Hi Paul,
I am sorry it took me a while to get back with you. I had to finish a couple
of chapters that I promised to my French editor. It's done now, so I'm
catching up with my e-mail.
Paul, you said:
"I'd love to hear more about how you view/use this other theoretical
tradition and any thoughts you might have about its relation to CHAT/AT and
Vygotskian orientations."
I'm afraid it would take me quite a while to do just that and so I hope you
will forgive me if I try first to propose a very simple idea: It seems to me
that if you can bring yourself to see "communication" as one--perhaps the
most common and most frequent--of our human activities, then Habermas's
theory of communicative action and activity theory--at least, the way I
understand it--are quite compatible. Personally, I believe that Habermas knew
about Vygotsky, although he chose to talk about Piaget, instead.
I must admit that you have put your finger on a topic of great interest to
me, on which I have been working for some time now. In fact, several years
ago, while I was working on my doctoral candidacy research, I was able to
integrate Carspecken's schema of critical ethnography (which is based on
Habermas's and Giddens's social theories, as you know) and Barker's concept
and theory of "behavior settings," re-interpreted in cultural terms (the
methodological synthesis yielded what I have called the "ethno-ecological
approach"). By so doing, I was able to demonstrate empirically, in my
ethno-ecological approach to the study of a university department, how
powerful an impact culture had on structuring activities, and how powerful an
impact these so structured activities had, in turn, on the local culture of
the department, which, at that time, was struggling with change.
Should you be interested in reading some of this work, you may like to
contact CUSTos Press at: CUSTos@hotmail.com, or call (281)433-8771, or write
to CUSTos Press, 2305 Addison, Houston, TX 77030, and request that they mail
you a copy of my research monograph (for $ 12,90, if I'm not mistaken)
entitled: "An ethno-ecological approach to person-environment transactions:
The case of an institution of higher education" (1998,ISBN # 1-889767-01-8).
A couple of articles on this topic were also published in 1996 and I'd be
glad to mail them to any address you'd like them to be sent to. Thank you
very much, Paul, for your kind interest in my work. I have to run now, but
I'll be happy to continue on this topic some other time, if you'd like.
Doris.
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