This nicely states my view of the fullest way to think about zopeds,
Aleksander:
it might be useful to consider concept like mutual asymmetrical interaction
(or
reciprocal asymmetry or complementary asymmetry - and mutual development
in the zoped or both sides development) where both partners could be to
each other more developed partner.
The great challenge is to arrange for such interactions in institutionalized
school
settings, which is why I prefer work after school. And the problem is, of
course,
much more general still.
mike
On 12/17/06, Aleksandar Baucal <abaucal@f.bg.ac.yu> wrote:
>
> I share with Michael experience that teachers can learn a lot from
> students as well as parents from children (actualy I share this with
> students each time when we discuss Vygotsky's theory). Moreover, there
> is a anecdote that is shared among my colleagues about Math prof who
> tried to explain to students some topic, but he got impression that they
> didn't understand. Than he explained them in another way, but again they
> didn't understand. He didn't want to retreat and tried in third way, and
> then he realized that actually he didn't understand this topic. I
> believe in the happy end of the anecdote, that is that prof finally
> understood the topic and after that he was able to help students to
> build their understanding :)
>
> This kind of examples seems to ask for more inclusive interpretation of
> the zoped (that supposes asymmetric interaction where actual pattern of
> activity of participant at the lower level is transformed through joint
> activity with more developed participants who brings new cultural form
> of activity into the joint activity). Based on above examples it might
> be useful to consider concept like mutual asymmetrical interaction (or
> reciprocal asymmetry or complementary asymmetry - and mutual development
> in the zoped or both sides development) where both partners could be to
> each other more developed partner. For example, teacher who is more
> developed than student regarding to understanding of certain topic from
> curriculum and student who is more developed that teacher regarding
> computer literacy and using Internet - they are searching internet
> together trying to build interpretation and understanding of certain
> natural phenomenon. It is not easy to imagine parallel example with
> parents and children especially in this time of fast social changes. If
> parents and children would have just one sided asymmetric relations it
> would end up with confused children since tools they appropriate through
> relationship with parents would misfit to social condition in which they
> will be adults. Moreover, it seems that children serve as more competent
> partner to parents when it comes to emerging forms of culture.
>
> Sasha
>
>
> Michael Glassman wrote:
> > I have been reading some of the discussion on Zoped and have been
> wondering more and more if Anselm Strauss' ideas on negotiated ordering
> might have some important implications for the way some people view the
> Zoped as a concept. Strauss suggested that the ordering in activity - he
> did not really talk about development (he was Mead's student) - but
> concentrated more on the ongoing dynamic activity itself. What he suggested
> was that the relationship between those who were in charge and knew what to
> do, and those who looked to those people in charge, was dynamic and
> dependent on the problems that were being faced. The hierarchy and also the
> allocation of resources (which I find interesting and possibly one of the
> core issues) is predetermined. But in the process of the ongoing activity,
> as the problems changed, the actual ordering within the community changes to
> meet the problem at hand. One of his most interesting studies was of an
> emergency room in San Francisco. While on paper and in allocation of
> resources doctors were the titula heads of the emergency room, when crises
> occurred there was a reordering of roles, where the nurses became the
> defacto heads of the activity, and the doctors looked to the nurses and
> understood this. I think one of the problems is that what happens is that
> what happens in process is then not re-translated into understanding. The
> doctors re-claim their roles as experts after the crisis and from what I can
> tell make little effort to share resources with the nurses.
