Mind and Social Practice
Selected Writings of Sylvia Scribner

Mind and Social Practice presents work from Sylvia Scribner's career as a pioneer of cultural psychology.

Ethel Tobach (Edited by), Rachel Joffe Falmagne (Edited by), Mary Brown Parlee (Edited by), Laura M. W. Martin (Edited by), Aggie Scribner Kapelman (Edited by), Barbara Rogoff (Foreword by)

9780521467674, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 January 1997

456 pages, 12 b/w illus. 17 tables
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.605 kg

"The volume is a wonderful illustration of Scribner's thinking and work over time, and the editors have arranged the volume in such a way as to place Scribner's work in the context of her life, her commitments, and the political and intellectual events of the times. Researchers will find this volume useful, not only because it brings together a number of Scribner's writings but also as a tool for reflecting on their own evolving theorizing and its sociohistorical development. The volume is also valuable for use in graduate courses that examine learning and schooling in cultural and social context and as a coherent example of a researcher interweaving theory and practice and her response to the moral obligations she owned as a researcher." Joanna O. Masingila, Anthropology & Education Quarterly

Sylvia Scribner's research and theory have been monumental in forming the emergent field of cultural psychology. Her studies of reasoning and thinking in their cultural and activity contexts added new concepts, methods, and findings to what many are now viewing as a distinctive branch of psychological studies. She was among the first to combine ethnographic studies with experimental studies in order to determine relationships among indigenous literacy and logical activities and their cognitive outcomes. Mind and Social Practice brings together published and previously unpublished work from Sylvia Scribner's productive and wide-ranging career. The book is arranged chronologically and includes five section introductions by the editors, placing Scribner's work in the context of her life, her commitments, and the political and intellectual events of the times. Her later, more theoretically rich writing is enhanced by an appreciation of her earlier work.

Series foreword
Preface
Foreword Barbara Rogoff
A Daughter's Perspective Aggie Scribner Kapelman
Introduction
Part 1: Pscychology as Social Practice: 1. Issues in the development of a labor mental health program
2. Advocacy: strategy or slution?
3. What is community psychology made of?
4. Social class and mental illness: a critical review
5. Research as a social process
6. Psychology and the problems of society: a review
7. Psychologists, process and performance
Part II. Thinking and Cultural Systems: 8. Societal structures of the mind: a review
9. Culture and cognition: a review
10. Situating the experiment in cross-cultural research
11. Recall of classical syllogisms: a cross-cultural investigation of error on logical problems
12. Modes of thinking and ways of speaking: culture and logic reconsidered
13. Intelligence tests: a comparative perspective
Part III. Literacy: Mind and Society: 14. The cognitive consequences of literacy
15. The practices of literacy: where mind and society meet
16. Literacy in three metaphors
17. Observations on literacy education in China
18. Studying literacy at work: bringing the laboratory to the field
19. Introduction: The future of literacy in a changing world
Part IV. Cognitive Development: Sociohistorical Perspective: 20. Vygotsky's uses of history
21. A sociocultural approach to the study of mind
22. Three developmental paradigms
Part V. Thinking at Work: 23. Mind in action: a functional approach to thinking
24. Knowledge at work
25. Thinking in action: some characteristics of practical thought
26. Studying working intelligence
27. Mental and manual work: an activity theory orientation
28. Toward a model of practical thinking at work
29. Head and hand: an action approach to thinking
Chronology
Bibliography
Name index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM]