Chapter 2: On Context

In their chapter entitled “Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts” Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie (this volume) propose an innovative model of the relation between the mind and society. The data from a single case study selected from the War diary of a young woman called June illustrate the theoretical assumptions of the model, which presents a fresh approach to the study of agency as June moves within and between different contexts. The authors state that “context” is their central term; they explain that it has multiple meanings and that in scholarly literature it is often substituted by other terms like “field,” “lifeworld,” “setting” or “Umwelt.” They justify their choice of the term “context” as being more “neutral” than other terms which carry “considerable conceptual baggage.” Since “context” is central to the authors’ model, I shall focus in my commentary on diverse meanings of context that appear in their chapter. This will enable me to show how these meanings contribute to the richness of the authors’ ideas.