[Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA

[Huw Lloyd]

On 13 October 2015 at 17:50, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Yes, Alfredo, I have had the same thought. Since each of us "moves on"
> constantly, it can be difficult to "stop and reflect" because it means (in
> this case) taking the time to re-read the collected parts of the discussion
> and then to be able (possibly) to be able to abstract new insights from it.
> Our academic lives, especially in the current circumstances (which can only
> expect to get worse in this regard) are nano-managed and evaluated on an
> externally imposed time scale.
>

Surely this is primarily a personality characteristic, i.e. the discovery
that taking on difficult conceptual challenges yields rewards.

During my 'formal' time of postgraduate research, I would hear from certain
staff about postponing my interests, whilst they endeavoured to shoe-horn
my research project into something trivial.  That's institutions for you.

In a similar vein, I am fairly convinced that the difficulty in doing good
psychological research is that institutions are predominantly doing bad
psychological research.  "Stopping and reflecting" (and acting) in a
sustained manner would be a threat to that.  :)

Best,
Huw



>
> PS--
> And then, of course, there is the question of personal relevance. I am
> particularly interest at the moment in the issue of imagination, others
> will have other priorities.
> Experiments of this sort can be instructive, regardless of outcome.
>
> Time will tell!
> mike
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 8:58 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> >
> > thanks a lot for putting this together. I sometimes struggle searching in
> > the e-mail threads to recover some discussions, and I've been copying and
> > pasting into word documents to keep track of
> > ideas. This practice has proven useful to me, the thread that you and
> Katie
> > have made now available for example having been a source of ideas for
> some
> > of the things that I am working on now. So I find this initiative very
> > compelling. But I also anticipate that it takes time to go through the
> > thread. I guess we should expect different dynamics to emerge when
> someone
> > posts an e-mail with some points and then others respond, as compared
> > to when the e-mail is a larger thread of ideas having emerged during a
> long
> > discussion. So, perhaps we do not yet know what reflection of the kind
> you
> > are making possible looks like. I'll surely need some time to go through
> > the thread and further contribute to the interesting topics. But I am in
> > for it.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Alfredo
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > *From:* lchcmike@gmail.com <lchcmike@gmail.com> on behalf of mike cole <
> > mcole@ucsd.edu>
> > *Sent:* 13 October 2015 17:43
> > *To:* Rolf Steier
> > *Cc:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; Alfredo Jornet Gil; Geoffrey C.
> > Bowker
> > *Subject:* Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA
> >
> > Hi Rolf--
> >
> > From the evidence so far, reflection in the form we have piloted has not
> > proven a compelling activity for mca-o-phytes. I will post the remaining
> > two topics and lets see if any public discussion follows.  Perhaps the
> lack
> > of collective reflection has deeper roots than the difficulty of pulling
> > together the relevant pieces in a single, quasi-organized file.
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Rolf Steier <rolfsteier@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Thank you for putting this together! I think this will be a great
> >> resource, and I'm particularly interested in looking back at the "space/
> >> place" and "imagination" threads.
> >> rolf
> >>
> >> On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 2:08 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Dear Colleagues -- From its inception, one significant feature of
> >>> xlchc/xmca was that conversations seems to go on for a while and kind
> of
> >>> peter out (if they started at all) and it was rare for participants to
> >>> return to consider what they had written before and what, perhaps,
> >>> collectively, might be learned from the chatting. I liken the process
> to
> >>> Vygotskian chaining. Interesting. Individuals display what they have
> taken
> >>> away when they write later on, I often
> >>> feel like a have learned a lot.
> >>>
> >>> But still, we seem to have no way to turn around to examine the results
> >>> of a given conversation, no matter how exciting it seemed at the time.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks to Katie Simpson, the Comm Dept/LCHC grad student who assists in
> >>> production of MCA, and thanks to the discussion that Rolf and Alfredo
> >>> provided us in their discussion of the ideas of Leigh Star, maybe we
> have
> >>> the beginnings of a socio-technical solution to what for me, at least,
> is a
> >>> problem.
> >>>
> >>> What Katie has done is to peel away all the headers and present quoted
> >>> messages in different threads that
> >>> emerged during the discussion. Then she categorized these into
> >>> Introduction & Conclusion
> >>> Boundary Objects
> >>> Space and Place
> >>> Imagination
> >>>
> >>> I have no idea if anyone is interested in using these materials to
> >>> revisit what we discussed earlier and perhaps to
> >>> come up with a deeper understanding of the interlocking issues
> involved.
> >>> Do the three threads, now with the
> >>> noisy pixels dissolved away, form any more general pattern? For me, for
> >>> example, the role of imagination in relation to boundary objects has
> been
> >>> very helpful. And others?
> >>>
> >>> I attach for now only the introduction. I am not sure which if any of
> >>> the three sub-topics people might like to discuss or in what order.
> >>>
> >>> We have a while before the new and ever exciting issue of MCA comes
> out,
> >>> so perhaps a time to pause, and reflect?
> >>>
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>>
> >>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> >>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> > object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>