The trick, in understanding the nature of culture, I suggest, is to escape from such either/or approaches—not by ignoring them but by forging a synthesis which recognizes, and continues to negotiate, the interactional and indivisible relationship of life composed of mind, matter, and medium. It has only been from within this non–dyadic understanding that the mediational quality of culture can begin to evolve. This roots of such a program can be traced in recent Western thought to the moderate relativism of Boas (1911) and the interactionist approach, the legacy of G.H. Mead (1959, 1962, 1964), which posits the origin of mind in interaction with Other through the medium of culture. Heirs to the Meadian tradition, e.g., Goffman (1959), Bateson (1972), Birdwhistell (1970), Warner (1959),and Habermas (1986) have demonstrated that to understand human behavioral phenomena the analysis must "include organisms in collective interaction as the basic unit of study." (Warner, 1959:p. 447).

In sum, the goal of understanding collective action is to comprehend the genesis of Self; and these traditions suggest that we see ourselves in relation to the norms of that social entity to which we belong. Western traditions have addressed the philosophical underpinnings of a social construction of the individual through the medium of culture, yet we have yet to fully develop an empirical approach which can ground theory in life. As suggested, Self grows out of realization of social norms, this is accomplished by activity, by praxis. We can have all sorts of theories about the world but that world can only become real to us by the trials and errors of interaction. This is just as true for our scholarly understanding as it is for our more mundane organizations of reality for as Voloshinov has noted (1973:p. 45)

…at the outset of an investigation, it is not so much the intellectual faculty for making formulas and definitions that leads the way, but rather the eyes and hands attempting to get the feel of the actual presence of the subject matter.

As will be further explained, the sociohistorical program arose from the need to reconcile in psychology experimental with introspective methods. This undertaking has been joined more recently by the task of converging the materialist and idealist agendas. While this endeavor is far from complete, the tradition has made an significant contribution in its argument for a unit of analysis, i.e., intersubjective activity. As the both the interactionist and the sociohistorical programs require understanding of the developmental history of the phenomenon of study, it is fitting to begin the project of explanation and synthesis with a brief look at the context in which the two arose.

Common Tradition

Despite Locke’s contrary assertions, the reigning philosophical paradigm prior to the latter half of the 19th century, believed that consciousness or mind originated within the individual. The study of the workings of the mind was, in the tradition of Descartes, a study of the soul and this was thought to be properly left to theology and philosophy. Any sense of collective mind was the summation of a collection of individuals. The rise of Protestantism in the West exacerbated the estrangement of the individual from the social group in that it validated the direct link between God and each believer, removing the need for a mediating institution such as the Church. Thus humankind was thought to have a special relationship with a creator and thus there was no link to the "lower" orders of animal life.

These divinely inspired, and consequently obscure parameters for the study of the mind, were disturbed by Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique (1984 [orig.1809]) evolutionist theories which became popularized in the physical sciences by Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1958 [orig. 1859]) and in the social sciences by Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (1876). It was these revolutionary works that posited the continuum, in the former, between the "lower" orders of animal life and humans, and in the latter, between "primitive" and "advanced" societies. The resulting paradigm became a primary influence on the direction of modern scientific inquiry. Marx stressed the social origins of the individual consciousness and saw in human history both an inescapable tyranny and an essential key to the understanding of humankind. More precisely, he suggested that the genesis of human systems was to be found in production:

Production creates the objects which correspond to the given needs; distribution divides them up according to social laws; exchange further parcels out the already divided shares in accord with the individual needs; and finally in consumption, the product steps outside this social movement and becomes a direct object and servant of individual need, and satisfies it in being consumed (Marx, 1973:p. 89).

In France, Durkheim (while ever an idealist) posited that activity is defined outside of the individual consciousness—that this conduct is established by the larger society and that it is "social fact" whose "determining cause…should be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of individual consciousness." (Durkheim, 1966:p. 10) The implications of this thinking for a psychological understanding of human actions was that an understanding of individual must come from the larger understanding of the individual’s social context.

Despite Kant’s doubts as to the possibility of a scientific psychology—how could the instrument of self examine self—a school of empirical psychological research arose in Germany in the 19th century. Foremost in the initial stages of this endeavor was Helmholtz who approached the study of mind through individual behavioral acts. In this work he was able to show that Kant’s critique was not absolute; that there was promise in a molecular (reductionist) approach; and that perception could be understood from the subject’s point of view.

In opposition to the molecular approach of Hemholtz was Brentano who in an early sketch of activity theory saw that the goal of empirical psychology was to study the subject purposively working with objects. He began with the molar activity of the mind where there must be an object for there to be a subject.

Brentano’s molar approach was to be eclipsed by the return to a molecular method in the development of an experimental psychology by Wilhelm Wundt who established his laboratory at Leipzig, Germany in 1879. His methodological emphasis was on introspection and on report of sensation as opposed to stimulus. In short, he was—as opposed to physiology—asking the subject to report on conscious experience. Wundt saw that such in reporting such higher mental processes social experience was an important variable. He concluded that the effects of this variable could only be examined in the artifacts of culture.

