[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Fw: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?

Antti, here is a link to th eWikipedia on "System concept"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
Why do Activity Theorists in Engstrom's current of thinking mix up the idea of a system concept with a unit of analysis? 

Andy

Antti Rajala wrote:

Greg,

You asked:
”My question is getting at where we locate "agency". In individuals alone?
Or as possibly being distributed among multiple people and perhaps in
amanner that isn't recognizable to the individual. But maybe there is
aconcept for that that is different from "double stimulation.”

I think that double stimulation can be analyzed not only at the individual
level but at the collective level as well. Actually, the study of Engeström
and Sannino (2013) that I referred to in my earlier email gives a nice
example. The study also involves in some respects a similar situation as
the one that you described having taken place with the workers in Malaysia.

According to my reading, the study describes a change laboratory
intervention taking place in a university library. The library as invited
researchers to help them find new forms of work with research groups. A
first stimulus emerges in the course of the change laboratory intervention,
as a member of one of the research groups that the university library is
delivering services says that they can find these services in the internet
without the help of the library. Thus a problem emerges for the librarians
to collectively produce a service that would be genuinely helpful for the
research groups.

In solving this problem, they organize their collective action with the
help of a second stimulus, namely the concept of knotworking (Engeström,
Engeström & Vähäaho, 1999) that the researchers have introduced in the
beginning of the change laboratory. In particular, a new working group, a
knot, is formed that starts to work with the emergent problem of inventing
a useful service.

What is in my opinion very innovative, Engeström and Sannino also provide
an example of this second stimulus, the concept of knotworking, becoming an
initial theoretical generalization that is reworked and enriched through a
process of ascending from abstract to concrete as the intervention evolves.
Specifically, in the end of the intervention, the concept of knotworking
gives rise to many concrete, practical applications of the librarians' work
at multiple levels of hierarchy.

As for the unit of analysis, I think that the unit of analysis in the study
is the intersection of several activity systems, the university libarary
and the research groups, In terms of agency, one can maybe talk about
shared transformative agency in which the subject is not an individual but
a collective. (More about shared transformative agency, see Virkkunen’s
paper in http://www.activites.org/v3n1/v3n1.book.pdf#page=43)

Best wishes, Antti


On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 6:57 PM, <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:


forgot to send this to XMCA

-----Forwarded by ERIC RAMBERG/spps on 06/06/2013 10:56AM -----
To: ablunden@mira.net
From: ERIC RAMBERG/spps
Date: 06/06/2013 09:05AM

Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?

True true, the history of philosophy does lead there Andy.  But that leads
to my trepidations regarding ideology lacking in practice.

What substance within conscious formation is measurable?

I believe that answer has yet to be found
perhaps?

eric

-----xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu wrote: -----
 To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
From: Andy Blunden
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
Date: 06/05/2013 08:42PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?

Eric,
By posiing the problem as that of the Kantian dilemma, of unifying two
disparate abstractions, you determine the answer as from the history of
philosophy and the answer is Hegel's answer: "a formation of
consciousness" or Gestalt des Bewusstsein.

Andy

ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:

I believe that this discussion needs to involve "unit of analysis" for
what it is that provides the mediational method.
What unit of study can properly encapsulate that which is being observed?
Activity? Concept? Word? Mirror Neuron?
Oh my what a great temptest LSV did let out of the teapot
eric

-----xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu wrote: -----
To: "xmca@weber.ucsd.edu" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
From: Achilles Delari Junior
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
Date: 06/05/2013 07:04AM
Subject: RE: [xmca] Double Stimulation?

Sure, Greg,
Well, seems to me that "draw analogies between different domains of
their worlds" is closer to "meaning construction" than to choice a
"stimulus medium" to help memory tasks, for instance. The "double
stimulation" is fine because introduces a kind of mediation between a
stimulus and our response to the stimulus. But, following Vygotsky's
formulations at that time this new series of "stimulus" (a nude, a
word, etc) act also as a stimulus, a conditioned one. If you change
you paradigm to the proposition that all sign implies any kind of
"generalization process" (meaning) that differs in their structure and
has a genetic construction (see the studies about concepts, for
instance), a sign could not be only a second series of stimuli ruled
by the same laws that a conditional reflex... As in "Instrumental
method": S-------X-------R. Where the relation S---------R is a direct
stimulus response relationship, but when you introduce a second series
of stimulus "X" (double stimulation) you have an indirect stimulus
response relationship, but the relation between S and X, and X and R
remain a conditioned reflex relationship... "Draw analogies between
different domains of our worlds" seem to mean that we are in transit
between different words of signification, and culture is a human
production that involves the "generalization" from a world to another,
broader, maybe not exactly more precise, but "broader", in my opinion.
I don't know...


"In natural memory a direct associative (conditional reflex)
connection A?B is established between two stimuli A and B. In
artificial, mnemotechnic memory of the same impression, by means of a
psychological tool X (a knot in a handkerchief, a mnemonic scheme)
instead of the direct connection A?B two new ones are established: A?X
and X?B Just like the connection A?B each of them is a natural
conditional reflex process, determined, by the properties of the brain
tissue. What is new, artificial, and instrumental is the fact of the
replacement of one connection A?B by two connections: A?X and X?B They
lead to the same result, but by a different path. What is new is the
artificial direction which the instrument gives to the natural process
of establishing a conditional connection, i.e., the active utilization
of the natural properties of brain tissue." Vygotsky "The Instumental
Method" (this is 1930)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/instrumental.htm

But already in 1928:

"Let us now compare the natural and cultural mnemonics of a child. The
relation between the two forms can be graphically expressed by means
of a triangle: in case of natural memorization a direct associative or
conditional reflexive connection is set up between two points, A and
B. In case of mnemotechnical memorization, utilizing some sign,
instead of one associative connection AB, the others are set up AX and
BX, which bring us to the same result, but in a roundabout way. Each
of these connections AX and BX is the same kind of
conditional-reflexive process of connection as AB." Vygotsky (1928)


http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1929/cultural_development.htm

See: "AX and BX is the same kind of conditional-reflexive process of
connection as AB." --> The same kind... This paradigm will not be the
same in 1933-34...

"(Introduction: the importance of the sign; its social meaning). In
older works we ignored that the sign has meaning. < But there is “a
time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together”
(Ecclesiastes). > We proceeded from the principle of the constancy of
meaning, we discounted meaning. But the problem of meaning was already
present in the older investigations. Whereas before our task was to
demonstrate what “the knot” and logical memory have in common, now our
task is to demonstrate the difference that exists between them.From
our works it follows that the sign changes the interfunctional
relationships." (Vygotsky, 1933-34)


http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/problem-consciousness.htm

And now?


Thank you.

Achilles.


Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 18:31:23 -0600
Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

Achilles,

Sounded interesting, but I'm not sure I followed you completely. You

say

that Strathern's quote seems like it has a broader application that

"double

stimulation", but I could use some help with the rest of your message.

If you have a few minutes, maybe you could try rephrasing?

-greg


On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Achilles Delari Junior <
achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:


In my undertanding, this is very broader and more powerful than

double

stimulation... Double stimulation could be overcoming with another

way for

think signs than "medium stimulus" - See "The problem of

consciousness"

(1933-34), for instance. The more important will be not the

similarity

between a nude and a word, but their difference, "before was

forgotten that

sign had a meaning" and "now" the meaning must be take in account.

Double

stimulation, in my understanding, do not resists to this new point

of view.

Achilles.


Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 06:19:04 -0600
From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu; lchcmike@gmail.com;

antti.rajala@helsinki.fi

CC:
Subject: [xmca] Double Stimulation?

I wonder if this quote by Marilyn Strathern can be productively

connected

(not necessarily geneaologically, but ideologically) to the

notion of

"double stimulation" (which I am just now trying to figure out):
"Culture consists in the way people draw analogies between

different

domains of their worlds" (1992: 47).

-greg

--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca



--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
------------------------------------------------------------------------

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca



__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca




--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca