More LSV and Contextualism

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Tue, 23 Mar 1999 12:44:39 -0800 (PST)

Hi all who are interested in this thread, which is at least associated
with an end to the perceived silence on the list. Seems like that
artifact changed the xmca context! :-)

Chuck makes clear something that I tried to make clear, but wasn't
very successful at. I am genuinely interested in why LSV has been
appropriated in a lot of recent academic discourse we all have contact
with as a contextualist (thanks for the mini lessons on what the term
could mean from many). We can all take that out of some part of his
work, but if you scan back through the textual examples that people
have provided, I think you will see that he is not, himself, making
a big deal of context, so various translatinos/substitutions are needed.
I sincerely doubt that it is such clever readings that have produced
the "common sense" view that contextualism is central to his enterprise.

There are some other ways to go with the texts themselves. For example,
LSV and Luria certainly talk about the humans living in a double world,
about overcoming slavish reliance on the here and now. Jim Wertsch
talks about the "decontextualizing" potential in mediational means. Where
there is decontextualization, can contextualism be far away?

But still, my gut feeling is that there is some sort of zeitgeist/confusion
at work to render this relationship so widely agreed upon.
mike