Michael Cole is Professor of Communication and Psychology and Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.

• Foreword by Sheldon H. White Introduction Enduring Questions and Disputes Cross-Cultural Investigations Cognitive Development, Culture, and Schooling From Cross-Cultural Psychology to the Second Psychology Putting Culture in the Middle Phylogeny and Cultural History A Cultural Approach to Ontogeny The Cognitive Analysis of Behavior in Context Creating Model Activity Systems A Multilevel Methodology for Cultural Psychology The Work in Context Notes References Acknowledgments Index

Michael Cole argues that, just as fish do not see water because they swim in it, so humans do not see culture because we swim in it. The first part of the book is a fascinating tour of the early days of psychology. He argues that when psychology tried to become a science, it stopped thinking about the culture in which individuals operate.