In this Wundt clashed with the approach of the German sociologist Vierkandt, who borrowing from the Gestalt tradition in psychology, saw that there was a existence of a "group" mind beyond the sum total of the individual members—a resurgence of the molar. It is in such a superorganism independent of individual control, yet dependent on human society, that a Culture resides.

Another contributor to the concept of a socially defined individual was Wilhem Dilthey who struggled to define a social science (Geistenwissenschaften) that approached the study of sociological phenomena in a different manner from that of the natural sciences. Seeking to study the most complex levels of human activity, he rejected a reductionist positivism (molecular) and sought an understanding in a continuous relationship (molar) of mind to nature and nature to mind. Yet despite this continuity he believed that in the study of humanity there could not be the abstraction inherent in the natural sciences. While natural science could explain, social science must understand. By this he meant that human experience, the raw data of the social scientist, had immediate consequence that was not present in the abstractions of raw data found in natural science—e.g. quarks, positrons, etc. Thus definitive steps were being taken by the end of the 19th century to move the study of mind from philosophy to science. Further there was the division between a reductionist, molecular science and that of a more holistic, molar approach where the individual could be understood in terms of society rather than the other way around.

It was against this backdrop in the the realms of psychology and social psychology/philosophy, the former in the Soviet Union and the latter in the United States, that L.S. Vygotsky and G.H. Mead came to strikingly similar perspectives. On one hand, Mead, as a social psychologist (and philosopher), provides the theoretical outlines for a connection between the individual mind and the larger process of society coupled with the suggestion that only the total society is appropriate as a unit of analysis. On the other, as a psychologist specifically interested in the development of individual "higher mental processes", Vygotsky focuses on the individuals and small groups in "concrete social interaction." where he finds that cultural development take place twice, first on the "intrapsychological" (social plane) between individuals and then on the "interpsychological" (internal plane) within an individual.

While there is no evidence that Mead and Vygotsky were aware of each others work, they were united in a common belief of the social origin of the mind and the power of a society to improve both the individual and social condition through education and other social programs. Both sought to enter the mind through the process of communication. In doing this they abandoned the experimental behaviorism and reductionism that was prevalent in Russian and American psychology at that time.

I will now turn to a more detailed examination of both Mead and Vygotsky. As Mead's work is more well known, I will only briefly touch upon the more important considerations in order to explore the thoughts of Vygotsky and the sociohistorical tradition more fully.

G.H. Mead

The linchpin of Mead’s conceptual orientation is the genesis of self, the image one has of the entity of which the individual feels to be in at least some physical control (or at least that which we feel we should control). We can only see ourselves in relation to the norms of that social entity to which we belong. We may not subscribe to the norms, but we are nevertheless enmeshed in them and we can only view ourselves by relating to them—orienting our position on the map of reality through the coordinates of our society’s norms. The process of establishing position is continuous as the radar sweep of the modern mariner. It is in this process that lies the true sense of communication, functioning through a myriad of known and unknown sensory channels. We can "locate" ourselves only through the perceived reflection of Self in Other—and this process require that a communication be entered into between self and society. It is out of this communication that the self is realized.

It was, perhaps, Mead’s understanding of the role that philosophy should play in a interdisciplinary human science that was his greatest contribution. He saw philosophy as the medium of synthesis whereby all branches of human science, whether social, behavioral or physical could be interrelated into a common theory of the nature of human existence. The constraints of this paper do not permit more than a passing notice of this issue which is essential to the complete understanding of the Mead contribution.

The weakness in Mead’s theory–driven approach is its vagueness in describing the actual linkage between interactionist mechanisms and processes, and the structure of society itself. To connect these elements into a concrete conceptual frame more comprehensive schemata have evolved. These are a range of ideas commonly grouped together under "Role Theory"—both in its "structuralist" (Faber, 1966) and "process" (R.H. Turner, 1962)—and "Ethnomethodology" (Goffman, 1959; Garfinkel, 1967; Birdwhistell, 1971; Geertz, 1973). It is ethnomethodology as theory and ethnography in practice that, perhaps, holds the greatest potential for the symbolic interactionist contribution to the understanding of cultural mediation.

Most simply, ethnomethodology is the study of methods used by people to create a sense of order in situations in which they interact. While interactionism focuses on the social environment of emerging definitions, norms, or values in order to reveal the organization of a society. Ethnomethodologist, in contrast, are concerned with the process individuals undertake to reach agreement on the impression of how rules, definitions and values come to exist—how those being studied, maintain or change their belief that there is, in reality, a social order. This is carried to the "thick description" concept of Geertz (1973). More than any other of Mead’s intellectual progeny, the work of Geertz brings symbolic interactionism into a near convergence with sociohistorical tradition.

Symbolic interactionism has partially answered the questions of where to place culture—neither in the object or subject but as the medium between the two—and how to describe it at the moment of observation. But it only hints at an answer to the question of causal significance. What is the process of historical development—the relationships between the phylogenic development of the species, the ontogenetic development of the individual and the historic development of the mediating culture. Interactionism defines the larger social phenomena, ethnomethodology explores their impact on the individual and small groups of individuals. But both are still interrupting a trajectory of events with a method capable of describing only the now, not the past and, consequently, not the future. They also fail to develop a satisfactory unit of analysis that can permit the expansion of micro observation into macro theory. It is to address this void that the contribution of the Vygotskian tradition is required.

