[Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

Tue May 30 00:11:48 PDT 2017

Larry, yes, I think that the phrase has a first relevance in that, as long as my limited understanding goes, ANT historically built upon ethnomethodology (sure many in this list know much more about this connection than me). "That a science does not merely exist in its practices, it exists as its practices" makes sense to me too. But I am particularly interested in how to get to understand how people, like the members of the Yuzuru Party, change and develop as part of changing and developing practice. I wonder how questions of development are addressed from the ANT perspectives. 
Alfredo

 ________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Sent: 29 May 2017 19:18
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

Alfredo,
Your referencing and regarding Yasuko’s framework and analysis as talking about the possibility of *seeing* in concrete terms opens up our weaving ability.  This framework may have a relation to *a* framework that Kenneth Liberman is exploring having to do with ethnomethods.  He indicates that there is a phrase [in and as of] that is central to that approach to *seeing*in concrete terms;

Hear Liberman’s approach:

1 The phrase ‘‘in and as of’’ intends to retain the actual state of affairs of a social practice. Instead of conceiving of a metaphysical object, ‘‘science,’’ which ‘‘has’’ certain practices, a science consists of its practices. It does not exist apart from them; in fact, the task of any inquiry into the lebenswelt origins of sciences takes its departure from this recognition. A science is nothing more than, and nothing less than, the activities of its practitioners. The phrase promises to retain the important insight, which is consistent with Husserl’s own phenomenological discoveries, that a science does not merely exist in its practices, it exists as its practices. The perspective is vital to an anti-essentialist inquiry, and the phrase is employed frequently in ethnomethodology (cf. Garﬁnkel, 2002, p. 92, 99, 138, 207, 211, 246, 247; Garﬁnkel and Wieder, 1992, p. 175).

Is this particular phrase  [in and as of] that Kenneth Lieberman makes explicit  helpful in our current exploring as weaving?
For example,

• in and as of Matsusaka cotton?

Intending to retain the actual *seeing* of a social practice. In other words making visible what was invisible.
Matsusaka cotton does NOT exist apart from *a* particular social practice as if a metaphysical object.
Lived practice [lebenswelt] takes the origin of Matsusaka cotton from this recognition, from this departure.
Matsusaka cotton is nothing more than and nothing less than Matsukaka cotton’s activities of its
This activity of these particular practitioners.
The phrase [in and as of] retains this important way of *seeing* or *gazing* or *watching*.
Matsusaka cotton does not merely exist *in* Matsukaka cotton’s practices [agency] but Matsusaka cotton exists *as* Matsusaka cotton practices.

This [in and as of] phrase expressing a particular approach towards *seeing* or *gazing* or *watching* may possibly be employed here/hear in Yasuko’s composition.

This lens of perception also seems to line up with Andy’s notion of social facts as actually existing facts that are not merely ideal.

Alfredo, this is all as background in which to engage with your weaving in your commentary that Yasuko is promising something else, while also noticing that both Wylie and Yasuko are exploring artifactual *agency*. Wylie sees benches as ways of *seeing* which implies the bench’s possessing their own agency. This notion of artifactual agency  overlaps Yasuko’s ways of seeing.

I acknowledge that hear we are recognizing different traditions, in and as of particular concrete actual reconfiguring contexts [arrangements]. However, there also is implied an imaginal aspect in both Wylie’s and Yasuko’s frameworks.

For example, Yasuko says:
‘recognition of the interrelations between humans and artifacts does NOT discount the distinctions that may be found between them.’

This reminds me of the phrase [intra-inter subjectivity] which I read as the human aspect being *intra* and the artifactual aspect being *inter* relations/actions/knowings  within the basic irreducibility of these human-artifactual *inter* relations.

Note that Yasuko points out that ANT is a symbolic theoretical proposition that humans & artifacts act [symmetrically] imply [equally].
This, Yasuko emphasizes is *only* a theoretical assumption put forward in order to break through the unproductive *diversions* of traditional social science studies. ....
Further, Yasuko adds:
During the configuration of *a* particular concrete  networks [ [not *the*abstracted metaphysical network] NCLUDING what humans want, think, feel, in terms of human agency [such as seeing and gazing and watching] depends on *a* concrete particular configuration [arrangement] of the sociotechnical environment/niche within which our wanting, thinking, and feeling, exist.

I do question the term [social object] in contrast to [social subject] such as the phrase “reconstructing Matsusaka striped cotton *as* a social object that becomes actual and concrete?  Is it not alternatively possible to say:

“reconstructing Matusaka striped cotton *as* a social subject that becomes actual and concrete?
Thereby arriving at the *intra-inter-actions* of human/artifactual irreducibility.

In summary, and returning to my opening comment,  does the phrase [in and as of] have any relevance to our weaving this particular commentary exploring the actuality of Matsusaka cotton in its concrete reality?

