>
> I found Eva's comments interesting about texts functioning as a kind of
> material setting in groups such as this--a kind of unstable structure.
>
> I haven't heard much discussion yet on physical spaces themselves. Why
> do spaces, and their divisions and distributions, often get written out of
> accounts of activity? In classroom studies in particular it often
> seems that spaces are assumed to be common across
> settings, and if mentioned, are generally noted as a supporting cast for
> talk and other aspects of activity.
>
> Would really be interested in hearing about any related work.
>
Sounds like a neat project, Kevin.
Mike Cole in his *Cultural Psychology* (ch 11) argues that the
distinction was due to psychology's divvying up the world into independent
variables (culture) and dependent variables (mind). Consequently, they
screen out all aspects of the culture that they are not currently
manipulating.
One of the things that we coded for in my recent study of
developmental research practices used in 912 articles randomly selected
from *Child Development* and *Developmental Psychology* 1930-1992 was
LOCATION. We found that the practice of omitting the location was most
prominent in the most prolific researchers. Kurt Danziger has argued that
the omission of location creates an illusion of generality -- the thinking
might be characterized somewhat like the following "since one is studying
a VERY general phenomenon, there is no need to go into specifics about
where it occurs." Perhaps the prolific authors can get away without
describing locations because the editors already know what the setting is
and miss the fact that it hasn't been described, or perhaps they buy into
the illusion, or perhaps they are so excited about the aspects of the
environment that are being manipulated that they miss those that are not.
Anyway, unspecified locations are holding their own as a
methodological practice against school/home/other or lab/multiple and
according to the projections using my dynamic, competing practices model,
they are expected to do so for decades to come. Part of this is in my
*Mind, Culture, and Activity* paper from 1997 (issue 1) and part of it is
in a paper I recently delivered to the Society for Chaos Theory in
Psychology and the Life Sciences. If you would like a copy of the latter
and can read a Word for Windows (1995) document, send me a side email note
and I will return it as an attachment.
David
ddirlam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu