“Putting culture in the middle”: A transactional reconstruction

ABSTRACT This paper revisits Michael Cole’s influential Cultural Psychology. The goal is to reconstruct Cole by putting him into critical and creative dialogue with John Dewey’s theory of transaction. It explores four advantages that arise by reconstructing Cole as a fully consistent Darwinian naturalist understood in terms of an equally consistent Deweyan transactionalism. One advantage is that transactional coordination can replace Cole’s reliance on mediation. Second, one can recognize potentiality as a category of existence. Third, it becomes easier for Cole to engage the embodied aspects of mental functioning. Finally, transactionalism overcomes Cole’s residual culture versus nature dualism.