L.S. Vygotsky

Vygotsky was born twenty three years (1896–1934) after Mead of a Jewish family in Belorussia. This heritage was to pose challenges to his rise as an academic, yet not so great that his intrinsic aptitudes could not be quickly realized. At the age of seventeen he was able to enter Moscow University, the focal point of scholarship in Eastern Europe. He graduated four years later to be swept up in the events of 1917.

Aided by the unique intellectual climate of revolutionary Russia, Vygotsky was able to construct a theory of the role of a culturally mediated mind that parallels yet goes far beyond its American counterpart in providing an empirically derived understanding of the process of mental development. Despite similar, though in Vygotsky’s case indirect, influences from the major contributors to the European discourse, there were two major behavioralist influence for Vygotsky to which Mead had no apparent access.

The first of these was G. Fechner, whose work Elements of Psychophysics (1966 [orig.1860]) offered a precise description of the relationship between changes in physical phenomena and responses to such changes within the human mind. The second, I.M. Sechenov, provided a method by which such responses could be effected suggesting that the linkage between the physical and the mental might be similar in process as that in the isolated tissues of frogs. Therefore, the same stimulus–response activity observed in such simple tissue might occur in the more complex organ structures such as the cerebral cortex. Sechenov had little success in providing definite evidence, but the potential linkage was now identified.

Sechenov, primarily through the more evidential work of I.P. Pavlov on the conditioned reflexes of animals, coupled with the now generally accepted Darwinian paradigm, opened the way for the behavioral "constructionist." While this group disagreed with Wundt’s introspective "voluntaristic" psychology, they did find a measure of convergence in a belief that an understanding of the complex processes of human cognition (higher mental functions) could be reached from simple units of analysis. In the case of Wundt, this unit was the unidirectional "sensation", while the constructionist. envisioned the bi–directional relationship of the "stimulus–response."

Yet even this small agreement was shattered by the theory of the Gestalt school (Köhler, Wertheimer, Kofka). It was their thesis that complex phenomena such as cognition could not be described simply by summing up a number of sensations or stimulus–responses. Max Wertheimer provided an example of this thinking in his work in perception. His model discounts the constructionist approach, believing that the the individual visual elements can only be entered or perceived as a whole. The school that evolved from Wertheimer’s seminal thoughts developed four laws of organization which appear to be universal in that a given stimulus will create a given perception regardless of sociocultural context.

This was the state of ferment that existed in psychology when Vygotsky came on the scene in 1923 as an assistant to the behavioralist Chelpanov. While Vygotsky sided with the Gestalt school against the reductionism of both the behavioralist and the introspectionist, he "felt that the Gestalt psychologist failed to move beyond the description of complex phenomena to the explanation of them." (Cole and Scribner in Vygotsky, 1978:p. 6) What he set out to do then was to converge the three streams of thought—introspectionist, behavioralist and Gestalt—into a science of the mind that could incorporate the the simple mechanics of stimulus–response within the contextural matrix of society to give explanation to the development, both individual (ontogenetic) and as a society (phylogenetic), of the higher mental functions. To achieve this he adopted three positions: (1) a reliance on a genetic or developmental method; (2) individual higher mental processes originate in social interaction; (3) mental processes can be understood in terms of the culture that mediate them. Further each of these must be understood in terms of the others.

From this it becomes clear that it was in a description of the developmental process that Vygotsky sought his method to understand the structure of the mind. As a Marxist, this development had to derive from a social origin, for it is a principal tenet of "historical materialism" that changes in the history and society of humankind effects changes in the structure of individual behavior and consciousness. As a mechanism for this impact, Vygotsky built from Engel’s belief that it was in activity and tool use that the human interrelationship to environment is structured

P.P. Blonsky reinforced this emphasis on activity as the appropriate point of entry in to the study of human phenomena. He saw that it was in the history of human behavior and particularly in the technology employed by behavior that a full understanding of the mind could be achieved.

As part of this emphasis on behavioral acts, language became an obvious point of departure. In his exploration of linguistics Vygotsky was paralleled by the work American linguists Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir. Built on the earlier speculation of Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt in the nineteenth century, Whorf and Sapir—whose empiricist theories came to dominate modern anthropological linguistics—believed that all languages are functionally equal and that:

It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but, rather, is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impression, for his synthesis of his mental stock and trade. (Whorf, 1956:p. 212)

Vygotsky through his own efforts and even more in that his pupil Luria, echoed this Whorf–Sapir thinking in proclaiming the social environment to be a major factor in shaping human cognition. All proposed that while animals possess only one signal system level, the reflexive, humans are endowed with a second which permits mediated thought. Luria’s work with Siberian peoples was offered in support. He attempted to show that societal variables directly contributed to difference in handling of verbal problems; specifically, the more "westernized" and "educated" groups were able to deal with abstract problems (Cole, 1971:p. 185).

Thus Vygotsky was prepared to tackled his central problem which was to find a method to employ both the natural and mental sciences in an understanding of the mind. From the behavioralist he grasped that the only in activity could the mind’s development be traced; from both the introspectionist and Marxism that activity or behavior could not be studied in reductionist isolation; and from linguistic theory the idea that language provided an ideal activity unit for analysis.

The Contribution of Vygotsky

The divergence in the work of Mead and Vygotsky comes not so much from disagreement but, rather, from difference in focus, context, and the absence of any direct communication. To understand how these differences have been reflected in their traditions, I now turn to several broad areas within the work to compare and contrast the specific understanding of each of these men on the nature of culture as artifact and activity in human communication.

The Method: a History of Behavior

Both Mead and Vygotsky can be seen as being allied to the phenomenological approach to the study of human systems and in opposition to positivism. Mead, however, as a social psychologist, stressed larger unit of society as the appropriate point for analysis. He sought to understand how individuals formulate action within the society. The conclusion which he reached was that while society acted as the necessary "mirror" (it was difficult to escape this Cartesian metaphor) by which the individual could structure Self, it was highly interactive, requiring action on the part of both the individual and society—a process between to subjects not the action of a subject on an object.

Mead believed that the sociological or collective observation was the only valid method for the gaining entrance to these entities. He saw that language, for example, could only be studied in such a context. As his work was almost entirely of a speculative or ideational nature, befitting his philosophical stance, there was no empirical research which is evidenced in his failure to explain, except in the most general terms, the way in which society structures the individual. It is in the filling of this void that the work of Vygotsky acts as a natural complement to that of Mead.

Stressing the developmental theme of his studies, Vygotsky primarily considered the growth of the mental processes of young children. He saw in this juncture between biological organism and social system the key to understanding the interrelationship of mind and society.

Vygotsky characterized his own method as "experimental–developmental" (Vygotsky, 1978:p. 61). There were three principal features of Vygotsky’s analytical method.

1. An emphasis on process as opposed to objects—this means that unlike traditional psychology which had treated psychological processes as objects, he advocated the analysis of artificially induced processes overtime whereby the temporal and intersubjective dimensions could be evaluated.

2. The need for explanation (genotypic) in addition to description (phenotypic)—here he points to the fact that phenomena which are externally identical can have a highly diverse genesis (and vice versa). For a process analysis it is essential to provide explanation along with description.

3. "Fossilized behavior"—this is a behavioral process that have "died" but remain as mechanized forms. These forms can at times be phenotypically identical to other more active forms. The only means to understand them is by a dynamic analysis which can artificially retrace its development—its history.

In short, these three features form the argument for the historical method. Vygotsky (1978:p. 65) quotes P.P. Blonsky: "Behavior can be understood only as the history of behavior." He continues with his own assessment:

The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool, and the result of the study. (ibid.)

A Theory of Culture: The convergence of Subject and object

For Mead the mind was clearly a thing of the individual, yet formed out of the interrelationship with the larger group. It is a thing of the social group without which Mead believed it will either not exist, or at the very most, be severely limited. For the mind to develop, there must be some process of self–reflection. There must be other humans, a group, a society which offers up a "mirror" to one’s behavior.

It is in this process that lies the true sense of communication. It functions through a myriad of known and unknown sensory channels. We can "locate" ourselves only through the perceived reflection of Self in Other—and this process requires that a communication be entered into between Self, the "I," and society. It is out of this communication that the Self is realized.

Communication is a process of putting Self in the position of Other, and of forming a communion based on shared meanings—the "significant symbol"—a gesture which has parallel meaning for both parties to the communion. This is not only so that one may understand the Other, but that one may also understand Self.

But how are meanings shared? If we are to escape the Cartesian metaphor of the mirror, or the Kantian duality of scheme–content, what is the relationship between the physical and mental world; what is the process by which society enters the individual—where society in culture mediates mind? Mead as a social psychologist loosely constructed a process which parallels the more precisely described internalization of Vygotsky::

…mechanism by which the individual living his own life in that of the group is placed in the attitude of taking the role of another…is…that of communication. …Communication as I shall use it always implies the conveyance of meaning; and this involves the arousal in one individual of the attitude of the other, and his response to these responses. The result is that the individual may be stimulated to play various parts in the common process in which all are engaged, and can therefore face the various futures which these different roles carry with them in reaching finally the form that his own will take. …The final step in the development of communication is reached when the individual that has been aroused to take the roles of others addresses himself in their roles, and so acquires the mechanism of thinking, that of inward conversation. (Mead, 1959:p. 85)

Mead bias for group phenomena is evident when he suggested that the real problem in communication is in the organization of a significant social base as he sees the ultimate communication is that of a "universal discourse."

…one which does bring people so closely together in their interrelationships, so fully develops the necessary system of communication, that the individuals who exercise their own peculiar functions can take the attitude of those whom they affect. (G.H. Mead, 1962:p.327)

Figure 1: The Median Concept of Self Genesis where "I", the individual organism finds "Self", the human being in a reflection from "Other."

The continued reference of Mead was that of the relationship (Figure 1) of interaction between the individual and the Other, that this relationship is the basis of society, a shared reality. It is this shared reality and its product, the significant symbol, which is the genesis of communication, and whose existence makes possible the realization of self.

