Andy,
Right on. By contextualizing logic in social relations Hegel is actually formulating a social psychology - and, in doing so, provides the link between micro and macro levels of social analysis.
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: timescale question
The way I see it, remembering all the time that internalisation is a creative process of appropriation, which never *simply* copies or reproduces the external, all our concepts are internalisations *of* social relations. I think Leontyev did a great job of explaining this idea, for me, in his Activity, Consciousness, and Personality http://www.marxists.org/archive/leontev/works/1978/index.htm. Activity, tools, language, social institutions, scientific works, laws, art, etc., etc., mediate between individual forms of consciousness and social formations. There are millions upon millions of examples so it's hardly worth starting. Hegel's Doctrine of the Notion shows in detail how social formations mediate the relations between individual consciousness and universal consciousness, albeit in an almost incomprehensible form. "All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice"
Andy
At 04:50 AM 25/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:
A very thought-provoking post, Andy. May I ask you about the phrase "to a great extent, world social relations are our external personality." Vygotsky of course emphasized the concept of internalization, the concept that social relations are internalized, and in doing so, (speaking generally), create individual personalities. But on first blush it does not seem to me to be symmetrical to say that world social relations are our external personality. I seem to be missing something. Could you explain this phrase for me?
Thanks,
Steve
At 04:02 PM 10/25/03 +1000, you wrote:
Well I think I did a bad job of trying to tie the topic of global political economy back into mental development. Surely the whole point of the Cultural Historical approach to psychology is to recognise that to a great extent, world social relations are our external personality. Living in a world where "combined and uneven development" manifests itself in political-economic development certainly entails the emergence of specific forms of consciousness. Modern consciousness is replete with forms that specifically arise from this phenomenon: (1) the substitution of "really existing socialism" for the "socialist utopia of the future"; (2) the replacement of the conception of a history led by the most advanced cultures by a conception of history being made elsewhere; (3) the gradual loss of coherent ideals in the formation of ethical conceptions in favour of various forms of compromise and solidarity; (4) an emergent universalism based on the world market replacing a conception of property or cultural qualification for inclusion.
I am sure that the same kind of phenomenon would be observable in group development, or in the development of a person's capacity in multiple activities. The "combined" aspect joins the "uneven" element when the possibilities for the "advanced" to develop without both conflict with other advanced formations and transformation of the "less advanced" parts of a complex are exhausted.
Andy
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