Mind, Culture, and Activity: An International Journal

Volume 2, Number 4, Fall 1995

Contents:

Introduction

Editors

A basic tenet of cultural-historical, activity-based theories of human nature is that mind is understood as an emergent aspect of culturally mediated experience in the world. Mind is a process that exists in, and emerges over time, and hence to study mind is to study processes of transformation over time. Such research, in short, must adopt a genetic/developmental methodology.

In principle (which is to say, in a world organized just to the likes of the analyst!) one needs to consider genesis on several, co-constitutive, Òlevels of timeÓ or Ògenetic domainsÓ: phylogenetic, cultural-historical, ontogenetic and microgenetic. In practice, cultural-historical research is, by and large, limited to a single, or perhaps a combination of two levels. The most common combination of levels, which appears to be gaining acceptance among mainstream psychologists in recent years, is the study of microgenesis and ontogeny: how do processes of change observed at the microgenetic level become different or remain the same as children age? One way of trying to combine ontogeny and cultural history can be found in the studies of the parallels between the ontogeny of number development and historical number development in the ancient Middle East.

Cross-cultural work is sometimes viewed as a way to combine the study of ontogeny and cultural history; this was the idea, for example, behind A. R. Luria's studies among Central Asian peasants and collective farm workers. Taking advantage of a period of rapid changes in social life associated with Soviet power and collectivization, Luria sought to determine how these socio-cultural changes impacted thought processes. Patricia Greenfield's recent replication of work she conducted with Childs several decades ago in Chiapis is yet another example of research in this genre.

The papers by Naoki Ueno and Yasuko Kawatoko examine the constitution of literacy through the reification of artifacts in cultural practices, particularly the practices associated with trade and cooperative irrigation management. The papers by King Beach develop an activity-theoretic approach highlighting the notions of heterochrony and leading activity, and offering a way to think about the problem of transfer of knowledge as a social-cultural, rather than privately cognitive, process. Although different in their idioms, these papers are highly complementary to each other, providing an unusually fine grained analysis of the inter-digitation of individual, group, and cultural change. They also indicate the genuinely international character of current research in cultural-historical, activity approaches to cognition. The work reported in by Beach, Kawatoko, and Ueno was supported by the Toyota Foundation.

Reification of Artifacts in Ideological Practice

Naoki Ueno

This introduction serves to frame theoretically two research studies in this issue which explore the social and situational construction of literacy and numeracy as embedded in practice. The author argues that the ÒrealityÓ of cultural artifacts is socially constructed and reconstructed in a process of ideological practice. Ideological practice reifies the ÒformÓ of artifacts such that the tool and the human relations associated with its use gain ÒmaterialityÓ which is powerful and tangible in spite of a lack of physical grounding. The form of artifacts reflects the form of social organization in which actual practice and artifacts socially organize each other in a reciprocal and non-deterministic manner.

The Social Construction of Reality in the Artifacts of Numeracy for Distribution and Exchange in a Nepalese Bazaar

Naoki Ueno

This study explores street mathematics as they are embedded in the context of a governmental reorganization of the Nepalese bazaar. The forced introduction of the metric system caused merchants to organize a practice of mathematical conversions whereby the old system of measurement could be coordinated with the new allowing the merchants to comply with government requirements while responding to the publicÕs distrust of the new system. The author argues that the invention and social organization of new artifacts for conversion from the old to the new system permitted the authority of the old system of measurement to be reconstructed in the new metric system. The social organization of the new system was an ideological practice which eventually ÒreifiedÓ or made real the new cultural artifacts in actual contexts of the institutionalized practice of distribution and exchange.

Social Rules in Practice: "Legal" Literacy Practice in Nepalese Agricultural Village Communities

Yasuko Kawatoko

This research study explores the development of new literacy practices in the context of wet-rice farming in Nepal. Designated Òlegal literacyÓ by the author, the new practice is socially organized around communal irrigation and involves the social construction of the ÒrealityÓ of new relations between the farmers as well as the establishment of social rules which are codified in a Òrulebook.Ó The ideological practice which establishes the materiality and authority of the new social rules and the rulebook permits them to work as resources for the resolution of disputes and for the collaborative management of water, labor, scheduling and compensation for land appropriated for the water system. In establishing the development of legal literacy as situational as well as social, the author compares the infrastructural features and ideological achievement of two villages.

Sociocultural Change, Activity, and Individual Development: Some Methodological Aspects

King Beach

This piece which introduces an article in this issue proposes a methodology for studying individual learning and development related to sociocultural change.1 The author argues that the mediating function of activity affords a new methodology that allows the study of sociogenetic-ontogenetic relations without having to resort to reductionism or Cartesian dualism. The tri-part methodology involves 1) Simulation by selecting key activities that can be constrained and arranged in sequence to model changes in society, and by that same sequence of activities, induce learning and development; 2) Heterochronicity which looks comparatively at the histories and timeframes of various activities in a research site as well as the comparative histories and timeframes of particular activities and the lives of different generations of the research population in the interest of identifying periods of rapid societal change, and 3) Leading activity which is co-determined by the point in an individualÕs developmental history at which she participates in the activity as well as the genetic sequence of activity categoires characteristic of that society.

Activity as a Mediator of Sociocultural Change and Individual Development: The Case of School-Work Transition in Nepal

King Beach

This study explores how sociocultural change and individual development are mediated by activities in a process complicated by temporal transitions in environment and in the activity which leads, or is psychologically primary. Based on research among rural Nepali high school students becoming shopkeepers and among rural shopkeepers attending adult education, the author suggests a cultural- historical alternative to transfer in understanding the continuity and discontinuity of personal knowledge across situations and over time.

Courtney Cazden: