cultural-historical vs Activity Theory
nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Sun, 29 Nov 1998 08:44:31 -0600
I was recently reading Leont'ev's article (1971) "On Vygotsky's
Creative Development" in the Collected Works "Problems of the
Theory and History of Psychology and the tension between
Cultural-historical and Activity theory was apparent. I have
also sensed this tension in an article I read on "The Golden
Key" program. One tension I have seen has been the relationship
between sense and meaning in that Vygotsky felt
sense(subjective) was primary and meaning (objective) proceeded
from it. The article on "The Golden Key" program by Kravtsov,
Berezhkovskaya, and Kravtsova argued that Leontiev and the
activity approach legalized the division in psychology on the
grounds of intellect and personality.
I have ordered Luria's book, but was curious of the theoretical
aspects of the tension between cultural-historical and Activity
Theory. Leont'ev' seems to question Vygotsky's division of
elementary and higher cultural processes, and sees all processes
as cultural or at least determined to a greater extent
culturally than Vygotsky argued.
Nate
Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
People who possess strong feelings even people with great minds
and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys
and girls
L.S. Vygotsky