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RE: [xmca] Ingold linking "figments" of imagination and "figments"ofmateriality as a single ontology

Tnx Andy for replying back so quickly,
 
What you have  just said it is exactly what was my impression when i started doing my PhD here in Charles Darwin University,neverthless though if we consider how is the situation in many other places around the world at least in Australia,and especially here in Darwin from what i have seen untill now the Indigenous issue is of high priority for NT goverment but also for CDU,having in mind that we are not living in paradise but we living in earth with very complicated beings running it, instead of saying that it doesnt worth to initiate projects because they wont last i think is better to use those chances we have even if are not total solutions for the problem.For example there is a project now going on now at CDU from the humanities and art department that they will establish visual camers to aboriginal communities and teach them how to using them for give them the chance to be able to commerce worldwidely their paintings thus providing them with the chance to be indepedent economically,without relying to centrelink for unemployment benefits..I am aware that this is also another manifestation of capitalism but really,reality as you mentioned before is transient,and if now we have the conditions of capitalism instead of being passive and philosophical i think we should do what it can be done,even if not as perfect we have it in our minds..
 
Warmest Regards,
 
Nektarios

________________________________

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
Sent: Fri 18/11/2011 11:33 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Ingold linking "figments" of imagination and "figments"ofmateriality as a single ontology



Maybe there's no answer to my question, Nektarios. Maybe, living in a
capitalist world we are doomed to see our every effort to build
something offering people a future destroyed by the combined effects of
bureaucratic indifference and capitalist greed? But, to be fair, the
precondition to self-determination is self-sufficiency: until you are
able to contribute something which someone else needs, you are condemned
to dependency on someone else. What the "social entrepreneurs" do,
generally, is organise "import substitution" projects in poor
communities, for example, some residents of a poor estate organise
themselves into a "maintenance company" and then tender to do the
maintenance on the houses in the housing estate they live in, rather
than the work going outside the community. The project of market
gardening which Mike mentions in his paper is an exmaple, too. The fact
is that all funding bodies in Australia (and elsewhere) are locked into
the neoliberal dogma of funding projects on a 3-year funding cycle.
Projects which rely on outside funding are invariably terminated after 3
years. So after raising people's hopes, they are crashed down again,
leaving people worse off than they were before. Bureaucracy is no
improvement on capitalism. This has been going on in our relation to
indigenous communities for 200 years.

