[Xmca-l] Re: Request: Chandler article

[Greg Thompson]

Annalisa,
I believe that Terry Turner was one of the few Marxists academics at
Chicago who would actively support students who were involved in practical
Marxist activity (and some of his students would lob the epithet "bourgeois
Marxist" at the other Marxist academics - I TA'd with one of his students
who, after getting her PhD, had pursued a non-academic PhD, but she
continued to teach in the core as just one aspect of her continued
activism). Anyway, I didn't know him personally but all second hand reports
I've ever heard have been very positive.

As to the paper you mentioned yes, it looks like a very interesting take on
Piaget. I found this in it:
"Piaget’s essentially dynamic approach to the concept of structure is
reflected in two representative statements from Structuralism:

the “being” of structures consists in their becoming, that is, in their
being “under construction” [1970a:139].

There is no structure apart from construction [1970a:140].

“Construction,” or the process through which structures are formed, is thus
the most important concept in Piaget’s theory of structure."

I wonder if it might be possible to read Piaget as a philosopher of the
constitution of Being? Or am I reading too much into (out of?) that passage?

-greg
p.s. Anthrosource was supposed to have gone open access, so I've shared
this article with all. I think there is a way to get articles through open
access but you just have to find the right way into it. Could be a great
resource for anyone without library privileges out there!






On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> I'd like to thank Francoise and Martin for requesting and providing this
> article, by Chandler. It's a really good one! Something about it reminded
> me of LSV's Ch 6 of Thought and Speech.
>
>
> Also seems appropriate to the threads of late.
>
>
> I'm interested in this notion that abstract thought is somehow culture
> free, though. Where does this come from?
>
>
> And who was Turner? Is there a way to get my hands upon the Turner article
> cited in this paper?
>
> [Turner, T. (1973), Piaget's Structuralism. Am. Anthrop. 75:351-373.]
>
>
> Apparently he passed away last November:
>
>
> http://www.chronicle.cornell.edu/stories/2015/11/anthropologist-terence-turner-dies-79
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
> Annalisa
>
>
> >
> > Chandler, M. J. (1975). Relativism and the problem of epistemological
> loneliness. Human Development, 18(3), 171-180.
> >
> > A commentary on the sense of isolation and estrangement which commonly
> accompanies the relativism ushered in by the emergence of formal
> operational thought, and a detailing of several regressive strategies
> frequently employed by adolescents in their efforts to accommodate to this
> plurality of solitudes. It is suggested that the stereotypy, cliquishness
> and press toward conformity common among adolescents, as well as the
> penchant for abstraction and the susceptability to secular and nonsecular
> conversions often characteristic of this age group, can be understood as
> attempts to cope with the estrangement of social relativism through the
> imposition of a kind of artificial consensus. Such essentially regressive
> solutions are viewed as a by-product of a standard of cognitive development
> which regards maturity as a kind of exclusive trafficking in abstract
> relativistic thought. This view is contrasted with an alternative
> construction of cognitive development which rejects the notion that
> concretism is an intellectual handicap of middle childhood, that centered
> or figurative thinking is a conceptual stage to be overcome, and that
> thoughts freed of all contradiction are the mark of conceptual maturity.
> This second and dialectical view of development is proposed as a
> perspective which permits a brand of cognitive growth that does not
> sacrifice the particular to the general nor condemn the adolescent to the
> vertigo of relativism.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
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
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