[Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
lpscholar2@gmail.com
lpscholar2@gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 23:12:18 PDT 2015
Alfredo
I certainly had an experience undergoing the “readings” shared this month generated from the article focusing on "boundary objects". The other articles supporting this “reading” and the lively adventure we all undertook together.
I want to draw attention to the contrasting "traditions" [CHAT, pragmatism, phenomenology] that offered an opportunity to read each particular article "through" the structure and pattern of the other traditions. There may be a "place" for this type of activity as an integral experience.
Alfredo, I experience you as "reading" this way when you quoted Nancy and then went "beyond". You commented: "With thoughts about the body, the body always forces us to think farther, always too far: too far to carry on as thought, but never far enough to become a body" (p. 37).
That is, doing, being a body, carries us "too far to carry on (only) as thought, but never far enough to become (only, purely) body." Thus, there is not a real division between body and thinking, but a delay, which is but feature of their unity. In this regard, Nancy argues that bodies are about spacing (which is another way to say that being is about making place). Again space crops up as (subject) matter here. Dewey (1929, nature and experience) refers to that space between the doing and the undergoing in terms of "an adventure," where "the old self is put off and the new self is only forming."
So, if my thinking here makes sense, the challenge is to link this characterization of being as going through an adventure (an "advening" (from "advenire") of oneself to oneself, to use Claude Romano's terms) with that of activity (or collaborative projects) as collective and historical achievements that provide for the possibility of any experience to go on"
I will add my commentary to emphasize that the [subject] matter [to be integral] has the quality of both doing and undergoing and also THAT space which Dewey refers to in terms of “an adventure”.
It seems possible that each "tradition" emphasizes one aspect "doing" or "undergoing" or the "space” as more accentuated but the adventure includes an integral intelligence.
The imaginal is implicated in this adventure and Dewey's term "perception" [not to be confused with “recognizing] as FELT integral EXPERIENCE MAY BE A KEY ASPECT OF THIS ADVENTURE. In Nancy's words, not [only] thought, not [only] body but including "spacing". In other words "making place" [dwelling with] within the adventure.
This I experience as the
reading/perceiving adventure
alfredo,
thank you for such stimulating thinking out loud.
t
Sent from Windows Mail
From: mike cole
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2015 4:00 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
It is great of you to lead us in a wrap up of your paper, Alfredo. The
discussion sits in my active arena of attention because it opened up and
enriched so many different concerns.
We had acei thread nothank you that long ago focused on imagination. It might not be ain
bad idea to return to those threads and pick them up to see what can be
woven from them now. I, for example, have always considered the 5th D
Dimension as a boundary object even as I have
written about it as a tertiary artifact, or, for that matter, a personal
experience. In fact, i believe it could be said to be a terrific boundary
object for joint exploration among those who, like
myself, believe imagination to THE core process in human
experience/perezhivanie. But I think we could find the time to look back,
at this long thread, we would see that the word imagination (and
experience!) are used in somewhat different ways/have slightly different
meanings (if we could settle on what we meant by meaning!
How could all of that happen if imagination were not there picking up
dropped threads, making new ones, and then trying to "make something of it"
?
(Of course, now I have to imagine I can remember how to find that prior
discussion!)
A great learning experience for me.
Thanks for the two of you for taking the time to create the discussion.
That must be our record long thread.
mike
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:
> Thanks all for having brought this discussion to these heights. I am
> personally learning a lot, although it's been hard to keep up with it and
> deal with other everyday tasks.
>
> Thanks, Ritva, for emphasizing the links between the discussion and the
> article when they may had seemed to be no longer there. I just want to wrap
> up in a think-aloud fashion, and from my view, how the issues that have
> arisen in the discussion relate, but also expand, on the ideas in our
> article; as a learning exercise.
>
> In the last entry, Larry notes that we need to include an "imaginal"
> aspect, not just actions, as part of the larger units of experience(s) that
> bring both forth. So the challenge is to think, theorize, research both
> action and imagination as aspects of a common unit, and one that is not
> only psychological, but also and at the same time societal.
>
> Following that line of thinking, I want to bring attention back to
> "bodies" and "space", which feature prominently in our paper, by means of a
> quotation from Nancy (Corpus, 2008):
>
> "With thoughts about the body, the body always forces us to think farther,
> always too far: too far to carry on as thought, but never far enough to
> become a body" (p. 37).
>
> That is, doing, being a body, carries us "too far to carry on (only) as
> thought, but never far enough to become (only, purely) body." Thus, there
> is not a real division between body and thinking, but a delay, which is but
> feature of their unity. In this regard, Nancy argues that bodies are about
> spacing (which is another way to say that being is about making place).
> Again space crops up as (subject) matter here. Dewey (1929, nature and
> experience) refers to that space between the doing and the undergoing in
> terms of "an adventure," where "the old self is put off and the new self is
> only forming."
>
> So, if my thinking here makes sense, the challenge is to link this
> characterization of being as going through an adventure (an "advening"
> (from "advenire") of oneself to oneself, to use Claude Romano's terms) with
> that of activity (or collaborative projects) as collective and historical
> achievements that provide for the possibility of any experience to go on.
> David writes: "In a very important sense the ideal image of the painting
> exists long before any action at all is taken." So, although we may take
> the first-time-through perspective of the one (body) who goes through an
> experience, there is something on place (is on "place" the right word?)
> before she does/undergoes it. As Andy notes, playing is done in and through
> actions, although play, or the game, is not reducible to any single action.
> So play, as a societal feature or category, is larger; it is a method of
> organization. And, not many e-mails ago, we did notice Dewey's and
> Bentley's reference of experience as precisely that: a method of
> organization. But experience and activity are not the same thing; how are
> they different?
>
> So, it seems to me, the difference is not about substance. They both are
> about actions, concrete and material. The difference (between experience
> and activity) might be then about time. The notion of heterochrony that
> Lemke brought in his 2000 paper "scales of time" seems most appealing to me
> here, although I do not know of much work that has continued to develop
> research in terms of the diachronies and delays that may exist between
> history and experiences thereof (or rather there is lots of literature I
> don't yet know/understand properly). In any case, these loose ideas seem
> relevant for further understanding how creativity and imagination develop
> as part of (design, teaching/learning, etc) activities.
>
> Thanks,
> Alfredo
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of
> Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> Sent: 26 July 2015 16:55
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; Andy Blunden
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
>
> David,
>
> This answer to my struggle shifts or slants everything.
>
> If we cannot "reduce" or "abstract" actions from "having an experience"
> then to be explicit and clear we must also include some other factor that
> is "beyond" reducing having "an" experience to just actions. This other
> factor is "construal" or "imaginal" phenomena. Having an experience is an
> INTEGRAL EXPERIENCE including both the imaginal and actions.
>
> David the other relation is the unity of "construing" and
> "disclosing"/"undergoing" an experience (as a unity or integral phenomena.)
>
> The relation(s) of the imaginal to action and the slant from which we
> approach THIS unity (that cannot be reduced or abstracted) from having an
> experience.
> How we understand THIS integral phenomena that is extending "beyond"
> actions but must necessarily INCLUDE actions
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "David Kellogg" <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> Sent: 2015-07-25 10:58 PM
> To: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>; "eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
>
> I think that the word Vygotsky uses here is not so much "image" as
> "imagination" or perhaps "construal". Or rather, it is "image" but it isn't
> image in the sense of a photographic image but more in the sense of a
> Russian icon. That's why you can have an image of a game, and it's also why
> it is really only half true to say that the concept is built through
> actions. Painting isn't reducible to actions, and in a very important sense
> the ideal image of the painting exists long before any action at all is
> taken.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Wow! Nice quote Larry! I must add that to my collection of Hegel
> citations
> > (though actually I think it is an Engels quote)! I am not the only one
> who
> > insists that a concept is a unity of individual, universal and
> particular!
> >
> > The thing is, Larry, if we think of the concept of "game", how does the
> > child come to use "game" in a way that adults will understand and in turn
> > be able to react when adults use it? This is of course a protracted
> process
> > but it is through actions. In Thinking and Speech, Vygotsky explains
> > concept formation only in terms of actions, not any kind of hypothetical
> > mental images or dictionaries or mental filing systems or whatever. It is
> > all actions which are in one way or another organised around some
> artefact,
> > and in particular a word. At the most elementary level when an adult
> points
> > and says "That is a game!" that point-and-name is an action. But it is in
> > the whole bundle of actions around the word "game" that a child or an
> adult
> > learns to use the word correctly, to utter the word meaningfully and
> > coordinate their own actions with respect to the word. The words on their
> > own are nothing. They acquire meaning only through their use in
> > collaborative activity in which the learner participates in some way. The
> > problem is, of course, that not everyone in the world uses the word in a
> > uniform, consistent way.
