Luria: Tulviste

From: Nate Schmolze (schmolze@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2000 - 10:21:56 PST


Earlier Mike mentioned Tulviste among others in reference to relativism. In
*Activity Theory and Social Practice* Tulviste has an interesting chapter on
"Activity as explanatory principle in cultural psychology". I found it
provoking and think "maybe" it points to a differentiation other than
relativism.

Tulviste mentions in reference to Luria's work that it usually gets two
responses; some say those without schooling are "stupid", and others say the
researcher is "stupid" because s/he asked the wrong questions. He argues the
former in more common in Soviet bloc countries because of Marxist
evolutionary thinking (not seen positively) and the second more common in
Western Europe and the states.

Tulviste rejects both and argues, "it is not cultural or historical
variation in mind that needs to be explained; rather, the mind itself, its
development and functioning can only be explained if culture and history are
employed in the explanation in a new way". (Note: Tulviste refers positively
to (Cole, Gay, Glick, & Sharp, 1971) as how Luria's research should have
preceded.

Tulviste argues that a strong version of activity is needed for CHAT to be
taken seriously;

"moving from a "weak" version of activity which makes us study mind in an
activity context, to the original "strong" version of Leontiev which makes
us explain mind, its origin and development, through activity".

He defines the "weak" and "strong" versions as follows:

Weak: various ways of thinking come into being independently; culture just
decides which ways of thinking are used at all and in which particular
situations.

Strong: Culture, including activity, is responsible for the coming into
being of various ways of human thinking functionally related to activities.

What I take from Tulviste is while we have tended to "understand" mind in
activity, culture, and context etc. we have not placed as much emphasis on
"explaining" mind through activity, culture, and context. As I think he
makes clear in regards to Luria that it is not an either / or because it was
the "understanding" aspect where Luria was deficient.

So, for me it seems that the "understanding in" and the "explaining through"
get more to the core of the different application/understandings/world
views (Russia/US) of Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev than say relativism.

Nate



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