Re: question on class

Ricardo Ottoni (rjapias who-is-at ibm.net)
Thu, 21 Oct 1999 21:16:58 -0200

Did you read Vygotsky's "Sulla psicologia della creativit=E0=20
dell'attore", translated to italian by Claudia Lasorsa, and=20
published in STUDI DI PSICOLOGIA DELL'EDUCAZIONE, 1986?

I think, there, you can also find - in such a way - the approach of that=20
issue.

>=20
> somtime ago Mike made the following pronouncement: "human brains cannot
> operate in a survivable manner, for individual or society, except trhou=
gh
> and in the medium of culture."
>=20
> It seems that things get hot when we start dealing with what that mediu=
m
> might be even when we agree in principle that human brains are part of =
a
> system that is composed of other and various kinds of human artefacts a=
nd
> structures that exist independently of the brain.
>=20
> Today, while dealing with the ever problematic issue of how to treat va=
rious
> administrative categories of ethnicity, thinking the inevitable: i.e.,
> administrative ethnic categories are, among several things, glosses for
> social class, it struck me that I haven't ever seen a discussion on xmc=
a of
> class as a factor in Vygotsky inspired research. Perhaps it isn't even =
in
> Vygotsky. I can't remember seeing anything in the two Vygotsky books =
I've
> read (Stds on Hist of Bhvr, Thght & Lng). But I also haven't seen any=
thing
> in any of the various secondary books and articles I've seen.
>=20
> Nevertheless, if Vygotsky was working within the framework he professed=
to
> be working in, it would be inescapable for some issues of class, or cl=
ass
> consciousness to be somewhere in the discourse (whether as issues of
> bourgeois or proletarian culture, etc.)
>=20
> It would seem even more inescapable when looking at formal education (t=
he
> framework within which scientific concepts become an issue) which initi=
ally
> emerges as a framework for maintaining class structures (ample evidence
> available from cultural and historical record of stratified societies).
> Following Willis', Learning to Labor, or Eckert's, Jocks and Burnouts, =
we
> see that high schools in our society perform this function on the down =
side
> through an interplay of the school's institutional activities and
> multi-generational working class networks through which the teenager
> journeys. We also know that prep schools perform this process at the
> narrower end of the social pyramid.
>=20
> Isn't this an example of internalization? Are there any studies of cla=
ss in
> the CHAT tradition or studies in which class figures as an important
> element/category? At this point it's not crucial for me to know how "c=
lass"
> is defined as long as it includes a reference to the individual's relat=
ion
> to the productive process in sectoral terms, just whether some notion o=
f
> class is employed.
>=20
> Paul H. Dillon