RE: Crisis in Psychology

nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Mon, 7 Sep 1998 20:18:15 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: Eva Ekeblad [mailto:eva.ekeblad@ped.gu.se]
Sent: Monday, September 07, 1998 1:40 PM
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Crisis in Psychology

Seems we have a common denominator Vygotsky - Cole - Wertsch - etc... here:
the crisis in psychology.

What Rachel writes sounds akin to what Mike outlines: a psychology that
moves out into the field of everyday activities. The different strategies
of creating new activity systems or pushing outwards from within would seem
to depend on the different affordances of different societal institutions.

Makes me wonder: does Wertsch, in his book, get out into the substance of
everyday activities?

I see him more of getting into everyday issues or at least issues that
psychology doesn't seem to focus on very much. He brings political science,
history, etc into the debate. I found his chapter on appropriation and
resistance as very powerful. He also focuses on how cultural tools can
limit not only assist us. A lot of sociocultural literature has a strong
assist interpretation of cultural tools, I found Wertsch's view that
cultural tools also limit our action as refreshing. Tension is a theme that
goes through out the book and that is a theme that relates to my everyday
activities.

And then, both Rachel's posting and Mike's book make me wonder: when
"psychologists" have broken away from contemporary psychology --

>Psychology got its start by breaking away from philosophy. A new study
>of how people act in the world will likewise have to break away from
>"contemporary" psychology and its metatheoretical groundings, not
>reluctantly but self-consciously.

-- and put themselves in eccentric orbits (like comets) that bring them now
into everyday activities of education and health care, now back into
Academia...
... what will their business be there? Their metatheory, their research
findings, their teaching of the next generation of Academe...

Oh. With MY half-century, here I am, asking questions, questions, like a
sixyear-old

Eva