Charles, Greg
Thank you for this emerging topic and theme of interdisciplinary
possibilities.
Charles, has there been an *historical effect* of your writing this article
on the journal *Psychiatry*.
The emergence of *family systems therapy* was strongly influenced by the
William Alanson White institute [for example Salvador Minuchin studied
there.
Psychoanalysis is also impacted through *interpersonal psychiatry* in its
relational turn.
A central motif emerging within this tradition is the understanding of
*anxiety* [as POSSIBLE or anticipated stress].
A central question becomes, "How do I [or we] make ourselves safe?"
How central is this question concerning *anxiety* as a factor that
motivates actions? I often ask this question when exploring communicative
praxis or pragmatic understandings. Many of the examples in the 12 issues
of the journal explored are exploring the possibility of [or avoidance of]
perceived anxiety.
Fascinating topic.
Thanks,
Larry
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Charles Bazerman <
bazerman@education.ucsb.edu> wrote:
Thanks for the Group Processes reference. I will have to wait until
after
travels this summer to get a hard copy, as the ecopy seems to be locked
down.
Peirce, I agree makes an important move by recognizing the importance of
interpretation, but despite looking at his works a number of times on the
recommendation of people I trust, I find he does not get us far enough.
This is what I have to say about him in my soon to be released volume A
Theory of Literate Action.
best,
Chuck
Peirce's semiotics with interpretation
Charles Peirce, among the founding generation of pragmatists,
looked most directly at language and semiotics, making some first steps
towards articulating the implications of a pragmatist view for language
and
language use. Most importantly, he recognized a major role for the
interpreting speaker and interpreting hearer in the meanings conveyed by
communication, rather than assuming meaning was immanent in an abstracted
language system (Peirce, 1958). It is people who attach meanings to
experienced worlds and issues of concern. This recognition of the
importance of interpretive processes might lead to an investigation of
how
differences in individuals and groups of individuals might influence the
bases and procedures of interpretation within specific situations
(potentially a psychological, sociological, anthropological and even
historical inquiry). Peirce, however, chose to seek clarity through a
semiotic taxonomy of the relations among signs, objects, and
interpretants
(t
hat is interpreted meanings), a taxonomy that he kept adjusting
throughout
his life. His account does suggest some of the instability of semiosis,
as
meanings are dynamically produced through interpretation, which is
potentially infinite; nonetheless, he seems to believe that this
instability can be contained by establishing an abstract philosophic
vocabulary about the relations of signs, objects, and interpretants. His
taxonomy does not provide any specific leads about how we might inquire
into the psychological or sociological variables of meaning making and
interpretation. In not pursuing the motives of the individual nor the
development of the individual in satisfying needs within the social and
material worlds, Peirce leaves us with a mystery of the individuality of
interpretation creating indeterminacy of meaning, with no way to get back
to the sources, needs, and mechanisms for meaning making. Yet it is these
underlying forces that drive all utterances including writin
g and lead to the proliferation of new texts, new genres, and new fields
of literate interaction. Pierce, therefore, does not yet provide us with
an
understanding of how and why people use language to produce the creative
inventions that are at the heart of the pragmatic worldview.
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 10:33 am
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Many thanks for this article - it is wonderful. And I totally agree
that
language-as-activity is the place to look for an interdisciplinary
science
of human behavior (and I'd agree that Vygotsky doesn't quite give us
enough
of a theory of language, but I might add Peirce to your additions of
Volosinov and Bakhtin).
When I started reading your article I thought for a minute, based on
the
list of scholars, that you were describing the Macy conferences held
between 1948 and 1953, published under the name Group Processes. These
were
an incredibly eclectic collection of scholars, including
anthropologists,
psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, biologists, mathematicians,
engineers, and linguists.
I found these to be particularly fascinating b.c. there aren't many
times
when you can actually read the words of advice that margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson gave to Erving Goffman - it really puts things in
perspective to see how much criticism was heaped on these geniuses
(perhaps
we should think of the criticism from others as a part of their
genius?).
Here is a link to the google books ref for the second volume:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Group_processes.html?id=goMIAQAAIAAJ
and here is a review of the second volume (on the bottom of the page -
not
the neuropharmacology one on LSD - although I think that was in the
same
series!):
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/19/2/173.2.full.pdf
Note that Volume 2 includes one of Bateson's earlier formulations of
the
problem of the message "This is Play". Fascinating to watch ideas
form...
