Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline [Hardcover]

Michael Cole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

Why do psychologists find it so difficult to keep culture in mind? Why, if we agree that culture is central to mental life, can't we make a central place for it in the study of mental life? This work takes up the odd dilemma of cultural psychology. The psychologist Michael Cole, known for his pioneering work in literacy, cognition and human development, offers a multifaceted account of what the field of cultural psychology is, what is has been, and what it can be. Cole first takes us back to a time when culture "was" accorded a place of honour in psychology. He describes what happened when the discipline was subsumed by natural science at the turn of the century and culture became a causal variable with mind as its effect - an approach that distorts both the culture-mind relation and the methods needed to study it. The alternative Cole puts forward treats culture instead as the special medium of human life, a medium saturated with artifacts, the residue of the experience of prior generations. Mediation through culture is the special characteristic of human thought, he contends, and he shows how this perspective fits with contemporary ideas in cognitive science, developmental psychology and anthropology. Cole also demonstrates the usefulness of this view by applying it to a variety of theoretical, methodological and practical issues in the study of human development. These include the relationship between nature and nurture, the process by which culture both enables and constrains development, the role of literacy and education in cognitive development, and the procedures for designing new forms of activity to promote children's development.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book is an attempt to answer two questions: "Why do psychologists find it so difficult to keep culture in mind?" and "If you are a psychologist who believes that culture is a fundamental constituent of human thought and action, what can you do that is scientifically acceptable?" The answer to the first question involves an excursion into the history of psychology, exploring the way in which experimental science became divorced from the historical sciences. In addressing the second question, Cole (communication and psychology, Univ. of California, San Diego) builds upon the "cultural-historical" school of Russian psychology and advocates a methodology based upon field studies. In an increasingly diverse society, the neglect of cultural differences or their banishment as "extraneous variables" should be troubling to psychologists, and Cole's prescriptions for a new "cultural psychology" are most welcome. All academic and research libraries should purchase this title; since it is addressed to social scientists, it is not a necessary purchase for public libraries.?Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wash.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Culture is back in psychology. Michael Cole, one of the most significant contributors to this movement, gives a thoughtful synthesis of his three decades of theoretical and empirical research in this book. Though mild-mannered in his writing, Cole's proposal amounts to nothing less than a radical restructuring of the entire discipline of psychology as a scientific enterprise. Whether one agrees with him or not, anyone interested in the culture--mind relation should read it cover to cover. In fact, any psychologist, basic or applied, will be richly rewarded by a close reading of it...Cole's cultural psychology is an impressive achievement with a promising future.
--Yoshihisa Kashima (Contemporary Psychology )

A pathbreaking volume on cultural psychology by one of the moderm masters of that subject. Full of riches.
--Jerome Bruner

Nowhere will a reader find as rich and thorough a historical account of the origins and evolution of an approach that has become increasingly influential in American psychology.
--Deanna Kuhn, Columbia University Teachers College

Michael Cole argues that, just as fish do not see water because they swim in it, so humans do not see culture because we swim in it. The first part of the book is a fascinating tour of the early days of psychology. He argues that when psychology tried to become a science, it stopped thinking about the culture in which individuals operate. (New Scientist )

Michael Cole's recent book is a fascinating combination of history, autobiography and monograph. It is written in just the way that psychology should be written. It is informed by the chequered past of this strange discipline, if indeed it is one. In the autobiographical sections the author takes us through his transformation from naeive paradigm dope to truly creative scientist. As a monograph the book consists of an exposition of 'cultural psychology' as a general theory of human thought and action, richly illustrated with empirical work conducted within that framework. It has the further merit of cross-referencing, so to say, some, though not all, of the other forms that the disciplinary matrix the author calls 'cognitive psychology' has taken in recent decades. Whenever one comes across a book of this depth and a record of this breadth of experiences, one is struck yet again by the amazing way that orthodox, methodological behaviourism and the naeive cognitivist mainstream can continue to be pursued...In this remarkable book we have another volume to accompany the growing shelf-load of subtle and powerful studies that call into question the hegemony of methodological behaviourism, naeive experimentalism, the 'quick fix' for a few papers to support a tenure application, and mentalistic cognitivism with its hidden and quite implausible individual mental mechanisms...Let us hope that this book is widely read, and its message even more widely acted upon.
--Rom Harre (Culture & Psychology )

In a very readable, clear book, Cole uses the domain of cognitive development to show how a cultural framework can help us understand the dynamic interplay between individual, social, cultural, and historical lines of development...[It is] a convincing argument for why studying culture can open new horizons and frontiers.
--Margarita Azmitia (American Journal of Psychology )

Michael Cole's latest book represents an impressive synthesis of the many disciplinary strands of cultural psychology, as well as an inspiration for this discipline...Cole's tale is made even more compelling by the account of how he was able to address the concrete theoretical, methodological, and practical problems he and his colleagues encountered while trying to take culture into consideration in their research...Cole's book should be of interest to a broad audience concerned with the systematic examination of culture and mind...All educators concerned with creating, evaluating, and sustaining productive environments for learning are likely to find both examples and analytic tools that may help them in their ventures. Cole's subtitle calls cultural psychology a 'once and future discipline.' With this work, he offers a significant boost to the discipline's future.
--Joseph L. Polman and James V. Wertsch (American Journal of Education )

