ABSTRACT
This volume is intended to examine the many facets of work assembled under the broad banner of sociogenesis, with special attention given to the core construct of internalization. Although a large part of what it means to be sociogenetic is to hold to the premise that the development of action is inherently social, a diversity of perspectives is becoming increasingly apparent as scholars struggle with methodological implications and go about the business of examining exactly how the child's encounter with the world precipitates development. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. The first is to identify, despite all this diversity, certain points of equinamity: to define what sociogenesis is and is not, and to sketch out in preliminary fashion its basic assumptions, history, and methodology. Second, because the process of internalization has become a pedal point of tension within the sociogenetic enterprise, we mean to provide an introduction to the various ways in which it has been approached, and to a few of the more contentious issues that have surfaced in the process of elaborating them.