But while Mead gave a sweeping sketch of the process of internalization as communication, we are still left without a more precise understanding of how society enters the individual—the procedures by which society through culture mediates mind. It was Vygotsky’s belief that in both "organic development" (phylogeny) and "mastery of use of tools" (ontogeny) the human mind take form. From this Vygotsky determined that:

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge. (Vygotsky, 1978:p. 24)

This raises the question of how speech effects cognition. Here Vygotsky suggested that (in the manner of the Gestalt approach) that while visual perception integrates an array of elements into a whole, speech requires "sequential processing" which in turn leads to the development of analytical thought. Slowly over time, it is this analytical process that supercedes the direct input of sensory perceptions—i.e., sight, sound, smell, touch—and the acquired:

…system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement It reconstructs the choice process on a totally new basis. Movement detaches itself from direct perception and comes under the control of sign functions included in the choice response. (ibid.:p.35)

Therefore, Vygotsky postulated that here is the essential break with other forms of animal life who are constrained to operate solely on the basis of their perceptual fields.

Vygotsky theorized that it was when the child was able to internalize what had been heretofore externally directed speech (i.e., speech to adults) that the greatest leap in cognitive development took place. For it was in such an egocentric dialog that the child is able to carry out rational problem solving. It was, as Vygotsky proclaimed, that in "the history of the processes of the internalization of social speech (that) is the history of the socialization of children’s practical intellect." (Vygotsky, 1978:p. 27) Thus the hypothesis of Vygotsky was that individual activity is shaped by sign systems and that autistic or internalized speech is the outcome of the developmental process—that mind issues from the child’s interaction with society.

It was the sign or more specifically word meaning that Vygotsky thought he could investigate mental development. He theorized that the acquisition of meaning attached to a word (sign) is an ongoing process. In this process the developmental line moves from exploratory gestures and sounds (the result of a phylogenic programming) through signs with indicative or context–bound functions into the final stage of decontextualization in which they assume full symbolic function. This can be shown, Vygotsky posited, by experiments with block sorting which appeared to occur in three loosely equivalent stages:

1. Unorganized Heaps—highly individuated criteria for sorting;

2. Complexes—based on objective connections between the objects;

3. Genuine Concepts—scientific criteria that come as the result of schooling.

Here it is useful to contrast the work of Jean Piaget and Vygotsky in that it explains not only the thinking of Vygotsky but illustrates the intellectual Cartesian traditions against which he was so opposed. As the sequence of mental genesis is traced both by Piaget and Vygotsky (Table 1) in terms of autistic (inner), egocentric, and social speech, it is important to explore the meaning and function which each gives to these terms and why they perceive an opposing direction of genesis

Table 1: Comparison of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s concept of speech development

A key difference found in the developmental paradigms of Vygotsky and Piaget was in their concept of the dynamic of development—the way in which nature and nurture intertwine. Vygotsky placed a much greater importance on the social structuring of egocentric and inner speech which govern human activity while Piaget found their genesis in a phylogenetic template. Vygotsky’s line of development made it possible to analyze inner speech from evidence (word meaning) drawn from egocentric speech.

In this method of analysis offered by Vygotsky, is his understanding (or lack) of the role of semiotic mediation in the transition of the interpsychological to the intrapsychological. The primary linkage in this transition was the change of the structure of egocentric speech into the abbreviated structure of inner speech. Vygotsky wrote of this transition:

…egocentric speech grows out of its social foundations by means of transferring social, collaborative forms of behavior to the sphere of the individual’s psychological functioning (in Wertsch, 1985:p. 111)

Of great importance for Vygotsky is the cognitive effect of the transition from parallel processing which occurs in the "reading" of a visual field to the serial processing required by language. It is this acquisition which enables analytical thought which, in turn, facilitates the ability to assign to a word (sign) meaning (in egocentric speech) and, ultimately, sense (in inner speech).

While the differences in Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s notions of mental development have many ramifications, of central importance is what they suggest about the role of education (schooling). Piaget seems to suggest that stages in development are arranged along a biologically structured chronology and that a disruption in such a chronology will irrevocably impair the learning process. Vygotsky, argues this in that development arises out of the quality of interaction between the individual and the sociocultural environment. Thus mental development takes place whenever there is an interactive adjustment between the interpsychological and intrapsychological planes.

To understand this process requires the integration of a full range of genetic analysis: the ontogeny (individual development), phylogeny (species development), sociocultural history (the process of development in the sociocultural mediation), and microgenesis (momentary development) of the higher mental processes. In each of these domains development occurs by unique processes which converge in the "concrete activity and development of the individual." (Wertsch, 1985:p. 3). This emphasis on concrete activity goes beyond the more ideational processes of intersubjectivity, stressing the Marxist importance of praxis in the development of consciousness. This stress was shared by Mead in his concept of sociality—deeply influenced by his understanding of the theory of relativity—by which he meant the ability to hold:

…two [or more] attitudes in a comprehensible relationship to each other as representing the same occurrence from two [or more] different standpoints which, having a mind or being a mind, he can occupy. If he accepts the two [or more] mutually exclusive situations as both legitimate, it is because as a minded organism he can be both. (Mead, 1959:pp .80–1)

In this lies a great significance for development communication—whether at the level of individual, group, or nation. If we are to accept Vygotsky’s paradigm, then we can place the responsibility for building the mind, not on some inaccessible phylogenetic process—in the hand of a god—but on the quality of the human interaction. By exploring the function of the tool/sign, Vygotsky has pointed us in the direction of the true locus of the mind—the socially mediated activity of the human with the reality of the physical environment. It is the quality of this activity that will dictate the quality of the mind.

