JAMES V. WERTSCH KEYS TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY Jerome S. Bmner, Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture. Cambridge, M.A: Harvard University Press, 1990. Richard A. Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Reviewed by James V. Wertsch I Acts of Meaning by Jerome Bmner and Thinking Through Cultures by Richard Shweder are major landmarks for the social sciences. Each volume provides an insightful, often brilliant analysis of issues at the core of contemporary debates in psychology, anthropology, and related disciplines, and each has something important to say about how to pursue inquiry in the field of "cultural psychology." Bruner's conlribution, based on his 1989 Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures at the Hebrew University, is written primarily from the perspective of a man who has witnessed and shaped much of the history of psychology over the past half century. Shweder's contribution, composed of essays written between 1979 and 1989, outlines the thoughts of an interdisciplinary scholar (albeit with a primary concern with anthropology) who has had a major hand in shaping current debates about culture theory and cultural psychology. Although each volume touches on an impressive array of issues, a focal concern for both is cultural psychology. The fact that two such major figures have turned their attention to this topic reflects the widespread concern it is arousing; the fact that the two authors almost never cite each other or even common sources reflects the diversity of approaches that characterize today's discussion. Despite this diversity there are some obvious themes that motivate the renewed concern with the issues of cultural psychology. Bruner's and Shweder's starting point is a fundamental dissatisfaction with the current state of psychology. Instead of emerging into a discipline capable of providing an integrated and insightful picture of mental processes, psychology has become a set of increasingly isolated and arcane subdisciplines with all too little prospect for entering into contact with one another, let alone with ideas from other areas of inquiry. The two authors see this predicament as deriving from deeply questionable, but seldom questioned assumptions. Primary among these are an unwillingness to deal with issues of meaning and the acceptance of the atomistic individual as the starting point for inquiry. As Bruner notes in his short, fascinating review of the "cognitive revolution" Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16: 273-280, 1992. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 274 JAMES V.WERTSCH which began in the late 1950s, meaning was an explicit part of the original agenda for this revolution, but this focus was soon transformed into something quite different. Very early on...emphasis began shifting from "meaning" to "information," from the construction of meaning to the processing of information. These are profoundly different matters. The key factor in the shift was the introduction of computation as the ruling metaphor and of computability as a necessary criterion of a good theoretical model. Information is indifferent with respect to meaning (p. 4). In place of the overriding concern with information and information processing, Bruner argues for the idea "that the central concept of a human psychology is meaning and the processes and transactions involved in the construction of meanings" (p. 33). Much of Acts of Meaning is therefore concerned with "meaning-making," especially that which occurs through the use of narrative. Shweder also places meaning and the construction of meaning at the center of his formulation of cultural psychology. •..cultural psychology is a hybrid from of semiotic science and natural science. For it assumes that human consciousness is a complex contingent mechanism whose dynamic functioning is mediated by the system of meaning within which it is embedded (p. 20). The kinds of meaning that concern Bruner and Shweder vary widely, but one theme that unites them is that they are all inherently social in nature. For this reason these authors' analyses of meaning bring into question the kinds of individualistic assumptions which subtly, but powerfully permeate contemporary psychology• Instead of beginning with implicit assumptions about the existence of the autonomous individual and then turning to the analysis of meaning, these two authors give socially organized meaning a kind of analytic priority and individuals are viewed as emerging through its construction and mastery. The claims put forth by Bruner and Shweder have their roots in the writings of many figures from the social sciences and humanities, but I shall not even attempt to review the rich background they invoke. Instead, I shall explore their ideas and some of the implications of these ideas by turning to the writings of two figures whose ideas complement those of these two authors at several points. These are the philosopher Charles Taylor and the Soviet psychologist and semiotician L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934). This is appropriate both because Taylor and Vygotsky provide some of the context for these authors (especially Bruner) and because they provide a useful perspective for understanding further implications of Bruner's and Shweder's claims. Vygotsky (1978, 1981b, 1987) and his followers were quite adamant about the need to search for the origins of individual mental functioning in social life. For example, one of Vygotsky's followers, A.R. Luria (who was also a colleague and friend of Bruner's), produced a succinct version of the social primacy argument in the following terms. KEYS TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY 275 In order to explain the highly complex forms of human consciousness one must go beyond the human organism. One must