Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

Hi Greg,

I suspect your plaint is part of your answer -- the willingness to address
problems concomitant to the conceptual development of (variations of)
genesis & ecology.

I've added a few thoughts, below.

Best,
Huw


On 22 July 2013 07:10, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:

> To clarify my previous question, I was referring to the article that Mike
> sent around which mentioned that his post at Rockefeller University was as
> a Professor of Experimental Anthropology and Ethnographic Psychology. I
> thought these both sounded like fascinating names for academic units and
> was wondering about what ever happened to them since I don't recall having
> come across either of these juxtapositions of terms.
>
> I should clarify that I ask the question as someone trained in Cultural
> Psychology/Psychological Anthropology. And the word on the street is that
> the trend in Anthropology over the past 15 years or so seems to have been
> towards not re-hiring psych anthro people for positions in Anthro
> departments that have been held by psych anthro people. In other words,
> psych anthro seems to be losing momentum. (but perhaps this is more
> pendulum swinging than it is a slowing of forward motion?).
>
> Along these same lines, anthropologists seems to often have hostility
> toward psychologists. I have watched a number of attacks on psychology by
> anthropologists. A favorite was a rather eloquent talk given by an anthro
> grad student about how the field of psychology assumes an "hypostatized
> subject". I happen to agree with her argument, but don't agree with her
> takeaway - to banish psychology from the social sciences. I see this kind
> of critique as one side of a two-sided stupidity, where each side
> criticizes the other side without seeing that the other side has something
> that their side lacks. (and American politics is dominated by the same type
> of thinking).
>
> I'm a little less familiar with the other side - that of Psychology, but
> from what I've seen, the idea of an Ethnographic Psychology would really be
> appreciated only by a small number of fringe Psychological researchers.
> Just thinking of it would make most psychological researchers run and hide
> at the thought of poor internal validity and reliability.
>

Psychology itself is multi-disciplinary.  Developmental psychologists are a
minority.   Many academics who work in psychology have not even heard of
Vygotsky.


>
> It seems that these academic fields develop a center of gravity that makes
> it very difficult for anything not in close orbit to be considered to be
> real and worthwhile. And so sure, disciplines have their value as a means
> of specialization of methods and such, but what I am objecting to is a
> different kind of discipline - the kind that excludes combinations that
> appear to core researchers in the field to be unrecognizable.
>

Apropos to of the thesis of implicit mediation.


>
> Mike has two early pieces that speak directly to this problem and, imho,
> make these points quite nicely (much better than above). The first is a
> chapter titled "Ethnographic Psychology of Cognition - So Far" in George
> Spindler's book The Making of Psychological Anthropology. Here is a long
> url to the google book (which is worth looking at solely for the picture of
> Mike in it circa 1975!):
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=8NAh8MqAO_8C&pg=PA612&lpg=PA612&dq=rockefeller+university+ethnographic+psychology&source=bl&ots=IUbReJGeiL&sig=fEqik0Wptm0VMu9w0DR6UYm19NU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R8PsUYm2C8mzyAHloIGgBQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rockefeller%20university%20ethnographic%20psychology&f=false
> And the second is titled "Toward an Experimental Anthropology of
> Education":
>
> http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3195588?uid=3739928&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102483831431
>
> Sorry for the long urls (haven't figured out tiny url yet). (and
> maybe someone else can make the pdf's available? I didn't want to infringe
> on copyrights).
>
> So let me re-ask my question a bit more directly:
>
> Mike, what happened to the departments (committees? groups?) that were
> called Experimental Anthropology and Ethnographic Psychology?
> And maybe they had a less certain existence to begin with; so, in what ways
> did they exist in the first place? Were these departments or
> sub-departments or committees or working groups? And were they funded?
>

Apropos to a theme in Mike's 5D projects and elsewhere, i.e. the ecology of
these projects/activities.


>
> And what followed from these two pieces you authored? Both pieces suggest
> that they are only preliminary, did either of these concepts/fields get
> picked up anywhere else? (I assume that they did in other guises, but I
> feel that, despite running in the circles where one would expect to find
> these combinations, I haven't seen/heard these terms used - but this may be
> due to my ignorance...).
>
> Very curious.
> -greg
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 10:18 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Greg, I think that the answer is that these disciplines exist, but exist
> > alongside a myriad of other such specialised disciplines, contributing to
> > the fragmented image of the fragmented world we live in, which is
> presented
> > by academia. What Vygotsky and Luria and Leontyev were offering was a
> > General Psychology, as a foundation for a general, *interdisciplinary*
> > science of human life. Nothing wrong with specialisation of course.
> Science
> > is impossible without it. But Psychology, as the founders of CHAT
> imagined
> > it, was interdisciplinary, I believe, rather than a discipline which
> > defended its boundaries against encroachment, and carved out a niche for
> > itself.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> > Greg Thompson wrote:
> >
> >> What ever happened to Ethnographic Psychology or Experimental
> >> Anthropology?
> >> In today's intellectual climate in Psychology and Anthropology, they
> feel
> >> like oxymorons, or even impossibilities (and perhaps to some very
> >> few, "cutting edge").
> >> Seems like we're just going around in circles...
> >> -greg
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:34 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Here is a review I wrote some years ago about Luria's Nature of Human
> >>> Conflicts. It summarizes and provides illustrations of some of the
> issues
> >>> we have been discussing while introducing others.
> >>> Note that a few years ago, the book did appear in Russian based on
> >>> reconstruction of the original
> >>> manuscript by Victor Belopolsky. It is my impression that the book is
> >>> little known or appreciated in Russia but I might be mistaken.
> >>> For what its worth
> >>> mike
> >>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 3:28 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hi BJ-- I will get the article reviewing luria referred to in earlier
> >>>> message next.
> >>>>
> >>>> There is an attachment here.  Call it, Cole Review of Nature of Human
> >>>> Conflicts and put it under the Nature of Human Conflicts on the Luria
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Pubs
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> page and on the page "about" luria.
> >>>>
> >>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >>>> From: Brittany Loy <brittanyloy0217@pointloma.edu**>
> >>>> Date: Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:02 AM
> >>>> Subject: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
> >>>> To: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> attached
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> > ------------
> >
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> > http://marxists.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<
> http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>