[Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed

[James Ma]

Thank you so much, Martin.


On 19 December 2017 at 21:15, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
wrote:

> > On Dec 19, 2017, at 5:09 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Michael,
> >
> > I'd like to ask you a question alongside Greg's: What is Vygotsky's path
> to
> > knowledge, in particular, knowledge about the constantly unfolding,
> > evolving social world?
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > James
>
> Hi James,
>
> Much has been said about this question in this discussion group over the
> years! Here are some notes I made some time ago. I am sure that others will
> jump in!  :)
>
> Vygotsky viewed methodology as central to the kind of psychology he wanted
> to create: “the methodology,” he wrote, “will be the first step forward"
> (2004 [1926-7], p. 242). And “Anyone who attempts to skip this problem, to
> jump over methodology in order to build some special psychological science
> right away, will inevitably jump over his horse while trying to sit on it.”
>
> There were three central aspects to the methodology that Vygotsky
> envisioned for his “general psychology”: analysis, genetic inquiry, and
> experimentation. They amount to a conception of qualitative research that
> is significantly different from much of what goes by that name today. One
> reason for this is that methodology for Vygotsky was not merely technique
> but “the theory of scientific method” in which “practice and philosophy are
> united.” In other words it was a logic of inquiry, a paradigm which
> involved assumptions about what exists (ontology) and how we can know
> (epistemology).
>
> The “analytical method” was of central importance to Vygotsky, and he
> rescued it from phenomenology and from so-called Marxist psychologies of
> his time. It is the study of the internal relations of a complex whole. For
> example, water should not be analyzed into its elements but studied as a
> molecule in its qualitatively different forms: ice, liquid, vapor, etc.
> (1987/1934). Analysis is “the highest form of induction.” It requires no
> repetition, for it is the study of a particular case for the general
> properties which are realized in it. Analysis is to “perceive the general
> in the particular;” the particular phenomenon is maximally abstracted from
> its specific conditions. For example, Pavlov’s study of salivation in dogs
> was an analysis of reflexes in general, in animals in general. Vygotsky’s
> model here was Marx’s analysis of the commodity, a form with internal
> contradictions, through the selection of a unit of analysis, a “cell”: the
> commodity. Analysis requires the partition of a complex whole into its
> aspects. In other words analysis is a form of case study, idiographic and
> holistic. Its aim is to discern general laws; objective tendencies which
> underlie the manifold appearances. Its products are not essences but
> “generalizations which have boundaries and degrees.”
>
> The second aspect is genetic inquiry. Vygotsky wrote that he agreed with
> Marx that “the only science is history.” History meant “two things: a
> general dialectical approach to things; in this sense, everything has its
> history,” and, second, human history: “the uniqueness of the human mind
> lies in the fact that history and evolution are united (synthesis) in it”
> (1986). Genetic inquiry requires tracing the history of the development of
> a phenomenon, the path it has followed, to identify its underlying
> objective tendencies. It attends to the process of sublation in which
> earlier forms are both overcome and preserved. Furthermore, it is an
> inquiry that is oriented by practical concerns, concerned to facilitate the
> leap from necessity to freedom by mastery of the tendencies that are
> identified. A genetic account is a description, but also provides an
> explanation. It weaves together ontogenesis (the process of
> “individualization”), history (cultural evolution),  phylogenesis
> (biological evolution), and microgenesis (experiment).
>
> Indeed, Vygotsky's methodology includes a central place for
> experimentation: what he called “Traps for Nature.” But this was not
> experimentation in the sense of manipulation of variables, standardization
> of procedure, with the researcher as detached observer. On the contrary,
> for Vygotsky an experiment was a collaboration between researcher and
> participant as they together established the conditions for the possibility
> of the phenomenon of interest (e.g. the famous blocks task). An experiment
> is a form of analysis, it is “an analysis in action, as each analysis is an
> experiment in thought” (2004/1926-7). The unusual character of this view of
> experimentation is revealed by Vygotsky's statement that “every lyrical
> poem is an experiment.” In Vygotsky’s view the artificiality of an
> experiment is a merit, not a weakness. It allows us to reveal a historical
> process in abstracted form. Furthermore, an experiment provides a
> historical analysis, through the opportunity to study the microgenesis of a
> phenomenon.  For Vygotsky, historical methods and logical analysis (the
> logic of an experimental design) are not opposed, because logic is
> sedimented history.
>
> Martin
>
>
>

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