seek the origins of conscious activity and "categorical" behavior not in the recesses of the human brain or in the depths of the spirit, but in the external conditions of life. Above all, this means that one must seek these origins in the external processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human existence (1981, p. 25). In contrast to such an assertion, Bmner believes that "by habit and by tradition [psychologists] think in rather individualistic terms" (1990, p. 11). Therefore, social primacy claims of the sort outlined by Luria call for a great deal of rethinking in psychology (and related disciplines as well). Shweder's comparative analyses push this point beyond the habits and traditions of psychologists by suggesting that the assumptions found in this discipline reflect a more general Western perspective. In contrast with many cultures of the world he writes that "What makes Western culture special...is the concept of the autonomous distinctive individual living in society...the inviolate self views social relationships as derivative matters, arising out of consent and contract between autonomous individuals" (pp. 150-151). The combined emphasis on information at the expense of meaning and on the individual at the expense of the social has had a devastating impact on psychology in the view of Bruner and Shweder. Among its unfortunate spin-offs has been a kind of universalism grounded more in Western ethnocentrism than on solid reasoning. I f social and cultural arrangements are viewed as derivative of processes carded out by autonomous individuals, then it does indeed make sense to focus on the individual. When coupled with the assumption that at the level of a central processing mechanism individuals are basically the same, this leads to a kind of universalism that Shweder's and Bruner's proposals for cultural psychology are designed to counter. Bruner does recognize a kind of universalism, something which reflects a disciplinary perspective in which biological as well as cultural forces are at issue. However, his overriding concern with cultural psychology leads him to place primary focus on the limits of any biologically grounded universalistic claim: "...it is culture and the search for meaning that is the shaping hand, biology that is the constraint.., culture even has in its power to loosen that constraint" (p. 23). Reflecting the influence of another tradition, Shweder is strongly committed to a relativistic perspective. At several points in his volume he provides useful analyses of this relativism, situating it with respect to universalism and evolutionism and mapping out the "benefits and costs" of these "three interpretive models for rendering intelligible the apparent diversity of human understandings" (p. 114). Many will read Bruner's and Shweder's volumes from the perspective of the message they have for the social sciences, and this is entirely appropriate. In particular, the two works will be seen as outlining exciting possibilities for how cultural psychology can contribute to a redirected and revitalized program of 276 JAMES V. WERTSCH inquiry into the inherently social and cultural nature o f human mental processes. However, the implications of what the two authors have to say go far beyond the boundaries o f these discussions and touch on issues at the center o f broader debates on issues such as the rights and responsibilities of individuals and society. One o f the major contributors to these debates is Charles Taylor, who has examined issues such as self, individualism, and communitarianism in a series of recent works (1985a, 1985b, 1989). Much of Taylor's critique is ultimately motivated by his rejection o f " t h e disengaged image of the self' (1985a, p. 5), an image which he sees as pervasive in the modern world. In his view "The ideal of disengagement defines a certain - typically modern - notion o f freedom, as the ability to act on one's own, without outside interference or subordination to outside authority" (p. 5). Much o f Taylor's work is devoted to tracing the historical emergence o f notions such as the disengaged image of the self and to showing that many o f these notions are in the end inherently incoherent. For example, this is evident in his discussion of"atomism." The term 'atomism' is used loosely to characterize the doctrines of social contract theory which arose in the seventeenth century and also successor doctrines which may not have made use of the notion of social contract but which inherited a vision of society as in some sense constituted by individuals for the fulfilment of ends which were primarily individual. Certain forms of utilitarianism are successor doctrines in this sense. The term is also applied to contemporary doctrines which hark back to social contract theory, or which try to defend in some sense the priority of the individual and his rights over society, or which present a purely instrumental view of society (1985b, p. 187). Atomism is a view of human nature that provides the foundation for "primacy-of-rights" theories. Such theories, which have been "one o f the formative influences on modern political consciousness" (1985b, pp. 188-189), give the fights of the individual a privileged status over a principle o f belonging or of obligation to society. "Theories o f belonging," in contrast, are grounded in the opposite order of priority. In Taylor's view atomism has come to play an extremely powerful role in our way o f thinking about the relationship between individual and society. This is true not only in conscious political theorizing; it seems to pervade our basic, unreflective patterns o f thought and action as well. It's as though without a special effort of reflection on this issue, we tend to fall back into an atomist/instrumental way of seeing. This seems to dominate our unreflecting experience of society, or