[Xmca-l] Re: how to broaden/enliven the xmca discussion
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Mon Oct 6 16:55:24 PDT 2014
Mike, what I got out of Seth's intervention was just a plea for people
to stop claiming to have the "real Vygotsky" and I thoroughly agreed
with him.
And so far as I know Marx uses the German word for Activity, viz.,
Taetigkeit, in "Theses on Feuerbach" - that word which pre-dates
"behaviour" and "consciousness" by centuries, but which is sometimes
referred to nowadays as a unity of these two abstractions, and it was
only later interpreters that introduced the term "praxis", which being
Greek sounds a lot cleverer. Action and Activity, in my view and
etymologically, are both thinking and behaving.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
mike cole wrote:
> Thanks, David. I think i understand better what you mean by "LSV rejects
> "activity" as a unit of analysis for anything but behavior,and most
> certainly as a unit of psychological analysis. Somehow I was expecting text
> from LSV where he says "activity is not a unit of analysis" because of all
> the places in his text where he uses the term activity as a sort of "lay
> term".
>
> ...
>
>> Holbrook Mahn.
>> Holbrook began by saying that:
>>
>> a) We do not "borrow" concepts made for one discipline and "apply"
>> them to another. Not even dialectical materialism can be "applied" to
>> psychology (or even sociology or economics--Marx didn't do applied
>> philosophy!). Holbrook then produced a number of quotations from The
>> Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology to show that Vygotsky
>> knew this, and countered with other quotations from Problems of the
>> Development of the Mind to show that Leontiev did not know this.
>>
>> I know places where LSV is clear on this score, in Historical meaning,
>>
> for example, but not the evidence of Leontiev's errors.
>
>
>
>
>> b) The term "praxis" has been thus borrowed. It doesn't refer to
>> practical activity: it refers to a unity of thinking and practice.
>>
>>
>
> Borrowed from Marx by ..??? by Leontiev? There is any form of practical
> activity without human thinking?
>
>
>
>> c) The term "social situation of development" has been thus borrowed;
>> it does not refer to a "context" but to the child's relationship to
>> the environment.
>>
>>
>
> By whom? I am always in a puzzle about the use of this term. Isn't
> perezhivanie the term that LSV uses to talk about relation of child to
> environment? At least, there seems to be a lot of chatter about issue.
>
>
>
>> d) The term "unit of analysis" does not refer to a God particle that
>> is indifferent to the problem of analysis. ygotsky did not imagine a
>> "unit of analysis" that fit any and all problems in psychology. Each
>> unit of analysis is specific to a particular problem of unity (e.g.
>> the problem of the unity of the child and his or her environment in
>> Problem of the Environment and the problem of the unity of verbal
>> thinking in Thinking and Speech).
>>
>> Amen to that.
>>
>
>
>
>> e) The term "verbal thinking" is a mistranslation: Vygotsky is talking
>> about thinking by language, or thinking through word meanings, and not
>> some kind of verbalizable inner speech (which does exist, but which is
>> a distinct layer from thinking).
>>
>>
> There is a lot of confusion around this issue and would probably need
> somewhat separate discussion. I interpret in the former way. The role of
> meaning in inner speech, and the usefulness or not of the sense/meaning
> distinction has me confused. Dima Leontiev has put the distinction behind
> him and now refers to "cultural meaning" (paleo meaning
>
> ) and
> "personal meaning (paleo sense)." I am paleo in this regard.
>
>
>> Most of this has been said before, not least by Vygotsky himself. I
>> know that Holbrook has been saying it at least since 2007 when I first
>> heard him at the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Costa
>> Mesa, and he develops it at some length in:
>>
>>
>> https://www.academia.edu/1803017/Vygotskys_Analysis_of_Childrens_Meaning-Making_Processes
>>
>> Mahn, H. (2012). Vygotsky's Analysis of Children's Meaning-Making
>> Processes, International Journal of Educational Psychology1(2):100-126
>>
>> It's been said by others too: Mike Cole actually makes many of the
>> same points in discussing how the Kharkov school deviated from the
>> work of Vygotsk,
>>
>
>
> I did not know enough to make many of these points in 1978! They certainly
> distanced themselves from LSV and PI Zinchenko went after the
> natural-cultural memory distinction,
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> and J.V. Wertsch is quite explicit in his revisionism
>> when he presents "mediated activity" as a unit of analysis in
>> opposition to "word meaning".