> >
> > Perhaps negotiated ordering has important implications for the Zoped as
> well (is such a concept applicable to Vygotsky? Well I continue to believe
> that Vygotsky was reading Dewey in his early career and was influenced by
> him - but of course even saying this gets a lot of people angry. And Anselm
> Strauss was working from a base developed by Mead and Dewey). From what I
> have been reading, one of the things people are trying to explore is this
> notion is that there is some sense of negotiated ordering in the Zoped
> where, when facing different problems, different members of a learning
> community take different positions in the learning/development equation (can
> we really differentiate learning from development and would we want
> to?). This maybe works especially well if we are looking at learning from a
> dialectical perspective - because what needs to happen for learning to occur
> is for something to make you question what you are thinking, to cloud the
> issues that you were sure of. I think of Piaget and the early work he did
> with his own children. Wasn't Piaget actually learning - in a dialectical
> fashion - from his own children. I think of my relationship with my own
> children and I know they did things that completely threw me for a loop,
> completely made me re-think issues I thought were set in my mind. They were
> creating a natural disturbance in my Zoped. But by admitting this I have to
> admit I learn from my three year old - not in a cute type way, but in a real
> way where I have to give up my mantle of expert in our relationship.
> >
> > Yet we have a great deal invested in this culture of the expert - the
> idea that the expert teaches and the student learns. I hate to say it -
> because I'd rather stay away from economic issues - but it is also a part of
> our capitalist base and how we allocate resources. We pay experts more
> because they are experts, we hire them as consultants because they are
> experts, we let them act as gate keepers and decision makers because they
> are experts. I wonder to what extent Vygotsky has been assimilated in to
> this entire culture of experts?
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Mike Cole
> > Sent: Sun 12/17/2006 10:47 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Zopeds at the cultural historical level
> >
> >
> >
> > Andy-- When you write:
> > Hegel does not talk about "assisting" the
> > learning subject, but rather of subordinating them.
> >
> > I think you get near the heart of Yrjo's thought experiment in
> "development
> > as breaking away" and
> > socialization theories (which, heaven help us, are often the implicit
> > theories behind talks concerning
> > zopeds). The adults in Yrjo's (Hoag's) story are seeking to "raise
> > up/normalize" the children by subordinating
> > them to a social order with lots of rules and strictures as the means to
> > their "development", e.g. growing up
> > to replicate that order. Breaking away is the only way UP as well as
> OUT.
> > But, of course, such subordination
> > is talked about as benevolent assistance.
> >
> > What makes it all very complicated even in the ontogentic case is that
> > subordination and assistance are so
> > closely related to each other. The duality of structure? After all, the
> core
> > of the method of dual stimulation,
> > in Vygotsky's words, is to "subordinate oneself to an external stimulus"
> as
> > a means of achieving self control
> > "from the outside" in order to break free of local situational
> constraints.
> >
> > As problematic as this is at the ontogenetic, intergenerational level,
> it
> > simply gets more so at the culturalhistorical
> > level.
> >
> > Might not institutions such as, for example, the National Academy of
> > Sciences, be a social instrument whereby certain
> > individuals are chosen to act as more knowledgable peers, who society
> uses
> > as a means to its own self development?
> > Or, if one approves less secular social instrumentalities, the synod of
> > bishops?
> >
> > Thoughts for a spinkly sunday morning where the sun is making its
> > reappearance after a too-brief visit of some rain.
> > mike
> >
> > On 12/17/06, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I don't know, Hegel was theorising modernity not multiculturalism. But
> >> according to Hegel social learning is not a process of imitation, or
> >> civilisation "rubbing off" on people, but of the production and use of
> the
> >> artefacts of a society in the production of the needs of that society
> >> according to its laws. True, Hegel does not talk about "assisting" the
> >> learning subject, but rather of subordinating them.
> >> Andy
> >> At 06:07 PM 15/12/2006 -0800, you wrote:
> >>
> >>> Andy,
> >>>
> >>> I totally agree with your extended analysis of Hegel. The problem
> is
> >>> that when we look at the reality of the relations that arise between
> >>> conquered and conquerers the patterns of assimilation are really quite
> >>> different. The conquered often "shuck and jive", move slowly,
> withdraw
> >>> into smaller and smaller universes where they preserve the core of
> their
> >>> identity prior to being conquered. Eric Wolf called this the "gods
> >>> beneath the altar". As I remember Benjamin's "Theses on Historical
> >>> Materialism", he pointed to this: histories are stopped but not
> >>> necessarily eliminated, these chronological frameworks within which
> the
> >>> phylogenetic zopeds exist, but they are waiting to begin
> again. History
> >>> isn't unilinear, something Marx saw quite clearly in the ethnological
> >>> studies he was undertaking at the end of his life. For Hegel, history
> >>> was unilinear and Reason was the telos toward which everything
> cultural
> >>> and historical moved. Not so Marx.
> >>>
> >>> Another important thing I remember about the hegelian master-slave
> >>> dialectic concerns the role of work in developing the universal
> essence
> >>> that later becomes the basis of the post-feudal civilizations. Very
> >>> materialistic really.
> >>>
> >>> The question I think about a lot, especially in light of the "andean
> >>> cosmovision" movements, of which Evo Morales is a happy surfer, is
> >>> whether the elements that have been conserved can be developed again
> >>>
> >> with
> >>
> >>> their own dynamic, that the "other" way of putting the pieces together
> >>> can become a dynamic in it's own right. There is a very advanced
> >>> movement down here in that direction. Right now, the City of Villa el
> >>> Salvador, originally a "squatter's settlement" to the south of Lima
> >>> (something very comparable to El Alto's relationship with La Paz in
> >>> Bolivia) is hosting a "Reawaken the Native Gods (wakas)" reunion,
> >>> inviting shamans from the highlands to Paracas (the third most
> important
> >>> ceremonial site at the time of the Conquest) for three days to pray
> and
> >>> dance and revitalize those spiritual forces. A lot of people here
> move
> >>> in that direction which isn't a simple nationalism since it is
> >>> pan-Andean, refers to the non-European, to another ontology as one
> >>>
> >> friend
> >>
> >>> puts it.
> >>>
> >>> Like I said, I don't think Hegel sheds much light on this process or
> >>> how the conquered manage to preserve that sense of identity in codes
> >>>
> >> that
> >>
> >>> resist rational penetration.
> >>>
> >>> Paul
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>> Paul, I let my contribution to this thread drop, because I wasn't
> sure
> >>>
> >> how
> >>
> >>> much a compare-and-contrast of Hegel's master-servant and Vygotsky's
> >>>
> >> ZOPED
> >>
> >>> was useful. But anyway ...
> >>>
> >>> The essence of the master-slave dialectic is this (IMO): the master
> >>> incorporates the material energies of the servant into its own system
> of
> >>> needs and their satisfaction, so that all the artefacts of the
> conquered
> >>> subject are destroyed as artefacts and their materiality (the land,
> >>> products, etc and the bodies of the human individuals) is re-organised
> as
> >>> part of the subjectivity of the coloniser (their meaning is changed),
> by
> >>> virtue of the dominated people labouring under the direction of the
> >>>
> >> master,
> >>
> >>> meeting the master's needs according to the methods of the master, the
> >>> servant's lands and bodies being redefined as resources for meeting
> the
> >>> needs of the master. The servant not only loses all control of their
> own
> >>> activity, but are forced into activity which they neither understand
> nor
> >>> see the need for. Thus the "unhappy consciousness." But as Paul says,
> by
> >>> performing the activity defined by the coloniser's subjectivity, they
> >>> become officienados in that activity, thus arises (development and)
> >>> self-consciousness.
> >>>
> >>> The servant's material activity mediates between the master's needs
> >>> (consciousness) and their satisfaction in the form of culture; the
> >>>
> >> master's
> >>
> >>> culture and consciousness mediates between the slave's activity and
> their
> >>> consciousness of that activity.
> >>>
> >>> The shared core of this conception with Vygotsky's ZPD is that of the
> >>> dominant culture, represented by a dominant subject, determines both
> the
> >>> activity that the 'learner' must perform and the needs being
> fulfilled;
> >>> doing without understanding leads to understanding of doing,
> ultimately,
> >>> the non-subject becomes a free and equal member of the dominant
> activity
> >>>
> >> an
> >>
> >>> culture by learning to reproduce it by their own activity.