And honestly I can't imagine a conference today approaching the
intellectual breadth of the Macy conferences. So maybe this isn't just
a
pendulum swinging closer and then further from interdisciplinarity.
Maybe
we are getting further and further away from the possibility of a true
and
lasting interdisciplinarity?
-greg
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Charles Bazerman <
bazerman@education.ucsb.edu> wrote:
You might look into the history of the journal Psychiatry, which was
part
of an attempt to reunify the social sciences around the problems of
living.
On the board were the founder of linguistic anthropology Edward
Sapir and
the founder of modern propaganda studies Harold Lasswell
took major roles alongside the founding editor, psychiatrist Harry
Stack
Sullivan. Its lead article of the first volume was in particular
Edward
Sapir ‘Why cultural anthropology needs the psychiatrist,’
(Psychiatry,
1938, 1: 1, 7–12). This was republished as
Edward Sapir (2001). Why Cultural Anthropology Needs the
Psychiatrist.
Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes: Vol. 64, No. 1,
pp.
2-10.
I have done an analysis of the early volumes Practically human: The
pragmatist project of the interdisciplinary journal Psychiatry, which
appeared in the initial issue of Linguistics and the Human
Sciences. LHS vol 1.1 2005: 15–38.
I am attaching it here as it raises the entire dilemma of the
fragmenting
of the social sciences and the attempts to reunify them.
Chuck Bazerman
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 8:49 am
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
To: Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>, "eXtended Mind,
Culture,
Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Carol,
I like your suggestion that psych students should take anthropology
courses, and would add that anthro students should take psych
courses
as
well so that they don't see psychological researchers as a kind of
bogeyman.
But maybe there needs to be something more since this can create a
Necker
cube either/or effect - where the student feels that these are two
incommensurate fields and that they must choose one or the other.
Maybe everyone should take a course in Cultural Psychology? (okay,
that's
not going to happen, but it would be a nice way to introduce the
concept of
"interdisciplinarity" in a more serious manner).
-greg
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 8:00 AM, <carolmacdon@gmail.com> wrote:
Well I was thinking about that claim this morning and I think
that our
psychology dept within itself offers very different courses now
but
all
under the same department. In education we have very different
courses
under the rubric of psychology in education eg cultural
psychology in
education. Of course we think that activity theory is where it's
all
at but
we are minuscule proportion of the psychologists in the country.
Of
course
I would be happy to work in linguists and anthropologists but
psychologists
here are not able to make that leap. Perhaps if psych students
were
advised
to take anthroplolgy
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!
-----Original Message-----
From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
Sender: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 07:36:56
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
I imagine Nicholas would find mikes suggestion of ethnographic
psychology
to be BORING. Why no call for the integration of philosophy or
other
humanities into the social sciences?
This sounds to me like the very old argument that the social
sciences need
to be more like the natural sciences.
Old whine, new bottle...
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 23, 2013, at 3:25 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>
wrote:
The NY Times ran an op-ed on Sunday that might be of interest
to
people
dissatisfied with the current state of academic disciplines:
Gray Matter
Let's Shake Up the Social Sciences
By NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS
Published: July 19, 2013
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when I was a graduate student, there
were
departments of natural science that no longer exist today.
Departments of
anatomy, histology, biochemistry and physiology have disappeared,
replaced
by innovative departments of stem-cell biology, systems biology,
neurobiology and molecular biophysics. Taking a page from
Darwin, the
natural sciences are evolving with the times. The perfection of
cloning
techniques gave rise to stem-cell biology; advances in computer
science
contributed to systems biology. Whole new fields of inquiry, as
well
as
university departments and majors, owe their existence to fresh
discoveries
and novel tools.
In contrast, the social sciences have stagnated. They offer
essentially
the same set of academic departments and disciplines that they
have
for
nearly 100 years: sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology
and
political science. This is not only boring but also
counterproductive,
constraining engagement with the scientific cutting edge and
stifling the
creation of new and useful knowledge. Such inertia reflects an
unnecessary
insecurity and conservatism, and helps explain why the social
sciences
don't enjoy the same prestige as the natural sciences.
One reason citizens, politicians and university donors
sometimes lack
confidence in the social sciences is that social scientists too
often miss
the chance to declare victory and move on to new frontiers. Like
natural
scientists, they should be able to say, "We have figured this
topic
out to
a reasonable degree of certainty, and we are now moving our
attention to
more exciting areas." But they do not.
