[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: English version of Cultural Model

Wed Jul 8 10:59:46 PDT 2015

Paul, Gregg, Mike and all,

Everett Rogers, who I am coming to like more and more, suggests that innovation, which I guess I am using as a stand in for newness, does not come so much from the size of the group as the structure of the group - that is do they have a smaller group that they give and time and resources to experiment and then the status to disseminate the newness to the larger social group.

Rogers also differentiates between centralized diffusion of innovations and decentralized diffusion of innovations.  In centralized diffusion of innovation the core experimenters are considered to have specific status within the society and any innovation must progress top down from these institutional/social groups.  I like the Finnish Activity Theory reading on this (and let me be clear I am a novice on this and I get it more from Hakkarainen than Engestrom) that experimenters then have to work or find a way to convince these top down institutional gatekeepers of the value of the innovation to the larger society (something Rogers found it was very difficult for outsiders to actually do, making me question this idea of training others outside of the cultural group perhaps speaking to Paul's post.

Decentralized innovation is much more difficult in static communities but I think is more possible in more targeted specific groups.  This Rogers suggests is dependent on a non-hierarchical development of innovations, passing both experimentation and dissemination of positive developments back and forth between group members rather than depending of on top down.  The danger in this is that all members of the group have to be able to work together in managing both the experimental and the diffusion processes.  Rogers suggests this for instance occurs in heavily agricultural communities, and reading some of the history of agricultural reform in South America this sounds extremely plausible.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Dr. Paul C. Mocombe
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 1:43 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: Madhere, Serge
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: English version of Cultural Model

Mike,

What I am interested in is the HOW would the new come from within a community of novices?  W.E.B Du Bois (1803) suggested his "talented tenth" program for black america.  That is, the talented tenth of black america educated in western society would be the new leaders of the community leading them to a "new" modernity without racism (as the old modernity was built of the intellectual inferiority of the so-called negro) .  E. Franklin Frazier (1936) argued instead they became a simulacra of white folks, "the black bourgeoisie."  Carter g. Woodson (1933) took it further and argued they became miseducated.  

Historically speaking, in the african diaspora, the majority of the african novices in modernity did not create anything new.  The majority reproduced the discourse and discursive practices of their former colonial masters, what frantz fanon called black - skinned white masked individuals.

Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> </div><div>Date:07/08/2015  12:56 PM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> </div><div>Cc: "Madhere, Serge" <smadhere@howard.edu> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: English version of Cultural Model </div><div> </div>I have no idea where you get your reading of LSV and creativity, Greg. I am not sure who the person with the correct interpretation of Vygotsky is, so can't help there.With respect to his ideas on creativity many knowledgeable folk are "present" on xmca and can perhaps help.

I think I might be able to  provide an answer that accords with my understanding to the question you pose. Your question :

*Can we imagine the "new" coming from within a community (of novices!) rather than from without? *

We do not have to imagine this happening in so far as as direct observation is infused with imagining. We can rely upon empirical data. In  *Cultural Psychology *and elsewhere I have turned to the work of Rose and Felton
(1955) on creation and diffusion of culture in small groups, work which has been extended in Schaller and Crandall (2004). Very bare bones but it seems to be an illustration of the "new" coming from within a community of novices. I have taken these bare bones and added to them Gary Allen Fine's description of the formation of idioculture and applied that idea to watching the genesis of a new 5thDimension from rumors of one that existed once somewhere by people in a new her and now. Seems like I see a thread of joint mediated action-in-activity running from its bare bones to to its live performance.

Also seems like a way to approach the study of language emergence Nicaraguan sign, a contested history.

mike

PS-- Rose and Felton attached. Do not know if a pdf of the book exists.

someoneone calling our "wildfire is down" and

On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 8:47 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> A colleague was just telling me of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book on 
> the Haitian Revolution, *Silencing the Past: Power and the Production 
> of History*. One of the things that he mentioned was that Trouillot 
> points to the general non-recognizability of what happened in Haiti - 
> here was the first black republic and the first central American 
> nation to declare independence from colonialism and yet almost no one had written about it.
> In the historical consciousness (of North Americans), it was as if it 
> never happened - an "unthinkable history". At the time of its 
> happening, it was truly unthinkable - notions of liberty among a Black 
> populace was an impossible thing for white Europeans to imagine.
>
> And yet, it happened.
>
> In connection with questions about "the end in the beginning" and the
> (seeming?) necessity of the expert-novice relationship, I wonder if 
> this might be a blind spot for Vygotsky-ian theorizing vis a vis 
> creativity, innovation, and the "new"?
>
> With respect to Haiti, it seems like something new is coming into 
> being. So then, how do we imagine this new-ness of being? The default 
> Vygotsky-ian approach seems to be that the new development comes from 
> the already-fully-formed. In the case of Haiti, this could lead down 
> the unfortunate path of seeing the Haitian situation (the new) as 
> being dependent upon the European colonizers (the fully-formed). This 
> seems to me, in a sense, to return us to the view that there was 
> "nothing new" in the Haitian revolution.
>
> This is a potential blind spot that I was pointing to with Packer's 
> piece as well as in the case of Nicaraguan sign language. Can we 
> imagine the "new" coming from within a community (of novices!) rather 
> than from without?
>
> I'd welcome corrections here to my thinking about Vygotsky, CHAT, 
> and/or Haiti. Please.
>
> -greg
>
> 
>
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe < 
> pmocombe@mocombeian.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Dr. Madhere  has provided the English version of the kreyol charts I 
> > sent in a previous email.  I am waiting for the paper.
> >
> >
> > Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II
> >
> > <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: "Madhere, Serge"
> > <smadhere@Howard.edu> </div><div>Date:07/04/2015  9:36 AM  
> > (GMT-05:00)
> > </div><div>To: pmocombe@mocombeian.com </div><div>Subject: English 
> > version of Cultural Model </div><div> </div>Mr Mocombe,
> >
> >
> > As you requested, please find attached the English version of the 
> > slides from my model on culture and education.
> >
> >
> > Serge Madhere PhD
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>

-- 

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible. N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*