> >>>
> >>> For Hegel this is the dialectic by which *self-consciousness emerges*;
> it
> >>> is the dialectic relating subjective consciousness and objective
> >>> consciousness.
> >>>
> >>> I don't know if that help anything or not. I'm not sure.
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>> At 01:45 PM 15/12/2006 -0800, you wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> mike,
> >>>>
> >>>> I've just gone back to read some xmca posts -- been computer deprived
> >>>> for a bit and stuck to using internet cabinets in Lima for very brief
> >>>> stuff. I had erased a lot of messages but found that I hadn't read
> the
> >>>> one you originally posted, to which I'm now replying, probably
> >>>>
> >> postponing
> >>
> >>>> it until I could read more carefully. Then I went to the xmca website
> >>>>
> >> to
> >>
> >>>> check the thrread in detail and found it had bifurcated, someone
> >>>>
> >> posted a
> >>
> >>>> reply, changing the subject name to something about more competent
> >>>> peers. That thread grew a lot and I haven't read all those messages
> so
> >>>> I'm not sure whether the original thread concerning
> >>>>
> >> cultural-historical
> >>
> >>>> zopeds continued there.
> >>>>
> >>>> The way you phrased the problem was quite clear and Andy's response
> >>>> about conquest and colonization most interesting. resonating with an
> >>>> earlier exchange around the book about native american science. In
> the
> >>>> 1500s the conquering Europeans were arguably less culturally advanced
> >>>>
> >> in
> >>
> >>>> many fields of human practices (engineering, mathematics, astronomy,
> >>>> agriculture, institutional administration, just to mention a few)
> than
> >>>> the people they conquered. They really only had an advantage in
> >>>> weaponry. And there was absolutely no zoped functioning in either
> >>>> direction it seems, just a master-slave relation. For Hegel that
> >>>> relation turns into a pyrrhic victory followed by the esse"Unhappy
> >>>> Consciousness" in which the dominated slave realizes its own nce to
> be
> >>>> the negation of the Individual and the true universality of
> >>>>
> >> consciousness
> >>
> >>>> as something trans-individual. The slave realizes that s/he is the
> >>>>
> >> truth
> >>
> >>>> of the Master. I always recall the scene from the movie Spartacus
> when
> >>>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>>> Roman general asks: Who is Spartacus? and one by one all of the
> >>>> rebelling slaves stand up and claim to Spartacus. Then they are all
> >>>> crucified, of course. But that transition isn't an example of a zoped
> >>>>
> >> so
> >>
> >>>> Hegel isn't much help here.
> >>>>
> >>>> The problem of more advanced cultural forms is certainly an important
> >>>> one, but when I wrote the query concerning the historical dimensions
> >>>>
> >> of
> >>
> >>>> the zoped, I wasn't really thinking about the problem in quite the
> way
> >>>> you phrased it, that is I wasn't really thinking about more or less
> >>>> advanced cultures as defined in terms of specific practices (I don't
> >>>> think it would be possible to specify that one culture is superior to
> >>>> another in any absolute sense, but yes at the level of specific
> >>>> practices), I was really wondering about the transmission of customs
> >>>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>>> habits that seems to occur without any conscious teaching involved,
> >>>>
> >> but
> >>
> >>>> which is part of the package when a child is learning the basics,
> that
> >>>> historical dimension that moves at the backs of people, without their
> >>>> knowledge or awareness. I don't see how we can doubt that this goes
> >>>>
> >> on;
> >>
> >>>> e.g., learning racism implicitly in nursery rhymes, learning the
> >>>> individualism (looking out for good old number one first) also seems
> >>>>
> >> to
> >>
> >>>> qualify as something that isn't so much taught as a specific skill
> >>>> imparted by a more knowledgeable member of the group, but as a
> >>>>
> >> corrolary
> >>
> >>>> to learning itself within certain cultures, just as learning that the
> >>>> family comes first is dominant in others. It's very clear to me that
> >>>> there is a big gap between people's real morality and their ideal one
> >>>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>>> that practicality (living in the world with the skills we've learned)
> >>>>
> >> is
> >>
> >>>> usually the reason given to explain the difference between the
> >>>> two. Yeah, it'd be great to turn the other cheek but in reality no
> one
> >>>> does because that's just not the way the world works.
