In 1987 I was working at Moscow State Lomonosov University. This was clearly
a transitional time - from the years when Leotjev's activity theory was a
dominant framework (at that particular institution) to the times of a
theoretical diversity which actually often turned into a vacuum. I was
working on the topic of language development from CHAT perspective and
thought that the whole world already knew what Vygotsky and Leontjev's
theories were all about. (after all, their works were translated already!!
so I thought). That is why, I believed that there wasn't much point in
repeating anything they had said (or in interpreting it) and that one
should, instead, just move ahead and develop the theory further. Well, with
time I learned that the broader context matters and that things are done one
step at a time and that the horse cannot run in front of a carriage (is this
the right expression in your exotic - for me - English language, Diane?).
That in order to move ahead and to be able to communicate what this is
about, one needs to each time start from scratch and reconstruct the whole
foundations from which one intends to move on...
This was an exciting time of perestrojka and glasnost (who now remebers
these words?), the time when old ideological controls were almost gone but
the new - monetary ones - were not yet there. (perhaps the only time of
almost complete freedom I ever knew). Hence, the first opportunity TO SEE
THE WORLD - Hungary, wow! Budapest, wow! Looked like a wild West to me. An
international conference on history of Psychology took place in 1987 in
Budapest (CHEIRON), with couple of nice talks by some nice people interested
in Vygotsky (van der Veer, Ratner, Nagy). I was shocked to find out how
different the worldviews of people can be just because they live in another
part of the world. Different on everything - on past and present, on
politics and history, psychology, and of course, on Vygotsky. Well, this
shouldn't be a long story so I should stop now.
Anna
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 3:31 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: early cultural psychology
Douglass Price Williams was one of the first people i know to start using
the term and there was an article by Toulmin on this topic. Perhaps
Douglass's book, which consisted of several articles, was what Dianne
was htinking of.
mike
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