Carl Ratner is Director of the Institute for Cultural Research and Education, USA, and has developed the field of cultural psychology in generally Marxist directions.

Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva is Professor of Psychology and supervisor of the postgraduate program in Human Development Process and Health in the Department of Educational and Developmental Psychology at the Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia, Brazil.

Notes on contributors

Introduction: recovering and advancing Vygotsky's Marxist psychology

Carl Ratner and Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva

PART I Toward a Marxist psychology

1 Marxist psychology, Vygotsky's cultural psychology, and psychoanalysis: the double helix of science and politics

Carl Ratner

PART II Marxist epistemological and methodological aspects of Vygotsky's psychology

2 Marxist methodological foundations in Vygotsky's work

Larissa Bulhões and Lígia Márcia Martins

3 The problem of work, consciousness, and sign in human development

Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva, Ilana Lemos de Paiva, and Lavínia Lopes Salomão Magiolino

4 The germ cell of Vygotsky's science

Andy Blunden

5 What makes Vygotsky's theory of psychology a Marxist theory?

Peter Feigenbaum

PART III Psychological applications of Vygotsky's Marxism

6 Imagination and creative activity: ontological and epistemological principles of Vygotsky's contributions

Kátia Maheirie and Andréa Vieira Zanella

7 Materialist dialectics in Vygotsky's methodological framework: implications for applied linguistics research

James P. Lantolf

8 Constructionist interpretation of Vygotsky: a theoretical-methodological study of the concept of language

Eduardo Moura da Costa and Silvana Calvo Tuleski

Index