Andy

Nektarios Alexi wrote:
> But can someone suggest any practical ideas of how to initiate a
> project here in australia without a funding?or any previous projects
> that are still going on that havent been funded?Because i totally
> agree with Andy ''And once aproject becomes a business it is subject
> to all the viscissitudes of the market, competition, corruption and
> the business skills of the
> participants. And for many of us, to turn a literacy program into a
> for-profit business would negate the very purpose of the intervention.''
>
> 
>
> Regards,
>
> 
>
> Nektarios
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
> *Sent:* Fri 18/11/2011 10:03 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> *Subject:* Re: [xmca] Ingold linking "figments" of imagination and
> "figments"of materiality as a single ontology
>
> Water does it for me if one imagines water flowing between banks, and
> this is the meaning of the illustration on the cover of my book, which
> shows a river flowing through a city (Dublin actually). That image, for
> me, really captures what a project is all about ... and all the ancient
> wisdom about rivers never being the same etc., etc.
>
> Here is a conundrum about projects. There is a line of thinking (I have
> Mark Latham and Noel Pearson in mind, so Australians will know what I am
> talking about) that any project which relies on "funding" is doomed to
> eventual failure when funding is withdrawn as it inevitably will be at
> some point. In fact, in countries like Australia funding is almost
> always withdrawn after 3 years, as we do not have the tradition of
> philanthropy that you have in the US. Despite Eugene Matusov's claim
> that  he knows how projects can survive indefinitely even if the
> "partners" have "incompatible visions," his project was "killed" when
> one of the partners withdrew funding. This of course is not an
> afterthought but the whole point. So, the story goes that in order to
> survive, a project has to generate its own sources, or sustainability.
> But of course the lack of such sources is almost always the very issue
> that the project is addressing, directly or indirectly. And once a
> project becomes a business it is subject to all the viscissitudes of the
> market, competition, corruption and the business skills of the
> participants. And for many of us, to turn a literacy program into a
> for-profit business would negate the very purpose of the intervention.
>
> But I think it is an idea which needs to be responded to.
>
> Andy
>
> mike cole wrote:
> > Apt addition to the discussion, Larry.
> >
> > I also want to "go back" to introduce what to me is a clear statement
> > of Bauman on liquidity. After going through the encyclopedia to get at
> > a notion of liquidity he sums up as follows:
> >
> > What all these features of fluids amount to, in simple language, is
> > that liquids, unlike solids, cannot easily hold their shape. Fluids,
> > so to speak, neither fix space nor bind time. While solids have clear
> > spatial dimensions but neutralize the impact, and thus downgrade the
> > significance, of time (effectively resist its flow or render it
> > irrelevant), fluids do not keep any shape for long and are constantly
> > ready (and prone) to change it; and so for them it is the flow of time
> > that counts, more than the space they happen to occupy.
> >
> > Seems a useful mode of thought to me, as applied to the forms of
> > activity flow that we struggle to analyze.
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> > <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Andy
> >     I'm adding a quote from Stetsenko and Arievitch in the article
> >     they wrote
> >     for Jack Martin's edited book "The Sociocultural Turn in
> >     Psychology The
> >     Contextual Emergence of Mind and Self"
> >
> >     The quote is from the section they title "Human Development as a
> >     Collaborative Process of Transforming the World"
> >
> >     Therefore, human activity - material, practical, and always by
> >     necessity
> >     social collaborative processes aimed at transforming the world and
> >     people
> >     themselves - is taken in CHAT to be the basic form of human life,
> >     by which
> >     is created everything that is human in humans, including knowledge
> >     produced
> >     by them.
> >
> >     Andy, in Jack Martin's latest writings Stetsenko's perspective now
> >     holds a
> >     place at center stage.
> >     Anna also suggest Activity theory must re-engage with "agency" and
> >     "subjectivity" as central aspects of our humannness that CHAT
> >     currently
> >     under theorizes. That's for another thread.
> >
> >     Larry
> >
> >     On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> >     <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     > Andy
> >     > You wrote
> >     >
> >     >  I stretch the patience of my xmca friends by rabbiting on about
> >     projects
> >     > because, if this is the case, actual research needs to be done on
> >     > collaboration and projects. We need to learn more about
> >     collaboration, and
> >     > what faciitates or undermines the formation of long-term
> >     collaborations. Is
> >     > there any more important question?
> >     >
> >     > Andy, besides "courage" to change the world, patience is a
> virture I
> >     > suspect is alive and well among yur friends. My patience
> >     struggling to
> >     > grasp your perspective has been warmly rewarded many times over.
> >     >
> >     >  The research question and methods that develop to answer  the
> >     question
> >     > "about collaboration" as we ACT to "realize" collaboration and
> what
> >     > facilitates or undermines the formation of long-term
> >     collaborations I would
> >     > embrace as the BIG question worth grappling with.
> >     >
> >     > Andy, what may be CHAT's most significant perspective is the
> >     realization
> >     > that the process  making  collaborative acts "real" & the
> >     > process exploring, RE-searching  developing the compass  [tool]
> >      to help us
> >     > "understand" and interpret "about collaboration" are the SAME
> >     SIMULTANEOUS
> >     > process.
> >     >
> >     > Larry
> >     >   On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Andy Blunden
> >     <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>wrote:
> >     >
> >     >> Thanks Larry.
> >     >>
> >     >> Although I do agree that collaborative projects are needed as a
> >     response
> >     >> to the problems of modernity, my point is that "collaborative
> >     project" is a
> >     >> *unit of analysis* for social life, i.e., that everything we do
> >     is to be
> >     >> taken as part of collaborative projects. I stretch the patience
> >     of my xmca
> >     >> friends by rabbiting on about projects because, if this is the
> >     case, actual
> >     >> research needs to be done on collaboration and projects. We
> >     need to learn
> >     >> more about collaboration, and what faciitates or undermines the
> >     formation
> >     >> of long-term collaborations. Is there any more important
> question?
> >     >>
> >     >> The other point you raise about duration and liquidity: given
> >     that we
> >     >> cannot have recourse to any eternal abstractions, human nature,
> >     etc., being
> >     >> able to theorise across duration is important, and
> >     collaborative projects
> >     >> do this because of the way individuals come and go, and are
> >     inducted along
> >     >> the way, actually weaving and maintaining durable social
> >     fabric, even as
> >     >> their identity changes. This gives a believable process for
> >     ideas and
> >     >> patterns of action which outlive individual persons. It
> >     responds to the
> >     >> observation about "liquidity" because projects continuously
> >     *realise* their
> >     >> aims, that is, aims and objectives (sources of motivation) are
> >     continuously
> >     >> revised in the light of the experience of the project.
> Projects are
> >     >> "iterative" as they say. Occupy?
> >     >>
> >     >> Andy
> >     >>
> >     >> Larry Purss wrote:
> >     >>
> >     >>> Hi Mike, and others discussing solidity/fluidity.
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Andy is asking us to recognize the centrality for
> >     collaborative projects
> >     >>> to
> >     >>> be a meaningful response to the issues Bauman is
> articulating. ...
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Andy, I agree that collaborative projects are the answer to
> >     Bauman's
> >     >>> question. The question then becomes "what particular
> >     projects?"  My
> >     >>> suggestion is that these projects must be able to give an
> >     answer to the
> >     >>> limits and ambivalence of freedom and "self-expression". I also
> >     >>> intuitively
> >     >>> sense that the answers must also in*form structures of some
> >     "duration"
> >     >>> that
> >     >>> recognize not only who we "are" and who we are "becoming" but
> >     also are
> >     >>> structures which recognize who we "were".
> >     >>> ...
> >     >>> Larry
> >     >>>
> >     >>>
> >     >>>
> >     >>>
> >     >>
> >     >>
> >     >> ______________________________**____________
> >     >> _____
> >     >> xmca mailing list
> >     >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >     >>
> >    
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> >     >>
> >     >
> >     >
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> >
> >
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/ <http://home.mira.net/~andy/> >
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
> <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857

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