I'm not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and
investigating classic topics like monopoly power, racial
profiling and
health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad
for
markets, that people are racially biased and that illness is
unequally
distributed by social class. There are diminishing returns from
the
continuing study of many such topics. And repeatedly observing
these
phenomena does not help us fix them.
So social scientists should devote a small palace guard to
settled
subjects and redeploy most of their forces to new fields like
social
neuroscience, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology and
social
epigenetics, most of which, not coincidentally, lie at the
intersection of
the natural and social sciences. Behavioral economics, for
example,
has
used psychology to radically reshape classical economics.
Such interdisciplinary efforts are also generating practical
insights
about fundamental problems like chronic illness, energy
conservation,
pandemic disease, intergenerational poverty and market panics.
For
example,
a better understanding of the structure and function of human
social
networks is helping us understand which individuals within social
systems
have an outsize impact when it comes to the spread of germs or
the
spread
of ideas. As a result, we now have at our disposal new ways to
accelerate
the adoption of desirable practices as diverse as vaccination in
rural
villages and seat-belt use among urban schoolchildren.
It is time to create new social science departments that
reflect the
breadth and complexity of the problems we face as well as the
novelty of
21st-century science. These would include departments of
biosocial
science,
network science, neuroeconomics, behavioral genetics and
computational
social science. Eventually, these departments would themselves be
dismantled or transmuted as science continues to advance.
Some recent examples offer a glimpse of the potential. At
Yale, the
Jackson Institute for Global Affairs applies diverse social
sciences
to the
study of international issues and offers a new major. At
Harvard, the
sub-discipline of physical anthropology, which increasingly
relies on
modern genetics, was hived off the anthropology department to
make the
department of human evolutionary biology. Still, such efforts are
generally
more like herds splitting up than like new species emerging. We
have
not
yet changed the basic DNA of the social sciences. Failure to do
so
might
even result in having the natural sciences co-opt topics rightly
and
beneficially in the purview of the social sciences.
New social science departments could also help to better train
students
by engaging in new types of pedagogy. For example, in the natural
sciences,
even college freshmen do laboratory experiments. Why is this
rare in
the
social sciences? When students learn about social phenomena, why
don't they
go to the lab to examine them - how markets reach equilibrium,
how
people
cooperate, how social ties are formed? Newly invented tools make
this
feasible. It is now possible to use the Internet to enlist
thousands
of
people to participate in randomized experiments. This seems
radical
only
because our current social science departments weren't organized
to
teach
this way.
For the past century, people have looked to the physical and
biological
sciences to solve important problems. The social sciences offer
equal
promise for improving human welfare; our lives can be greatly
improved
through a deeper understanding of individual and collective
behavior. But
to realize this promise, the social sciences, like the natural
sciences,
need to match their institutional structures to today's
intellectual
challenges.
Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Yale
University,
is a co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:
xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 9:16 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
Greg, I think you are completely right with the way you
describe the
interdisciplinary blindness inquestion. Michael Hedelberger (for
yet
another example) referred to the "folk psychology" of natural
scientists,
neuroscientists in particular, when they unwittingly step
outside their
discipline and talk about psychology instead of brains.
Also, I think you are completely right in disagreeing with
suggestions
to replace the relevant interdisciplinary gulf with a dichotomy
beween
thinking and speaking, and insisting that actions always include
thinking
and that speaking is an action. Otherwise, we are not talking
about
actions, but behaviour. Behaviour is the result of abstracting
actions away
from consciousness. And thinking cannot be abstracted away from
voluntary
motor actions which was the topic of Luria's book, of course.
And this is the point isn't it? Whether a sensible social
science
can
abstract from (individual) consciousness and rely only on
objectified forms
of mind (such as the recorded word), and whether a sensible
psychology can
absrtact away from the formative processes of the practical and
material
objectifications of thought inherited by every individual from
their
societal environment.
Andy
Greg Thompson wrote:
Michael,
I'm still having a hard time figuring out how any instance of
speaking
or
even thinking about speaking is not action.
But Philip's post suggests a slightly different way of
thinking
about
the
discourse/action distinction.