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: May 28, 2017 11:55 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

I am glad to see you find common ground, although I would say that Yasuko's article is very different: while Wylie's analysis seems to be concerned with a seeing of a landscape, and seems to operate from within that seeing or gaze, Yasuko's framework and analyses seem to promise something else: to talk about the possibility of that seeing in concrete terms. So I see Wylie's paper as addressing something like this: what is a possible seeing of this landscape from where I stand (e.g., as a reader of Derrida)? Whereas I hear Yasuko's article as being more about the historical and material premises that position Wylie as that particular looker who sees a landscape in that way, an account that then would have to include the reading and citing of Derrida not as something given or somehow 'natural', but as yet another aspect of a multitude of aspects forming the arrangement that supports that particular seeing. The two approaches seem very different to me, among other things, because the latter can explain the possibility of the former but not the other way around. Not that you cannot learn from both, of course, which you can!

An aspect that is sharply distinctive in Y. Kawatoko's article, at least with regard to the one that Larry has shared, is a concern on *development*, on growth and change, rather than on self and experience. Kawatoko's article describes a trajectory involving an intertwining between enhanced awareness and re-configured contexts or 'arrangements'. In this regard, Kawatoko's article seems to be much closer to the CHAT tradition that characterises much of the MCA readership.

In fact, Kawatoko's article, which analyses a history of weaving, also seems to describe a weaving within the weaving: the one that tangles together history and weaving hands. As socio-historical arrangements develop, so too develop the weaving skills, which is to the cloth what the gaze is to the landscape in Wylie's paper. In this regard, the paper seems to touch upon, though not thematise, the issue of emotions and affects and their development as part of social activities or practices. In CHAT circles, this issue is very much discussed and the Vygotskian legacy seems to offer possible venues for further inquiry. But I am curious about the possibilities that stem from ANT (or the version your article draws from). In which way does this framework help you characterise this affective dimension (Yasuko and anyone else), and how does it address the issue of growth, of development?

Thanks for engagement,
Alfredo

________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of 川床靖子 <kawatoko@r-aquaparks.com>
Sent: 28 May 2017 09:57
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

Dear Larry Purss,

Thank you very much for John Wylie’s article, “Landscape, absence and the geographies of love.” It beautifully describes what we experience in our mind when we face and view (magnificent) landscape. I like the following phrase: Our “stories of life and love weave together landscape and memory.” In this sense, absence and presence are mutually constituted.

In the same way, past and present, participation and non-participation, culture and sub-culture, everything is mutually constituted in a series of context of interactions among human, non-human, and machinery, in other words, under the sociotechnical and historical arrangements.

I am for the author’s way of exploring things; that is, “bringing to light things previously hidden or lost, unearthing memory, making the invisible visible.” In my cases, “talking” is important to make invisible visible. Talking is part of practice. What and how individuals talk about artifacts they use, fellow members working together, personal and public stories regarding the place become important resources to make the invisible visible for the researcher, while simultaneously the individuals’ talks give the individuals opportunities to make their own practice visible and to constitute their own participation in the (work) place.

Larry, yes, I am applying this approach to the subject of the Yuzuru Party.

> 2017/05/28 午前0:22、Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> のメール：
>
> Yasuko,
> Thank you for your personal narrative,  introducing your ways of walking through *tactile* places.
>
> I will open my response through revivifying Ueno’s sense of spirit in our walking alongside Ueno and  listening:
>
>
> “Participation in a community is realized through the process of making the community *visible* to the participants.”
>
> Participants create *boundaries* between communities and make them *visible* each time they discuss codes or categories, and in doing so, they are able to constitute their own participation in the community.
>
> Yasuko, you are applying this approach (way of tactile walking) in your approach to the *subject of* (not object of)
> The Yuzuru Party. (distributing agency)
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
> From: 川床靖子
> Sent: May 27, 2017 12:31 AM
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] xmca new discussion started
>
> Dear xmca members,
>
> Thank you very much for putting my article under discussion at xmca.
>
> Let me introduce my research career briefly.
>
> Until the 2000s, I had done some research in company’s workplaces or institutionalized systems where some “strategy” called by Michel de Certeau (1984) could work, and investigated the ways of relations among individuals, artifacts and machineries in those spaces: the practice of repair technicians in a copy machine company, the practice of operators under the introduction of new production system (Toyota Production System) in the US manufacturing company, and the technology of a care needs assessment under the nursing-care insurance system in Japan.
>
> After that, I have been interested in everyday practices by ordinary people, especially women and old people who live in farm villages or small towns in Japan. In everyday practices that are “tactical in character”, people “make (bricolent) innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules”, referring to Michel de Certeau (1984). I have tried to explore, and described vividly ordinary people’s tactics, more specifically, the procedures, bases, effects, and possibilities of those collective activities. For example, the practice of old women who were engaged in a “happa (leaf) business” in a mountain village, and the practice of women weavers group with the objective of developing traditional hand-weaving skills and sharing Matsusaka cotton with the next generation (current issue).
>
> I think I am a type of researcher who takes pleasure in walking around here and there in search of interesting humans collective activities. The important thing for me is how vividly I can describe interactions among people, artifacts, and machinery that I find interesting in the places. For the sake of cultivating more fruitful viewpoints in the field, I might need some more theoretical bases that I lack unfortunately.
>
> I hope I have your many productive suggestions to our works.
>
> Yasuko Kawatoko
>
>
>