The Social in Post-Vygotskian Theory by Giorgio Bertini

The ‘Social’ in Post-Vygotskian Theory Harry Daniels University of Bath Abstract. In this article some limitations of the increasingly popular theories of the Russian semiotician L.S. Vygotsky will be identified. Emphasis will be placed on the lack of an account of social positioning within discourse as well as the social, cultural and historical production of discourse. At the heart of these concerns there lies an underdeveloped perspective on the social function of language, particularly when it is used to influence interpersonal relations. The theories of cultural transmission developed by Basil Bernstein in the later stages of his career will be discussed in terms of the potential for refining the Vygotskian thesis. Key Words: Bernstein, language of description, social positioning, Vygotsky

This paper will discuss some of the shortcomings of the social theory of L.S. Vygotsky and suggest that Basil Bernstein’s work on social positioning and his approach to the development of multi-level languages of description may be of value to those concerned with theoretical and empirical work on the social formation of mind. In what is arguably his most influential text, Thinking and Speech, Vygotsky (1987) discusses the process of development in terms of changes in the functional relationship between speaking and thinking. He asserts that ‘change in the functional structure of consciousness is the main and central content of the entire process of mental development’ (p. 188). He illustrates the movement from a social plane of functioning to an individual plane of functioning. From his point of view the ‘internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). In this way interpersonal processes are transformed into intrapersonal processes as development progresses. Vygotsky provided a rich and tantalizing set of suggestions that have been taken up and transformed by social theorists as they attempt to construct accounts of the formation of mind which to varying degrees acknowledge social, cultural and historical influences. His is not a legacy of determinism Theory & Psychology Copyright © 2006 Sage Publications. Vol. 16(1): 37–49 DOI: 10.1177/0959354306060107 www.sagepublications.com

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and denial of agency; rather he provides a theoretical framework which rests on the concept of mediation by what have been referred to as psychological tools or cultural artefacts. Bernstein (1993) has suggested that the metaphor of the ‘tool’ itself serves to detract attention away from the relation between its structure and the context of its production: The metaphor of ‘tool’ draws attention to a device, an empowering device, but there are some reasons to consider that the tool, its internal specialized structure is abstracted from its social construction. Symbolic ‘tools’ are never neutral; intrinsic to their construction are social classifications, stratifications, distributions and modes of recontextualizing. (p. xvii)

There is a long-running debate as to whether Vygotsky was a Marxist who wished to create a Marxist psychology. There is no doubt that he drew on theoretical Marxism. It has been argued, for example by Bernstein (1993), that this in itself presented him with a particular theoretical challenge: A crucial problem of theoretical Marxism is the inability of the theory to provide descriptions of micro level processes, except by projecting macro level concepts on to the micro level unmediated by intervening concepts though which the micro can be both uniquely described and related to the macro level. Marxist theory can provide the orientation and the conditions the micro language must satisfy if it is to be ‘legitimate’. Thus such a language must be materialist, not idealist, dialectic in method and its principles of development and change must resonate with Marxist principles. (p. xv)

If activities are to be thought of as ‘socially rooted and historically developed’, how do we describe them in relation to their social, cultural and historical contexts of production? If Vygotsky was arguing that formation of mind is a socially mediated process, then what theoretical and operational understandings of the social, cultural, historical production of ‘tools’ or artefacts do we need to develop in order to empirically investigate the processes of development? These questions would appear to be a matter of some priority for the development of the field, as so much of the empirical work that has been undertaken struggles to connect the analysis of the formative effect of mediated activity or tool use with the analysis of tool production. I intend to try to invoke an account of the production of psychological tools or artefacts, such as discourse, that will allow for exploration of formative effects of the social context of production at the psychological level. This will also involve a consideration of the possibilities afforded to different social actors as they take up positions and are positioned in social products such as discourse. This discussion of production will thus open up the possibility of analysing the possible positions that an individual may take up in a field of social practice. In this paper I will use the following question as a device with which to open a debate about the relationship between principles of social production, regulation and in-