Psychological Tools in The Collective Activity Of Remembering:

As Piaget’s theory may be seen to be driven by a Cartesian understanding of the primacy of the individual, Vygotsky’s Marxist world view dictated the genesis of the individual human being from society. The concept of the genetic role of activity or praxis to human mind is a key tenet of this ideology. Vygotsky narrowed this to focus on tool use stating:

To assume that labor, which fundamentally changes the character of humans’ adaptation to nature, is not connected with a change in the type of human behavior is impossible if, together with Engels, we accept the notion that ‘the tool signifies specifically human activity, a transformation of nature by humans—production’" (in Wertsch, 1985:p. 77).

Vygotsky went further than Engels in that along with the "technical" tools of production he included "psychological tools" as mediating cultural objects. The former category were designated as "tools", operating on an external plane, while the latter, which he called "signs", operated internally.

Memory is the key to understanding the interrelationship of mind and society in that the role of sign/tools, which are the product of society in the development of the mental functions, are clearly delineated. Essentially the human mind is a processor of past (stored) and present (incoming) information. We have seen how Vygotsky believed that language is the key instrument in the mind’s ability to store information. Without language, or with it alone, comes natural memory (characterized as dominating non–literate peoples) which is closely related to perception "because it arises out of the direct influence of external stimuli." (Vygotsky, 1978:p. 39) But language is not fully sufficient. To begin to truly control their environment, and not simply respond, humans require tool mediation of information. The level of the tool’s efficiency—at the low end the quipu, or bulla and at the high end computerized data banks—effects the ability of the society and its individual members to control the environment. Mediated memory allows human activity to take place not only in the present but through memory in the past—with analytic reason permitting a glimpse of the future through causality.

Thus the key to a mediated memory is the sign/tool operation In this action the sign/tool acts a the intermediary between stimulus and response (Figure 2). Because of the tool/signs reversibility, the environment effects the individual in ways controllable by the individual and by the society to which that individual belongs. Therefore, while instinctive unmediated reaction to stimulus might demand one type of action (biologically determined) the mediated stimulus is controlled by the cultural definition of the sign.

Figure 2: Vygotsky’s model of tool/sign (X) mediation of stimulus (S) response (R)

Sign operations are not the result of a process of logic. They arise in a series of evolving transformations which build upon themselves, "linked like stages of a single process, and are historical in nature." (ibid.:p. 46) Vygotsky’s research discovered two strands within this general trajectory, one was biological, while the other sociocultural. Within the general process of development, two qualitatively different lines, differing in origin, can be distinguished: the elementary processes, which are of biological origin, on the one hand, and the higher psychological functions, of sociocultural origin, on Other. Vygotsky saw that "history of child behavior is born from the interweaving of these two lines." (ibid.) Subsumed within this sociocultural thread were two further strands: speech and tools. It would be incorrect to see these threads as strict dichotomies, rather they form the poles of continuums with many "transitional systems" lying in between.

Both Vygotsky and Mead seem to imply that memory lies in an interactivity between the subjective and objective. For the first requirement of a mnemonic system is the concept of temporality. Such a concept rests as Mead points out on the praxis of intersubjectivity. Perhaps one of Mead’s greatest contributions for developmental psychology (and hence a most fruitful point of synthesis with Vygotsky) is his espousal of a relativist perspective He points to the human capacity to hold two points of view simultaneously. This is the result of what he terms the "common world." This world arises in the fact that our individual consciousness are dawn from the same interactive system.

Thus while we are a constructed entity, we can through the very process of construction, share in an understanding of Other (who is also the construct of a similar process). It is in this common world, the collective "object" in which each of the myriad selves that constitute a society are reflected, that resides the locus of both time and space—mind and memory. It is this collective world, a system of shared constraints, containing both object and symbol that is culture. It is this culture that mediates our existence as human beings (Figure 3).

Figure 3: A Model of the Cultural Mediation of Mind.where "E" is the External World or Environment, "I" is the Individual, and "C" is culture. (there is multidirectionality)

Implications for Cross-Cultural Research

While the enormous work of Vygotsky has only been briefly touched, this discussion will turn to the cross–cultural issues raised by his formulation of a culturally mediated mind. Central of these is an understanding of the manner by which a Culture (specific to a group) effects its individual members; who, in turn mediate both their Culture and the environment; which again impacts the individual in an endless cycle of reified activity; terminated only by the extinguishing of the common identity, the collective memory.

Vygotsky, himself was unable to carry out research in a cultural setting other than his own. He did perceive of a need for primary data and, shortly before his death, began to plan with his student Luria a field study in Central Asia to gain such first hand data.