>>
>
>
> mediated ACTION and often as not, mediated action in context.
>
>
>> But of course since a unit of analysis
>> must preserve in some shape or form the essential properties of the
>> whole, the use of "mediated activity"
>> (action)
>> cannot be a unit of analysis for
>> the mind if we wish to retain the idea that the mind has a semantic
>> structure (that is, if the "whole" is structured something like a text
>> or a discourse rather than like driving a car, shooting a gun, or
>> hunting animals).
>>
>>
>
> When we get to semantic structure of consciousness, we know there was a
> break between LSV and his buddies. It seems that it is in arriving at this
> formulation that the charges of idealism and sign-o-centrism kick in.
>
> My difficulty is in making arguments about consciousness- -in-general,
> perhaps a relic of my behaviorist past. Luria appears to have come around
> on this issue. I have had a difficult time understanding the changes in
> Leontiev's thought over the period of the 30's and 40's.
>
>
>> Now, in the discussion of Holbrook's presentation, this wild-haired
>> guy who looked a little like Itzhak Perlman rose to argue that
>> Leontiev's interpretation was really one fair interpretation, and that
>> it really was addressed towards a specific problem, which is how to
>> prevent dualism from arising (that is, how to explain how word meaning
>> could arise historically).Through joint mediated activity?
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>> He also said that Holbrook was juxtaposing
>> quotations out of context: the quotes that showed Vygotsky arguing
>> against a "Marxist psychology" were directed against a very specific
>> group of vulgar Marxists (e.g. Zalkind) and that is why Vygotsky uses
>> scare quotes around "Marxist".
>>
>>
>
> Not so?
>
>
>
>> I then muddied the waters, first by addressing the wild-haired guy
>> instead of Holbrook (a major breach of protocol) and then by arguing
>> that speech really is sui generis, because it is a form of "activity"
>> (if we must call it that) whose conditions of comprehension are no
>> longer recoverable from the activity itself (and so the unit of
>> analysis for verbal thinking cannot be sought in activity). There
>> wasn't enough time to really develop what I wanted to say, so I went
>> over to continue the discussion, and it turned out that the wild
>> haired guy was none other than Seth Chaiklin, who is, we all know, one
>> of the foremost paleo-Vygotskyans when it comes to the much
>> misinterpreted concept of the ZPD.
>>
>>
>
> Speech is a form of activity or a means of activity? Or of action?
>
> I guess I do not understand. If its worthwhile, perhaps spell the idea out
> here?
>
> So far as I can tell, there are ONLY misinterpretations of the Zoped. Seth
> was right on about it being used in Anglo-American discourse as something
> akin to zone of proximal learning,fitting into the associationist view of
> development as more learning. But the one right interpretation has escaped
> my notice.
>
> Thanks again for taking the trouble to write that out. Perhaps it will be
> generative for people.
> mike
>
>
>
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>
>> PS: Holbrook DID get one thing wrong. Stalin did not argue that
>> language was purely ideal and superstructural; that was Marr's
>> position. Stalin, or whoever ghost wrote his articles, argued that
>> language was base, and therefore somehow material, whatever that
>> means. But Stalin was not really interested in ideas; he was just out
>> for Marr's blood.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 6 October 2014 22:21, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi David--
>>>
>>> The specific example of your comments on originals and adaptations hits
>>>
>> on
>>
>>> a point it would be helpful to hear more about:
>>>
>>> You wrote:
>>> Back in Sydney, Seth Chaiklin and I found ourselves in a somewhat
>>> similar argument, with Seth in Perelman's chair, and me clinging
>>> rather obstinately to a paleo-Vygotskyan interpretation which actually
>>> rejects "activity" as a unit of analysis for anything but behavior,
>>> and most certainly as a unit of psychological analysis. Seth's
>>> argument was pragmatist: for certain practical applications, we need
>>> new interpretations, including revisionist ones. Mine was an argument
>>> in favor of species diversity: when the revisionist account supplants
>>> the original to such a degree that Vygotsky's original argument is no
>>> longer accessible to people, we need to go back to original texts (and
>>> this is why it is so important to make the original texts at least
>>> recoverable--once they are gone, it is really a whole species of
>>> thinking that has become extinct).
