Vygotsky & Bernstein in the Light of Jewish Tradition [Hardcover]

Vygotsky & Bernstein in the Light of Jewish Tradition examines the role that Jewish cultural tradition played in the work of the Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky and the British sociologist Basil Bernstein by highlighting aspects of their respective lives and theories revealing significant influences of Jewish thoughts and beliefs. The authors demonstrate that theories and human life are dialectically interconnected: what research can reveal about a man can also provide a better understanding of the very nature of his theory. This book is a valuable resource for psychologists, sociologists and students interested in the sociocultural formation of mind. In this volume, which includes a range of psychological and sociological perspectives, Vygotskys and Bernsteins Jewish background is shown to influence the broad cognitive, emotional, and ethical approaches of both scholars to education and learning development. Language is emphasized as the main semiotic tool that grants mankind the divine power to generate human experience and history. These essays will be of great interest for any scholar of education, addressing both students and specialists from a multidisciplinary perspective. It has already become a tradition to look for the roots of Lev Vygotskys theory in the writings of Marx, Engels, Spinoza, and Hegel, and for the roots of Basil Bernsteins theory in the writings of Durkheim, Sapir, Whorf, Mead, and Strauss. What is basically ignored in these accounts, however, are the cultural and family environments in which Vygotsky and Bernstein were raised and developed. This omission is especially ironic in light of the fact that Vygotsky and Bernstein themselves stressed the importance of family, culture, and social practices as the major determining factors in the formation of an individuals thinking and worldview. This book is the first serious and successful attempt to deal with this omission by retracing how the experience of Vygotsky and Bernstein as Jela