Nate et al,
Let me try to respond even if incompletely now before moving on to Paul
D., my apologies for delays, end of semester here....
Nate wrote:
>
>Pedro,
>
>Interesting paper. Something in your conclusion that did not fit right with
>me was,
>
>"CHAT focuses more on how the content, rather than the structure of human
>thought and behavior changes within a intellectual system that predates
>Weber's (1964) insight regarding the interplay between socioeconomic
>conditions and intellectual systems. Both appear to recognize what Marx and
>other sociologists of knowledge missed. The central idea here is that
>socio-cultural conditions do not produce intellectual orientations directly
>but they do produce differential receptivities to such intellectual
>systems."
>
>CHAT is a big field, yet it seems to me that the Weber approach was exactly
>what Vygotsky was argueing against. Vygotsky, Luria, and Leont'ev all seemed
>to base their theories on Marx. Could you elaborate because it seems totally
>opposite to what I'd tend to see the CHAT focus.
>
Clearly the Troika's thinking was based on Karl M. etc but if you take
behaviorism for example, when it was emerging as a new paradigm, promising
even, at one time in its search for universals etc...one can see that
interplay above. I don't see this as an either / or situation, I think that
in spite of the troika's lineage going to Marx. the CHAT perspective,
because of its attention to the three lines of developmental in the
understanding of consciousness etc, does NOT miss the point above. This
does not make them pro-Weber and anti Marx necessarily.,
>If CHAT is just the latter I am unclear how it poses anything different.
No, I am not saying it is only that, actually that it is much more than
that and the other, and the dialectic tension, the the constant refocusing
from the obejective to the subjective, and back again from one level of
analysis to another.. etc is what poses something much different than what
we are used to or would like to have finalized....CHAT remains an open system.
>Vygotsky critiqued the notion that the form and structure of thought did not
>change because of socio-cultural-historical factors. Luria's work and
>Leontiev's elaboration of activity have structure not content perse as their
>focus.
Ok, I think I see the problem now and I probably need to
"elaborate why you see CHAT mainly concerned with content, and why
>socio-cultural-historical conditions can not produce intellectual
>orientations?
>
I am referring to structure here as the hardware of the mind and surely
social conditions can "change" the functional level of that structure as
when education leads to higher proportions of groups using more formal
operations in some areas than before etc. The structure before, while
mostly engaged in concrete functions (if you would allow Piaget in for the
sake of parsimony) had the potential for more formal functions...all along,
the structure was there, the functions changed.etc.
What i was associating with content, for example, might be related more to
how homosexuality was constructed at one point, not long ago, as a
psychopathological disorder in the old DSM. The interplay of the reasons
why comes to mind, and how this, and the IQ construct of intelligence and
later androgeny can be understood and also deconstructed from a CHAT
perspective. Mainstream psych has always been there ready to tackle
problems of industrial, now corporate societies..
As long as students in my dept. are taught that they are learning how to
detect , test and treat particular disorders, they truly believe it and
act as agents (see the Matrix anyone?) and miss the historicity (ty Diane)
of the HMO world in their practice and similar presses.
For me, CHAT spits in the soup of clinical psych oftentimes, particularly
as the "disorders" lean to the social more than the biol.
Once one wears the CHAT lens. what used to be simple problems regarding
"who needs therapy', the complaint, the diagnosis, who is the therapist
(and their learning histories)... what comes up is the relativity of it
all, the Shaman there and the shrink here as mediators of experience etc...
(But who are you going to call when hysteria leads to paralysis and
blindness, no organic, physio cause....and yet your kid can't walk??)
The social problem, in this case, shortcircuited the mind which then makes
the body do the talking..)
But I am not saying CHAT stops there , it actually forces the helping
professions to become much more sophisticated in understanding how social
conditions might affect receptivities and perhaps structures, who knows?
(Was ADHD there all along or did it come about as family, media soc changed
and attention priorities changed etc...who has the attention deficit in
this case anyway??.how do we know? can we look at it scientifically or do
we simply talk it ?
I know some practioners who are not blind to cultural anthropology but they
are the exception. And yes Laing and others were there before..
What i was struggling with in this paper is how, in charting a new course
for undertsanding these aspects of mind in terms of gauging CHAT's
contribution to be made (given that much already was done in its absence),
CHAT forces a new perspective on past and current practices and encourages
integration.
I don't think efforts to make CHAT a new counseling theory will work,
mainly because it functions as a metaparadigm from which many in Corsini's
book may be understood.
Sure, the zpd has already been proposed by some trying to bring lsv into
the field but geez ~!# who-is-at !#@@!%
>I enjoyed your paper very much, the last statement took me surprise I guess.
>
I'll need to work on that when I review my sources, I can see why though,
I'll try to get back to the issue but I am partly responding to Paul D.
already..... thanks
pedro
Pedro R. Portes
Professor
Educational Psychology & Counseling
502-852-0630
0629 Fax
"..the true teacher is that teacher who constructs
his own educational work not (just) by inspiration,
but on the basis of scientific knowldege.
Science is the truest path to the mastery of life. "
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