Despite the current enthusiasm for cultural psychology, its disciplinary id
entity remains problematic. In this essay, the question of the identity of
cultural psychology is pressed with respect to the vision promoted in Micha
el Cole's Cultural Psychology: The Once and Future Discipline. Cole advocat
es a form of psychology that is sensitive to cultural and historical contex
t, and which purports to reinstate the program of Wundt's Volkerpsychologie
and the historical-cultural psychology of Vygotsky and Luria. Unfortunatel
y, Cole's account manifests the same tensions and ambiguities as these orig
inal projects, and fails to live up to its revolutionary and integrative pr
omise. Like its historical precursors, Cole's vision of cultural psychology
fails to take seriously the theoretical possibility of historically and cu
lturally local forms of cognitive processing.