The author of this work argues against reductionist accounts of human cognition, proposing a sociocultural theory whereby 'mediated action' and cultural tools shape cognitive processes and can explain how they are organized.

This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive outline of how visual images, language and discourse work as `systems of representation'.

Involving many scholars and writers in many fields, this book ranges from grand historical themes to the whimsical; from the arts and high culture to folk and popular culture, organized around 245 thematic sections such as, history, ...

And how has their widespread use affected American culture? David Herzberg addresses these questions by tracing the rise of psychiatric medicines, from Miltown in the 1950s to Valium in the 1970s to Prozac in the 1990s.

Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and ...

How should public policy respond to this diversity? Barry challenges the currently popular answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the 21st century.

A series of essays in which Barthes seeks to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals, gestures and messages through which western society sustains, sells, identifies and yet obscures itself.

After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that involve multiple individuals.