy and editor of An Introduction to Vygotsky and Charting the Agenda: Educational Activity after Vygotsky. His books have been translated into Japanese, Portuguese (in Brazil and Europe), and Spanish. Michael Cole is the University Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Human Development and Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. He also holds the Sanford Berman Chair of Language, Thought and Communication. He is the author and coauthor of several books and many articles on culture and development. He is a member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Education. James V. Wertsch, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds joint appointments in Education, the Russian Studies Program, and the Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology. He is the director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. His topics of study are collective memory and identity, especially in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as in the United States.

"The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky, for many reasons, makes a strong contribution to readers' efforts to appropriate an informed Vgotskian perspective. The roster of authors is impressive, representing nine nations and including chapters by a near-predictable who's who of Vygotskian scholars...This review, while undoubtedly too long, is far too brief to do this book justice...There's much to be learned from The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky and much to be constructed in relation to it." Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia "The Companion makes a compelling case for the unfinished status of many of Vygotsky's ideas and therefore the value of new Vygotskian scholarship...This book illustrates that Vygotsky's unfinished legacy is a profound platform that permitted these contributors, in dialogue with Vygotsky and each other, to say and do things anew." Janet E. Kuebli, PsychCRITIQUES