[Xmca-l] Re: Hi

[David Kellogg]

Joao, Alfredo--

We tend to think of Vygotsky as a psychologist, or an educationalist, or
even a developmentalist, and of course he was all of those things. But one
of the problems with reading Vygotsky is that he saw himself, and others
saw him, principally as a practitioner in three professions that no longer
exist, and in order to see Vygotsky as he saw hiimself and as others saw
him we really have to reinvent them. I think all three of those no longer
existing professions have to do with aging.

The first is, of course, defectology, which studies not only children
with "circuitous and non-direct forms of development" (that was Vygotsky's
formulation and main interest) but also geriatrics and dementia. So for
example Vygotsky begins his essay on imagination in the adolescent with
examples of advanced Parkinson's patients from a clinic that Cassirer
visited in Frankfurt.

The second is pedology. As Alfredo says, this is concerned with the
"Problem of Age", and the limitation of its domain is the main source of
the disagreement between Wolff-Michael and myself. Embryos grow and do not
learn. Adults learn and don't grow. I think pedology is restricted to human
beings who are growing and learning at one and the same time, because
development is essentially the interaction between the two.

But the third is hardly ever mentioned. Vygotsky was involved, particularly
towards the end of his life, with something called "psychotechnics", which
doesn't exist for us simply because it cannot. It was the science of
providing jobs for young adults. When my wife was going to school, this was
a major concern for the Chinese government: the idea was "yi ge luobo, yi
ge kang" (that is, one radish sprout for one hole): each person who
graduates from college has a lifetime position in a planned economy.
Needless to say, this is no longer a concern for the Chinese state. I
remember when the dean announced that the "fen pei" system of
psychotechnics was being abolished and our graduates were told to look for
their own jobs. Not everybody cheered, and for good reason.

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 Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 4:15 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> Hi Joao,
>
> I just did a search in Vygotsky's collected works (English) and the
> keyword "aging" did not give any entry back. Of course, it depends what you
> mean by "aging". If with it you mean "being already grown up and then
> getting even older", then I am not sure you will find explicit discussions
> about this in Vygotsky other than arguments precisely to specify the
> special nature of child development as compared to adulthood.
>
> There is of course the chapter "The Problem of Age" (Collected works, vol.
> 5), which happens to have been very much discussed lately in relation to
> the lead article in the 2017 Issue 4 discussion on Neoformation by Roth,
> and its commentary by Kellogg. A good place to look at if you are
> interested in "aging" in Vygotsky.
>
> The chapter is transcribed and published in Marxists.org, here:
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/problem-age.htm
>
> A discussion regarding how/whether to approach adulthood as involving some
> form of developmental stages has been had recently here in xmca. Actually,
> in November there is a thread called "adult development". You can find all
> discussions had in November here:
>
> https://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/2017-November/thread.html
>
> Xmca also allows looking for keywords in the conversations and the archive
> goes back to 1995! You can search here:
> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/index.html
>
> So, I am not sure you can find a direct answer in these resources, but
> surely you'll come up with food for posing many other good questions.
>
> Alfredo
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of jbmartin@sercomtel.com.br <jbmartin@sercomtel.com.br>
> Sent: 14 January 2018 00:06
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu; jbmartin@sercomtel.com.br
> Subject: [Xmca-l]  Hi
>
> Hi ... I would like to know if you know papers that articules Vygotsky's
> theory with the aging process
>
> thanks
>
> Joao Martins
>