"The second, more preliminary, issue is whether the social, indeed, is
primary.
The Vygotskyan position, reflected effectively in your second paragraph,
above, answers the question in the affirmative. But, as far as I understand
it,
the American pragmatists (especially G. H. Mead) emphatically opted for an
equal balance. (It is the pragmatists' theory of symbolic interactionism
that
grounds Cobb's work, so this may explain his divergence from CHAT
assumptions.) What one buys by taking the social as primary is the
opportunity to theorize the social/cultural independently of the
individual.
But that's just what the pragmatists feared (how American!). Taking the
two as balanced means that the theorizing of either is problematized.
So, yes, one does somehow come away with a partial picture of the
individual as non-social. But that's the price to be paid for establishing
a dialectical balance in which the social (along with the individual) is
emergent."
In reference to pragmatism IM"H"O Holzman and Newman in *Vygotsky
Revolutionary Scientist* make some interesting distinctions between
practice and pragmatism. How can we say something is dialectic is we say
the individual is part of a system and not. This is what confuses me, I
guess. Dialectic as Vygotsky, and I believe Marx, used it was two "things"
being within a system for the dialectical relationship to occur. If the
approach is dialectical how can it also be outside the system, it seems to
go against how I understand dialectics. For example, in *Thinking and
Speech* Vygotsky saw the "zone of sense" being the system of
meaning/senses.
"The first and basic one is the preponderance of the sense of a word over
its meaning - a distinction we owe to Paulhan. The sense of a word,
according to him, is the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our
consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, fluid, complex whole, which has
several zones of unequal stability. Meaning is only one of the zones of
sense, the most stable and precise zone. A word acquires its sense from the
context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense.
Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary
meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more
than a potentiality that finds diversified realisation in speech."
So, for something is to be dialectic both forces must be within a system so
the dialectical relationship can occur, be understood, or studied. If we
use Activity Theory to think about a classroom it is not that the
individual is seperate from the activity or interacts with it, but rather
the interaction occurs within it. In this sense, to speak of an individual
acting with activity, culture, society, or interpersonal relations does not
seem beneficial. The individual is part of those systems not seperate from
it. Once within the system, Cobb's criticism makes sense to me, but I do
believe CHAT perspectives are addressing these issues. For example, a
theme running though *Perspectives of Activity Theory* is the importance of
focusing both on externalization/internalization. As Davydov mentioned we
do not need to go back to the days of activity of externalization and
internalization (referring to the Russian context). I would also argue
that approaches that make internalization a prerequisite for
externalization (novice to experts) have a danger.
So, to quote Cobb, Wood, and Yackel in *Contexts for Learning*
"The emphasis on mathmatical communication in both small groups and whole
class settings reflected our developing view that mathmatics is a social
activity - a community project - as well as an individual constructive
activity".
Why can't a social activity be an individual constructive one. There
appears to be a seperation that is not needed. My point is social activity
is the system in which individual constructive activity takes place.
Within a social activity, community project there are various things we can
study in a relational way. For example, the activity itself is essential
as well as the role of subject/s. Engestrom makes the suggestion that more
than one is best. I see no reason why we need to exclude an anaysis of the
individual (one in activity) in such an analysis. I think Bill was making
such a point. I don't think CHAT perspectives need to be seen as the
non-study of individuals, that was a point Vygotsky was making in
Psychology of Art. I suppose it would be a more contextual psychology, one
in which the individual is studied across time in a given activity.
Nate