[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis?

[Martin John Packer]

I think you need to be careful to distinguish between "situation" and "social situation of development," Andy. LSV is very consistent in proposing that adult and child live in the same world, but relate to it differently.  To repeat the excerpt I quoted earlier: LSV writes of "the same environmental conditions" and "the same situation"...

"How can one explain why exactly the same environmental conditions exert three different types of influence on these three different children? It can be explained because each of the children has a different attitude to the situation. Or, as we might put it, each of the children experienced the situation in a different way. .... So it appears that, depending on the fact that the same situation had been experienced by the three children in three different ways, the influence which this situation exerted on their development also turns out to be different."

While in the Problem of Age he writes...

"We must admit that at the beginning of each age period, there develops a completely original, exclusive, single, and unique relation, specific to the given age, between the child and reality, mainly the social reality, that surrounds him. We call this relation the social situation of development at the given age."

.. and that "the social situation of development is nothing other than a system of relations between the child of a given age and social reality."

He is consistent: there is *one* social reality, one world. But different ways of relating to that reality.

Martin

On Oct 13, 2014, at 8:36 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> This is my last post on this question, Martin, just to clarify that "situation" is not the same as "environment," in that is specifically refers to the relation between the environment and the subject. OK, I was speaking loosely in using a colloquial expression. I should know better. But "situation" is a precise word, and "social situation of development" is even more precise. Not the same as "environment." See "Problem of Age" on this.
> 
> But nonetheless, Martin, our exchange does highlight how easy it is to misconstrue someone's word on this topic.
> 
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> 
> 
> Martin John Packer wrote:
>> No, Andy, that's not OK.  What I was saying, and what LSV said, was that the three children live in "exactly the same environmental conditions," "the same situation." I think it is a grave error - though a  common one - to think that talk of "the world a person lives in" suggests that each person lives in a different world. That is very evidently *not* what LSV was saying. He is *not* saying that each child lives in a different world. He's *not* even saying that each child lives in a different situation. He says explicitly the opposite: they are all living in the *same* situation, the *same* environment. The *same* world. I would be willing to grant that different cultures amount to different worlds, or at least different worldviews (there is a debate in anthropology right now about this), but you seem to be talking about adults and children in the same culture. Of course there are differences between the psychology of an adult and the psychology of a child. From that you infer that they live in two different worlds? No - they have different ways of *relating* to the *same* world. 
>> Martin
>> 
>> On Oct 13, 2014, at 8:13 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>> 
>>  
>>> Martin,
>>> 5 minutes ago you were lecturing Robyn Babaeff on the distinction between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd child. I presume you could also tell us about the difference between the psychology of an adult and a child of this or that age. I thought that we had established that the point Vygotsky is expressing in a dozen different ways (in the hope of not being misconstrued) is that it is not the world as such but the relation between the person and the world, the significance of the world for the child, the child's orientation to the world, the child's situation, and I think you threw in the *duties* of the child/man, as something distinct from the expectations placed upon a child. To talk about "the world a person lives in" is just another one of the hundred different ways of formulating the same relation. OK?
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Martin John Packer wrote:
>>>    
>>>> Where did LSV draw a distinction between the child's world and the wider world, Andy?
>>>> 
>>>> So adults raise children in the wider world, but those children live somewhere else? Martin
>>>> 
>>>> On Oct 13, 2014, at 7:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>       
>>>>> I think that street kids and child soldiers, etc., like the oldest child in Vygotsky's case study, are kids who have been thrust into the adult world developmentally before their time. To accept that there is no fixed and firm line between the child's world and the wider world in which adults make a living, marry, raise children, vote and fight wars is not to deny the existence of the distinction.
>>>>> In any case, whatever you or I think, Vygotsky (who knew plenty of street kids) used this distinction.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Andy
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Martin John Packer wrote:
>>>>>           
>>>>>> Oh come, on Andy!  Where is this "adult world" that apparently children do not live in? Do they live, then, in a separate "child world"? If so, in which of these worlds do parents become alcoholics? Here in Bogotá there are children living in the streets. In Western Africa there are children dying of ebola. Which world do they live in, exactly?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Oct 13, 2014, at 6:28 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>                
>>>>>>> However, these kind of translations are quite unsuitable for characterising the position of a child. They are relevant only to the adult world. In the context of child-and-carers, I think "attitude" is just as good as "interpretation", "significance", etc., the various words Vygotsky uses to indicate the relation relevant at the child's stage of development.
>>>>>>>                      
>>>>>>                
>>>> 
>>>>       
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
> 
> 
>