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dividual functioning: ‘How do principles of power and control translate into principles of communication and how do these principles of communication differentially regulate forms of consciousness?’ (Bernstein, 1996, p. 18). Vygotsky’s account of development rests on notions of mediation and externalization as well as what he termed internalization. The concept of ‘mediation’ opens the way for the development of a non-deterministic account in which mediators serve as the means by which the individual acts upon and is acted upon by social, cultural and historical factors. There is considerable tension and debate as to the nature of such factors. The tensions are revealed in competing definitions of ‘culture’ and the labelling of contemporary theoretical approaches as, for example, either socio-cultural or cultural-historical. The means of mediation that have tended to dominate recent discussions are cultural artefacts such as speech or activity. These semiotic and activitybased accounts may be seen as referring to different levels of emphasis within a single process. The field abounds with descriptors such as ‘sociocultural psychology’, ‘cultural-historical activity theory’, and so on, each of which has been defined with great care. However, confusions persist alongside what still appear to be genuine differences of emphasis. Wertsch (1998) has advanced the case for the use of mediated action as a unit of analysis in social-cultural research because, in his view, it provides a kind of natural link between action, including mental action, and the cultural, institutional and historical context in which such action occurs. This is so because the mediational means, or cultural tools, are inherently situated, culturally, institutionally and historically. Activity theorists have adopted a different approach. Engestr¨om (1993) points out the danger of the relative under-theorizing of context. For example, it could be argued that mediated action is such an undertheorizing: . . . individual experience is described and analysed as if consisting [of] relatively discrete and situated actions while the system or objectively given context of which those actions are a part is either treated as an immutable given or barely described at all. (p. 66)

It is of interest that so much effort has been expended attempting to clarify the movement from the social to the individual and yet relatively little attention has been paid to the reverse direction. Bruner’s (1997) reminder about Vygotsky’s liberationist version of Marxism serves to reinforce the view that his was a psychology that posited the active role of the person in his or her own cognitive and emotional creation. Whether the emphasis was directly on creativity itself or through the use of expressions such as ‘mastering themselves from the outside’, in his early work Vygotsky discussed externalization at some length.

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Engestr¨om has developed a model of transformation he calls the expansive cycle in which internalization and externalization develop complementary roles. Engestr¨om and Miettinen (1999) provide a discussion of the internalization/externalization process at every level of activity. They relate internalization to the reproduction of culture and externalization to the creation of artefacts that may be used to transform culture. I wish to suggest that when the cultural artefact takes the form of a pedagogic discourse, we should also analyse its structure in the context of its production. Given that human beings have the capacity to influence their own development through their use of the artefacts, including discourses, which they and others create or have created, then we need a language of description that allows us to identify and investigate: ● the circumstances in which particular discourses are produced; ● the modalities of such forms of cultural production; ● the implications of the availability of specific forms of such production for the shaping of learning and development. As Bernstein (1993) argued, the development of Vygotskian theory calls for the development of languages of description which will facilitate a multilevel understanding of pedagogic discourse, the varieties of its practice and contexts of its realization and production. There is a need to connect the theory of social formation of mind with the descriptions that are used in the activity of research. This should provide a means of relating the socialcultural historical context to the form of the artefact. Bernstein (2000) illustrates the need for an appropriate language of description in his discussion of the concept of habitus: . . . if we take a popular concept habitus, whilst it may solve certain epistemological problems of agency and structure, it is only known or recognized by its apparent outcomes. Habitus is described in terms of what it gives rise to, and brings, or does not bring about. . . . But it is not described with reference to the particular ordering principles or strategies, which give rise to the formation of a particular habitus. The formation of the internal structure of the particular habitus, the mode of its specific acquisition, which gives it its specificity, is not described. How it comes to be is not part of the description, only what it does. There is no description of its specific formation. . . . Habitus is known by its output not its input. (p. 133)

If processes of social formation are posited, then research requires a theoretical description of the possibilities for social products in terms of the principles that regulate the social relations in which they are produced. We need to understand the principles of communication in terms derived from a study of principles of social regulation. If, as Lemke (1995) argues, communication plays a critical role in social dynamics, then social theories about discourse should point the way to a

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dynamic, critical, unitary social theory. Lemke suggests that whilst linguistics furnishes theories of description and psychology provides theories of mind, both tend to ignore the social functions of language and the social origins of human behaviour. He laments the lack of progress in advancing this agenda: Unfortunately, most theories of discourse are not social theories. Indeed most theories of discourse are mainly linguistic and psychological, paying relatively little attention to the question of who says what when, why, and with what effects. The social context of discourse, and issues of discourse as social action are largely ignored. Instead discourse is mostly seen as the product of autonomous mental processes, or it is simply described as having particular linguistic features. (Lemke, 1995, p. 28)

