I'll consider your message in greater detail later but for me, the distance
between Foucault and CHAT is rather substantial -- a great deal has been
written about class from Foucaultian directions and I really haven't seen
how that stuff deepens the Vygotsky issues: e.g., internalization, ZPD, etc.
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: nate <schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 21, 1999 6:36 PM
Subject: Re: question on class
>Paul,
>
>As for Vygotsky, In Child Psychology of his collected works he deals with
>class in a little more depth. The context is mostly a critique of Piaget
>and others in their strong middle class bias in regard to research. My
>understanding was that he was calling for research that took class as more
>central. In *Psychology of Art*, an earlier piece, his description of
>social psychology seemed to point toward a psychology that could by pass
>ideology (class).
>
>As far as CHAT, if she can be considered a part of, I am finding Walkerdine
>emphasis on class very influential. What I am finding interesting in this
>regard is Walkerdine, Nik Rose, Foucault and others considered "posts"
>seemed to have a strong emphasis on class. Let us not forget that Foucault
>in Dicipline and Punish quoted Marx on several occasions. What is
>interesting is that in their migration to the U.S. their emphasis on class
>seems to be qualified as "structural" something to move beyond.
>
>I am currently reading *Daddy's Girl* by Walkerdine and in my view class is
>very central. Also her critique of "child centered pedogogy" in *The
>Mastery of Reason* it was very much situated as "bourgeois' society where
>class took on central importance. Nik Rose work on govermentality puts
>forth a similar analysis. What is frustating me terribly at this moment is
>how that aspect of their work is somehow secondary and they are simply
>deconstructing without a social consciousness.
>
>Class tend to be defined as something lacking content or in the negative
>rather than the positive. This is difficult for me because its a big
>aspect of my subjectivity especially since entering the middleclass domain
>of higher education. Is that subjectivity merely a false consciousness or
>is their content there. There seems to be important bourgeois tools
>involved that I don't want to or have my children denied of, yet I also
>don't want to lose my consciousness in the process. If its simply false the
>solution lies in appropriating a bourgeois conscious, but if there is
>content it becomes a little more difficult. I see Walkerdine pointing
>toward the latter.
>
>Nate
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Paul Dillon <dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com>
>To: XMCA <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
>Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 2:51 PM
>Subject: question on class
>
>
>> somtime ago Mike made the following pronouncement: "human brains cannot
>> operate in a survivable manner, for individual or society, except trhough
>> and in the medium of culture."
>>
>> It seems that things get hot when we start dealing with what that medium
>> 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 and
>> structures that exist independently of the brain.
>>
>> Today, while dealing with the ever problematic issue of how to treat
>various
>> 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 xmca
>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
>anything
>> in any of the various secondary books and articles I've seen.
>>
>> Nevertheless, if Vygotsky was working within the framework he professed
>to
>> be working in, it would be inescapable for some issues of class, or
>class
>> consciousness to be somewhere in the discourse (whether as issues of
>> bourgeois or proletarian culture, etc.)
>>
>> It would seem even more inescapable when looking at formal education (the
>> framework within which scientific concepts become an issue) which
>initially
>> 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.
>>
>> Isn't this an example of internalization? Are there any studies of class
>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
>"class"
>> is defined as long as it includes a reference to the individual's
>relation
>> to the productive process in sectoral terms, just whether some notion of
>> class is employed.
>>
>>
>> Paul H. Dillon
>>
>