Does experimental psychology face a cross-cultural crisis? Michael Cole believes so, and in his engaging and lucid book...he offers the beginning of a solution. Cultural Psychology covers a wide range of topics, sometimes retrospectively, other times with an eye towards the future, and consistently woven with the threads of his own experience--from early work in Liberia, to ongoing research in the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California San Diego. Discussion varies from the theoretical to the practical to the historical, all the while painting an engaging picture of a potentially reborn discipline...The result is an excellent integration of a widely diverse set of influences, arguing for the shortcomings of general psychology while providing a positive alternative, and demonstrating the practical application of this 'second psychology.'...[It] is not only an interesting and excellent piece of synthesis and scholarship, but also potentially important across the multiple disciplines of philosophy, education, cognitive science, and psychology. The book should therefore appeal to a wide audience, and rightly so...Overall, Cultural Psychology is an inspiring and prescient work.
--William W. Schonbein (Philosophical Psychology )

[This book] throws...light on Max Velman's belief that awareness should not be thought of in terms of happenings in the brain alone, but is rather located in 'events as perceived'--in amalgams of the external world with brain activity. After reading Cole, there's not much room for doubt that the cultural and social world of the experiencer, as well as the physical world, enters the amalgam. To reach a full understanding of conscious mind, culture must be given as much weight as neuroscience.
--Chris Nunn (Journal of Consciousness Studies )

In an increasingly diverse society, the neglect of cultural differences or their banishment as 'extraneous variables' should be troubling to psychologists, and Cole's prescriptions for a new "cultural psychology" are most welcome. (Library Journal )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067417951X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674179516
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,170,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking for Mr. Discipline, July 7, 2005

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Paperback)

In Anthropology, the word "culture" still has a certain resonance, even if it has resonated a bit too much over the last century ! So, as an anthropologist with a very imperfect grasp of psychology and zero experience of practical research in it, I took up this book in order to widen my horizons. I thought I would discover a link between two fields that should be closer. After all, I shared Cole's feeling that the more or less artificial nineteenth century division of social and humane sciences has run its course. I hoped Cole would somehow connect studies in psychology to anthropological work that I knew, for example, the work of Robert I. Levy on Tahiti, and the works of Sudhir Kakar, Reynaldo Maduro, Morris Carstairs, and Stanley N. Kurtz on India. I did not find any reference to these or other such work. I could not find any real connection to current anthropology whatsover, though Cole summarizes old concerns and old conclusions very well. He also provides a very insightful chapter on the evolution of thought, language and culture via studies of primates. So, while, I found interesting material, I couldn't really connect it to cultural anthropology as we know it today in any strong sense. Much of the book concerns constructed laboratory experiments with school kids around the topic of cognitive development and the task of overcoming learning disabilities. While useful and relevant work to society, I could not link this with "culture" in any real sense, because what the experiments tended to do was try to escape the participants' normative culture and build instead an entirely artificial, controllable, measurable culture. Cole says at one point (p.176) that some researchers assume that "when one abstracts activities from their cultural context there is a meaningful sense in which they can be considered the same activity." It seems to me he then questions the validity of this, but in my view he could not escape making that assumption in his own work after all. I admit that these so-called "shortcomings" are the result of my personal approach to the book, not really those of the author. Methodological concerns may divide Anthropology and Psychology as much as anything, as Cole himself says. Still, CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY deals almost purely with the concerns of psychology, much less with culture or history.

Cole is concerned about the directions his field has taken. He wants to bring culture to a more central role in Psychology and designates his wide study "Cultural Psychology" to emphasize this. In order to back up his argument, he reviews a tremendous amount of literature on many topics. This would be very useful for anyone with an interest in this general area. He brings in the work of Russian psychologists whom, I suspect, are little known in the West. But, strangely, though he says he's using their work as a principal building block of his new Psychology, he criticizes a lot of their assumptions. I could not isolate their main contribution to his argument, other than to say that they considered culture and history important parts of the cognitive development of every human. In short, CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY is an attempt to establish a branch discipline of psychology and become a textbook for that discipline. It is not easy reading, but written with honesty and wide-ranging research. I will leave it to others, more qualified than I, to say whether it succeeds or not, but it certainly provoked a lot of thought in the brain of an anthropologist. That's never bad.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive work of Educational Psychology, March 28, 2006

By 

Andy Blunden (Brunswick, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Paperback)

This is by far the best work of psychology I have read. Although I have been familiar with the works of Vygotsky, Luria and Co. for a long time, Cole takes these ideas to a new level. It is utterly convincing, practical and engaging. The book is structured like a mystery novel. It begins with the author being sent to Liberia to help diagnose the reasons for the failure of the new school system introduced as part of the country's modernisation plans. Each new turn solves one mystery but throws up a new mystery, and we are drawn along with this puzzle - how do people learn? Every teacher should read this book. Compulsory reading!

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cole's book integrates culture into mainstream psychology., August 24, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (San Diego, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Paperback)

Mike Cole carefully chronicles the historical roots of culture in psychology. He demonstrates that psychologists have worried about the cultural aspects of human behavior since the onset of their discipline. It was only a matter of time before psychology developed to the point where it could no longer ignore the "activity system" that gives it life. Mike Cole helps us gain this insight.