[Xmca-l] Re: bildung and obuchenie

Mon Jun 16 08:11:15 PDT 2014

Yes, but I am uncomfortable with the term 'serious' here. For me the defining form of adult playful interaction is light hearted, free-wheeling social chat among friends (though I am happy to accept that other forms of adult playfulness are available!). This may be 'serious' in the sense that it plays a very important role in holding communities together but I don't think it is experienced as serious (come on guys, we really need to get back to our playful interaction). The lightness of attachment to personal perspectives, intentions etc. which is a necessary condition for being open to other possibilities just doesn't feel serious (even if it is). I am also not sure that it is helped by being studied, observed or thought about too much.

The unlived life is not worth examining.

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Larry Purss
Sent: 16 June 2014 15:56
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: bildung and obuchenie

Greg, Rod,

Thanks for this article exploring bildung as *serious play*.
The distinction which Ricoeur explores between *socius* and *neighbour* seems to offer an entry into moral stances as *staying open to the other* and moving away from *having* re-presentations of the already formed.

It seems the notion of *serious play* as holding one's perspective lightly [in contrast to frivolous play] and remaining open to alterity and the other [Gadamer's notion of *fusions of horizons* as entering play] expands and deepens the seriousness of the understanding of play in developmental theory. Play moves beyond a particular stage of development to become developmentally emergent within all of life's engagements. This notion of *serious* play within a dialogue with *socius* also transforms the notion of *socius as roles* [as Ricouer explores this distinction].
Serious play moves *beyond* socius and structural relations AS *systems*

Larry

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Rod Parker-Rees < R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:

> I was thinking much the same, Gregg.
> Stephens presents bildung as being a fundamentally social process -
> the self is built out of relationships with others and as we engage
> with others we also come to know more about who we are. I would argue
> that all understanding is essentially social (having a feeling for how
> what we know is known and felt by others) but that this is
> particularly central to our understanding of our 'self'. From this
> perspective we can only understand ourselves by building our awareness
> of how we are experienced by others and playful interactions (social
> chat, hanging out) is more effective for this than more remote forms
> of study. I learned about obuchenie in the course of a wonderful (VERY
> hot) summer school near Moscow which focused on Vygotsky's concept of
> play. I learned that Russian understandings of education have a much
> wider, tanglier connection into the persons teaching and learning than
> is common in the UK and the USA - which may be why Russians are more
> likely to describe themselves as students of someone who was a student
> of someone who was a student of Vygotsky (for example) - being
> someone's student means you have had an opportunity to get to know
> more of the person than just what is contained in published works. I
> think the same is true of 'character building' (though I share Gregg's
> reservations about the history of this) in English public schools
> where people pay for the company their children will keep as much as
> for the quality of the teaching - and the products of particular schools can be quite distinctive and recognisable!
>
> I am impressed by how much is packed into such a short article!
>
> All the best,
>
> Rod
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Greg Thompson
> Sent: 16 June 2014 06:25
> To: xmca-l@ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] bildung and obuchenie
>
> In reading the article I just mentioned (in Anthropology and Education
> Quarterly), I got to thinking that bildung seems very similar to obuchenie.
> I asked a Russian professor who happened to be in a classroom before a
> class I was teaching and she described a concept that seemed very
> similar to bildung. From what I could gather, obuchenie has the same
> sense of "cultivation" that seems to be at the heart of bildung. And
> of course I don't mean "cultivation" in the high cultural sense of being a "cultivated"
> person (although this might have been part of what the early authors
> writing about "bildung" had in mind) rather I mean the idea of a full
> development of the human, not merely the dumping of information into
> the individual.
>
> Anyone have any sense about overlap between these concepts?
> Are they as similar as they seem to me?
> If different, then how so?
>
> And I wonder how people would feel about the term "character
> education" as an English analogue to the German bildung and the Russian obuchenie?
>
> Yes, yes, yes, I know that this aligns with politics that make many
> people sick to their stomach, but frankly, I'm interested in imagining
> a politics that isn't so provincial as the American Left and Right so
> I'm always looking for politically polyvalent concepts. What do you
> think? Could this be a concept that can work in politically polar opposite communities?
>
> -greg
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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