This work echoed the Whorf–Sapir hypothesis in proclaiming the social environment to be a major factor in shaping human cognition. They attempted to show that societal variables directly contributed to difference in handling of verbal problems; specifically, the more "sovietized" and formally educated groups were able to deal with abstract problems (Cole, 1971:p. 185).

An early culture theory (Tylor 1871, Morgan, 1877) saw that primary stages of the more developed cultures were replicated in "primitive" peoples. In short, these cultures acted as a "time–machine" to provide a look at our own "evolutionary" past. The work of Morgan was to become a major influence on cultural materialism. Engels found validation of the Communist Manifesto in Ancient Society (Morgan, 1963) and through it came to consider the social forces that existed in non–literate, "classless" societies. This consideration led to Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State by Engles (1942) which posited that the development of civilization passed through stages starting with a "promiscuous horde" and ending in a state which he equated with civilization. It was in this manner that social evolutionist thinking entered into Soviet thought and, therefore, to underpin much of the Soviet communitarian approach

Another line of investigation explored the question of divergent human speciation through a difference in environmental stimulus. This was especially important for all theories of social determinism. If the human mind is shaped by a relationship to an environment which structures, and is structured by, human activity then, over time, isolated peoples could diverge phylogenetically. Additionally, if there was such a phylogenetic divergence was it the result of genetic or sociohistorical variables.

As has been discussed, Piaget provided one framework to grasp the continuity as well as the complexity of cognitive development; the brain possesses an innate operating system (rather than explicit genetic programs, i.e., representations of time and space, memory, causal and logical inference, etc.) which is continually modified through a dialectic process. This occurs, not only with the physical and social environment, but also with the brain’s representation of such environments, i.e., "mazeways." (Wallace, 1970) Yet this process, according to the "rationalist" point of view is regulated by a genetic template. Neo–Piagetians, such as Christopher Hallpike (1979), suggest that similar stages may exits in a "collective cognition" or world view. Therefore all humanity lies somewhere along the Piagetian "stages and periods" continuum.

As these stages are, in part, responses to the stimuli of environmental challenge it is conceivable that where there is an absence of challenge, there too will be an absence of growth. Yet it is important that this represents only one dimension of development, termed by Hallpike "vertical." There is also the "horizontal" dimension of experience and judgement and emotional maturity—the shaping of intelligence over time. A "lower" order of vertical development may find a high degree of horizontal complexity. Therefore a "primitive" group could be locked into, for example, the pre-operatory stage, yet within its intellectual parameters create a highly elaborated and rich cultural tradition.

Against this theory, Vygotsky and his colleagues Luria and Leont’ev (As reported by Cole, 1988:p. 5) organized an expedition to Central Asia where the planned to study:

the system of thinking of primitive societies, the development of the psychological functions in their thinking, and the pointing out of those changes which this thinking undergoes in social and cultural transformation connected with socialist growth (Luria, 1934:pp. 255–256)

A central "social" problem which motivated this research (although not necessarily for either Vygotsky or or his students) was the need to bring a wide variety of peoples who were placed by accidents of history and geography in various stages of development within the general developmental scheme of the Soviet Union—a developmental scheme that by many measures can be described as folly. In this the Soviets were faced by a problem of assimilation similar to that of the United States, except instead of scattering and devastating small tribes they were dealing in many cases with large national minorities of millions of members, e.g. Kazak, Uzbek and Turkomen.

Cole (1988) suggests that there are two major flaws in Luria’s study. As we have discussed above, the key error in the Piagetian approach (from the point of view of that of the sociohistorical school) is that it does not consider the mediating influence of activity or tool use. This same understanding of an "activity system" in the Uzbek and Kazak people was absent in Luria’s work. He failed to gain entrance into their cultures, instead and measuring them against his own activity system—a classic case of ethnocentrism. The second area of difficulty was that from his measurement of certain activities he proceeded to make generalizations across a whole range of "mediational mechanisms of cognition." He did not restrict his interpretation to the class of activities observed.

This was a similar problem for Jack Goody (1987) working with Scribner–Cole (1981) and the African Vai. From a theoretical schema based on the ideas of Vygotsky, it was believed that mastery of writing, such as in the case of Sonie (a principal informant), acted as a mediator for change in all "his basic intellectual operations."

The individual, ethnographically framed record of Sonie was contrasted with the more quantitative societal focus of the Scribner–Cole psychological testing (similar to Luria, in that it was structured from outside the activity system). Of major concern was the inability of this latter research to produce any significant measure by psychological testing of a causal link between literacy and cognitive development, i.e., at the level of basic abilities. This led to the conclusion that literacy (as shown in the Sonie model) creates a individualized set of operations based on the particular form of literate activity, e.g., English, Vai, Arabic. Therefore, the function of the literate activity at the level of each operation as a mediator in the interaction of the individual and the sociocultural environment must be carefully examined. It was only through this form of analysis that the impact of literacy (or any other form of tool/sign use) both on the individual and the society can be measured.