The concepts of both ‘habitus’ and ‘genre’ have been proposed as theoretical devices for ‘bridging’ the gap. As I noted above, however, Bernstein is critical of habitus for its weaknesses when it comes to operational description and thus comparative analysis. Both Hasan (1992a, 1992b, 1995) and Wertsch (1985a, 1985b, 1991) note the irony that whilst Vygotsky developed a theory of semiotic mediation in which the mediational means of language was privileged, he provides very little if anything by way of a theory of language use. Wertsch has turned to Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres for such a theory. However, Hasan (in press) has argued that whilst Bakhtin’s views concerning speech genres are . . . rhetorically attractive and impressive, the approach lacks . . . both a developed conceptual syntax and an adequate language of description. Terms and units at both these levels in Bakhtin’s writings require clarification; further, the principles that underlie the calibration of the elements of context with the generic shape of the text are underdeveloped, as is the general schema for the description of contexts for interaction.

Hasan is also concerned with the bias within activity theory towards the experiential function of language. She equates this with the ‘field of discourse’ within systemic functional linguistics. Her concern is with the absence of analysis of what she refers to as the ‘tenor of discourse’, by which she means the social relations and the positioning of the interactants, and the ‘mode of discourse’, that is, the nature of the semiotic and material contact between the discursive participants. Within Vygotskian theory, speech is supposedly the primary means of semiotic mediation, and yet the social functioning of language is undertheorized. In an account of the social formation of mind, surely there is a requirement for theory which relates meanings to interpersonal relations. This emphasis on representational/experiential meaning and the absence of an account of the ways in which language serves to regulate interpersonal relations and in which its specificity is in turn produced through specific patterns of interpersonal relations and thus social regulation constitute a serious weakness (Hasan, 2005).

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Halliday’s (1978) view of language as a social semiotic requires us to think of it as a resource to be deployed for social purposes. He seeks to analyse the uses of language as integral to the social functions, the social contexts of actions and relationships in which language plays its part (Lemke, 1995). Halliday provides the account of language use that is absent in Vygotsky, and Bernstein provides the basis for a language of description which may be applied at the level of principles of power and control which may then be translated into principles of communication. Bernstein also seeks to show how these principles of communication differentially regulate forms of consciousness. As Bernstein (1996) noted in discussion of sociolinguistics: Very complex questions are raised by the relation of the socio to the linguistic. What linguistic theories of description are available for what socio issues? And how do the former limit the latter? What determines the dynamics of the linguistic theory, and how do these dynamics relate, if at all, to the dynamics of change in those disciplines which do and could contribute to the socio. If ‘socio’ and linguistics are to illuminate language as a truly social construct, then there must be mutually translatable principles of descriptions which enable the dynamics of the social to enter those translatable principles. (pp 151–152)

One implication of this position is that different forms of social may be seen in relation to different patterns of communication: From this point of view, every time the child speaks or listens, the social structure is reinforced in him and his social identity shaped. The social structure becomes the child’s psychological reality through the shaping of his acts of speech. (Bernstein, 1971, p. 144)

Different social structures give rise to different modalities of language which have specialized mediational properties. They have arisen, have been shaped by, the social, cultural and historical circumstances in which interpersonal exchanges arise, and they in turn shape the thoughts and feelings, the identities and aspirations for action of those engaged in interpersonal exchange in those contexts. Hence the relations of power and control which regulate social interchange give rise to specialized principles of communication. These mediate social relations. Bernstein seeks to link semiotic tools with the structure of material activity. Crucially he draws attention to the processes which regulate the structure of the tool rather than just its function: Once attention is given to the regulation of the structure of pedagogic discourse, the social relations of its production and the various modes of its recontextualising as a practice, then perhaps we may be a little nearer to understanding the Vygotskian tool as a social and historical construction. (Bernstein, 1993, p. xix)

Bernstein also argues that much of the work that has followed in the wake of Vygotsky ‘does not include in its description how the discourse itself is

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constituted and recontextualised’ (p. 45). As Ratner notes, Vygotsky did not consider the ways in which concrete social systems bear on psychological functions. He discussed the general importance of language and schooling for psychological functioning; however, he failed to examine the real social systems in which these activities occur. The social analysis is thus reduced to a semiotic analysis which overlooks the real world of social praxis (Ratner, 1997). The feature that can be viewed as the proximal cause of the maturation of concepts, is a specific way of using the word, specifically the functional application of the sign as a means of forming concepts. (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 131)

