------
Mike-
The issues raised by Eva and in our interchange from years past are of
course old ones and continue to come up in meetings such as Aarhus, etc.
I think they are worth revisiting from time to time, but I also am less
inclined than in previous years to think that some kind of abstract
theoretical discussion will tell us very much. Over the past several
years I have been increasingly impressed with how much particular
empirical issues ("exemplars" in Kuhn's terminology) shape the seemingly
theoretical discussions we have, and I think this is the key to
understanding similarities and differences in theoretical claims. Your
work on the 5th D is something that has led you to say a lot about
activity settings, and I often use this as an example of how and why a
level of analysis having to do with activity is so important. My current
obsession with narrative history texts has led me to focus on mediated
action, but some notion of activity and actiity setting is never far from
the picture. I think in the end the key is soemthing like Burke's ideas
about "ratios" between pairs of pentadic elements: we just seem incapable
of handling too many (more thant 2?) basic theoretical constructs at a
time!
Hence I continue to think that there is much more complementarity than
opposition in our various perspectives. The differences that exist derive
primarily from the empirical phenomena we have chosen to examine rather
than from a principled difference in theoretical commitment.
Jim
On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Mike Cole wrote:
>
> I am guessing you are not reading xmca. Here is a questerion for you.
> mike
> >From xmca-request who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu Fri Jun 18 15:15:14 1999
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> Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 23:29:22 +0200
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> >From: Eva Ekeblad <eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se>
> Subject: soci-historical (Re: Talking about CHAT)
> Resent-Message-ID: <EDq4nB.A.BaE.4ora3 who-is-at weber>
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>
> At 09.12 -0500 99-06-18, nate wrote:
> >I recently reread the 1995 x-practice discussion of signs and the
> >differentiation seems to go beyond just a differentiation between post
> >soviet and western perspectives. Jim talked about the differentiation
> >between production and consumption which may not be very far off from the
> >differentiation of cultural historical and Activity Theory. Arne creates
> >some very interesting triangles that attempts to merge these two
> >perspectives.
>
> I've been re-reading that stuff, too, but with a focus on pulling out
> Arne's contributions into an intelligible whole. And as far as I remember,
> there had been quite a lot of back-and-forth when Arne came in strong, so I
> may have missed something.
>
> What I read as Arne's main objection to Jim's contributions was, I suppose,
> a quite foundational objection against Jim's model being a theory of
> ACTION, not a theory of ACTIVITY (although then Arne goes on, very
> hermeneutically, to understand this in terms of Jim's chosen field of
> research). I think this is one of the differences signalled by the labeling
> differences between CHAT and Jim's 'socio-cultural approach'. The presence/
> /absence of "historical" also signals something -- in Jim's case avoidance
> of the "bad karma" of Marxist history writing (has he written about that in
> published form anywhere? -- too much of what I learn comes from from the
> archives)... judging from *Mind as action* he DOES take account of history,
> but he also sticks to an action model.
>
> The historical part of the CHAT acronym I see as corresponding to an
> integration of history in the work of Mike and Yrjo. For example, the way
> Mike presents his theoretical position in *Cultural Psychology* is very
> much a genetic, historical method.
>
> I'll append the entire posting of Mike and Jim discussing names, back in
> 1989, when labeling matters were more in flux.
>
> cheers
> Eva
>
>
> ************************************************
> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 89 07:14:00 pdt
> =46rom: mcole who-is-at weber (Mike Cole)
> Subject: What shall a thing be called?
> To: xlchc who-is-at ucsd.edu
>
> =46or some time, Jim Wertsch and I have been discussing the pros and cons of
> various names for the general approach to the study of mind initiated in
> the USSR by Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev. Those worthy gentlepeople, as
> you know, used various names for their enterprise, including
> cultural-historical, instrumental, and later the concept of activity came
> to be highlighted.
>
> In the following note, Jim is reacting to a paper I prepared for a
> symposium on cross-cultural contributions to psychology which I entitled,
> "Cultural psychology: a once and future discipline?" In the note that
> follows his, I respond briefly. The two of us thought that the issue might
> be worth further discussion, so I am posting them on XLCHC.
>
> I think that the issue of labels is non-trivial. The notion of cultural
> psychology is "in" among some social scientists these days; Jim Stigler and
> Rick Shweder, who are participants in this network, are editing a book with
> that title and hosting a discussion at SRCD on this topic later this week.
> Jerry Bruner is writing a book that may have this label in its title and I
> have been working on a manuscript that will, unless this discussion changes
> my mind, also bear the label, cultural psychology.
>
> The question is, what "voices" are evoked by various labels, and which most
> suit various purposes? I would be very interested in what ghosts spring to
> life for various XLCHC participants when they hear socio-cultural approach
> to psychology vs. cultural psychology vs cultural-historical psychology,
> and what what alternatives seem most reasonable.
> mike c
>
> =46rom: <JWERTSCH who-is-at CLARKU>
> Subject: cultural psychology
> To: mcole who-is-at ucsd
>
> Mike-
> Your Nebraska paper is terrific. I had a few minor comments, but I want to
> respond about the major issue that it raised for me. This issue has to do
> with whether we should be talking about "cultural psychology,"
> "sociocultural approach," or "cultural-historical psychology." I opt for
> the second term, and I think it's an important issue.
>
> The problem with talking about cultural psychology is that the term
> "cultural" is tied to particular disciplines and ideas in our discourse.
> In Bakhtin's terms, it has a particular history, and its use invokes
> particular others' voices. I believe that cultural phenomena are
> absolutely crucial to what you and I want to examine, but I think without
> some term such as "social" issues of social class, reproduction of social
> institutions, and so forth get overlooked. That is, cultural tends to
> focus on what anthropologists tend to examine, whereas some notion of
> social or social structural looks at institutional factors in modern,
> large-scale societies.
>
> The place where this shows up concretely in your paper has to do with what
> we both see as the linchpin of the whole argument--mediation. By focusing
> on analysts who study culture, mediation tends to be viewed as something
> that individuals consciously dream up for particular purposes. If
> mediational means are viewed from a more social theoretic perspective, they
> tend to be understood in terms of phenomena that are there for reasons that
> have to do with the creation and reproduction of economic and cultural
> capital, i.e., for the reproduction of social structure. In this view,
> mediational means are often organized around principles that may actually
> run against the grain of what would be best for the mediation of mental
> functioning. This idea that mediational means are often created for
> reasons other than to mediate mental functioning is crucial for many of the
> arguments about oppression and dissimilarity of access to mediational means
> that I see you making.
>
> This is cryptic for now, but I've got to run. Let me know if it makes sense=
> =2E
> Jim
>
> >From mcole Tue Apr 18 14:33 PDT 1989
> To: JWERTSCH who-is-at CLARKU.BITNET
> Subject: Quickly in return
>
> The politics of representation in this discussion are a crucial issue at
> several levels.
> 1) That paper was written for VERY conservative PSYCHOLOGIISTS, and for
> a cross-cultural conf as that is ordinarily understood. berry's view was
> dominant. So, my paper was a compromise. No--she is never going to be a
> rugby player [reference here is to ongoing discussion of key example of
> social/cultural relationship] -- did not fit into the discussion. I am
> acutely aware of this shortcoming.
> 2) I fully intend, IN THE CONTEXT OF DISCOURSE CALLED PSYCHOLOGY to
> adhere to the canons of the discipline. It is related to practice and
> institutionalized in a "modern" way. I will argue, with Luria and Vygotsky,
> that WITHIN THE PROBLEMATIC OF MID-19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN (AND AMERICAN)
> society, the "crisis" in psychology was real and that the socio-historical
> school provides a systematic way to overcome that crisis.
> I expect to lose this argument, but I will make it as strongly as I
> can, both as critique and as positive argument based in practice.
>
> THEN, friend, I come at the issue from the discipline of communication
> where, instead of the mediational view being anti-paradigmatic it IS the
> paradigm, and it needs constant criticism through interaction with practice.
>
> So, for my project, I want to use socio-historical. Why, since I agrue
> that culture is history in the present? Because of their different
> affordances. Culture a la D'Andrade is a-temporal, a- developmental,
> a-historical, but is understood as cultural. For me, culture without
> development is a contradiction in terms. Cultures are for growing things
> (cf. William's), and whenever the "multiple genetic domains" aspect is left
> out--caput. Socio-cultural affords leaving out the NECESSITY of
> developmental analysis.
> Now, in the discipline of communication, one might think that it would
> be possible for socio-cultural to be a better term. Mike Shudson would be
> more comfortable with it. And he is historical. But he is also a cultural
> idealist, and darned if idealism doesn't somehow afford too weak a theory
> of the forces and relations of production in shaping the conditions where
> cultural artifacts evolve. Geertz says some great things in those 1973
> essays, but he leaves the material world out of things and goes
> hermeneutic. I go materialist. He does not engage in the practice of
> development. I do. Am I "righter" than him? In my theory/practice
> methodology I am. For text analysis, he may be the best we can get.
>
> My current project on growing activity systems to promote new
> institutional arrangements while testing theories of learning/development
> microgenetically ought to be a good way to get a firmer grip on these
> issues.
>
> Does this make sense?
> mike
>
>
>
>