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

Tue Jul 14 03:27:16 PDT 2015

By coincidence, someone just sent me a link to https://vimeo.com/57250619 which is a talk by Nikolai Veresov, with whom I'd been unfamiliar. He emphasizes LSV's integration of his love for theater and his insistence on the drama of everyday life as a principal tension in human development. 

In case you're interested, I also make these points in:

Smagorinsky, P. (2011). Vygotsky's stage theory: The psychology of art and the actor under the direction of perezhivanie. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 18, 319-341. Available at http://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/MCA/MCA2011.pdf 

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2015 9:38 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: G. H. Mead and Harvey Sacks

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.ed
>>>> u]
>> 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)