horizontal/vertical//diaologue/dialectic

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 07 2001 - 13:20:58 PDT


Eugene wrote:

I do not think that 'dialectic negation' is an appropriate term here because
in my view "American" focus on diversity and "Russian" focus on historical
progress are not in dialect but rather in dialogic relations. I'd be very
interested if you or somebody would try to reveal a dialectic relation in
that.

I have been talking a little with Yrjo about the horizontal/vertical
"dimensions of development" issue which Don questioned and Yrjo says he
has written more about. A relevant text here is the 1983 LCHC article
on culutre and development in Handbook of Child Psychology which I have been
meaning to scan and post..... but......

anyway, I think that there might actually be a dialectic relation betwen
the horizontal and veritical dimensions that Yrjo emphasises which would
help to answer Don's questions about how the horizontal dimension could
be considered developmental owing to lack of necessary sequence. New
cognitive insights (development?) are initially context specific and, I
think, remain at best incompletely and heterogeneously realized across
life events (even those events where they are presumably relevant). When
two or more such contexts are brought into interaction with each other,
through boundary crossing, shifts in social relations of other kinds,
emergence of new tools, etc., the possibility arises for them to be
subsumed within a single system of understandin which is more inclusive
and perhaps for an entirely new system of undestanding to emerge. Hence,
in principle at least, the horizontal/vertical dichotomy when put together
with the learning/development dichotomy, might create conditions for a
dialectic relationship.

I think Zaporozhets had something to sayon this matter, but have not found the
ref.
mike



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