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

Tue Jul 14 10:05:08 PDT 2015

I have been reflecting on the way we "know" how to move through a flowing crowd as described by Mead. Also reflecting on the micro movement of conversational analysis.  
I am pondering this "constructive"  movement in relation to vygotsky's understanding that thought is not expressed in the word but is "completed" in the word. 
Where does meaning exist in this contrast between process and completion?

Does meaning reside in the relation of word and thought as a relation of "representation" BETWEEN thought and word continually constructing this relation of something as something else. (always new and novel and unique and singular construction of meaning). 

Or is the relation  to focus our attention that thought is COMPLETED in the word. One can speak of this relation AS the "becoming" coming to the "fore" in the notion of "therefore".  The unity of being and nonbeing. 
The relation of thought and word as not a relation of one "thing" standing in place of another "thing" as objects of interchange as representing each other. 
The relation of thought to word is  a process of becoming emerging into being/form. 

Buber describes this process of "becoming" coming to the "fore" as the process of this "unconscious" process becoming "conscious" the coming to the "fore" is a later higher development of focus.

In other words the unity of being and becoming and focus on the aspect of "becoming completed" as the process of coming into existence. 
Can empiricism measure this process or does it focus on the "representations" (the completed products) (UPON WHICH) the more inclusive unity of being/becoming ( more than just completed form) can become concealed.

Now once completed we "have" artifacts that have been completed and they become included (historically) as we are moving forward.   The relation of "being WITH becoming" is a unity but this unity includes the being of artifacts.

This is where the question of enculturation (bildung) as productive existence is an aspect of the unity OF being/becoming.
This being/existing is the being of "completed becoming."  Another way of recognizing completed becoming is as "traditions" that enter the "zone of meaning".
When we bring the completed products of becoming to the "fore" we have empiricism as what becomes "visible" to chart and measure. 

When we bring the process of becoming (in itself) to the "fore" we are bringing another epistemology and another aspect of ontology to the "fore" AS CONSCIOUS "therefore".

We can "prejudge" what becomes "therefore". We can focus upon either the completed products as primary (key) or we can focus upon the "coming/becoming" into "form" as the primary (key)

A third alternative is to focus on the UNITY upon which the completed products (of our acts) and the process of becoming "completed" are not two different representational elements (things) as something representing something. In other words not one completed word representing another completed word as representing "things" that already exist and can be observed as "facts".

It may be there exists a primary "world" that historically exists and through "bildung" we come to know the "meaning of" this world and it is possible to bring this aspect of the unity of being/becoming to the "fore" (through focus).

We can also bring to the "fore" (through focus) the micro movements of conversational analysis. This move focuses on the becoming aspect of the unity of being/becoming.

Historical focus and micro focus are intimately united. What we bring to the "fore" depends on our biases and traditions.

Mead focused on the  general while Sacks focused on the micro aspects of meaning coming into being.  
The question of the relation of thinking to the COMPLETION in the word can be generalized to the relation of thinking to the completion of artifacts in general.

Artifacts becoming formations as an unconscious primary "ground" UPON WHICH we come to focus our attention on various aspects of the unity of thinking with completed forms. (as figure).

Note what is figure and what is ground are not elements or predetermined substances. Each comes into being depending on where we focus our attention and   in bringing an aspect to the "fore"  as conscious awareness or as "thinking" what was previously figure recedes to the back "ground" 
The "key" is to question the notion of "completed" word and the place of this completed word within the micro and historically focused "subject matter".

Where does meaning reside? Our answers seem to hinge on this question

"traditions" (to be entered into) as counterpoints to micro analysis of the empirical.
Always to be "completed" in the zone of the "not yet but possibly"   coming into existence developing within historically constituted realms of focused attention.

The unity of being/becoming as a dance of the "not yet formed" and the "completed form" without end.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Peter Smagorinsky" <smago@uga.edu>
Sent: ‎2015-‎07-‎14 3:29 AM
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: G. H. Mead and Harvey Sacks

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)