As I hinted in my recent message on appropriation vs internalization,
I think I understand why you would feel anxious not to be
cast too much in the role of an indigenous authority when addressing such
big issues as whether "Vygotsky had no less modern "project" (using
Sartr's term) than Piaget," and whether or not "it is very legitimate to
use Vygotsky's framework to justify postmodern point of views."
However, I do look to you with particular respect, and am very grateful to
you for the following linguistic elaboration:
"Bakhtin use of the term "appropriation" ("prisvoienue" literally means to
make somebody else'
property one's own) is very different than Vygotsky's use the term of
"internalization.", "
especially since you understand and agree with my concern over the use of
the English words Learning and Language in early translations of
Vygotsky's writings in Russian.
I am also very much obliged to you for the following local historical
account, and will revisit the Valsiner & Van de Veer text (which I only
saw in pre-printed form some years ago) for its elaboration and
dcoumentation:
"I found interesting discussion of the origin of Vygotsky concept of
"internalization" in Valsiner and van Veer's 1994 book on Vygotsky. He
barrowed it from Freud (via Luria who was the chair of the Russian
Freudist society in 20s)."
Given your close association with her, I also take you to be an authority
on the following point:
" I know that Barbara Rogoff was heavily influenced by Bakhtin in
development of her concept of "appropriation." " Someone told me that as
far as they know, Vygotsky and Bakhtin, despite being contemporaries,
never actually interacted or cited one another's work. I wonder, therefore
why so many Vygotskian scholars in the USA have taken to citing both of
them together ? Is this because they share some elements of a specifically
Russian cultural frame of reference ?
As you point out, "in Russian culture in general and in Vygotsky in
specific, there is
much more focus on history then culture. It may be not overgeneralization,
that in many contexts Vygotsky viewed culture as a specific historical
stage of the development of a society. Culture is viewed as history." I
see this historicized view of culture as one of the most powerful
contributions of Vygotskyan theory to the field of cultural psychology. It
helps to remind us that cultural practices and meaning systems vary not
only cross-sectionally from one society (or social group) to another, but
also diachronically within a given society, group, tradition, etc. It also
makes it clear that ethnolinguistic and national categories may often be
much less relevant dimensions of cultural influence on behavior than what
Paul Dillon terms "the role of the larger social processes, in this case a
socialist revolutionary movement." I have always taken the view (based on
writings by Wozniak, Cole and Wertsch among others) that Vygotsky's
participation as a citizen in the early phase of Soviet society was a
major stimulus for the direction of his theorizing about the
social-historical situatedness of human development.
Thanks for drawing our attention to your new paper in Human Development,
which I look forward to reading.
Robert
Robert Serpell tel: ( 410 ) 455 2417
Psychology Department 455 2567
University of Maryland Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore MD 21250 fax: ( 410 ) 455 1055