Bronfenbrenner, Urie

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005) established a scholarly position from which the child’s participation in his or her complex and ever-changing world is seen as the crucial hub for human being and development. Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow but emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 6 years. It was in the United States that he was educated as a psychologist and built an academic career. As a Russian-speaking American academic, he was able to translate, both literally and metaphorically, between scholarly traditions as they were developed in the two societies. In the United States–Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Cold War era, these efforts of theoretical bridging were valuable for the development of contextualising psychologies in ‘the West’.

Bronfenbrenner was an ambitious scholar; ...