Mind, Culture, and Activity: An International Journal

Volume 3, Number 1, Winter 1996


Contents:

Introduction

The Seven Flaws of Cross-Cultural Psychology. The Story of a Conversion
Ernest E. Boesch

How Instruction Influences Children's Concepts of Evolution
Mariane Hedegaard

Intersubjectivity Without Agreement
Eugene Matusov

Review Symposium:
J.D. Keller, C. Bazerman, B. Latour :
Cognition in the Wild , by Edwin Hutchins

Response to Reviewers, by Edwin Hutchins

Book Review:
Giyoo Hitano : Sociocultural Studies of Mind , by J. V. Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A. Alvarez

Introduction

Editors

An unusually broad range of basic issues concerning the co-constitution of relations between mind, culture, and activity await the reader.

Ernst Boesch provides an extended thought experiment in the paradoxes of psychological research which seeks to illuminate the role of culture in mental life through the use of cross-cultural comparisons. His analysis pushes us inexorably to search for alternative methodologies in which rich knowledge of local circumstances is essential.

Mariane Hedegaard takes up the important challenge of practice as the crucible of cultural-historical, activity-based approaches to mind. She reports on an extensive teaching experiment (also referred to as "experiment-by-design" or "formative experimentation" which has a long tradition in Russian psychology and is currently gaining popularity elsewhere. Hedegaard's study is one of a small number of Western European studies that apply Vasilii Davydov's "germ cell" approach to developmental teaching. Her account makes it clear that successful applications of this approach are possible, while indicating the enormous amount of work that will be required if such practices are to become both routine and effective.

Eugene Matusov's contribution takes up a theme with many reverberations in this journal, the role of discoordinations, ruptures, and conflict in constituting mental life. Distinctive in Matusov's contribution is the search for ways such discoordination participates in its seeming opposite‹human intersubjectivity. In Matusov's view, current approaches to intersubjectivity tend to overstate the homogeneity of experience required to permit intersubjectivity and at the same time what seems to him an overly individualistic conception of cognition. He seeks to reformulate the issues within a communities-of-practice approach. From this perspective, intersubjectivity is the emergent outcome of joint participation in the "whole ongoing activity" and individual perspectives need not be (indeed, cannot be) perfectly coordinated.

Next we present a review symposium featuring Edwin Hutchins' monograph, Cognition in the Wild. We are especially pleased with this opportunity because Hutchins' work, which has appeared in brief articles in this journal over many years, has had an important impact on the development of the ideas which are central to this journal's goals.

As each of the reviewers makes clear, this is a book that deserves the widest possible attention for its unusual success in synthesizing contemporary contributions to cognitive studies from a variety of key disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. From the perspective of MCA, Cognition in the Wild is of special importance because it demonstrates that a rigorous theory of mind which starts from the analysis of joint, culturally mediated, human activity is now a practical possibility. We are grateful to the reviewers for helping guide discussion of productive ways to build on Hutchins' achievements.

We close this issue with a review of Sociocultural Studies of Mind, edited by J. V. Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A. Alvarez.

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The Seven Flaws of Cross-Cultural Psychology. The Story of a Conversion

Ernest E. Boesch

University of Saarbruecken

For Alfred Lang on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

The following expands on an example that W. J. Lonner, in the not yet published draft of a chapter, used for illustrating the method of cross-cultural psychology, and which I take the freedom to elaborate here. It is therefore an entirely fictional story, but all it says is based on personal experience. One could call it, then, a true fiction.

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How Instruction Influences Children's Concepts of Evolution

Mariane Hedegaard

University of Aarhus

This article focuses on variations in children's understanding of the evolution of species and the origin of humans, and on how these variations are related to classroom instruction. In order to evaluate the children's concept development as influenced by teaching method, children from two classes who participated in a teaching experiment throughout the third grade were interviewed. The teaching experiment aimed at teaching the children the theoretical concepts of evolution by teaching them to integrate their knowledge into coherent models. Two experimental groups from two different schools were interviewed during the middle of the fourth grade. A control group of children from a class that had not been taught the concepts of evolution were also interviewed. Analyses of the interviews showed that the manner of instruction influenced the children's conceptions, both in the area they were taught, the evolution of species, and a related area, the origin of humans.

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Intersubjectivity Without Agreement

Eugene Matusov

University of California, Santa Cruz

In this paper, there is an attempt to construct the notion of intersubjectivity as a process of a coordination of participants' contributions in joint activity. This notion incorporates the dynamics of both agreement and disagreement. I argue that a traditional definition of intersubjectivity as a state of overlap of individual understandings overemphasizes agreement and de- emphasizes disagreement among the participants in joint activity. It disregards disagreement at two levels: 1) by focusing only on integrative, consensus seeking, activities, in which disagreement among participants of joint activity often is viewed as only the initial point of the joint activity that has to be resolved by the final agreement (macro-level), and 2) by considering disagreements as only nuisances or obstacles while focusing on integrative activities (micro-level). To illustrate how disagreement can constitute intersubjectivity at macro- and micro-levels, examples of children's development of a classroom play are examined. Diversity and fluidity of intersubjectivity will be discussed.

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Review Symposium

Janet Dixon Keller, Charles Bazerman, and Bruno Latour:

Cognition in the Wild, by Edwin Hutchins

BOOK REVIEWS

Giyoo Hitano:

Sociocultural Studies of Mind by J. V. Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A. Alvarez


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