Moral functioning as mediated action

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that it is quite useful, both theoretically and empirically, to adopt a socio‐cultural approach to the study of moral development. This entails viewing ‘moral functioning’ as a form of mediated action, and moral development as the process by which persons gradually appropriate a variety of ‘moral mediational means’. Mediated action entails two central elements: an ‘agent’, the person who is doing the acting, on the one hand, and ‘cultural tools’ or ‘mediational means’, the tools, means, or ‘instruments’, appropriated from the culture, and used by the agent to accomplish a given action, on the other. I make this argument drawing on recent work in socio‐cultural psychology, specifically the work of James Wertsch (1998). I also consider the work of both Carol Gilligan (1982) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1981, 1984) as illustrative examples, to show how their respective insights about moral functioning and the process of moral development can be interpreted from, and enriched by, a mediated action/socio‐cultural perspective.