at least to emerge more easily when we try to formulate what we know from this experience. It's a naturally favoured idea, benefiting from a built-in everrenewed initial plausibility (1989, p. 196). Despite this seeming plausibility and the powerful hold atomism has on our thinking, Taylor argues that it is inherently incoherent. It is flawed because it and ideas such as the primacy-of-rights doctrine to which it gives rise make KEYS TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY 277 implicit assumptions about the nature o f the individual which cannot be justified without going beyond the individual (much in the way Luria proposed). For example, pfimacy-of-fights doctrines tend to focus exclusively on injunctions against interfering with individuals' fights and fail to explore implicit presuppositions about the kind o f being that deserves fights in the first place. In his critique o f this doctrine Taylor points out that we ascribe individual rights only to certain beings who "deserve our respect," meaning they are at least sentient beings 'capable o f enjoying life and one's various capacities', where 'enjoying' has something like its old-fashioned or legal sense, as in 'enjoying the use o f one's limbs', rather than its narrower colloquial sense o f having a good time" (1985b, p. 192). If one asks which beings have the capacity to enjoy life and their various capacities, Taylor notes that while some might view animals as having such rights "Even the strongest defenders o f animal rights will agree that men have different rights - for example, the fight to free choice o f their religion or metaphysical convictions, to will their property, and so on" (1985b, p. 193). Furthermore, in contrast to animals, the source of humans' potential to command our respect is a set of capacities they have developed as a result o f belonging to a society. For this reason ...asserting a right is more than issuing an injunction. It has an essential background, in some notion of the moral worth of certain properties or capacities, without which it would not make sense. Thus, for example, our position would be incomprehensible and incoherent, if we ascribed rights to human beings in respect of the specifically human capacities (such as the right to one's own convictions or to the free choice of one's lifestyle or profession) while at the same time denying that these capacities ought to be developed, or if we thought it a matter of indifference whether they were realized or stifled in ourselves or others (1985b, p. 195). Dealing specifically with the value o f free choice that primacy-of-rights doctrines regard so highly, Taylor shows how the fundamental capacity to make choices is grounded in essential presuppositions that are incoherent from the perspective of atomism. The view that makes freedom of choice this absolute is one that exalts choice as a human capacity. It carries with it the demand that we become beings capable of choice, that we rise to the level of self-consciousness and autonomy where we can exercise choice, that we not remain enmired through fear, sloth, ignorance, or superstition in some code imposed by tradition, society, or fate which tells us how we should dispose of what belongs to us...If all this is valid, then the doctrine of the primacy of fights is not as independent as its proponents want to claim from considerations about human nature and the human social condition (1985b, p. 197). In the end, therefore, Taylor's argument leads to the conclusion that "asserting rights itself involves acknowledging an obligation to belong" (p. 200). Bruner's and Shweder's writings provide a social science complement to Taylor's philosophical critique. Their focus on meaning and their rejection o f individualistic presuppositions underlie a perspective incompatible with 278 JAMES V. WERTSCH atomism, the primacy of fights doctrine, and the unencumbered image of the self. Theirs is a perspective, then, that has something to contribute to discussions about the fights and responsibilities of individuals in modem society as well as to discussions about more technical issues in the social sciences. Such ideas are reflected in the two authors' proposals for formulating a cultural psychology and in their critique of existing perspectives in psychology and anthropology. In the latter respect, for example, Shweder makes the following comment about culture and personality theorists. After culture and personality theorists have explained the formation of individual character by reference to so-called objective conditions, they analyze the sociecultural domain as though it were fashioned to correspond either directly or inversely to features of the modal personality of societal members...Culture and personality theorists frequently introduce person variables (for example, wishes, frustrations, conflicts, motives) as prior objective constraints that select for or against soeiocultural institutions and thereby influence their evolution (p. 294). Bruner's and Shweder's ideas will strike many readers as a move in the fight direction. Unfortunately, however, this does not mean that the full implications of their analyses will be appreciated and accepted once and for all. Given the individualistic habits and traditions mentioned by Bruner and the naturally favored idea of atomism noted by Taylor, Western social scientists - especially psychologists - are unlikely to incorporate the full force of the proposals mapped out in these two volumes into their own thinking. It is not so much a matter of outfight rejection or lack of familiarity with the ideas put forth by figures such as Bruner and Shweder as it is a matter of difficulties in fitting these ideas into existing theoretical paradigms and methodological constraints. In my view one way to crystallize the insights of these two authors in such a way that misinterpretation