I am agnostic on Phil's call for a glossary, although as a vehicle for
discussion, creating a "key word" facility on the web and allowing various
individuals to post their understandings might facilitate identification
of important fault lines around which we might cluster (or might not, who
knows).
At one level what chat means is the following: A rejection of the idea that
there are in-principle, irreconcilable differences between the ideas
developed by Vygotsky-Luria-Leontiev prior to 1931 or so associated with
the creationg of the unit in Kharkov. This does not mean there were no
differences. Dima Leontiev says he has a copy of a letter in which ANL
lays out his differences with Vygotsky and Luria, Eugene Matusove has
an article in New Ideas in Psychology criticizing LSV in what he terms
sociocultural terms, and if you read the special issues of J. of Soviet
Psych that I published on the Kharkov school in about 1981 you will see
that LSV is little in evidence.
But it does mean that in later years Luria and Leontiev managed to cooperate
productively in institution building, until death and re-hardened political
times erroded their efforts (not, they jointly published a paper which appeared
in a book edited by Wolman on theories in psychology with criticisms of
LSV in addition to laying out their views of his values).
When the original fractionation occured, it did so in a context of terror
that most of us can't imagine outside of fictional movie theatres, but it
was real enough and horribly destructive of human relationships, never mind
their lives.
Vera noted these issues in proposing a discussion of socio-cultural/AT
tensions. Since this topic did not win out for AERA, perhaps it would be
worth noting a time for its discussion here..... in the fall, I would
suggest, since mobility in the summer makes participation more than
usually sketchy.
Other linkages, cricitisms, etc, could of course be taken up as well.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 01 2002 - 01:00:11 PDT