> >
> > Andy
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> > On 25/07/2015 1:13 PM, Larry Purss wrote:
> >
> >> This "confusing struggle of different meanings" is of course nothing
> >> other than activity. That is how signs and situations acquire
> psychological
> >> meanings.
> >>
> >> In my continuing struggle that is definitely confusing I will share
> >> Vygotsky's own words on what a concept is:
> >>
> >> "A real concept is an IMAGE of an objective thing in all its complexity.
> >> Only when we recognize the thing in all its connections and relations,
> only
> >> when this diversity is synthesized in a word in an INTEGRAL IMAGE
> through a
> >> multitude of determinations, do we develop a concept. According to the
> >> teaching of dialectical logic, a concept INCLUDES not only the general
> but
> >> also the individual and particular.
> >> In contrast to contemplation, to direct knowledge of an object, a
> >> concept is filled with definitions of the object; it is the RESULT of
> >> rational processing of our existence AND it is mediated knowledge of the
> >> object. To think of some object with the help of a concept MEANS TO
> >> INCLUDE the GIVEN object in a complex SYSTEM of mediating connection and
> >> relations DISCLOSED in determinations of the concept"
> >> [Vygotsky, The Collected Works, Volume 5, Child Psychology, page 53]
> >>
> >> I felt my struggle I am going through may be relevant to others. In
> >> particular "when we recognize the thing in all its connections and
> >> relations .... THROUGH a multitude of DETERMINATIONS".
> >> THIS [thing] is synthesized "in a word" IN AN INTEGRAL IMAGE".
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 5:00 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:
> >> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Thanks Manfred. I think we are on the same page.
> >> This "confusing struggle of different meanings" is of
> >> course nothing other than activity. That is how signs
> >> and situations acquire psychological meanings, and
> >> children learn not only by observing but by
> >> participating in those activities.
> >> Andy
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >> On 25/07/2015 5:50 AM, Holodynski, Manfred wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Andy,
> >> thanks for your clarification. I now think I have
> >> understood your message. You are "travelling" in
> >> the social world and discussing Leontyev's
> >> understanding of the concept of objective meaning.
> >> I can now understand your critique that he might
> >> believe that something like an objective meaning
> >> may exist or can be extracted from an analysis of
> >> social interactions. Ok, if one is going to
> >> analyze what the essence of an "objective meaning"
> >> e.g. of the word "dog" is (and all the more of
> >> abstract terms such as feminism, social justice),
> >> then one will find oneself in a confusing struggle
> >> of different meanings that are also changing with
> >> time. So, the objective meaning of a word or
> >> concept is fuzzy and of many voices. Nevertheless,
> >> people are sometimes (:-) ) able to communicate
> >> their personal sense by using words and concepts.
> >> This is not a hopeless endeavor although it
> >> sometimes and for some people fails miserably.
> >> Your construction of a theory of collaborative
> >> projects is indeed a noteworthy proposal to deal
> >> with the societal emergence and change of the
> >> objective meanings of concepts that maintain the
> >> link between the social and psychological plane.
> >> Best Manfred
> >>
> >>
> >> Prof. Dr. Manfred Holodynski
> >> Institut für Psychologie in Bildung und Erziehung
> >> Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
> >> Fliednerstr. 21
> >> D-48149 Münster
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34311 <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34311>
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34310
> >> <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34310> (Sekretariat)
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34314
> >> <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34314> (Fax)
> >>
> >> http://wwwpsy.uni-muenster.de/Psychologie.inst5/AEHolodynski/index.html
> >> manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de
> >> <mailto:manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> >> Von:
> >> xmca-l-bounces+manfred.holodynski=
> >> uni-muenster.de@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >> <mailto:uni-muenster.de@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> >> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+manfred.holodynski
> >> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces%2Bmanfred.holodynski>=
> >> uni-muenster.de@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >> <mailto:uni-muenster.de@mailman.ucsd.edu>] Im
> >> Auftrag von Andy Blunden
> >> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 23. Juli 2015 16:26
> >> An: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Betreff: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary
> >> Objects
> >>
> >> Er: "macro-unit of activity", not "macro-unity".
