the cambridge companion to VYGOTSKY L. S. Vygotsky was an early twentieth-century Russian psychol- ogist whose writing exerts a significant influence on the devel- opment of social theory in the early twenty-first century. His nondeterministic, nonreductionist account of the formation of mind provides current theoretical developments with a broadly drawn, yet very powerful sketch of the ways in which humans shape and are shaped by social, cultural, and historical condi- tions. The dialectical conception of development insists on the importance of genetic or developmental analysis at several lev- els. The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky is a comprehensive text that provides students, academics, and practitioners with a critical perspective on Vygotsky and his work. Harry Daniels is the director of the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (Bath) at the University of Bath, UK. He is also adjunct professor, Centre for Learning Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and research professor, Centre for Human Activity Theory, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. Harry Daniels is the author of Vygotsky and Pedagogy and the editor of An Introduction to Vygotsky and Charting the Agenda: Edu- cational Activity after Vygotsky. His books have been translated into Japanese, Portuguese (in Brazil and in Europe), and Spanish. Michael Cole is the University Professor of Communication, Psy- chology, and Human Development and the director of the Lab- oratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. He also holds the Sanford Berman Chair of Language, Thought, and Communication. He is the author and coauthor of several books and many articles on culture and devel- opment. He is a member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Education. James V. Wertsch is a professor in the Department of Anthropol- ogy in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds joint appointments in Education, the Russian Stud- ies Program, and the Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology, all in Arts and Sciences. He is the director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. His topics of study are collective memory and identity, especially in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as in the United States. i Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007