I am also trying to get a grip on this issue: "solo vs joint activity" or
"individual vs distributed cognition". You wrote:
>The concepts of solo and joint activity, though, are orthogonal to the
>differences between a "participation" perspective, which examines development
>as a transformation of participation in sociocultural activity, and a
>"transfer" perspective, which still looks for reciprocal, and often one-way
>influences in development. People do participate in both solo and joint
>activity, but it's important to note that even in solo activity, individuals
>typically act using mediational means (a point Jim Wertsch would make) and do
>so within activities that are culturally valued or which have forms similar
>to other activities that other participants in a culture have participated
>in. So valuing joint activity to me doesn't mean one would have to buy
>Solomon's argument there that individual competence is still the unit of
>analysis....
>
Could we say then, that "solo activity/cognition" is an activity/cognition
"as if" it were social - "as if", like in make-believe or pretend
activities. What strikes me is that if a person (child/adult) engages in a
"solo" activity/cognition, and we claim that they are "using mediational
means ... and do so within activities that are culturally valued...", then
this activity probably has a form of pretended joint activity/cognition. In
other words, "solo" activities are nothing but "joint" social participation
activities without actual (here and now) social situations, e.g. they are
"fictive joint activities". Or, even better, when "solo", the joint/social
activity takes place in the world constructed through play/imagination.
This connects to the question Peter Smagorinsky reported about Vera
John-Steiner's paper in Chicago:
"Vera identified an as-yet unresolved paradox
for sociocultural researchers to explore: If learning is achieved
through the internalization of concepts through the mediation of
cultural tools--thus limiting what we know to the frameworks for
thinking provided by our culture's historical modes of cognition--
how then do we create new ways of thinking?"
A possible answer would be, that "internalization" of concepts is in fact
"fictionalization" of joint mediational tools, i.e. it is an activity of
transformation of actual mediational tools into fictional mediational tools.
Once freed from the actual situation, these mediational tools can be used in
previously impossible ways (although, like in any play, not entirely without
rules!!).
I would be very grateful if I could obtain a copy of Vera's paper. Moreover,
I am writing without having read Eugene's paper yet, my copy of the MCA
Journal still didn't arrive.
Ana
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. Office of Mental Health and
Philadelphia, PA 19144 Mental Retardation
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(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
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E-mail: pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
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