Eugene
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Hello everybody--
I want to comment on what people wrote recently.
1. Individual activity. I guess when Gordon, Yrjo, and I wrote about
individual activity we wrote in the context of human sociocultural
activities and practices. Michael Glassman shifted the discussion to embrace
non-human and non-sociocultural activities of apes in Kohler's experiments.
I think this shift is interesting and intriguing as we could see in Ana's
and Rolfe's (I wish both of them elaborated more on the issue of different
level of analysis and different levels of development. I really agree with
Ana that Vygotsky's, unlike Piaget's, focus on development from the
social-individual to the individual-social).
As for Kohler's experiments with apes, my premise is that activity of
individual (animal or human) should be considered in the context of their
entire life. Kohler's apes were POZ ("Prisoners Of Zoo"). Their solo and
joint activities with each other were embedded in the activities of the
people structuring their life, including Kohler. Not only the apes'
activities described by Kohler were structured and organized by him and his
assistants and the zoo as an institution but the apes might be even aware of
that. It is difficult to judge what kind of meaning of Kohler's situations
the apes might have but the observations by Premack and Woodruff (1978, Does
the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?, in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
4) on POZ apes and by de Waal (1982, Chimpanzee politics: Power and sex
among apes) on semi-POZ apes make me think that apes are aware of people
structuring their activities. I am not a specialist in ape or zoo-
psychology but I think that the notions of solo and joint activities can be
applied to such social animals as apes (i.e., where solo activity is
embedded in joint activity, joint activity involves solo activity).
I'd like to ask Yrjo to write more on division of labor. I'm not sure that
I understand what Yrjo meant by this notion. Is it firmly divided functions
in the activity among people fixed by the norms or any flexibly or temporary
distributed cognition? I guess what I don't understand is whether the
notion of division of labor is referred to stable norms (which are often
cultural, historical, and institutional) or to activity dynamics (or both)?
2. Agency & motive. I agree with Jesper who wrote,
"For those reasons I have increasingly come to think about motives or
intention as something which emerges and develops trough the activity. The
person might tell a story about his or her motives or intentions, but in
some sense it seems like an account which is produced after the activity and
not something which starts the activity. An interesting example is for
instance the classroom talk, where it is my experience that when you ask
people why they said something, they very often are unable to answer and
thinks it is a funny question to ask. The utterance was more part of an
ongoing activity in the classroom and not clearly motivated."
I think that motive as an expression of individuality is a
socio-historico-cultural phenomenon rather than the initial principle of
activity. Like Jesper, I suspect it is an ideological, story-telling
phenomenon probably born with the question, "Why did you do that?" Russian
historian Losev seems to suggest that the notion of personal responsibility
developed with a transition to a city-type civilization.
3. Progress and diversity. I both agree and disagree with Jesper that, Ian
Moll and Peter Smagorinsky were talking about "different things." I agree
because Ian and Peter presented two different paradigms that, like any
different paradigms, have different focuses and themes. The main theme of
Ian's paradigm (similar to Luria's in many respects but, I hope, not
identical) seems to be "nation building" -- struggle against poverty,
illiteracy, hanger, unemployment, and consequences of the South African
apartheid. Peter's main theme seems to be peace coexistence of different
cultures, struggle against cultural dominance and oppression, appreciation
of cultural synergy and diversity of cultural values.
I respectfully disagree with Jesper because close look at both Ian's and
Peter's papers shows that both voices use each other as backgrounds that
they criticize. Ian criticizes Peter's paradigm for the "paralysis of
action" and "tacit apartheid" -- Ian seems to feel that it is hypocritical
to talk about diversity of values when power and welfare is strongly
associated with literacy, schooling, and other Western skills and values.
The question becomes how to give these skills to disadvantaged population.
Peter seems to imply a reform of Western society to allow power and welfare
to be associated with diversity of skills and values. Having historical
experience of South Africa, Ian probably considers Peter's goals as utopian
and idealistic that potentially can block the ongoing progress of
deconstruction of the apartheid. While, having historical experience of the
US, Peter probably can suspect the danger for a new form of cultural
domination and oppression in the goals proposed by Ian. I think that the
resent decades in both countries have provided the ground for both
paradigms: destruction of the institute of apartheid in South Africa seems
to push for the universal progress paradigm while changes in gender, race,
cultural relations in the US seems to push for the appreciation of cultural
diversity paradigm.
Parenthetically, I want to add that I seem to hear these two paradigms in
the US as well. In the US school reform movement, there are many voices and
many paradigms. One of which belongs to minority (but not only minority)
voices who want to gain success for their children within Western values and
Western system of education considering school as equalizer for societal and
economic power and welfare. Another belongs to mainly white liberal voices
who want to reform the system of education all together to embrace different
cultures considering school as an extension of local community. I found
support for this picture in Graubard's analysis of the free school movement
at the end of the 60s -- beginning of the 70s (1972, The free school
movement. In Harvard Educational Review, 42 (3), 351-373).
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
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Eugene Matusov
Psychology Department
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
EMATUSOV who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu