[Xmca-l] Re: G. H. Mead and Harvey Sacks

[Greg Thompson]

Mike,

Thanks for the Dilthey and Mead connection.

Funny, I went to google it but accidentally typed in "Dilthey and Dewey"
and was surprised to find one of the first hits was "The Anthropology of
Experience" - a summary of a book by Victor Turner and F. Bruner, and it
also happens to be the name of a class that I'm teaching this fall (I
discovered this book shortly after I had decided on the title of the class
- or so I thought).

Anyway, when I finally corrected my search and searched for "Dilthey and
Mead", at the bottom of the page I found a like to an XMCA post in 2013 by
one Greg Thompson, asking about links from Vygotsky to Dilthey (for those
interested in that thread, here it is:
http://xmca.ucsd.edu/yarns/14853?keywords=) (oh, and btw, kudos to those
managing the listserve - it is much easier to read through entire threads
than it used to be - very cool!).

Michael notes in his post in that thread that it was William James who
suggested that Mead go to study with Dilthey, but Michael notes that he
(Mead?) never got his PhD while there. I also came across another piece
that said that Mead took a couple classes from Dilthey but never
acknowledged Dilthey in any of his work. Maybe just forgot about him.

Speaking of forgetting, to my surprise, there in my post from two years ago
I found the title of the book after which I recently unwittingly had named
my class - the Anthropology of Experience. Is it just me or is forgetting
an important part of academic work?

As Michael Glassman noted in his comment - very incestuous group of ideas
here.

-greg


On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 7:38 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the Kenneth Burke connection, Mike. Fascinating. Vygotsky, if I
> am not mistaken, uses the metaphor of being “on stage” in human
> interaction? Langacker uses precisely the same term in his latest work,
> which attempts to apply cognitive grammar to the actual use of language in
> real time. This is late in coming from cognitive linguistics, but seems to
> tap into a something rich with potential, not just for how we use language,
> but how we learn it and how language changes over time. The point you make
> about the technologies we have to analyze language use is a good one.
> Henry
>
> > On Jul 13, 2015, at 6:29 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Harvey Sach's was also famous for his "seeming obscurity", Henry.
> > Its difficult to describe a dynamic tangle in linear language.
> >
> > In thinking about the levels of analysis said to differentiate Mead and
> > Sachs (the first more macro, the other more micro) it is probably
> > worthwhile to keep in mind the different technologies for representing
> the
> > phenomena when communicating with others about them.
> > Harvey work the top end of digital recording as it existed when he was
> > working, and ethnomethodologists depend hugely on their work for being
> able
> > to make the fleeting repeatable. Mead did not have talking movies and if
> he
> > had a tape recorder, it was an early model.
> >
> > The link to symbolic interactionism is one that it seems all chat-minded
> > folks might keep in mind. It brings us around to Kenneth Burke and
> > dramatism, a topic of direct interest to several on the list, but rarely
> > discussed.
> >
> > Mead, it seems interesting to note, got his PhD in Germany with Dilthey
> (as
> > I recall), the alter-ego of Vygotsky's vision of an explanatory
> psychology.
> >
> > Hmmm, what is there some sort of family resemblance here?
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 4:24 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I followed Ellen’s suggestion, went to the Mead Project, found
> Prefactory
> >> Remarks to Mead’s “The Philosophy of the Present” and found this:
> >>
> >> "As I look back I can see that a great deal of the seeming obscurity of
> >> Mr. Mead's expression was due to the fact that he saw something as a
> >> problem which had not presented itself at all to the other minds. There
> was
> >> no common language because there was no common object of reference. His
> >> problem did not fall into the categories and classifications of either
> >> idealism or realism. He was talking about something which the rest of us
> >> did not see.”
> >>
> >> Compare that to the “saying” that always appears at the end of Mike
> Cole’s
> >> posts:
> >>
> >> 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”
> >>
> >> Interesting.
> >>
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Jul 13, 2015, at 1:32 PM, Ellen Scully-Russ <scullyru@gwu.edu>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Michael - others
> >>>
> >>> This is a great site for all things Mead ---
> >>> http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/
> >>>
> >>> If you go to the project inventory and then to the M's, you will find
> an
> >>> extensive list of Mead's publications with links to the text.
> >>>
> >>> Enjoy....
> >>>
> >>> Ellen
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 11:34 AM, Glassman, Michael <
> glassman.13@osu.edu
> >>>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Taking a first look at the article there is something that, I am
> really
> >>>> confused about, maybe others can help clear up this mystery.  Almost
> all
> >>>> the work cited in the article comes from the book Mind, Self and
> >> Society -
> >>>> which was published posthumously by his students.  I was also told in
> >>>> graduate school Mead didn't publish very much on its own.  Yet a few
> >> years
> >>>> ago I went to a Mead archive (it is no longer open, I wish I could
> >> remember
> >>>> the link, it is actually back somewhere in the xmca archive - search
> >> Mead
> >>>> if you are interested) which included a number of articles including
> >>>> contemporaneous reviews and rejoinders.  I read a few of them and they
> >> were
> >>>> really, really good - and I got a much better understanding of what
> >> Blumer
> >>>> came to call symbolic interactionism.
> >>>>
> >>>> I would also argue against the author's interpretation of Mead.  In
> the
> >>>> end he was an instrumental Pragmatist and was focused on process.
> >>>>
> >>>> Anyway, anybody who has insight please let me know.
> >>>>
> >>>> 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 Greg Thompson
> >>>> Sent: Monday, July 13, 2015 11:20 AM
> >>>> To: xmca-l@ucsd.edu
> >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] G. H. Mead and Harvey Sacks
> >>>>
> >>>> Interesting article by George Psathas about G. H. Mead and Harvey
> Sacks
> >> if
> >>>> anyone is interested:
> >>>> http://www.todayscience.org/SST/article/sst.v1i1p24.pdf
> >>>>
> >>>> -greg
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Ellen Scully-Russ, Ed.D.
> >>> Associate Professor, Human and Organizational Learning
> >>> The Graduate School of Education and Human Development
> >>> The George Washington University
> >>> 44983 Knoll Square, Suite 147
> >>> Ashburn, VA 20147
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Both environment and species change in the course of time, and thus
> > ecological niches are not stable and given forever (Polotova & Storch,
> > Ecological Niche, 2008)
>
>
>


-- 
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