> >>>>
> >>>> If such is the case, that these dimensions, primarily moral and
> >>>>
> >> ethical
> >>
> >>>> ones, are transmitted first in this kind of "blind" way , then the
> >>>> modification of these levels must depend on something other than the
> >>>>
> >> kind
> >>
> >>>> of direct teaching that characterizes a zoped.
> >>>>
> >>>> Perhaps the examples given by Yrjo point in this direction more than
> I
> >>>> realized and I'll have to go back and look at that: but as I
> remember,
> >>>> these "expansions" involved breaking out, destroying old structures,
> >>>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>>> clearing a space for new ones. What bigger space than a raft on the
> >>>> Mississippi River? The idea that a zoped is a conversation with a
> >>>>
> >> future
> >>
> >>>> seems very useful to me, the question of course: what is that
> >>>> future? Andy's statement that phylogenesis is about "pulling oneself
> >>>>
> >> up
> >>
> >>>> by the bootstraps" enters here. But really, how is it possible to
> >>>>
> >> avoid
> >>
> >>>> teleology?
> >>>>
> >>>> Lately I've been very much impressed what could be called "historical
> >>>> traumas", events and processes extending over a period of time, that
> >>>> leave what I can only describe metaphorically as topography within
> >>>>
> >> which
> >>
> >>>> the rivers of consciousness/mind flow. This a result of living again
> >>>>
> >> in
> >>
> >>>> the Andes where a suppressed past is constantly whispering beneath
> the
> >>>> present day-to-day activities. There are major traumas: the Conquest
> >>>>
> >> in
> >>
> >>>> the Americas , extirpation of idolatries=attempted destruction of
> >>>> indigenous belief systems, whose effects are still reverberating
> after
> >>>> 500 years, and there are lesser ones, like the social-political
> >>>>
> >> violence
> >>
> >>>> that lasted in the Central Andes for about 15 years (1980-1995) but
> >>>>
> >> whose
> >>
> >>>> effects shape the way parents relate to their children, silences, all
> >>>> those things left unsaid, The same song sung by both sides of the
> war:
> >>>> Flor de la Retama. .
> >>>>
> >>>> When Zlatcko addressed my initial post in which I suggested that
> Paolo
> >>>> Freire's notion of situation-limits (something he got from Karl
> >>>>
> >> Jaspers)
> >>
> >>>> had a bearing in the question of what happens in a zoped, he brought
> >>>>
> >> up
> >>
> >>>> the point of sufficiently grounded evidence as to what might be the
> >>>> phylogenetic strands of development. This is quite difficult to
> >>>>
> >> address
> >>
> >>>> obviously. The vanguard of the proletariat lacks any meaning when one
> >>>> can't really identify a proletariat. China inundates the world's
> >>>>
> >> markets
> >>
> >>>> with well-made and embarrrasingly inexpensive goods that undermine
> the
> >>>> industrial working classes of Europe and America. We come back to
> >>>> cultures--where do we find the universal basis? is there one?
> >>>>
> >>>> Hegel's unhappy slaves found the universal meaning through work which
> >>>> was of course social activity. Perhaps the very course, as Ilyenkov
> >>>> suggested, is something that's laid out there before us, that some
> >>>>
> >> groups
> >>
> >>>> of the larger society will instinctively understand in its teleology
> >>>>
> >> just
> >>
> >>>> by their position within the system.
> >>>>
> >>>> This all written in the old notion of xmca where half-baked ideas
> were
> >>>>
> >> OK.
> >>
> >>>> Paul Dillon
> >>>>
> >>>> __________________________________________________
> >>>> Do You Yahoo!?
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> >>>>
> >>> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> AIM
> >>> identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
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> >> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> AIM
> >> identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651
> >>
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