> >> :( Andy
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >>
> >> On 24/07/2015 12:10 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Manfred, I am delighted to hear your voice
> >> again on this list.
> >> I understand what you are saying. I will try
> >> to better explain how I
> >> stand with A N Leontyev.
> >>
> >> I am a social theorist, that is I am
> >> interested in changing societal
> >> arrangements (to put it very politely), and I
> >> am one of few social
> >> theorists, properly so-called, who base
> >> themselves on Vygotsky's
> >> theories, and use Activity Theory as well. My
> >> position is a
> >> contradictory one because Vygotsky and
> >> Leontyev were psychologists
> >> (like
> >> you) and not social theorists. Social
> >> Theorists and Psychologists
> >> generally live in different buildings on the
> >> university campus, in
> >> different departments, publish in different
> >> journals, refer to
> >> different founding theorists, and altogether
> >> inhabit different
> >> universes. Social theorists have ideas about
> >> psychology, but generally
> >> not scientific ones, and vice versa.
> >> In my opinion, Vygotsky's ideas provide an
> >> excellent foundation for
> >> social theory because he introduced into human
> >> development and every
> >> interaction between two individuals a
> >> culturally produced sign. But he
> >> only went so far. He showed how people acted
> >> and developed within
> >> their social situation, but he did not tackle
> >> the problem of how that
> >> situation arose. Leontyev, by his discovery of
> >> the Activity as a
> >> macro-unity of activity, made an epoch-making
> >> development which opened
> >> CHAT to become a fully developed
> >> social-and-psychological theory. But
> >> what he said himself on questions of social
> >> theory was of very poor
> >> quality, as I said, "Neanderthal." Not the
> >> sort of ideas that would
> >> win any following among social theorists
> >> today. But he was after all a
> >> Psychologist and not a Social Theorist, so he
> >> is forgiven.
> >>
> >> Now, to your point. If I am not mistaken
> >> "objective meaning" is not a
> >> psychological category at all for Leontyev.
> >> Yes? And personal sense
> >> is, as you eloquently explain, a fundamental
> >> Psychological category.
> >> So if what I said were to be interpreted to
> >> say that personal sense is
> >> a subset of objective meaning, that would be
> >> quite wrong. While I
> >> accept (as I must) a categorical difference
> >> between material
> >> objects/processes and their reflection in my
> >> mind, I do not at all
> >> understand societal processes as
> >> nonpsychological processes. I try to
> >> conceive of them together in one unit, and I
> >> think I am on my own
> >> there (some Freudian/Phenomenologists aside).
> >> There remains of course the distinction
> >> between the individual
> >> (Einzeln) and the universal (Allgemein),
> >> mediated by the particular
> >> (Besonder). A human individual is something
> >> radically different from a
> >> number of individuals. For the human
> >> individual and how they erleben a
> >> social situation, I rely on my friends and
> >> collaborator-psychologists.
> >> I am interested in how the Activities go. In
> >> small part to avoid
> >> having arguments with followers of Leontyev I
> >> call activities
> >> "projects."
> >> So I reserve the right to say things about
> >> projects without a follower
> >> of Leontyev correcting me. "Project" is not a
> >> mysterious or esoteric
> >> concept; every English-speaker knows what a
> >> project is, and if there
> >> is any confusion with projects as defined by
> >> Existentialists, I call
> >> them "collaborative projects." (i.e., people
> >> usually join them, not
> >> create them). These include capitalist firms,
> >> political parties,
> >> sporting clubs or indeed whole sports, a
> >> family, a professional career
> >> - all those things which gives our lives
> >> mening while we build the
> >> world we and our children must live in, what
> >> Fedor Vasilyuk called an
> >> отношение . A project is not a collection of
> >> people, it is an
> >> aggregate of actions (like an Activity) and
> >> the "logic" of projects is
> >> something different from Psychology, but it is
> >> inclusive of Psychology
> >> as well. A project is a kind of psychological
> >> phenomenon, but it is
> >> also much more than psychology, because, as
> >> you remind us, people
> >> regulate their own behaviour using signs
> >> created in the world beyond
> >> their ken. Projects are the material substance
> >> of Concepts, and I rely
> >> on Vygotsky for a Psychology of concepts. OK?
> >>
> >> Everything you said (except how you
> >> characterised my
> >> ideas) I agree with. Complex business isn't it?!
