Skip to main content

Cultural-Historical Psychology

  • Reference work entry

Introduction

From the 1920s onwards, a group of Russian psychologists, revolving around the intellectual “troika” of Lev Vygotsky, Alexandr Luria, and Aleksej Leont’ev, started to come up with a corpus of closely interwoven experiments, field investigations, and theoretical writings which later were to become the basis of the cultural-historical school. Although it was confronted with political resentments and suppression in the Soviet Union and the USA for many decades, cultural-historical psychology still stands as one of the most consistent and inspiring approach in the field of psychology. It provides fruitful concepts and inspires new investigation methods in many different areas of the discipline, such as developmental psychology, social psychology, linguistics, cultural psychology, and critical psychology.

Definition

Even though its topics range from aesthetics to perception and neurology, and from developmental to culture studies, and though its methodology comprises...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Bruner, J. (1993). Do we „acquire“ culture or vice versa. Reply to M. Tomasello, A. C. Kruger, and H. H. Ratner. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(3), 515–516.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknapp Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. (Eds.). (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, E. (Ed.). (1990). Contemporary neuropsychology and the legacy of Luria. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holzkamp, K. (1985). Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jäger, S. (2009). Kritische Diskursanalyse. Eine Einführung (5th ed.). Münster, Germany: Unrast.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness and personality. New York: Prentice Hall. Original work published in Russian in 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leont’ev, A. N. (1981). Problems of the development of the mind. Moscow: Progress. Original work published in Russian in 1959.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luria, A. (1976). Cognitive development: its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Original work published in Russian in 1968.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luria, A. (1987a). The man with a shattered world: The history of a brain wound. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Original work published in Russian in 1968.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luria, A. (1987b). The mind of a mnemonist: A little book about a vast memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Original work published in Russian in 1971.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markard, M. (2011). Einführung in die Kritische Psychologie: Grundlagen, Methoden und Problemfelder marxistischer Subjektwissenschaft (4th ed.). Hamburg, Germany: Argument.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind. The cognitive origins of art, religion and science. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Slunecko, T. (2008). Von der Konstruktion zur dynamischen Konstitution (2nd ed.). Vienna: Vienna University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Teo, T. (1998). Klaus holzkamp and the rise and decline of German critical psychology. History of Psychology, 1(3), 235–253.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological functions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky, L., & Luria, A. (1994). Tool and symbol in child development. In R. van der Veer & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The vygotsky reader (pp. 99–174). Oxford, England: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

Online Resources

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Slunecko .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Slunecko, T., Wieser, M. (2014). Cultural-Historical Psychology. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_65

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_65

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5582-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5583-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics