[Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed

[Martin John Packer]

> On Dec 19, 2017, at 5:09 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> I'd like to ask you a question alongside Greg's: What is Vygotsky's path to
> knowledge, in particular, knowledge about the constantly unfolding,
> evolving social world?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> James

Hi James,

Much has been said about this question in this discussion group over the years! Here are some notes I made some time ago. I am sure that others will jump in!  :)

Vygotsky viewed methodology as central to the kind of psychology he wanted to create: “the methodology,” he wrote, “will be the first step forward" (2004 [1926-7], p. 242). And “Anyone who attempts to skip this problem, to jump over methodology in order to build some special psychological science right away, will inevitably jump over his horse while trying to sit on it.”

There were three central aspects to the methodology that Vygotsky envisioned for his “general psychology”: analysis, genetic inquiry, and experimentation. They amount to a conception of qualitative research that is significantly different from much of what goes by that name today. One reason for this is that methodology for Vygotsky was not merely technique but “the theory of scientific method” in which “practice and philosophy are united.” In other words it was a logic of inquiry, a paradigm which involved assumptions about what exists (ontology) and how we can know (epistemology). 

The “analytical method” was of central importance to Vygotsky, and he rescued it from phenomenology and from so-called Marxist psychologies of his time. It is the study of the internal relations of a complex whole. For example, water should not be analyzed into its elements but studied as a molecule in its qualitatively different forms: ice, liquid, vapor, etc. (1987/1934). Analysis is “the highest form of induction.” It requires no repetition, for it is the study of a particular case for the general properties which are realized in it. Analysis is to “perceive the general in the particular;” the particular phenomenon is maximally abstracted from its specific conditions. For example, Pavlov’s study of salivation in dogs was an analysis of reflexes in general, in animals in general. Vygotsky’s model here was Marx’s analysis of the commodity, a form with internal contradictions, through the selection of a unit of analysis, a “cell”: the commodity. Analysis requires the partition of a complex whole into its aspects. In other words analysis is a form of case study, idiographic and holistic. Its aim is to discern general laws; objective tendencies which underlie the manifold appearances. Its products are not essences but “generalizations which have boundaries and degrees.”

The second aspect is genetic inquiry. Vygotsky wrote that he agreed with Marx that “the only science is history.” History meant “two things: a general dialectical approach to things; in this sense, everything has its history,” and, second, human history: “the uniqueness of the human mind lies in the fact that history and evolution are united (synthesis) in it” (1986). Genetic inquiry requires tracing the history of the development of a phenomenon, the path it has followed, to identify its underlying objective tendencies. It attends to the process of sublation in which earlier forms are both overcome and preserved. Furthermore, it is an inquiry that is oriented by practical concerns, concerned to facilitate the leap from necessity to freedom by mastery of the tendencies that are identified. A genetic account is a description, but also provides an explanation. It weaves together ontogenesis (the process of “individualization”), history (cultural evolution),  phylogenesis (biological evolution), and microgenesis (experiment).

Indeed, Vygotsky's methodology includes a central place for experimentation: what he called “Traps for Nature.” But this was not experimentation in the sense of manipulation of variables, standardization of procedure, with the researcher as detached observer. On the contrary, for Vygotsky an experiment was a collaboration between researcher and participant as they together established the conditions for the possibility of the phenomenon of interest (e.g. the famous blocks task). An experiment is a form of analysis, it is “an analysis in action, as each analysis is an experiment in thought” (2004/1926-7). The unusual character of this view of experimentation is revealed by Vygotsky's statement that “every lyrical poem is an experiment.” In Vygotsky’s view the artificiality of an experiment is a merit, not a weakness. It allows us to reveal a historical process in abstracted form. Furthermore, an experiment provides a historical analysis, through the opportunity to study the microgenesis of a phenomenon.  For Vygotsky, historical methods and logical analysis (the logic of an experimental design) are not opposed, because logic is sedimented history. 

Martin