RE: Luria in Uzbekistan

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2000 - 20:08:47 PST


Hello everybody--

Below is a message from Ricardo. I'm not sure that my reply will reach
Ricardo since he is going to move (see below his new address for those who
want to contact him). I think that Ricardo's message is very important
contribution to the discussion.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Ricardo Ottoni [mailto:rjapias@attglobal.net]
  Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 10:34 PM
  To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
  Subject: Re: Luria in Uzbekistan

  Eugene Matusov wrote:

     In so far as history
> implied progress/development, it is a very unfortunate term to
> use as a paradigm name. Or at least, some think so.
    What do you think?

  Well, Eugene. I, personally, cannot yet agree with this. I think
cultural-historical is
  an expression that strongly sugest that social interaction and cultural
production are built and occur within a specifc
historical-economical-political context - as you had
  depicted above, dropping some light over the particular conditions of
Vygotsky-Luria research in Uzbequistan.

  Ricardo, I strongly agree with your emphasis on importance of history.
However, I disagree with a specific version of historism as unfolding of the
universal societal progress (even if the progress is viewed as non-linear
and spiral as it is in Hegelian tradition). What do you think?
  By the way, I comunicate thar I asked to unsubscribe the listgroup.
  I have to move to São Paulo and I do not know where I'm gonna live there.
  So, I ask anyone who needs to be in touch with me that do it by regular
mail to the following direction:

  RICARDO OTTONI VAZ JAPIASSU
  Rua Augusto Frederico Schmidt, 156-C/802
  Barra Avenida - Salvador
  40140-530 BAHIA

  I hope that you will return back to xmca soon. Happy move,

  Eugene

    Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 1:22 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Luria in Uzbekistan
>
>
>
> Nate has usefully raised the issue of Luria's results from Central
> Asia. I have done the same but view things somewhat differently
> than Eugene (of course, intersecting the events in question from
> such different starting points!).
>
> Here is part of the exchange:
> > Yes, there was religion based literature, but my understanding
> > from Luria's
> > work was that "literacy" was selective and very few had access to
it. My
> > point was in forming a "pre-soviet" Uzbekistan identity it was a
> > version of
> > literacy that was very Russian and a result of Luria's work and
> > the literacy
> > campaigns.
>
> Behind "Luria's literacy campaigns" in Uzbekistan and other places of
the
> Soviet Union in 30s was NKVD the predecessor of KGB. If you carefully
read
> Luria's transcripts, you can find between the lines of
> "illiterate" people's
> statements about power that Luria did not want to see in their answers
(or
> did he?!).statements about power that Luria did not want to see
> in their answers (or
> did he?!).
>
> -------
> First, this exchange indexes with special clarity why people like
> jim wertsch prefer the term socio-cultural to cultural historical
> or activity theory. Luria was a modernist. Not the only one around
> at the time in either Russia or the US. In so far as history
> implied progress/development, it is a very unfortunate term to
> use as a paradigm name. Or at least, some think so.
>
> Second, Luria's work was never published in the USSR at the time
> and could hardly have been a cause of anything... until we get
> to the first report in 1970-71 and then 75-76 in Russian and
> English. Very different times.
>
> Third, as discussed in Cultural Psychology I think Luria's methods
> in that work flawed from a chat point of view. However, our
> socio-historical-activity-cultural-cohort in Russia thinks that
> I am romantically relativist, while Jack Goody, David Olson, and
> others assume that he affirms at modernist account of cultural
> and psycvhological Development.
>
> mike



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