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Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline

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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.

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!

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.

Cultural Psychology outlines a theoretical framework for cultural-historical investigation into human cognitive development predicated on analysis of everyday human activities. The author traces the role of culture in the history of psychological research, discusses lessons from cross-cultural research in Liberia, builds upon the Russian cultural-historical school (Vygotsky et al) and discusses the practical application of recent research into social activity and learning (5th Dimension, Field College). Throughout, Michael Cole persuasively argues that human cognition is culturally and socially constituted and articulates methodologies for studying cognitive development through joint activity.

I am interested in the implications of this work for educational strategies and on academic disciplinary boundaries. If cognitive development is constituted by specific social and cultural activities how do we rethink pedagogical practices? What helpful role can standardized tests really play in education? How do we rethink academic boundaries that separate studies of human sciences from culture? Can assessment tools useful for members of one cultural group be applied to members of other groups? Many of these issues are taken up in the engaging latter chapters of Cultural Psychology where Cole describes his work with different innovative educational programs incuding the 5th Dimension. Good stuff.

I circle around and around when balancing Coles' wonderfully intriguing study with the overly academic style of writing that he uses. Michael offers his best attempt--a Grade A effort--to navigate smoothly the reader through the ins and outs of cultural psychology, its origin, and its conflicting points with a keen eye toward the future. Alas, he makes a gallant effort, but fails due to his inaccessible prose, not his scholarship or argument.

You may need to read this one more than two times to get his points. If you can persevere that long...prepare for an unforgettable journey into the mind of culture!

Cultural Psychology is a book that doesn't discriminate among its readers; it makes no assumptions that the reader comes from a psychology background. Michael Cole, the author, after laying down the history, takes the reader through the development of cultural psychology supplementing this journey with relevant examples and appropriate metaphors. The focus being on "putting culture in the middle" the book provides an insight into the process of bridging the gap between culture and mind, which have been, categorized under two separate disciplines. And it is interesting to note that both these disciplines are struggling with similar problems to be able to articulate this fluidity.

The discussion around methodology as an underlying motif is most fascinating and how the field is a site of constant negotiation, of alterations in meanings and juxtapositions especially in the context of two terms "culture" and "context". One finds a similar trend of adjustments and readjustments in the field of anthropology, a field Cole continually refers to in the book. In spite of the difference in the content of what each discipline focuses on one finds similarities in what these two disciplines are trying to achieve; to strike a perfect balance between the individual and culture, to find the right spots to place the individual and culture in their respective methodologies.

Cole describes context to mean "to weave together" saying, "An "act in context" understood in terms of the weaving metaphor requires a relational interpretation of mind; objects and contexts arise together as part of a single bio-social cultural process of development."(136). So understanding the individual mind in context of culture where mediation is carried out through cultural artifacts. And where this interaction takes place differently for different individuals with varied experiences, memories and responses to these cultural artifacts. He focuses on the mediating role artifacts play in activities and how the mind develops through the processes of interactions mediated through these artifacts. Therefore arguing that the individual mind cannot be studied in isolation but in context.

In his concluding paragraph Cole writes, "Create a methodology, a systematic way of relating theory to data that draws upon both the natural sciences, as befits its hybrid object, human beings. Find an activity setting where you can be both participant and analyst. Enter into the process of helping things grow in the activity system you have entered by bringing to bear all the knowledge gained from the both the cultural and natural sciences sides of psychology and allied disciplines"(349-350) stressing the importance of borrowing and lending transactions between disciplines. Another aspect of methodology suggested here is the shift from a one-dimensional role of observation to the dual role of both participation and analysis characterized by dialogue and communication, a similar concern in the allied discipline of anthropology.

The first part of this book presents a thorough history of early psychology, and the unfortunate schism that was created between what Cole refers to as first and second psychologies. At bottom, first psychology --which is today the far more prevalent mode of academic inquiry into the human mind-- assumes that the human mind and the environment that surrounds it are two easily distinguishable things. From this assumption follow various stimulus --> response approaches to studying human behavior, where it is assumed that the simple reactions that are elicited from subjects to simple stimuli is an adequate way of probing consciousness and thought. This reductive strategy is in line with the "scientific" aspirations that gripped the human sciences in the early part of the twentieth century. In this paradigm, the social and cultural context that surrounds and gives structure to human life is either thought to be too complex to incorporate into "real" studies, or is noise that a clean, quiet lab can remedy. Second psychology, covered in the second part of the book, starts from the assumption that meaning is inseparable from the goals and intentions that only culture/society make intelligible. Instead of assuming that there are a priori essential psychological structures that determine human behavior, it starts by questioning how human action makes-sense, that is, puts cultural resources to use in the service of fulfilling/attaining a certain goal. These cultural resources --be they language, tools, other people-- are intricately involved in the very conceptualization of what counts as a goal and what counts as legitimate ways of attaining it. It is taken for granted that this goal oriented action will take different shapes in different cultural and historical settings, as the cultural resources available in different times and places will enable and limit, that is mediate, what is possible in different ways. This ecological imperative in second psychology helps to guide real world applications that are sensitive to the historical/anthropological contexts of the subjects being studied, and not simply abstracted out of these contexts and asked to perform certain measurable "standard" tasks. This book shows how it is possible to design such studies, constructively incorporating culture and society into questions of human action, thought, and consciousness.

Mike Cole's influential and important book examines the role of culture in the history of psychology. His main points of inquiry are "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 it scientifically acceptable?" Answering these questions takes us through many disciplines and countries. Cole draws on Russian cultural-historical theories of activity and mediation first put forth by Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev and others as well as his own research among the Vai of Liberia and children through the Fifth Dimension program. The books stresses that the crossing of disciplinary boundaries is of central importance to expanding our understandings of processes human thought and learning.
In interrogating how to be scientifically rigorous, credible and accepted while keeping culture as a central tenet of human thought and action, Cole is concerned with "ecological validity" and "behavior-in-context," which question whether it is possible to take behavior or activity in one context and then make expansive generalizations to many contexts (i.e. does the ability or inability to correctly answer multiple choice questions on a timed SAT exam really measure how well one will do in a college setting or how well do tests conducted in a laboratory really allow for understandings of behaviors outside the lab?).
Extending questions of ecological validity and behavior-in-context, Cole is extremely interested in sustainability. It is not enough to make broad generalizations from an isolated lab or classroom, rather the goal is to understand behavior in real life situations that effect life as it is lived. This means trying to find better ways to understand and treat learning disabilities, to improve literacy and academic performance in children as well as making tenable connections between disciplines that brings in new ideas and methods to affect positive change and keep it implemented and going.
This book is excellent for those interested in culture, interdisciplinary studies, psychology (and its history), and education.

This book revolves around two thematic lines of questioning. First, Cole is asking what is the role of culture in the mind. To attempt an answer, he explores the history of psychology. He discusses the process of division that the human sciences underwent at the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth, and how the constitution of psychology as a science meant its divorce from history and culture. Cole traces various proposals for reconciling the experimental and historical sciences, discussing Mill's dual psychology, Volkerpsychologie, descriptive psychology, and Wundt's proposal for a dual psychology. He emphasizes Wundt's argument that once cultural history intertwines with individual experience, they can no longer be disentangled to be studied with experimental methods, and that genetic methods are needed to address culturally mediated psychological processes.
Cole's second axial line of questioning is, if one is a psychologist who believes that the role of culture in mind is significant, how does one conduct research while maintaining scientific credentials? To address this question Cole takes as a point of departure cultural-historical activity theory, and expands upon the basic principles laid out by Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev among others to formulate a more complex and nuanced understanding of the intertwining of the natural and cultural lines. Cole extends Vygotsky's insights to posit the co-evolution of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic. He stresses that adopting a cultural-historical approach does not answer the question of how to carry out analyses, and writes toward formulating a methodology that addresses the issue of describing and analyzing everyday life.
M Walsh's Review: Every now and then a book enters the academic scene, and it produces a shift in our way of understanding a discipline. Read and reread, taught in classrooms, taken up by one and then another discipline that sees in it something new, something that relates to our contemporary context, Michael Cole's Cultural Psychology is just such a book. In this compelling read, Cole outlines a program for developmental psychology as a cultural-historical science - a potentially revolutionary move that ruptures the way developmental psychology has traditionally been conceived. Drawing on Russian cultural-historical activity theories and American pragmatic social sciences, Cole thoughtfully weaves together a cultural-historical approach to the study of mind. Two provocative questions guide his project. He asks: Why do psychologists find it so difficult to keep culture in mind? If you are a psychologist who believes that culture is a fundamental constituent of human thought and action, what can you do that it scientifically acceptable?
To answer the first question, Cole gently guides the reader into the annals of psychology in an attempt to locate the paradigmatic moment when experimental psychology was severed from the history of psychology. The second question hinges on a re-exploration into the work of the great Russian father's of psychology, Vygotski, Leontiev, and Luria, who viewed culture as intimately intertwined with the human experience, and who were able to temporarily accomplish what other psychologists could not: the institutionalization of a cultural psychology that accommodated both sides of Wundt's two psychologies. In his book Cole launches the important argument that cultural mediation is a key aspect of any species along the phylogenetic line from which Homo sapiens appear. Relatedly, one of the most intriguing conversations begins in Chapter 6, "Phylogeny and Cultural History." Here Cole explores the role of prolepsis - "the representation of a future act or development as being presently existing" - in the organization of human psychological functions. Using concrete examples gleaned from studies, Cole shows that new parents construe the phylogentic-biological characteristics of their child against the backdrop of their own past (or cultural) experience. Based on their own cultural experience, Cole makes the argument that parents forecast a probable future for their child. In later chapters he goes onto argue that prolepsis is an integral component of culturally mediated thought.
Michael Cole's, Cultural Psychology is not only eloquently written, shedding important light on the history of a fractured discipline, it is also a text with broad implications for contemporary issues involving cross-cultural differences.

In his book on Cultural Psychology, Cole focuses on culture's role in development. Psychology students may be surprised to learn that this is not a new field; although Wundt is widely given credit as the founder of U.S. psychology, his second psychology that stressed the importance of culture has traditionally been silenced or pushed to the backburner. The Soviet psychologists, however, have always kept the second psychology as a central element. Cole builds on the foundation that was laid by the Soviet psychologists to take a cultural-historical approach to the relationship between mind and culture. He focuses on activity and artifacts.

Cole stresses the importance of artifacts and their mediating role in activities. Artifacts move beyond simple objects to embrace their cultural uses and history as well as the ability of a person to use them for alternative purposes. It is through the individual's interaction with the world using these artifacts that the mind develops. Therefore, the mind cannot be understood separately from either the artifacts or the cultural context.


Throughout the book, Cole relies on an analogy of a garden to discuss development. Like seeds kept in a shed, the biological can drive human development only so far before it requires the nourishment of culture to blossom. The physical and the cultural cannot be separated, for they operate together to create the person. Cole also goes beyond the traditional nurture vs. nature debate in another way, arguing that the present is created by both the past and the future intersecting. The cultural group assesses what a newborn child will and will not be able to do depending on their past experiences of their limitations. Without realizing it, these past experiences and future expectations shape how they treat the child. Together, these past memories and future predictions merge to create the present world for the child. Development is not so easily categorized into physical or cultural.

Cultural Psychology provides a refreshing and exciting look at the intersection of culture and the mind. It is rich in detail and theory, alternately growing dense or flowing freely. It merges practice and theory, refusing to be confined to experimental labs.