Thinking as Action

Abstract

The aim of cultural psychology is understanding how mind is related to cultural, social, institutional, and historical contexts. This endeavor requires an adequate unit of analysis. We believe this unit of analysis to be mediated action. Our view of action as the unit of analysis has important theoretical and methodological consequences. In the theoretical domain , it means assuming a notion of culture as a set of semiotically mediated activity settings, and a view of cognition as heterogeneous, contextually and historically-culturally situated and semiotically mediated. We outline three methodological implications: a historical or genetic perspective, the analysis of activity in everyday cultural contexts, and the use of semiotically mediated action as a unit of analysis. Finally, we explain the way in which we have employed mediated action as a conceptual and methodological tool for conducting research in cultural psychology and illustrate some of these ideas with reference to specific studies carried out by our research group.