will be at least more difficult is to place major emphasis on the notions of agency and action. Specifically, I think it is useful to focus on the notion that human agents and the actions they carry out must be reconceptualized such that cultural tools become an inherent part of their very definition. This is a point on which Vygotsky (1978, 1981a, 1981b, 1987) is very helpful. A central claim in the theoretical perspective he developed was that human action is defined largely in terms of the forms of "mediation" it involves. He viewed mediational means such as external memory aids, maps, and especially natural language as the key to understanding human social and mental processes. This was a basic insight that underlay his account of phenomena such as the development of concepts and the internalization of speech (i.e., the mastery of social discourse which gives rise to mental functioning in the individual). This focus on mediational means played such a central role in Vygotsky's approach that near the end of his career he made the bald statement that "the central fact about our psychology is the fact of mediation" (1982, p. 166). There are many points on which Vygotsky's semiotic analyses and his KEYS TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY 279 account of social processes can be criticized and extended. Among the figures whose ideas have major contributions to make in this regard is a contemporary of Vygotsky's from the Soviet Union, M.M. Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986), whose ideas about "voice," "social languages," and "speech genres" are particularly relevant. Even without getting into these modifications, however, Vygotsky's writings provide a powerful foundation for a radical revision of the notion of agency that touches the heart of the issues raised by Bruner, Shweder, and Taylor. Specifically, Vygotsky's perspective suggests that the basic definition of human action and agency must give a central role to the mediational means employed. Instead of falling into the trap of assigning agency to pre-existing atomistic individuals, the point would be to predicate it on individuals operating with mediational means. Much in the spirit of Taylor's argument, then, there is no atomistic individual. Instead, the agent which carries out human action is more appropriately, though less elegantly, described as "individual(s)-operatingwith-mediational-means." In this view agency can no more be reduced to mediational means in isolation than to the atomistic individual. Instead, the irreducible unit of analysis of mediated action must serve as the focus. This focus, which involves an inherent tension between uniquely situated acts on the part of an individual or individuals on the one hand and the socioculturally provided mediational means on the other was what concerned Vygotsky (1981a) in his analysis of the instrumental act and Bakhtin (1986) in his analysis of the utterance as an inherently dialogic process. A focus on mediated action is quite compatible with what Bruner and Shweder are arguing. However, it formulates this argument with a somewhat different emphasis, hopefully one that will serve to keep the issues these authors raise in clear focus in the social sciences. The compatibility can be seen in comments such as Bruner's that "The tool kit of any culture can be described as a set of prosthetic devices by which human beings can exceed or even redefine the 'natural limits' of human functioning" (p. 21). In Shweder's volume the compatibility is reflected in statements such as "The idea of tools for thought is an apposite (and self-referring) metaphor for thinking about thinking. It says that thinking is fundamentally interdependent with the traditional intellectual artifacts, representational schemes, and accumulated knowledge of some cultural or subcultural community" (p. 98). The central role Vygotsky attributed to mediation when trying to understand human action and human agency provides a focus that goes against the grain of our standard ~sumptions about these issues. These assumptions often go unrecognized, but even when they are explicated and rejected they seem to creep back into our thinking and writing. In the end it is not so much the consciously formulated claims that seem to make it so difficult for the ideas of authors such as Bruner and Shweder to have the impact they deserve. Rather, it is the kind of 280 JAMES V. WERTSCH tendency "to fall back into an atornist/instrumental way of seeing" outlined by Taylor that makes it so difficult. In order to overcome this tendency we may need to focus even more on developing tools of speaking and thinking such as the concept of mediated action that make it next to impossible to ignore the wise points raised by Bruner and Shweder. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology Clark University Worcester, Ma 01610-1477, U.S.A. NOTE 1 The research here reported was assisted by the Spencer Foundation. The statements made and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. REFERENCES Bakhtin, M.D. 1981 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. (M. Holquist, ed.; C. Emerson and M. Holquist, trans.) Austin: University of Texas Press. 1984 Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. (C. Emerson, ed. and trans.) Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press. 1986 Spccch Genres and Other Late Essays. (C. Emerson and M. Holquist, eds.; V.W. McGee, trans.)Austin: Universityof Texas Press. Bruner, J. 1990 Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress. Luria,A.R. 1981 Language and Cognition.(J.V.Wertsch, ed.)Ncw York: Wiley Interscienccs. Shweder, R.A. 1991 Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambn'dgc, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. 1985a Human Agency and Language. 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