Phil-- The conference topic seems really interesting and I hope you will
keep us up on its doings. Mid- April is an impossible times for Americans
interested in education including work-based education to move around a
lot.
My own work is focused, of course, on a different sector of non-compulsory
education and training, that which occurs between home and school, but I
am sure there are important overlapping concerns.
Your message raises an issue that has been increasingly bothering me and
I wonder if you and others in the group could help me out. I am reading
the work of Holland and Lave in a couple of books, one by Holland on culture
and agency, the other by Holland and Lave called "history in person." This
comes on the heels of reading other modern writings in anthroplogy in which
various claims are made about something referred to as "human subjectivities"
(as in your posting).
What has me perplexed is what range of meanings writers are attributing to
this term. Sometimes it appears to be roughly equivilant to "from the subject's
point of view" and the warrants have to do with social analysis of positioning.
At other times it seems like a form of psychologizing based on a variety of
methods, but the methodology linking these methods to theories of various
kind (in the Holland and Lave case, Bakthtin is often and important invoked)
makes me wonder if I am dealing with psychologists, sociologistists, etc.
I think I am probably not entirely alone in my uncertainties about what
"subjectivity" refers to in a lot of recent post modern writing. What is
your understanding? I would be equally interested in hearing from others who
find this term useful, along with some account of the theoretical/methodological/ political implications of its use.
mike
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