Whilst it is quite possible to interpret ‘a specific way of using the word’ to be an exhortation to analyse the activities in which the word is used and meaning negotiated, this was not elaborated by Vygotsky himself. The analysis of the structure and function of semiotic psychological tools in specific activity contexts is not explored. In Engestr¨om’s (1987) work within activity theory the production of the outcome is discussed but not the production and structure of the tool itself. The rules, community and division of labour are analysed in terms of the contradictions and dilemmas which arise within the activity system specifically with respect to the production of the object. The production of the cultural artefact—the discourse—is not analysed in terms of the context of its production, that is, the rules, community and division of labour which regulate the activity in which subjects are positioned. Mediating artefacts: Tools and signs

Object Sense

Subject

Outcome Meaning

Rules

Community

Division of labour

Figure 1. The structure of a human activity system (Engestr¨om, 1987: 78).

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Bernstein’s (1981) paper outlined a model for understanding the construction of pedagogic discourse. In this context pedagogic discourse is a source of psychological tools or cultural artefacts. Bernstein’s primary object was to view the production of pedagogic discourse in the context of the action of a group of specialized agents operating in a specialized setting in terms of the often-competing interests of this setting. Bernstein’s work on cultural transmission in schools shows his continuous engagement with the interrelations between changes in organizational form, changes in modes of control and changes in principles of communication. Initially he focuses upon two levels: a structural level and an interactional level. The structural level is analysed in terms of the social division of labour it creates, and the interactional level in terms of the form of social relation it creates. The social division of labour is analysed in terms of strength of the boundary of its divisions, that is, with respect to the degree of specialization. Thus, within a school the social division of labour is complex where there is an array of specialized subjects, teachers and pupils, and it is relatively simple where there is a reduction in the specialization of subjects, teachers and pupils. Thus, the key concept at the structural level is the concept of boundary, and structures are distinguished in terms of their boundary arrangements and their power supports and legitimations (Bernstein, 1996). The interactional level emerges as the regulation of the transmission/ acquisition relation between teacher and taught: that is, the interactional level comes to refer to the pedagogic context and the social relations of the classroom, or its equivalent. The interactional level then gives the principle of the learning context through which the social division of labour, in Bernstein’s terms, speaks. Bernstein distinguished three message systems in the school: curriculum, pedagogy (practice) and evaluation. Curriculum referred to what counted as legitimate knowledge, which was a function of the organization of subjects (fields), modules or other basic units to be acquired. Pedagogy (practice) referred to the local pedagogic context of teacher and taught, and regulated what counted as a legitimated transmission of the knowledge. Evaluation referred to what counted as a valid realization of the knowledge on the part of the acquirer. Curriculum was analysed not in terms of contents but in terms of relation between its categories (subjects and units). Pedagogic practice, again, was to be analysed not in terms of its contents but in terms of the control over the selection, sequencing, pacing and criteria of communication in the transmitter/acquirer relation. It is apparent that the curriculum is regarded as an example of a social division of labour and pedagogic practice as its constituent social relations through which the specialization of that social division (subjects, units of the curriculum) is transmitted and expected to be acquired.

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Bernstein uses the concept of classification to determine the underlying principle of a social division of labour and the concept of framing to determine the principle of its social relations, and in this manner he integrates the structural and interactional levels of analysis in such a way that, up to a point, both levels may vary independently of each other. Classification is defined at the most general level as the relation between categories. The relation between categories is given by their degree of insulation. Thus, where there is strong insulation between categories, each category is sharply distinguished and explicitly bounded and has its own distinctive specialization. When there is weak insulation, then the categories are less specialized and therefore their distinctiveness is reduced. In the former case, Bernstein speaks of strong classification, and in the latter case, he speaks of weak classification. In terms of framing, the social relations generally, in the analysis, are those between parents/children, teachers/pupils, doctors/patients, social workers/clients, but the analysis can be extended to include the social relations of the work contexts of industry or commerce. From Bernsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s point of view, all these relations can be regarded as pedagogic: Framing refers to the control on communicative practices (selection, sequencing, pacing and criteria) in pedagogical relations, be they relations of parents and children or teacher/pupils. Where framing is strong the transmitter explicitly regulates the distinguishing features of the interactional and locational principle which constitute the communicative context. . . Where framing is weak, the acquirer is accorded more control over the regulation. Framing regulates what counts as legitimate communication in the pedagogical relation and thus what counts as legitimate practices. (Bernstein, 1981, p. 345)

In that the model is concerned with principles of regulation of educational transmission at any specified level, it is possible to investigate experimentally the relation between principles of regulation and the practices of pupils. Relations of power create and maintain boundaries between categories and are described in terms of classification. Relations of control revealed in values of framing condition communicative practices. It becomes possible to see how a given distribution of power through its classificatory principle and principles of control through its framing are made substantive in agencies of cultural reproduction, for example families/schools. The form of the code (its modality) contains principles for distinguishing between contexts (recognition rules) and for the creation and production of specialized communication within contexts (realization rules). Through defining educational codes in terms of the relationship between classification and framing, these two components are built into the analysis at all levels. It then becomes possible in one framework to derive a typology of educational codes, to show the inter-relationships between organizational

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and knowledge properties, to move from macro- to micro-levels of analysis, to describe the patterns internal to educational institutions and relate them to the external social antecedents of such patterns, and to consider questions of maintenance and change. (Bernstein, 1977, p. 112)

The analysis of classification and framing can be applied to different levels of school organization and various units within a level. This allows the analysis of power and control and the rules regulating what counts as legitimate pedagogic competence to proceed at a level of delicacy appropriate to a particular research question. Bernstein later (1996) refined his distinction between instructional and regulative discourse, such that the former refers to the transmission of skills and their relation to each other, and the latter refers to the principles of social order, relation and identity. Whereas the principles and distinctive features of instructional discourse and its practice are relatively clear (the what and how of the specific skills/competences to be acquired and their relation to each other), the principles and distinctive features of the transmission of the regulative are less clear as this discourse is transmitted through various media and may indeed be characterized as a diffuse transmission. Regulative discourse communicates the school’s (or any institution’s) public moral practice, values, beliefs and attitudes, principles of conduct, character and manner. It also transmits features of the school’s local history, local tradition and community relations. Pedagogic discourse is modelled as one discourse created by the embedding of instructional and regulative discourse. The language that Bernstein has developed allows researchers to take measures of school modality: that is, to describe and position the discursive, organizational and interactional practice of the institution. Research may then seek to investigate the connections between the rules the children use to make sense of their pedagogic world and the modality of that world. Bernstein provides an account of cultural transmission which is avowedly sociological in its conception. In turn, the psychological account that has developed in the wake of Vygotsky’s writing offers a model of aspects of the social formation of mind which is underdeveloped in Bernstein’s work. Hasan (1995) brings Bernstein’s concept of social positioning to the fore in her discussion of social identity. Bernstein (1990, p. 13) used this concept to refer to the establishing of a specific relation to other subjects and to the creating of specific relationships within subjects. As Hasan (1995) notes, social positioning through meanings is inseparable from power relations. Bernstein (1990) provided an elaboration of his early general argument: More specifically, class-regulated codes position subjects with respect to dominant and dominated forms of communication and to the relationships between them. Ideology is constituted through and in such positioning. From this perspective, ideology inheres in and regulates modes of relation. Ideology is not so much a content as a mode of relation for the realizing of

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content. Social, cultural, political and economic relations are intrinsic to pedagogic discourse. (pp. 13–14)

Here the linkage is forged between social positioning and psychological attributes. This is the process through which Bernstein talks of the shaping of the possibilities for consciousness. The dialectical relation between discourse and subject makes it possible to think of pedagogic discourse as a semiotic means that regulates or traces the generation of subjects’ positions in discourse. We can understand the potency of pedagogic discourse in selectively producing subjects and their identities in a temporal and spatial dimension (Diaz, 2001, pp.106–108). As Hasan (1995) argues, within the Bernsteinian thesis there exists an ineluctable relation between one’s social positioning, one’s mental dispositions and one’s relation to the distribution of labour in society. Here the emphasis on discourse is theorized not only in terms of the shaping of cognitive functions but also, as it were invisibly, in its influence on dispositions, identities and practices’ (Bernstein, 1990, p. 33). As Engestr¨om and Miettinen (1999) note in their discussion of a Marxian interpretation of Hegel’s conception of self-creation though labour: Human nature is not found within the human individual but in the movement between the inside and the outside, in the worlds of artefact use and artefact creation . . . the creative and dynamic potential of concrete work process and technologies remains underdeveloped in his [Marx’s] work. (Engestr¨om & Miettinen, 1999, p. 5)

Bernstein (1990, pp. 16ff.) argues that socially positioned subjects, through their experience of and participation in code-regulated dominant and dominated communication, develop rules for recognizing what social activity as context is the context for, and how the requisite activity should be carried out. Participation in social practices, including participation in discourse, is the biggest bootstrapping enterprise that human beings engage in: speaking is necessary for learning to speak; engaging with contexts is necessary for recognizing and dealing with contexts. This means, of course, that the contexts that one learns about are the contexts that one lives, which in turn means that the contexts one lives are those which are specialized to one’s social position. My argument follows that of Hasan that the Vygotskian account of the ‘social’ is insufficient for the task Vygotsky set himself in his attempt to formulate a general social theory of the formation of mind. It lacks a central requirement of any theory of semiotic mediation that attempts to account for the way we as humans behave: how language is used to serve a social interpersonal function. Bernstein’s account of social positioning within the discursive practice that arises in activity systems, taken together with his analysis of the ways in which principles of power and control translate into

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principles of communication, might allow us to investigate how principles of communication differentially regulate forms of consciousness. References Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control: Vol. 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1977). Class codes and control: Vol. 3. Towards A theory of educational transmissions (2nd rev. ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1981). Codes, modalities and the process of cultural reproduction: A model. Language in Society, 10, 327–363. Bernstein, B. (1990). Class, codes and control: Vol. 4: The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1993). Foreword. In H. Daniels (Ed.), Charting the agenda: Educational activity after Vygotsky (pp. xiii–xxiii). London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique. London: Taylor & Francis. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory research and critique (Rev. ed.). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Bruner, J. (1997). Celebrating divergence: Piaget and Vygotsky. Human Development, 40, 63–73. Diaz, M. (2001). The importance of Basil Bernstein. In S. Power, P. Aggleton, J. Brannen, A. Brown, L. Chisholm, & J. Mace (Eds.), A tribute to Basil Bernstein 1924–2000 (pp. 106–108). Institute of Education, University of London. Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy. Engeström, Y. (1993). Developmental studies on work as a test bench of activity theory. In S.Chaikin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 64–103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Engeström, Y., & Miettinen, R. (1999). Introduction. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R.L. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 1–16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Arnold. Hasan, R. (1992a). Speech genre, semiotic mediation and the development of higher mental functions. Language Science, 14, 489–528. Hasan, R. (1992b). Meaning in sociolinguistic theory. In K. Bolton & H. Kwok (Eds.), Sociolinguistics today: International perspectives (pp. 126–140). London: Routledge. Hasan, R. (1995). On social conditions for semiotic mediation: The genesis of mind in society. In A.R. Sadovnik (Ed.), Knowledge and pedagogy: The sociology of Basil Bernstein (pp. 33–67). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hasan, R. (2005). Language, society and consciousness (J. Webster, Ed.). Sydney: Equinox. Lemke, J.L. (1995). Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics. London/ Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. Ratner, C. (1997). Cultural psychology and qualitative methodology: Theoretical and empirical considerations. London: Plenum. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological

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processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Ed. and Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky. Vol.1: Problems of general psychology, including the volume Thinking and speech (R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton, Eds.; N. Minick, Trans.). New York: Plenum. Wertsch, J.V. (1985a). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1985b). The semiotic mediation of mental life: L.S. Vygotsky and M.M. Bakhtin. In E. Mertz & R.A. Parmentier (Eds.), Semiotic mediation: Sociocultural and psychological perspectives (pp. 223–261). New York: Academic Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A socio-cultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harry Daniels is Professor of Education: Culture and Pedagogy at the Department of Education, University of Bath. He is also Director of the Centre for Socio-cultural and Activity Theory Research. His research includes work on processes of social exclusion and collaboration. His writing reflects his interests in socio-cultural and activity theory. He has published three books concerned with Vygotskian theory: Charting the Agenda: Educational Activity after Vygotsky (as editor, Routledge, 1993), An Introduction to Vygotsky (as editor, Routledge, 1996) and Vygotsky and Pedagogy (Routledge, 2001). Address: Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research, Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK. [email: H.R.J.Daniels@bath.ac.uk]

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