Revisiting Vygotsky for Social Change: Bringing Together Theory and Practice

Contemporary thinkers and researchers from different parts of the world involved in achieving human development employ Vygotsky¿s theory in order to deal with new social challenges arising in a global but deeply divided world (Santos, 2000; Souza e Santos, 2008; Martín-Baró, 1998). The chapters of this book shed light onto Vygotsky¿s initial principles adding critical and social perspectives as a way of expanding his legacy to global contemporary needs such as a critical reflection from the perspective of social change, social dynamics and human development, ethical-political situations of action power, dialectic relationship of the human being with society, contradictions in an individual¿s dramatic life events and awareness of the social environment to actively change the existing forms of life.

Adolfo Tanzi Neto is head of the Department of Anglo-Germanic Languages, College of Languages and Arts, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He is a researcher in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics (PIPGLA-UFRJ) and leader of the Nucleus for Studies and Research of Vygotsky School in Applied Linguistics (NUVYLA/CNPq). His research interests are in the fields of discourse and social practices as for human constitution and development, in the dimensions of cognition, semiotics, symbolic, and aesthetic sense. His interests are related to social activism, linguistic mobility, social change/justice, identity and agency based on critical and dialectical epistemologies of the Socio-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory. Fernanda Liberali is a teacher educator, researcher and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, in the English Department, in the Program of Graduate Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies and in the Graduate Program in Education: Education of Educators. She is one of the leaders of the Research Group / CNPq / PUC-SP Language in Activity in the School Context and an advisor to CNPq and FAPESP. Within the framework of Socio-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory, her main research interests are related to teacher education, teaching-learning, multimodal argumentation, and multilingualism/bilingual education. Manolis Dafermos is an associate professor in the epistemology of psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Crete. His interests include cultural-historical psychology, critical psychology, the history of psychology, and methodological and epistemological issues in the social sciences. He is the author of Rethinking Cultural-Historical Theory: A Dialectical Perspective to Vygotsky (2018) in addition to being the author or co-author of papers and chapters in various journals and collective volumes focusing on dialectics and its significance for social research.

List of Figures and Tables - (Post)Critical Global Studies: A Note from the Series Editors - Adolfo Tanzi Neto/ Fernanda Liberali/Manolis Dafermos: Introduction - Manolis Dafermos: Reconstructing the Fundamental Ideas of Vygotsky's Theory in the Contemporary Social and Scientific Context - Anna Stetsenko: Radical-Transformative Agency: Developing a Transformative Activist Stance on a Marxist-Vygotskyan Foundation - Fernanda Liberali: Building Agency for Social Change - Yrjö Engeström/Annalisa Sannino: Toward a Vygotskian Perspective on Transformative Agency for Social Change - Lois Holzman: Vygotsky on the Margins - Adolfo Tanzi Neto: Mediation in Neo-Vygotskian Terms: Rethinking School Mediated Practices from a Social Architectonic Perspective - Peter E. Jones: Vygotsky, Signs and Language: Critical Observations - Nikolai Veresov: Identity as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: The Dialectics of Belonging, Being and Becoming - Sueli Salles Fidalgo/Maria Cecília C. Magalhães: The Method in Vygotsky: Social Compensation to Achieve Higher Psychological Functions and Social Changes - Wanda Maria Junqueira de Aguiar/Maria Emiliana Lima Penteado/Raquel Antonio Alfredo: Totality, Historicity, Mediation and Contradiction: Essential Categories for the Analytic Movement in Research in Education - Bader Burihan Sawaia/Lavínia L. S. Magiolino/Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva: Imagination and Emotion as the Basis of Social Transformation - Gordana Jovanovic: The Challenges of the Reception of Vygotsky's Theory in View of Missing Revolutionary Changes - Michalis Kontopodis/Manolis Dafermos/Adolfo Tanzi Neto - Instead of an Epilogue. "We Are on Fire": Crisis as Turning Point, Vygotsky and Social Change - Contributors - Index.