[Xmca-l] Re: Vygotsky,Marx, & summer reading
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Sun Aug 20 03:26:05 PDT 2017
David, I was going to let this go, but after dwelling on it
for a while I think I cannot.
You are doing exactly what the various writers who were
endeavouring to reconstruct Vygotsky's tradition in the
1980s did: looking at various instances of unit of analysis
and listing out what you think are the essential features of
this object. This is the approach which Vygotsky criticised
in "The Problem of Age" in which researchers would try to
define a child's environment by listing out the features -
father's occupation, number of siblings, housing conditions,
etc., etc., but (to use Hegel's phrase) missing the concept.
I took a different approach. Somewhat bewildered and
rendered incredulous by these various lists of arbitrary
features of the unit of analysis, I asked myself where it
all came from. Having identified the origins of the idea in
Goethe through Hegel and Marx to Vygotsky, it became
possible to trace the development of the concept from one
writer to the next and see what was essential in the idea
even to the extent of seeing that the great writers who used
it could be mistaken in this or that respect. It was to
avoid this method of comparison of features that the method
of analysis by units was invented.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 20/08/2017 7:01 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> I would like to propose the following tests for a unit of
> analysis. They are all based on things Vygotsky wrote in
> the pedology.The examples, from biology, political
> economy, and music, are my own.
>
> a) It must be maximally simple. That is, it must be small
> enough to be manageable in experiments, clinical settings,
> and observable using "objectivizing" methods of research
> such as the functional method of dual stimulation or the
> Zoped. For example, cells can be managed in a petri dish,
> drawn from patients during examinations, and their genesis
> may be provoked and observed with a microscope: the
> commodity can be abstracted from an exchange for analysis,
> observed as it arises in production and exchange, and
> elicited through barter and markets. The four note "theme"
> of that opens Beethoven's fifth symphony is simple enough
> to play on a timpani as well as a piano.
>
> b) It must be minimally complex. That is, it must contain
> functioning analogues of all the properties which are the
> object of investigation. For example, cells have
> functioning analogues for metabolism, reproduction, and
> equilibrium with the environment.Commodities contain, in a
> coded, potential, or "embryonic" form, all the social
> relations of labor and capital we find in a mature
> capitalist economy. Beethoven's "theme" is complex enough
> to describe the structure of the symphony as a whole, and
> to form its coda.
>
> c) These analogues cannot be simple, miniaturized
> "recapitulations" of the properties which are the object
> of investigation. The mechanisms of cell metabolism,
> reproduction, homeostasis are not the same as the
> metabolism of the human organism. A commodity cannot
> produce or exchange or invest itself; it does not contain
> productive labour or finance capital in anything but a
> coded form; these must be unfolded through the historical
> process and that historical process is not infallibly
> predictable. Beethoven's "theme" did not create its
> variations and permutations: Beethoven did.
>
> Applying these tests to the units that Andy proposes (with
> one exception, number three below, they are also based on
> Vygotsky!) we find:
>
> 1.Word meaning is maximally simple but not minimally
> complex. It doesn't contain analogues of interpersonal
> meanings, e.g. questions, commands, statements, requests.
> It doesn’t contain analogues of textual meanings, e.g.
> hypotaxis and parataxis, Theme and Rheme, Given and New
> information.
>
> 2.The social situation of development is minimally complex
> but not maximally simple: it does construe the ensemble of
> relations between the child and the environment at a given
> age stage, including the whole of actual and potential
> language, but these cannot be managed in an experimental
> or clinical setting, or elicited in complete form using
> the functional method of dual stimulation or the Zoped.
>
> 3.Mediated actions are maximally simple and minimally
> complex, but not, as far as I can see, structurally,
> functionally or genetically different from the phenomena
> of activity they purport to explain.
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> Recent Article: Vygotsky, Halliday, and Hasan: Towards
> Conceptual Complementarity
>
> Free E-print Downloadable at:
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W7EDsmNSEwnpIKFRG8Up/full
> <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W7EDsmNSEwnpIKFRG8Up/full>
>
> On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 10:37 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> Word meanings for the study of (verbal) intellect
> Artefact-mediated actions for the more general study
> of the development of activity
> Perezhivaniya for the study of personality development
> (Defect-Compensation) for the study of disability or
> whatever
> Social Situations of Development for the study of
> child development
>
> See page 9 on https://www.academia.edu/11387923/
> <https://www.academia.edu/11387923/>
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 19/08/2017 10:47 PM, Martin John Packer wrote:
>
> What are the five, Andy?
>
> Martin
>
> On Aug 18, 2017, at 9:07 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
> wrote:
>
> Amazon have it for $38.21:
> https://www.amazon.com/Vygotsky-Marx-Toward-Marxist-Psychology/dp/1138244813
> <https://www.amazon.com/Vygotsky-Marx-Toward-Marxist-Psychology/dp/1138244813>
> which is not too bad.
>
> My chapter is available at
> https://www.academia.edu/11387923/
> <https://www.academia.edu/11387923/> but so
> far as I can see other authors have not posted
> theirs on academia.edu <http://academia.edu> -
> maybe elsewhere?
>
> Thank you, Alfredo, for highlighting how I
> have pointed to 5 different domains in which
> Vygotsky demonstrated the "method of analysis
> by units." To me, it seems useless to identify
> a writer's methodological innovations unless
> you can transport that methodology to a
> different context, and pointing to five
> applications by Vygotsky himself seemed a good
> way of showing how portable the method is.
> More recently, I used this method in an
> approach to political science, taking a group
> of people in the room trying to decide on what
> they are going to do together as a unit of
> analysis. Personally, I think this method has
> proved very fruitful and original. How lucky
> we are to be inheritors of Vygotsky's
> brilliant insights, still generally so unknown
> to the general scientific audience. What a
> gift LSV has given us!
>
> But legacies are always problematic. Alfredo,
> I think you would be a very good candidate to
> review this book. Beth?
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
> On 18/08/2017 10:16 PM, mike cole wrote:
>
> Peter, Alfredo Et al -
>
> It seems that the readers of MCA would
> appreciate a good overview review of
> the LSV and Marx book, but so far as I
> know, no one has proposed the idea
> to Beth, the book review editor. (You seem
> to have a jump on the task,
> Alfredo!).
>
> Also, given the cost of the book, it would
> be nice if authors could follow
> Andy's lead and make a draft available.
> Andy's article on units of analysis
> is on Academia, a click away. That way the
> many readers of XMCA around the
> world would not be excluded from the
> discussion.
>
> Mike
> Happy travels summer readers. :-)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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