Re: Wired Classrooms

Phillip Allen White (pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu)
Tue, 18 Nov 1997 19:43:12 -0700 (MST)

Hello Louise, and everyone -

Yes, CHAT is an acronym for cultural-historical-activity-theory.
Francoise has compiled a wonderful list of all the acronyms used on this
listserve. I was amazed at the number. It represented a considerable
amount of work on her part.

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Louise Yarnall wrote:
> Also, please refresh my memory on Foucault. I had him pegged as a critical
> theorist, someone who points out how cultural artifacts often shape our
> activities according to the priorities of Big Brother...

Foucault asserted that power does not reside in a body or place,
but is exercised. So, he understood power to be distributed - unevenly in
places, but distributed nevertheless. A comparison that I see is in
Bateson's description of the immanent mind - that intelligence is
distributed in a social activity, rather than residing in a particular
person. I think George Herbert Mead had similar understandings.

"... power is born out of a plurality of relationships which are
grafted onto something else, born from something else, and permit the
development of something else.
"Hence the fact that these power relationships, on one hand, enter
into the heart of struggles which are, for example, economic or religious
- and so it is not against power that struggles are fundamentally born.
"On the other hand, power relationships open up a space in the
middle of which the struggles develop." Michel Foucault (1989) Foucault
Live. Semiotext(e), Columbia University.

Hope this helps, Louise.

Phillip