Perhaps the discourse/action distinction is better captured by
individual
vs. group than by ideal vs. material, with discourse being
the group
level
phenomena that makes certain ways of thinking about things
more
or less
available, and action being the way that people use discourse
in
actual
practice (and which, in the collective, becomes discourse).
Discourse is
the thing that circulates in society and is instantiatable in
any
individual instance of bringing discourse to life by action
(whether
speaking or doing).
I'd be happy to talk Treyvon, but maybe better to stick to the
question
of
why a google search of "ethnographic psychology" turns up
only a
handful of
articles and no insitutional centers? This is a fantastic
idea -
so why
hasn't it caught hold?
Thinking through discourse and action (which have to be two
sides
of the
same coin), "ethnographic psychology" doesn't take hold
because it
doesn't
fit with discourse or with action (and I would still prefer to
put these
together, b.c. in academia, let's face it, if discourse isn't
action,
then
we are doing a whole lotta nothing! But I'll keep them
separate in
order to
try them on). Where discourse includes the predominant ways of
thinking
about what psychology is and action involves things like
publishing in
actual journals that will allow one to keep one's job. The
configuration
that rules out "ethnographic psychology" is thus very
complex. I
don't
know
that changing discourse or actions is really going to change
things
unless
the supports of discourse and action are altered in some way.
And
I
don't
think it is just one single support that can be knocked out
(e.g.
capitalism). Rather, I think there are lot of interconnecting
supports
that
make "the way things are (e.g., no "ethnographic psychology")"
appear to
most to be right and good and true. These include such myriad
things as
language (in the broadest sense of Western languages, but
also in
the
more
specific sense of the arcane lingos of different disciplines),
institutitutional structures ("joint" appointments remain the
exception
in
most universities), sociopolitical arrangements, and, yes,
capitalism.
It
isn't a perfect impenetrable Althusserian structure, some of
the
supports
may contain contradictions that make them prone to collapse,
and
others
may
be less well interconnected. This is all just to say that
there
is hope,
but the challenge is to identify where the shaky supports are
and
to
figure
out how to encourage their collapse. And I'll do my part at
pointing
these
out.
So, yes, discourse and action are the place to start.
-greg
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 12:52 PM, White, Phillip <
Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu
wrote:
Michael, in response to your multiple questions here, i'm
going
to
hazard
a guess based on my experiences teaching children who are
learning a
second
language as well as teaching teachers how to teach second
language
learners.
for me, the communicative discourse drives our actions.
when working with second language learners, when the
learners had
language
supports, particularly visual and auditory, they were often
stronger in
mastering an activity. for example, in science when
comparing two
objects
and finding similarities and differences. if on the board
that
statement
was posted, "I noticed that _____________ was similar to
________________
because ___________________."
in time, i noticed that when the teachers were learning
teaching
strategies, and, say, i'd focus on utilizing open questions,
when i
provided them with a piece of paper with specific open
question
prompts,
they were more easily and more quickly able to change their
questioning
behaviors.
while the teachers knew the difference between a closed
question and
an
open question, they didn't have the language structures,
say, on
the
tip of
their tongue. as time passed and they became more fluent
with open
questions, then they were better able to control their
questioning
strategies, which also demanded that the students then had to
respond
with
more than "yes", "no" or other monosyllabic discourses.
my two bits.
phillip
Phillip White, PhD
Urban Community Teacher Education Program
Site Coordinator
Montview Elementary, Aurora, CO
phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
or
pawhite@aps.k12.co.us
________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [
xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
]
On
Behalf
Of Glassman, Michael [glassman.13@osu.edu]
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 12:16 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
There is, it seems to me, a really big problem, or divide,
that
has
been
haunting the issue of communicative discourse and action.
Which is primary? And I don't think this is a frivolous
question - and
the idea that it is in a constant cycle has a difficult time
working
because the question always comes up where do we as
researchers
enter
this
cycle?
Does communicative discourse drive our actions? And do we
change our
actions by changing communicative discourse?
Or does action drive our communicative discourse? And we
change
our
communicative discourse through changing our actions.
Do we change racism in America by getting people to change
their
communicative discourse about Treyvon Martin?
Or do we get people to engage in more just actions and allow
this to
lead
to a change in communicative discourse.
One of the difficulties with Vygotsky, at least from my
view, is
that
he
can be interpreted both ways, depending of course on what
you are
reading
and level of confirmation bias.
Michael
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
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
--
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