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >>
> >> On 23/07/2015 10:37 PM, Holodynski, Manfred wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Andy,
> >> with great interest, I follow the
> >> discussion and your interpretation
> >> of A N Leontyev's contradiction between
> >> subjective sense and
> >> objective meaning. As far as I interpret
> >> ANL he presented a very
> >> elegant solution of the relation between
> >> sense and meaning: For ANL,
> >> subjective sense is not a part or subset
> >> of objective meaning (as you
> >> seem to insinuate him), but a
> >> psychological quality that emerges when
> >> a person uses societal signs and their
> >> objective meanings in order to
> >> regulate his or her socially embedded
> >> activity.
> >> What happens is a transformation of
> >> societal meanings into the
> >> personal sense of those involved. The
> >> personal sense that an
> >> individual assigns to interactions, facts,
> >> and experiences through
> >> the use of signs can be conceptualized not
> >> as a subset of societal
> >> meanings but as a particular sphere of
> >> mind that is constituted by
> >> two psychological factors in particular
> >> (a) the relation to the
> >> motives of the person, and (b) the
> >> relation to the situated and
> >> sensorially mediated experiences of the
> >> individual within the process
> >> of internalization.
> >> a) People do not appropriate the use of
> >> signs and their meanings
> >> during social interactions in an impartial
> >> way.
> >> They interpret and use them in the light
> >> of their actually elicited
> >> motives along with the motives they assign
> >> to the interaction
> >> partner. The societal meaning of the used
> >> signs does not have to
> >> match the individually assigned personal
> >> sense. For example, an
> >> outsider may well interpret a public fit
> >> of rage by a low-ranking
> >> bank employee toward his superior as an
> >> inexcusable violation of
> >> social etiquette. However, for the menial
> >> employee, it may well be a
> >> reassertion of self-esteem in response to
> >> a humiliating directive.
> >> b) The personal sense of sign-use is also
> >> determined by the
> >> situatedness and sensory mediation of the
> >> previous encounters in
> >> which the use of signs is (or was)
> >> embedded. Societal meanings are
> >> coded primarily not by propositional
> >> phrases (e.g., “a dog is a
> >> mammal” or “wide-open eyes signal fear”)
> >> but through their ties to
> >> sensorially mediated and situated
> >> perceptions—as complex as these
> >> interrelations may be (Leont’ev, 1978).
> >> For example, two persons can
> >> use propositional phrases to agree on the
> >> same definition of the term
> >> “dog” or “fear.”
> >> These terms, however, will be situated
> >> very differently and enriched
> >> with other sensory perceptions when one
> >> person grew up with a very
> >> likeable family dog and the other person
> >> experienced a highly
> >> dramatic episode with an overpoweringly
> >> large and aggressive dog.
> >> Thus, conventionalized signs and the
> >> meanings assigned to them are
> >> subject to an interpersonal process of
> >> interpretation and
> >> coordination that more or less
> >> successfully supports the embodiment
> >> and expression of personal sense. People
> >> do not have a private
> >> “speech” at their disposal that they can
> >> construct and use on their
> >> own (Wittgenstein). Therefore, they depend
> >> on the appropriation and
> >> use of conventionalized signs when they
> >> want to communicate
> >> successfully and satisfy their motives in
> >> social interactions.
> >> By an act of reflection, the person can
> >> try to realize and to become
> >> aware of his personal relation and sense
> >> of the situation and the
> >> used signs, but also this reflection has
> >> to fall back on societal
> >> signs in order to express this personal
> >> relations. So, this is the
> >> overall tension between objective meaning
> >> of an event or an object
> >> and its personal sense for a specific person.
> >> Best
> >> Manfred
> >>
> >> Prof. Dr. Manfred Holodynski
> >> Institut für Psychologie in Bildung und
> >> Erziehung Westfälische
> >> Wilhelms-Universität Münster Fliednerstr. 21
> >> D-48149 Münster
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34311
> >> <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34311>
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34310
> >> <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34310> (Sekretariat)
> >> +49-(0)-251-83-34314
> >> <tel:%2B49-%280%29-251-83-34314> (Fax)
> >>
> >> http://wwwpsy.uni-muenster.de/Psychologie.inst5/AEHolodynski/index.ht
> >> ml
> >>
> >> manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de
> >> <mailto:manfred.holodynski@uni-muenst
>
>
> [The entire original message is not included.]
>
>
--
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)
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