The Scribner–Cole approach failed, according to Goody (1987:p. 214), to find "general cognitive consequences." Scribner–Cole pointed to this same conclusion in noting that performance was affected "only on tasks whose requirements were linked directly to the requirements of a specific literacy activity..." (Scribner & Cole, 1981:p.158). Thus there is an apparent consensus between the Scribner–Cole and Goody findings in the modification of Vygotsky; that rather than looking at literacy as one transformational procedure, it is in reality multi–dimensional with many forms and many levels within each form—all of whose effects are context dependent.

This is supported by Cole’s (1988:p. 9) recent statement:

The presence of significant variations across different implementations of a single experimental procedure led us to… conclude that cultural differences in cognition reside more in the contexts within which cognitive processes manifest themselves than in the existence of a particular process (such as logical memory or the theoretical responding to syllogisms) in one culture and its absence in another.

It is for this reason that literacy, or any new technology, fails to bring a measurable cognitive affect to a sociocultural group overnight. While Vygotsky was able to converge mind and society, he did so simplistically, not giving proper balance to the complexity of the individuated relationship. The basic functions of memory, classification and problem solving are to rooted in a mediation of "the whole set of cultural and historical processes" to be altered overnight, or even in a generation or more. Yet is is such change that "psychological" testing addresses.

The key in grasping a culture–wide effect appears to be in the measure of mediation. Where the literacy effect is seen as unmediated, little cognitive change occurs. It is in the act of mediation—here most prominently in the institution of the school—that the locus of cognitive change is found. Had Luria looked more closely, or reported more accurately in his own study, the locus for the Uzbek’s cognitive change might have been in their resistance to Soviet hegemony.

It is to measure the context of the learning act that the ethnographic method becomes essential. While the psychological approach can measure variation in patterns of cognition in terms of etic stimuli, they cannot observe changes in the emic relationships between the individual and the environment (sociocultural and physical). It is only within this dimension that immediate change can be expected.

This call for the inclusion of an ethnographic method is seconded by Cole. While pointing out that the sociohistorical tradition is: "the only extant theoretical approach for which data about cultural organization of activity and mind are essential." (Cole, 1988:p. 6); he finds the problem of the Soviet communitarian tradition as the inability in the move from ontogeny to history—to grasp the "crucial nature of culture as the unique medium of all human activity." (ibid.) Instead the Soviet approach is bound by the 19th century social evolutionary theory whose subservience to a research model, driven by a priori economic determinism, prevents entrance into the activity systems of any culture other than those considered by (and embracing) Marx. The task is to liberate the sociohistorical approach from the hegemony of the Marxist subject–object ideology and provide it with the freedom to intermingle into other world views.

In attempt to reconcile the role of the individual within a non–Cartesian world view (Figure 4), Michael Cole (in personal communication, 1988) echoed Durkheim's understanding of the phenomenon of "human resolving power" (e.g., alienation) which he defined as the difference the individual perceives between the culturally mediated presentation of reality and individual experience of that reality (in this the idea of "affordance" put forth by J.J. Gibson [1979] will be of some assistance). It is precisely at this point—the struggle of both individuals and social systems to balance between total coordination (totalitarianism) and discoordination (anarchy)—that the analysis should take place.

Figure 4: Cole’s model of human consciousness (I) which arises out of the discordination
between environment (E) and cultural mediation (C)

Therefore, culture not only serves to link the individual and the world, but is also the process by which the individual physical organism becomes human. The sociohistorical frame for intercultural communication research is as a study of an activity in which both individuals and groups go beyond the bounds of their own historical and mediational systems, attempting (or required) for myriad purposes to reduce the uncertainty generated by systemic difference. This activity, regardless of outcome, immediately affects the individuals, the groups and the environment in which the activity takes place. Out of this interaction a new cultural system arises, replete with tools and symbols which for the participants act as a system of constraints.

The transformation of a biological organism—whether by adoption, adaptation, acculturation, assimilation—into a human being can be seen as the resolving activity between the "real world" phenomena and culturally mediated experience. In the intercultural case it is the "real world" that provides the opportunity for linkage—perhaps the adaptive challenge that forces Cultures into contact. It is in the resolution of conflicting cultural constraints that the activity of cultural accommodation or convergence is borne. This requires a conceptual shift, as Poster (1984, p. 53) suggested, from an understanding of activity of subjects on objects to one of an activity of symbolization among subjects (to depart from Hegel); a holistic approach that views "as the correlates between fields of knowledge, types of normativity, and forms of subjectivity in a particular culture" (Foucault, 1985:p. 4). More simply it is a shift from the analysis of objects to the analysis of process.

Yet can the such a psychologically framed analysis serve to describe sociological phenomena—can the micro–analysis be extrapolated into a macro–analysis? Has Weber’s problem of "levels of meaning" been solved? I suggest that the sociohistorical tradition provides such meaning both for the level of the "actors" and for the level of their aggregate, i.e., society. For as Wertsch (1985:p. 203) has pointed out, the study of activity is not just that of the "physical or perceptual context in which humans function…it is a sociocultural interpretation or creation that is imposed on the context by the participants." Therefore the larger system effects can be explored at micro as well as macro levels. This is not to suggest a return to reductionism but, rather, to provide a greater validity in the data to assure that it more completely reflects the complexity of forces and the immense range for their recombination.

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