LSV cited neither Barker nor Bronfenbrenner. How could he? Roger was born in
1903 and Uri in 1917. So, when LSV died, in 1934, I bet neither one had
written yet the first full sentence of their respective monumental work.
Thining along the same line, I doubt that when Pepper (1942) or Dewey &
Bentley (1949) articulated the various worl views, they had read any of LSV's
work (unless any of them could read Russian!), and certainly none of the work-
to-be-written by Barker and Bronfenbrenner. I imagine they just needed to
label broad categories or paradigms within which writers and scientists' works
could be classified.
When our western mind guides our classification efforts, do we proceed by
grouping things under a certain category because they contain the label in
their description? Or often because they embody the meaning or correspond to
the concept condensed, so to speak, in the category's label?Don't we classify
shoes and sandals under footwear because they both encapsulate the same
concept? By analogy, should only things or works containing the specific word
"context" be classified under Contextualism or can we classify under the same
label anything that argues about the "contextual specificity of meanings,"
whether or not the term itself is ever mentioned in them? I believe that many,
today, classify Barker's work under the Transactional paradigm. I doubt,
however (but my reading of Barker's work is limited and I may be wrong), that
Barker ever used the specific word "transaction" in his writings. However, the
way he describes in so many words what happens in his behavior setting
corresponds to what the label "Transactionalism" entails.
So, to respond directly to your comments, I don't think that LSV used the word
"context" per se, just as RB did not, at least not to my knowledge, use the
word "transaction" per se. As you surmise, they are most likely "being read"
into LSV"s and RB's works, because what these scientists described in so many
other words correspond to the concepts encompassed in the labels
"Contextualism" and "Transactionalism," respectively, to the root metaphore
of the "historical event" (confluence of people, place and time) or to the
other expression often used in lieu of it: "word in a sentense" (the word
getting its particular meaning from the specific context in which it is
embedded).
It seems to me that LSV's excerpts that I've quoted in another note amply talk
about context, though metaphorically. By the way, thank you so much for
bringing to our attention Urs Fuhrer's draft "Cultivating Minds." I find it
exhilarating. The last part resonates very much, after my methodological (and
fortunately successful) attempts to redefine Barker's behavior setting into a
culture-inclusive setting, in my "Ethno-ecological approach to person-
environment transactions" (1998). I admire how masterfully Prof. Fuhrer did it
at the theoretical level, by integrating Simmel's and Barker's
conceptualizations!
Again, thank you so much.
Doris.