1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

From the Publisher:
The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.

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Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

The measurement of meaning

How we Think

In this article, we examine the place of culture in the human sciences with specific reference to psychology and the cultural histories of India. Despite the depth of scholarly writing on the intimate and inextricable ties between culture and psychological processes, core advancements and definitive positions in psychology have remained elusive. The privileging of a single culturally specific world-view alongside the exclusion of others has seriously hindered the authentic internationalization of psychology. We propose that linkages between culture and psychology need to be visualized as a dialogue between different cultural traditions. In the dialectics between bheda–abheda (difference and non-difference), structural-developmental, dispositional-relational, and social-collective processes will be invoked to develop our arguments for a human-science approach to the study of persons in culture. We argue that it is through the inclusion, rather than suppression, of diverse ideologies that generalizability can be best achieved. This is a call for an audit and reconstruction of psychology and its practices as an international discipline with a roadmap for theory construction and research informed by a cultural psychological approach toward human phenomena.

Making Sense of Culture for the Psychological Sciences

Cultural dynamics of women’s lives

This chapter contains a commentary to the historical coverage of the issue of agency by Roger Smith and Luca Tateo, and introduces the need to use history of psychology as the basis for future theoretical advancements in the field (rather than a “museum of old ideas”). The habitual treatment of history in textbooks along the lines of “history and systems” is deemed inappropriate as it juxtaposes opposite ideas in a mutually exclusive way. The question—where does agency start—is addressed. It can be solved through analogy with the biological notion of “stem cells” we can posit the existence of the most basic ideas of the self-reflexivity of human beings: I AM, I WILL, I NEED, I WANT. In terms of their relations, we can set up the basic structure of their relationships. Psychology has historically concentrated on the I AM part under the disguise THEY ARE. The researcher has been, likely to be, left out of the study of the psyche, in favour of the study of some others (“THEY” = “subjects” or “research participants”). The agency of the researcher him-/herself is traditionally downplayed—even if it is actually the central trigger of all data through the construction of any method of investigation. The goal of the researcher is to make sense of him-/herself (I AM), yet the evidence through which such understanding can be reached is alien to him or her (plural: THEY ARE is turned into generic singular S/HE IS, yet maintaining the distance from I AM). Agency cannot be successfully introduced into scientific psychology unless the sequence of helical transition {I AM THEY ARE I AM} becomes exemplified. Agency is presented as a temporally located concept.

Historical leads for theory construction in psychology

Anand Paranjpe has written a thorough treatise that attempts to integrate the western psychology of the person and self with the traditions of Indian thought. The book is rich in thoughtful criticisms of western psychology, its superficial overlooking of non-western thought, and suggestions for integration with the borrowings of basic ideas from Indian philosophical traditions. The latter are introduced to unprepared (western) readers with the calmness of the pleasure of contemplation of basic ideas. The politics of western psychology—which keeps the discipline within its reins of triviality—emerges on the scene only occasionally. In many ways that makes sense. For in solving major conceptual problems, political discourse does not help, but serves as a blinder. The book also includes thoughtful (even if at times brief) overviews of relevant theorists of the self in the history of western psychology (Erikson, Piaget, Cooley, Mead, James, etc.) and treats the issues of emotion. The reader finds out how some tendencies in the history of western psychology—especially those emanating from Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl—moved along lines that have parallels in Indian thought (pp. 80–82, 226–228). Within the whole richness of analytic reviewing of others’ ideas,

Jaan Valsiner

Papers

Making Sense of Culture for the Psychological Sciences

Cultural dynamics of women’s lives

Historical leads for theory construction in psychology

Contemplating Self: From India to Contemporary Self-Psychology

One Hundred Years: A Constructive Jubilee Celebration for Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget: