[Xmca-l] Re: Vygotsky,Marx, & summer reading

[Andy Blunden]

"Artefact Mediated Action" was a product of the exegesis of 
Vygotsky especially in the West; people came to the 
conclusion that it was implicit in Vygotsky's work. But it 
was also recognised and incorporated by A N Leontyev in his 
work - indeed, Leontyev's Activity Theory makes no sense 
without the artefact-mediated action as a unit of analysis. 
But I don't think Vygotsky never said as much, did he? He 
was more concerned to counter the tendency to subsume speech 
as a subtype of artefact-mediated action, and keeping 
tool-mediated actions and sign-mediated actions 
qualitatively distinct forms of activity. But his analysis 
of Sakharov's experiments takes as given that a concept is a 
system of artefact-mediated actions.

Do you see a problem here, Helena?

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 20/08/2017 2:27 PM, Helena Worthen wrote:
> So "mediated action" works as a unit of analysis?
>
> Thanks -- H
>
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> Vietnam blog: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>
> On Aug 20, 2017, at 4:01 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
>> I would like to propose the following tests for a unit of analysis. They
>> are all based on things Vygotsky wrote in the pedology.The examples, from
>> biology, political economy, and music, are my own.
>>
>> a) It must be maximally simple. That is, it must be small enough to be
>> manageable in experiments, clinical settings, and observable using
>> "objectivizing" methods of research such as the functional method of dual
>> stimulation or the Zoped. For example, cells can be managed in a petri
>> dish, drawn from patients during examinations, and their genesis may be
>> provoked and observed with a microscope: the commodity can be abstracted
>> from an exchange for analysis, observed as it arises in production and
>> exchange, and elicited through barter and markets. The four note "theme" of
>> that opens Beethoven's fifth symphony is simple enough to play on a timpani
>> as well as a piano.
>>
>> b) It must be minimally complex. That is, it must contain functioning
>> analogues of all the properties which are the object of investigation. For
>> example, cells have functioning analogues for metabolism, reproduction, and
>> equilibrium with the environment.Commodities contain, in a coded,
>> potential, or "embryonic" form, all the social relations of labor and
>> capital we find in a mature capitalist economy. Beethoven's "theme" is
>> complex enough to describe the structure of the symphony as a whole, and to
>> form its coda.
>>
>> c) These analogues cannot be simple, miniaturized "recapitulations" of the
>> properties which are the object of investigation. The mechanisms of cell
>> metabolism, reproduction, homeostasis are not the same as the metabolism of
>> the human organism. A commodity cannot produce or exchange or invest
>> itself; it does not contain productive labour or finance capital in
>> anything but a coded form; these must be unfolded through the historical
>> process and that historical process is not infallibly predictable.
>> Beethoven's "theme" did not create its variations and permutations:
>> Beethoven did.
>>
>> Applying these tests to the units that Andy proposes (with one exception,
>> number three below, they are also based on Vygotsky!) we find:
>>
>> 1. Word meaning is maximally simple but not minimally complex. It doesn't
>> contain analogues of interpersonal meanings, e.g. questions, commands,
>> statements, requests. It doesn’t contain analogues of textual meanings,
>> e.g. hypotaxis and parataxis, Theme and Rheme, Given and New information.
>>
>> 2. The social situation of development is minimally complex but not
>> maximally simple: it does construe the ensemble of relations between the
>> child and the environment at a given age stage, including the whole of
>> actual and potential language, but these cannot be managed in an
>> experimental or clinical setting, or elicited in complete form using the
>> functional method of dual stimulation or the Zoped.
>>
>> 3. Mediated actions are maximally simple and minimally complex, but not, as
>> far as I can see, structurally, functionally or genetically different from
>> the phenomena of activity they purport to explain.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>>
>> Recent Article: Vygotsky, Halliday, and Hasan: Towards Conceptual
>> Complementarity
>>
>> Free E-print Downloadable at:
>>
>> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W7EDsmNSEwnpIKFRG8Up/full
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 10:37 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Word meanings for the study of (verbal) intellect
>>> Artefact-mediated actions for the more general study of the development of
>>> activity
>>> Perezhivaniya for the study of personality development
>>> (Defect-Compensation) for the study of disability or whatever
>>> Social Situations of Development for the study of child development
>>>
>>> See page 9 on https://www.academia.edu/11387923/
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>> On 19/08/2017 10:47 PM, Martin John Packer wrote:
>>>
>>>> What are the five, Andy?
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> On Aug 18, 2017, at 9:07 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>> Amazon have it for $38.21: https://www.amazon.com/Vygotsk
>>>>> y-Marx-Toward-Marxist-Psychology/dp/1138244813 which is not too bad.
>>>>>
>>>>> My chapter is available at https://www.academia.edu/11387923/ but so
>>>>> far as I can see other authors have not posted theirs on academia.edu -
>>>>> maybe elsewhere?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you, Alfredo, for highlighting how I have pointed to 5 different
>>>>> domains in which Vygotsky demonstrated the "method of analysis by units."
>>>>> To me, it seems useless to identify a writer's methodological innovations
>>>>> unless you can transport that methodology to a different context, and
>>>>> pointing to five applications by Vygotsky himself seemed a good way of
>>>>> showing how portable the method is. More recently, I used this method in an
>>>>> approach to political science, taking a group of people in the room trying
>>>>> to decide on what they are going to do together as a unit of analysis.
>>>>> Personally, I think this method has proved very fruitful and original. How
>>>>> lucky we are to be inheritors of Vygotsky's brilliant insights, still
>>>>> generally so unknown to the general scientific audience. What a gift LSV
>>>>> has given us!
>>>>>
>>>>> But legacies are always problematic. Alfredo, I think you would be a
>>>>> very good candidate to review this book. Beth?
>>>>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>>> On 18/08/2017 10:16 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Peter, Alfredo Et al -
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It seems that the readers of MCA would appreciate a good overview
>>>>>> review of
>>>>>> the LSV and Marx book, but so far as I know, no one has proposed the
>>>>>> idea
>>>>>> to Beth, the book review editor. (You seem to have a jump on the task,
>>>>>> Alfredo!).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, given the cost of the book, it would be nice if authors could
>>>>>> follow
>>>>>> Andy's lead and make a draft available. Andy's article on units of
>>>>>> analysis
>>>>>> is on Academia, a click away. That way the many readers of XMCA around
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> world would not be excluded from the discussion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike
>>>>>> Happy travels summer readers.  :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>
>