Leontiev Ch. 2

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed Oct 04 2000 - 21:46:51 PDT


Dear xmca'ers,

I have been following the posts for the last five days from a non-personal
computer and been unable to respond to the calls to move on to Ch 2. I get
the feeling that people are waiting for me to start it.

I do have all the notes from careful reading(s) of the chapter ready to
write a precis and expect to post that on Thursday morning. It's Wednesday
night right now and I just got back home.

But if anyone is anxious to start the discussion of Ch. 2, please feel free
to post away since I don't think that my role as chapter facilitator
includes any function analogous to that of the buzzer at Olympic races or,
maybe more to the point, school bell alerting everyone that it's time to
file into the classroom.

And although Yrjo Engestrom didn't find any way to summarize the discussion,
I'm wondering if anyone else might dare to boil down some salient points of
convergence or disagreement beyond the "individual activity" issue already
raised. But with reference to that exchange I'd like to draw on a quote
from Leont'ev that James Wertsch used in "Vygotsky and The Social Formation
of the Mind.", p.211.

" . . . human psychology is concerned with the activity of concrete
individuals, which takes place either in a collective--that is, jointly with
other people--or in a situation in which the subject deals directly with the
surround world of objects--for example, at the potter's wheel or the
writer's desk. However, if we removed human activity from the system of
social relationships and social life, it would not exist and would have no
structure. With all its varied forms, the human indivdual's activity is a
system in the system of social relations. It does not exist without these
relations. The specific form in which it exists is determined by the forms
and means of material and mental social interaction (Verkehr) that are
created by the development of production and that cannot be realized in any
way other than in the activity of concrete people. It turns out that the
activity of separate individuals depends on their place in society, on the
conditions that fall to their lot, and on idiosyncratic, individual
factors."

Hoping that doesn't jump the gun on later chapters :)

Reflectively,

Paul H. Dillon



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