Re: BB and that not for Bill Barowy

From: Helena Worthen (hworthen@igc.org)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 07:49:38 PDT


Nate, Bill --

Thanks to both of you...

When I "reply" to these messages, it goes to xmca on my screen. Yes, I'm on a
Mac here at home, where I do my xmca stuff. Bill, while one of your messages
went to xmca, the other went to me with copy to xmca, which would be ok,
wouldn't it? Although it would start a thread that wasn't really a thread
becuause it would be a message to me only.

Come to think of it, there have been several times when people seemed to be
writing to me privately and I've wondered why they didn't want to put their
comments into the xmca stream... maybe it was just a quirk of the machine, not
an intentional creation of a backchannel. Hmmmm, how do I fix this?

The kind of comments that I'm looking for have to do with AT. I find that AT
really helps me sort out the different groups (activity systems) involved in
this project. It's kind of like a pair of lenses that makes it possible to see
things I couldn't see otherwise. Yet AT is NOT a familiar research tool in
Labor Studies. In this field there tend to be the straight Marxists (who don't
usually mention Marx) or the labor economists, who can quantify anything your
heart desires, but only deal with small segments of a situation. But when I
start to explain AT to my colleagues, you should see the eyes glaze over. I
have to go all the way back to "What do you use a theory for?" and very few
people have the patience for that one, especially coming from a junior
colleague. But SOMETIMES, if I'm lucky, and I get as far as saying, "Theories
exist in tension wth each other -- they are different ways of looking at the
same stuff, and if you have one, you have to have another, in order to see
what the effect of each is on your interpretation of what you're looking
at..." then I get some time.

Also, the flavor of my paper is really different from what I've read in Yrjo's
books. I'm going to put myself out on a limb and say that the context here is
much more conflicted -- Chicago versus Finland!!! Our labor and employment
law is weak on protections and getting worse. So when I identify different
activity systems and presume their different motives -- the motives of the
Building Bridges students, the union apprenticehsip programs, the minority
caucuses within the unions, the union organizing departments, the churches
where the projects are sited, the community development corporations that hire
contractors, the union and non-union contractors -- the motives of some of
these systems are fiercely in conflict with each other. Hispanic construction
workers, for example, who have a complaint about their sweatshop working
conditions (for example, one worker on a job where people were getting paid $8
per hour, no benefits, cash, no overtime) injured his leg in a fall; he was
given ice packs and put back to work) actually do expose themselves to
physical risk if they decide to meet with a union organizer at a church. The
church is likely to have a parishioner who is connected to the contractor or
the developer -- the church will experience pressure. The non-union
contractors have management representatives high in the political structure of
Chicago, which is nothing you want to mess with .....etc. But does this
different flavor mean that I'm using a tool that's really different from what
I'm trying to grasp from Yrjo's materials?

In addition, I'm writing this for labor educators. We have one journal that is
focused on labor education -- Labor Studies Journal, it's called, and I'd hope
that this would get published there. The people who read it would be labor
educators like myself. I personally think we're in serious need of some theory
we can get our fingers around and use like a combination shovel and -- what's
the flat thing that bricklayers use? Anyway.....

I'd also expect some comments on the interviews and the way they show up (or
don't show up) in the body of the text.

Stuff like that.

Yes, I'm hoping for some actual discussion.

Thanks -- Helena

Nate Schmolze wrote:

> Helena,
>
> I really enjoyed the paper, its too bad more work like this is not out
> there.
>
> One of the things I enjoyed was your dealing with the contradictions of the
> various subjects involved.
>
> So's the weather any warmer way down south in Chicago?
>
> nAtE
>
> PS: Your paper is more visable now - it can be found on the main index page
> and via the archive link on the main index page.
>
> vygotsky@charter.net
> http://webpages.charter.net/schmolze1/
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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