either or?

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 10:55:39 PDT


Eric, Here is my try of the day.

You write:

The emergence of novelty does appear to me to be in direct conflict with
cultural influences because as a unit of study sociocultural researchers have
either decided to study one or the other but not both. Rogoff appears to be
interested in how cultural entities emerge while Valsiner tends to emphasize
how specific individual behavior appears during the course of semiotic
mediation.

By my analysis, tool mediated action in activity always underdetrmines
the outcomes. This underdetermination can result in a variety of outcomes,
some of which are unlikely to have been encoutered before. Lets call those
outcomes, novel. Some of the novel outcomes will be forgotten or surpressed,
or, maybe even, celebrated. In the latter case they may be remembered and
become a part of the tool kit in use by that and other persons int the
social group.

Novelty, tool mediation action in activity or sociocultural medium are not
in contradiction with each other from this perspective.
mike



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