Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Travels to Greece: Actors, Contexts and Politics of Reception and Interpretation

Abstract

This article explores how socio-cultural, cultural-historical and activity theory approaches to education and psychology have traveled to Greece over the last three decades. It explores the history of introducing these approaches in the Greek context while identifying key dimensions of the process, such as: diverse interpretation of original works, key actors in academic teaching and research and linkages with educational policy and activism beyond the university spaces. Greece with its specific history of military dictatorship, constitutional change, varied struggles for democracy within the university, European integration, and current crisis and neoliberal reforms is seen as a sample case; taking this case as a point of departure, the authors develop a meta-theoretical frame on how to discuss the various ways in which socio-cultural-historical approaches have traveled across socio-cultural, historical, institutional, political, regional, and also, increasingly globalized contexts of education.

Keywords

• activity theory
• cultural-historical psychology
• a.n. leontiev
• a.r. luria
• socio-cultural approach
• translation
• l.s. vygotsky
• globalization
• traveling theory