>>>
>>> 1. Could you guide us to a text you recommend where this interpretation
>>> is laid out?
>>> 2. What sort of revision was Seth suggesting and why?
>>>
>>> I have been reading Russian discussions around this issue. Clarification
>>> would be helpful.
>>> mike
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:37 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>> This morning I had the great pleasure of waking up in my own bed and
>>>> listening to Yo-yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Itzhak Perlman playing this:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRkWCOTImOQ
>>>>
>>>> It's the D Major Cello sonata number two by Mendelssohn, played, as
>>>> Yo-yo Ma tells us, on the Davydov (no, that THAT Davydov) Stradivarius
>>>> that was probably used to perform the sonata for the very first time
>>>> in front of Mendelssohn himself. Now, throughout this concert, Ma has
>>>> been something of a stickler for "the original", and Perelman has been
>>>> pulling politely but pointedly towards a more personal interpretation.
>>>>
>>>> So at around 6:45 on the clip, Perelman tells Ma that if Mendelssohn
>>>> himself had heard the sonata played on that very cello, then he,
>>>> Perelman, was sitting in the very seat that Mendelssohn had occupied,
>>>> and that therefore his freer interpretation was really closer to
>>>> Mendelssohn than any attempt to recreate the sonata with period
>>>> instruments. Mercifully, at this point, Ax interupts them and starts
>>>> to play.
>>>>
>>>> Back in Sydney, Seth Chaiklin and I found ourselves in a somewhat
>>>> similar argument, with Seth in Perelman's chair, and me clinging
>>>> rather obstinately to a paleo-Vygotskyan interpretation which actually
>>>> rejects "activity" as a unit of analysis for anything but behavior,
>>>> and most certainly as a unit of psychological analysis. Seth's
>>>> argument was pragmatist: for certain practical applications, we need
>>>> new interpretations, including revisionist ones. Mine was an argument
>>>> in favor of species diversity: when the revisionist account supplants
>>>> the original to such a degree that Vygotsky's original argument is no
>>>> longer accessible to people, we need to go back to original texts (and
>>>> this is why it is so important to make the original texts at least
>>>> recoverable--once they are gone, it is really a whole species of
>>>> thinking that has become extinct).
>>>>
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>>>
>>>> PS: Andy, what shocked me about Bonnie Nardi's plenum in Sydney was
>>>> not her use of "society" or "object": actually, I think I would have
>>>> liked it better if she had used those terms a little more imprecisely,
>>>> in their folk meanings. In fact, a little more IMPRECISION might have
>>>> made it even clearer to us the sheer horror of what she was
>>>> contemplating.
>>>>
>>>> For those on the list who missed it, the plenary focused on a world
>>>> without jobs--that is, a world where five-day forty-hour jobs are
>>>> replaced by "micro-work". Nardi admitted that this was a rather
>>>> dystopian state of affairs--but she also showed us what she called the
>>>> "bright side": more leisure, less greenhouse gases, and also human
>>>> identities less narrowly tied to work. As one person in the conference
>>>> pointed out, and Nardi confirmed, it would also mean more time for the
>>>> spiritual side of life.
>>>>
>>>> What was not pointed out was the effect of all this on the "object" of
>>>> "society", using both terms in their folk senses. The working class is
>>>> being ground down into the economic position of short term sex workers
>>>> and atomized into the social position of housewives. Inequality is now
>>>> at levels not seen since 1820. Even a cursory study of history tells
>>>> us that the result of this is not going to be individual spirituality
>>>> but rather more violence. The only "bright side" I can see is if that
>>>> force is organized, social, and directed against social equality
>>>> rather than against fellow members of the working class.
>>>>
>>>> dk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 5 October 2014 13:38, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I found Kaptelinin's article in MCA invaluable, Mike. Bonnie Nardi I
>>>>>
>> had
>>
>>>> the
>>>>
>>>>> great pleasure of meeting for the first time at ISCAR, and if she has
>>>>> written something on "object" that is very good news.
