Getting the situation right (Re: analyzing situated activities)

Edouard Lagache (elagache who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Tue, 15 Jul 97 09:36:31 -0700

Hello everyone,

Just a quick reply to Jay and Helena's puzzlements. Lave and Wenger's
book has some of the character of a biblical prophesy. Just like some
prophets choose to "encrypt" their thoughts by mixing language, the Lave
and Wenger pack into the introduction a philosophical wallop that most
people never even notice.

As I've argued here and elsewhere, Lave and Wenger made a drastic step
away from any conception of activity theory. They do this by not simply
burring the line between knowledge and environment, the burr the line
between subject/object. Knowledge stops being a phenomenologial
primitive. Instead it is purely the creation of a particular sort of
practice (intellectual practice.) Without knowledge, transfer becomes a
mute point.

However, this point of view has much deeper implications which throw
monkey wrenches into traditional understandings of schooling. The
institutions and associated practices of education presume that
"knowledge" (a construct of modern societies) is somehow "transferred" to
students in places called schools. Careful ethnographies beg to differ.
Peggy Eckert, Paul Willis, and others have founds schools to be
battlegrounds for identity formation. Foucault and Bourdieu both argue
that the institutional function of schools are to impose self-discipline
and impart cultural capital. In these accounts of schooling, knowledge
plays a secondary - indeed derivative role in what education is all
about. Far from empowering students, these views powerfully argue that
schools stamp out bodies, complete with gender, race, ethinicity, sexual
orientation, and a host of other predispositions - including for example,
a belief that knowledge is a phenomenologial primitive.

Apologies to those would are much more comfortable with the simple view
of schools as gentle incubators of knowledge. As I can attest, and I
think we all can agree, it's a jungle out there. It is with no small
sadness that I ponder the lessons taught two thousand years ago - and yet
to this day remain not understood - much less accepted.

Peace, Edouard

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