[Xmca-l] Re: "Context" or Object of activity

[Jonathan Tudge]

Hi, Mike, David, Andy, and others,

I'll just dive in a little more in response to this last paragraph of
yours, Mike:








*With respect to the Pepper ideas, which provoke a good deal of
interestamong scholars in humandevelopment at present, like Jon and myself,
my own view is that we aredealing with a hybrid system involving phylogeny
and (cultural) history.For Pepper that is a no-no.  Overton et al provide
relational developmentalsystems, Jon, I think, is with Pepper and believes
Urie is too. I am notsure of thatpart.*

I really do buy Pepper's view that the four paradigms (or world views)
about which he wrote are incommensurate, given that the causes that they
are built on simply don't fit.  Boiling it all down to the simplest (I hope
not simplistic) way of thinking about it is that mechanism is perfectly
happy with efficient or material causes (reductionist, based on the
environment or genes/biology) whereas organicists and contextualists accept
formal causes (non-reductionistic, based on emergent properties resulting
from dialectical or synergistic relations among what mechanists would
consider separate factors).  The defining difference between the latter two
is that organicists accept the notion of final cause--a basic
directionality to development leading to a specifiable endpoint (if people
live long enough), whereas contextualists take an open position on what
counts as an endpoint (it'll vary depending on cultural variability at
different historical periods).  (I know nothing about causes linked to the
4th world view, formism, as it doesn't seem to relate much to psychological
theories.)

It seems to me that coherence isn't possible if one wants to be both
reductionist and non-reductionist, and equally difficult to accept one
single endpoint and a variety of them, depending on cultural and historical
factors.  Overton I think takes the position that relational developmental
systems (RDS) is a new and improved hybrid; I consider him an organicist,
based on the half-dozen defining characteristics of RDS that he writes
about.  I also think that he's quite incorrect to treat Bronfenbrenner as a
mechanist.  It's telling, though, that he doesn't actually quote UB
himself, but relies on someone else's depiction of UB's theory.

Cheers,

Jon


~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Tudge

Professor
Office: 155 Stone

Our work on gratitude: http://morethanthanks.wp.uncg.edu/

A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing
gratitude in children and adolescents
<https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge

Mailing address:
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Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
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phone (336) 223-6181
fax   (336) 334-5076






On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 8:15 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> et all-
>
> Very interesting discussion. One of the questions that I had in reading
> Jon's text was his assertion that Vygotsky practiced contextualism as his
> world hypothesis. David's example seems to provide a clear argument for why
> one should argue that Vygotsky was, indeed a contextualist in Jon, Pepper,
> and most contemporary sociocultural scholars.
>
> One could also turn to the concept of the social situation of development
> to make
> a ssd - context connection, e.g., what different work are the two terms
> doing? Or are
> they what Peg taught me to think of as "notational variants"?
>
> I am totally with the idea that we are dealing with text and context. With
> respect to the
> 5thD I have from the beginning thought of it as a text that emerges with
> its con-text. In the case
> of the 5thD it was common to think of the activity in its room with its
> people as the text and the
> youth facility where we worked (including its personnel at different levels
> within the club's
> own organizational hierarchy.
>
> What Andy has been referring to is the observations we made at the time of
> the Iraq war that
> trace the series of contingent events that came together to prevent the
> 5thD from terminating
> and led to a reorganization of 5thD-Club relationship into a different
> configuration that then
> continued for several years successfully (in our view) but terminated
> suddenly when the income levels of the community within which the Club
> operations (the club and its context, perhaps?) led to closing
> and reorientation of the Clubs program that no longer could accomodate an
> activity in the form of the 5thD.
>
> With respect to the Pepper ideas, which provoke a good deal of interest
> among scholars in human
> development at present, like Jon and myself, my own view is that we are
> dealing with a hybrid system involving phylogeny and (cultural) history.
> For Pepper that is a no-no.  Overton et al provide relational developmental
> systems, Jon, I think, is with Pepper and believes Urie is too. I am not
> sure of that
> part.
>
> mike
>
> On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 4:42 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Yes, I got that. I have read a lot of your work on projects, as well as
> > Mike's on the Fifth Dimension and after school activities. But the word
> > "context" has the word "text" in it, not the word "project" or
> "activity".
> > And "text" pertains to my own work.
> >
> > Let me be a hardcore linguist for a moment: it's interesting in its own
> > right, and I think you will see it's not entirely irrelevant to the
> > question at hand. The word "that" begins with a voiced inter-dental
> sound,
> > which is often spelt "th" in English ('this', "that', 'these', 'those',
> > 'there', 'then' and of course the most common word in any length of
> English
> > text, 'the'). If you put your hands over your ears when you say them, you
> > will feel and hear vocal cord vibration. There are also a lot of words in
> > English with unvoiced interdentals like "thick', "thin", "thought", and
> > "three". If you put your hands over your ears or put a hand on your
> throat
> > when you say them, you will not feel any buzz.
> >
> > Now, does this phonological difference relate in any systematic way to
> > context? I think you can see that it does. The words that begin with
> voiced
> > inter-dental sounds are all deictic: they are used to point, to indicate,
> > to refer exophorically to the context of situation ("That on that") or
> > endophorically (anaphorically or cataphorically) to co-text (e.g. "That
> is
> > what I meant"). That is what Vygotsky meant by "sense". But the words
> that
> > begin with unvoiced interdental sounds are not deictic in this way: they
> > refer symbolically to dictionary definitions (or concepts). That is what
> > Vygotsky meant by "signification".
> >
> > Of course, both types of meaning involve contexts: a dictionary is as
> much
> > a context as a supermarket. But Vygotsky teaches us that they are
> different
> > kinds of contexts and they entail developmentally different kinds of
> > meanings. Bronfrenbrenner distinguished his contexts by scale (and also,
> > crucially, by the degree to which the child participates in the context).
> > Malinowski distinguished a context of situation, which includes all that
> we
> > need to make sense of a particular instance of text, from a context of
> > culture, which includes all that we need to make sense of the whole
> > language system. In both cases, the context is bounded, and in both cases
> > it is bounded by text. In fact, the relationship between situation and
> > culture is exactly the same as the relationship between language and
> text:
> > a situation is an instance of culture, and a text is an instance of
> > language. For that matter, weather is an instance of climate.
> >
> > Consider the "project" of writing a novel, Andy. In this situation, what
> is
> > really important is not the room you are sitting in or the window you
> > are looking out of or even the country you are living in. In this
> > situation, what is important is the imaginary context which is created by
> > the text you are generating. The relationship between text and context
> > seems to be almost reversed, and yet it is largely the same. The reason
> why
> > nothing essential changes is the same as the reason why "context" can
> > describe both exophoric and endophoric relations equally well. It is
> > because context does not mean a material situational setting for a
> project
> > or for an activity; it is rather an abstraction from a language or an
> > instance of language, i.e. a text.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > David Kellogg
> >
> > Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> > Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> > Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> >
> > Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> >
> > http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 9:07 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I can't follow your message at all, David, but perhaps a few
> > > words of explanation will help.
> > >
> > > Faced with, for example, a design experiment like 5thD, of
> > > course, the project leaders and researchers are aware of the
> > > importance of the context of the project and know that the
> > > success or early failure of the project will depend on
> > > events coming out of an unbounded context (s well as the
> > > resilience and self-sufficiency of the project). The problem
> > > is (1) how to conceptualise this unbounded context. (2) If
> > > you want to use the method of analysis by units, you ask
> > > yourself what is the relation between a unit of analysis and
> > > the context of the research. But (2) answers (1).
> > >
> > > (2) In designing the project you will analyse the unbounded
> > > context by means of analysis by units; specifically, you
> > > would understand that the world is made up of projects.
> > > These projects can be conceptualised as *mediating*
> > > elements, because the project which forms the subject matter
> > > of the research has *collaborative relationships* with a
> > > range of projects (the university, the local council, etc,
> > > etc.) and these projects, when you add all of them up, are
> > > the world. Still unbounded, but by means of analysis by
> > > units you have an approach. The context is analysed in terms
> > > of its units, projects, and those projects with which the
> > > subject project collaborates are the mediating elements and
> > > are in focus. No guarantee, but a start.
> > >
> > > So (1) the context is not *included* in the "unit of
> > > analysis" but is subject to analysis by units itself. The
> > > world is not a subordinate part of one of its units.
> > >
> > > This is in fact how Mike approached the problem.
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Andy Blunden
> > > http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > > On 2/02/2018 8:25 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> > > > The late Leo van Lier, who more or less single-handedly
> > > > created an "ecological applied linguistics" after he moved
> > > > to the USA from Peru, used to tell a story about getting
> > > > his eldest child, a boy who grew up speaking Spanish and
> > > > Quechua, to speak an English sentence. Children who do not
> > > > know what language can be easily trained to repeat
> > > > meaningless phrases out of context (I have a lot of data
> > > > on this), but children who already speak one language tend
> > > > to be quite careful about speaking a new one (and they
> > > > seem to be particularly careful about who gets to hear
> > > > what language). So the boy refused to speak any English at
> > > > all for a full year. One day Leo was in a supermarket
> > > > buying breakfast cereal, and the boy was riding in the
> > > > shopping cart. They passed another cart with another child
> > > > and exaclty the same brand of breakfast cereal. The boy
> > > > pointed to the other cart and then to their own and
> > > > distinctly said "That...on that".
> > > >
> > > > I don't see how the context of "that" is unbounded, Andy.
> > > > Yes, the cereal in question bears my name, but no, the
> > > > relationship is not close, or not close enough to do me
> > > > any good, as my father used to say over breakfast. But I
> > > > don't see why I cannot draw a boundary between the
> > > > breakfast cereal and my own name (as Bronfenbrenner does)
> > > > and say that the box and the cart are part of the context
> > > > of situation and the name and the Road to Wellville are
> > > > not. To say that "context" in this situation is an
> > > > "unbounded abstraction" is like saying that today's
> > > > weather is an unbounded abstraction. Weather, like any
> > > > other context of situation, is a context bounded by text.
> > > > One of the boundaries that text places on context is
> > > > distinguishing a context of situation from a context of
> > > > culture. That, as I understand it, is the distinction
> > > > between a micro-context and a macro-context, to use
> > > > Bronfenbrenner's labels. Or, if you like, the distinction
> > > > between weather and climate.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > David Kellogg
> > > >
> > > > Recent Article in /Mind, Culture, and Activity/ 24 (4)
> > > > 'Metaphoric, Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A
> > > > Commentary on “Neoformation: A Dialectical Approach to
> > > > Developmental Change”'
> > > >
> > > > Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> > > >
> > > > http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> > > > <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full>
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 10:39 AM, Andy Blunden
> > > > <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >     As Mike has pointed out on numerous occasions the
> > > >     "context" of even the most modest project or action by
> > > >     an individual, may turn out to be a
> > > >     geopolitical/historical event. There is no boundary
> > > >     which can be draw such that 'nothing outside this
> > > >     boundary counts as context'. So, when a theorist
> > > >     refers to 'context', either they have privileged
> > > >     God-like prescience or they mean by "context" the
> > > >     entire, unbounded totality of events in the world
> > > >     during or prior to this action. So to refer to this
> > > >     unbounded totality with the term "context" and join it
> > > >     to either the research subject or within the "unit of
> > > >     analysis" is to utilise an "unbounded abstraction."
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >     The issue raised here is not whether analysis is
> > > >     impossible of course, but simply, what is the
> > > >     appropriate methodology for researching unbounded
> > > >     totalities?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >     Andy
> > > >
> > > >     ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > >     Andy Blunden
> > > >     http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > > >     <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> > > >     On 1/02/2018 12:09 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
> > > >>     ....
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>     That said, I am very sympathetic to the idea
> > > >>     that "context", if it is external in the sense of
> > > >>     arbitrary, does not add much to our
> > > >>     understanding. But Andy, how does your point about
> > > >>     "unbounded abstraction" connect to this?
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>     Alfredo
> > > >>
> > > >>     ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>