>>>>> I don't think the problem is intractable, though I don't think one
>>>>>
>> good
>>
>>>> book
>>>>
>>>>> or one good article is enough. But for example, for a long while I
>>>>>
>> have
>>
>>>> been
>>>>
>>>>> jumping up and down about how people use the word "perezhivanie"
>>>>>
>> without
>>
>>>> an
>>>>
>>>>> article (the, a, an some, etc) implying it is some kind of "substance"
>>>>> whereas in Russian it is a count noun. While there remains outstanding
>>>>> differences about what perezhivanie means, I notice that almost all
>>>>>
>> bar
>>
>>>> one
>>>>
>>>>> now use it with an article. So, however that happened that is a step
>>>>> forward, and people are aware of the differences in interpretation and
>>>>>
>>>> they
>>>>
>>>>> are being discussed. I think if we talk about "object" for a while,
>>>>>
>> maybe
>>
>>>>> this can be straightened out. I know the task of conceptual
>>>>>
>> consistency
>>
>>>> in
>>>>
>>>>> our research community seems to be a hopeless task, but I am
>>>>>
>> optimistic.
>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>
>>>>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Those certainly seem like lively topics, Andy.
>>>>>> I had in mind specifically topics that are on peoples' minds that go
>>>>>>
>> U
>>
>>>>>> discussed. I hope that the time spent at ISCAR produces a shower of
>>>>>> interesting ideas. Isn't that the object of such gatherings?
>>>>>>
>> (Whatever
>>
>>>>>> object means!). :-). The Nardi and Kaptelinin chapter on basics of
>>>>>>
>> AT
>>
>>>> is
>>>>
>>>>>> one good source, but it seems the problem is intractable!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Saturday, October 4, 2014, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't know, but it's hardly surprising if things were a little
>>>>>> slow this last week as a lot of xmca-ers are also iscar-ers and
>>>>>>
>> we
>>
>>>>>> were all chatting like crazy in Sydney at the ISCAR Congress.
>>>>>> Everyone (and I mean everyone, including every passenger on a
>>>>>> Sydney suburban train as well) has their iPhones and tablets
>>>>>>
>> etc.,
>>
>>>>>> so they could read/write on xmca, but I guess they were
>>>>>> oversupplied with correspondents and protagonists.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My impressions of CHAT research:
>>>>>> On the positive side: very diverse, and at its best, sharp and
>>>>>> critical in relation to the dominant political forces, and still
>>>>>> way out in front in understanding the several developmental
>>>>>> processes which all contribute to our actions (phylogenesis,
>>>>>> historical genesis, mesogenesis, ontogenesis, microgenesis), and
>>>>>> not focussing on just one. And I have to say it is a great
>>>>>> community of research, relatively lacking in the competitiveness
>>>>>> and jealousy which infects most research communities.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On the negative side:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> * Most CHAT people still have a concept of "society" as some
>>>>>> homogeneous, abstract entity which introduces problems into
>>>>>>
>> the
>>
>>>>>> social situation on which they try to focus, i.e., people
>>>>>>
>> lack
>>
>>>> a
>>>>
>>>>>> viable social theory or the ability to use theory they have
>>>>>>
>> to
>>
>>>>>> analyse the wider social situation in a differentiated way.
>>>>>> * The idea of "unit of analysis" is almost lost to us. Only a
>>>>>>
>>>> small
>>>>
>>>>>> minority know what it means and use the idea in their
>>>>>>
>> research.
>>
>>>>>> * The concept of "object" is at the centre of a lot of
>>>>>>
>> confusion;
>>
>>>>>> few researchers using the concept are clear on what the
>>>>>>
>> concept
>>
>>>>>> is. This is related to an unwillingness to confront and
>>>>>> attempt to
>>>>>> resolve the methodological differences (I refer to
>>>>>>
>> systematic
>>
>>>>>> difference, rather than accidental misunderstandings) within
>>>>>>
>>>> the
>>>>
>>>>>> CHAT community; perhaps it's fear of losing the relatively
>>>>>>
>>>> civil
>>>>
>>>>>> relations between researchers - people prefer to let
>>>>>>
>>>> differences
>>>>
>>>>>> just fester without openly discussing them. The old Soviet
>>>>>> approach is gone, but perhaps we have gone too far the other
>>>>>> way. :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi-- I assume you grabbed it from my erroneous response to
>>>>>> someone who
>>>>>> wrote backto xmca instead of me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Had dinner with tim ingold yesterday evening. Such an
>>>>>> interesting and
>>>>>> unassuming guy.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any ideas about how to broaden/enliven the xmca discussion??
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with
>>>>>>
>> an
>>
>>>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>
>
>
>
>
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