[Xmca-l] Re: As of 2020, the American Century is Over

Thu May 14 13:52:13 PDT 2020

David,
It occurred to me that gender builds walls. The current state of American politics is all about gender. Donald Trump, as well as a property manager, is deeply associated with reality TV and “professional wrestling”. The macho brand he has created is where his base is. A simplistic take on Darwin, a Trump take would be survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism. More nuanced is success in filling an ecological niche. Then there’s natural vs. sexual selection. Darwin didn’t have that figured out, in my humble and ill-informed opinion. I think it was Phillip that proposed an anthropologist in every school. It would seem an anthropologist would be in a good position, in collaboration with researchers in more “material” fields, to weigh in on the gender wall and Trump’s base. My sense is that, despite the gains of LGBTQ and Me Too warriors in the U.S. and around the world, that Trump won, and might again, partly because of push back from people who are uncomfortable with non-stereotypical gender roles. And consider the loss of manufacturing jobs, the loss of jobs in general. Of course this is an economic, a survival issue, but it is gendered: No job, no manhood. No ecological niche available. 

Henry

> On May 13, 2020, at 11:56 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think our tradition has always been incredulous of frontiers for the same reason we are skeptical about elements. It's not really "as a plus" or "interdisciplinary" or "bridges not walls". It's more, "What is this thing you are calling a wall really made of?". 
> 
> One of the first of many distortions our elementary school kids have to learn is that there is a "science" class that includes biology and chemistry but not history and civics and a "social studies" class which includes history and civics but not biology and chemistry. 
> 
> Similarly, our kids learn that there is a "morals" class that isn't the same thing as "civics" or "ethics". I would like to teach them that this is something like the difference between Korean music and Western music or Asian painting and oil painting or Chinese and Western opera. But there's a little more to it than that.
> 
> I don't think Vygotsky would see any of these distinctions as fundamental or essential. We can place one discipline in the background in order to foreground another (for me it's always language, and for you it's always labor). But we don't forget that we're the ones who just did that.
> 
> In Midnight's Children, the Mumbai magicians are all members of the Indian Communist Party and consequently sworn, devout materialists. They can only bend reality so long as they remember that they are real themselves.
> .
>  
> 
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
> 
> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
> Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!UDIIfQ7T3n9hyrdXggci5W2O3tIz_zpkZShhu90U2ceRC8V1stJt1IqcLwk2_eE93mucWQ$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!UlLtbsnFYEU9uxUVpDtxIQgmzNmz2wz8fSVWuS79pILRH1ca52_dzQdUUlPohs0Vq847Mg$>
> 
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UDIIfQ7T3n9hyrdXggci5W2O3tIz_zpkZShhu90U2ceRC8V1stJt1IqcLwk2_eFwqdoblQ$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UlLtbsnFYEU9uxUVpDtxIQgmzNmz2wz8fSVWuS79pILRH1ca52_dzQdUUlPohs3gwAUvHw$>
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 11:36 AM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
> Oh for heavens sake, someone has to take a shot!
> 
> As a psychologist, what I find new, different, and useful about cultural psychology is its proposal that human psychological functioning occurs first (phylogenetically, historically, and ontogenetically) between people, as a social process, and is mediated by cultural artifacts.
> 
> That’s not to ignore the genetic or the biological, because the use of artifacts transforms the people who use them, biologically, neurologically, and even genetically.
> 
> And issues of equity enter because (s)he who has the artifacts has the power(s)…
> 
> good night   :)
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On May 13, 2020, at 12:30 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Great list of references, Phillip.
>> 
>> As someone who teaches outside the school context, as compared to what I think is the majority of people on this list, I often have to push myself to justify why I feel so at home in the Vygotskian tradition (or CHAT, or socio-cultural tradition). I notice that my bookshelf looks a lot like yours.  If I walked into your study and looked at your bookshelf I’d probably have a good laugh.
>> 
>> So what do these people have in common that defines them as being part of one tradition?  And compared to what?
>> 
>> Focus on language, social interaction, paying attention to history, paying attention to context - and the assumption that international is a plus?
>> 
>> As compared to avoiding genetics, testing, individualism, anything defined by national boundaries?
>> 
>> On a big scale, in other words, what’s special about the sociocultural approach?  Why do I recognize your list?
>> 
>> Thanks — H
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com__;!!Mih3wA!SsKJXlr9aEy4tVMsmtn0J43hDh_QJCslrIAhqqU4D5SFpiipG-a9GR2v_QkbGfqbERpNQg$>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 7, 2020, at 7:18 AM, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu <mailto:Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Helena & Henry -  yeah, the Choudry & Williams paper re:figured worlds and power was a pleasure to read - nuanced and evocative.  i was reminded of Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind, in which one of his assertions is that one of the attributed of learning - change in which a difference makes a difference - stochastic. also, i think that Yuval Noah Harari's assertion in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, that it was with the emergence of language that as one of the five great apes groups we were able to imagine figured worlds that don't exist - what he describes as the Cognitive Revolution.  
>>> it was somewhere in the early 2000's that i wrote a review of Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds for MCA.  thought i had first come across Dorothy Holland's work through Margaret Eisenhart's instruction on ethnographic methods and educational research. even earlier, at a conference in the early 90's Eisenhart suggested that every school have an anthropologist as a learning/teaching resource for classroom teachers.  of course, Shirley Brice Heath, as well as Kris Gutierrez, and Jose Lemon (Dancing with the Devil) are great exemplars of that, amongst too many others to mention.
>>> 
>>> again, Helena, many thanks for the paper.
>>> 
>>> phillip
> 

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