I have tried ( with mixed results) to capture the idea of culture as
related to history by referring to culture as "history in the present"
and it is in this form that I work on the levels problem that is
the subject of current discussion.
My own way of "rising to the concrete" of the abstraction of heterochronous
levels is to ground it in the simultaneous study of microgenesis,
ontogenesis, and "activity-setting-o-genesis" or "institutional history"
in the afterschool activities. Paul (I think!) asked how we know which
levels we are dealing with when, and tracking the instituionalized
practices where members identify the levels as well as analysts and they
agree is the method that seems to work for me.
But relative to the Long duree discussion of history in recent notes,
I am dealing with periods of only a few years. It sort of the "microgenesis"
of history, and therefore, in one sense, clearly trivial. But I have
developed a strong intuition that like microgenesis vis a vis ontogeny,
the microhistorical changes I have been documenting have something to tell
us about the larger time scales. Probably just an illusion, but an interesting
one.
mike