[Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

[Alfredo Jornet Gil]

Please, you've got nothing to apologise about; a short answer some times says a lot. Your point that emotion manifests as an aspect of reshaping agency is, in my view, totally in line with CHAT approaches. Conflict and contradiction are indeed two important aspects and Yrjo Engeström talks about them explicitly and in addressing your and Ueno's paper. In particular, Engeström describes 

"Activity theory sees historically evolving contradictions as the driving force of change and development. Contradictions are manifested in everyday actions as troubles and disturbances, in discourse as dilemmas, conflicts, and double binds (Engeström & Sannino, 2011)"

This is, I think, one way in which CHAT approaches the issue: historically evolving contradictions that exist at the societal level manifest in contradictions at the personal level, and development in the sense of changing into new forms of organisation (societal, personal). Similar approaches can be found in Roth too; I'll be asking both authors permission to share their work here.

I personally find ethnomethodology EM fascinating and a powerful approach to stick the realities of social life; but I always wondered what does EM do with questions of change. Your article documents change; and it does so while showing that change is both systemic and involves emotion. Really fascinating questions,
Alfredo

________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of 川床靖子 <kawatoko@r-aquaparks.com>
Sent: 31 May 2017 13:36
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: Hans Christian Arnseth
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started

Alfredo,

I apologize that I only give you a simple answer as before.

I see the discontent (emotion) expressed by some Yuzuru members in the context of their reshaping agency.                   Their reshaping agency grows out of the transformation of the socio-technical arrangement surrounding Yuzuru members.
In CHAT, do they see the discontent as the emergence of conflict between members?

Yasuko Kawatoko


> 2017/05/30 午後3:44、Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no> のメール：
>
> Yes, as Andy suggests, in CHAT, talking about affect does not imply a dichotomy. In fact, just before his premature death, Vygotsky had taken on the task to develop a theory of emotions that was to be based precisely on a firm commitment to overcome cartesian dualism.
>
> I think that no summary will do justice to all there is to say about CHAT and the study of emotions. But if I had to make it short, I would say that Vygotsky was striving towards a materialist account of emotions in particular, and of the psyche more generally, that would not take the form of a 'mechanistic' explanation. He hoped to explain the psyche as a material phenomenon without giving up the concept of psyche, or mind, as the proper subject. He aimed to achieve this by postulating and investigating a genetic relation between emotions as they emerge historically as social wholes (that is, as much more than emotions: as a dinner, a farewell party, a romantic rupture...), and the way they manifest as individual feelings. This may be akin to studying the socio-technical arrangements of emotions, to put it in terms closer to your text.
>
> Although Vygotsky's was a project for psychology, which is not ANT's interest, I asked you about emotions because I felt that the empirical case that you describe in your article brings to relieve a story of transforming affects as these belong to a history of socio-historical development or, as you describe it, of a reconfiguration of a socio-technical arrangement. I am referring to the fragments in which, as you describe in your text,
>
> "There was tension in the meeting because the person from the MCPA expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the textiles that the members had woven." (p. 138).
>
> You also point out "The discontent felt by some Yuzuru members in terms of the direction of the Party’s activities was expressed in discussions." (p. 139). Yet, you warn readers: "Caution must be exercised in interpreting this, as discontent that was felt by Yuzuru members." I was thinking that this note of caution might be a fruitful arena for discussing at the interface of CHAT and ANT. I did empathise with Yuzuru Party members' feelings as I was reading the narrative and excerpts. Thanks for that!
>
> Alfredo
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> Sent: 29 May 2017 15:27
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>
> Yasuko, affect/cognition is an analytical distinction but it
> does not form a dichotomy, as you say. At the level of
> activity this distinction is not present, likewise in the
> case of agency, personality, experience, etc. To make an
> analytical distinction is not necessarily to posit a dichotomy.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>
> On 29/05/2017 11:20 PM, 川床靖子 wrote:
>> To tell you the truth, I am not much familiar with CHAT and Vygotskian legacy.
>>
>> I appreciate it if you could explain what has been discussed about “the issue of emotions and affects and their development as part of social activities or practices” in CHAT circles and Vygotskian legacy.
>>
>> As for ANT, the idea that attracts me the most is its disposal of dichotomy. For example, you said, “In which way does this framework help you characterize this affective dimension?” The word “affective” is bothering me because I feel some sign of dichotomy such as affective/cognitive, emotional/reasonable and so on. The concept of ‘agency’ in ANT connotes all human volitional actions including learning, feeling, conceiving, gazing, etc.
>>
>> Thanks for discussion,
>>
>> Yasuko Kawatoko
>>
>>
>>> 2017/05/29 午後3:53、Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no> のメール：
>>>
>>> I am glad to see you find common ground, although I would say that Yasuko's article is very different: while Wylie's analysis seems to be concerned with a seeing of a landscape, and seems to operate from within that seeing or gaze, Yasuko's framework and analyses seem to promise something else: to talk about the possibility of that seeing in concrete terms. So I see Wylie's paper as addressing something like this: what is a possible seeing of this landscape from where I stand (e.g., as a reader of Derrida)? Whereas I hear Yasuko's article as being more about the historical and material premises that position Wylie as that particular looker who sees a landscape in that way, an account that then would have to include the reading and citing of Derrida not as something given or somehow 'natural', but as yet another aspect of a multitude of aspects forming the arrangement that supports that particular seeing. The two approaches seem very different to me, among other things, because the latter can explain the possibility of the former but not the other way around. Not that you cannot learn from both, of course, which you can!
>>>
>>> An aspect that is sharply distinctive in Y. Kawatoko's article, at least with regard to the one that Larry has shared, is a concern on *development*, on growth and change, rather than on self and experience. Kawatoko's article describes a trajectory involving an intertwining between enhanced awareness and re-configured contexts or 'arrangements'. In this regard, Kawatoko's article seems to be much closer to the CHAT tradition that characterises much of the MCA readership.
>>>
>>> In fact, Kawatoko's article, which analyses a history of weaving, also seems to describe a weaving within the weaving: the one that tangles together history and weaving hands. As socio-historical arrangements develop, so too develop the weaving skills, which is to the cloth what the gaze is to the landscape in Wylie's paper. In this regard, the paper seems to touch upon, though not thematise, the issue of emotions and affects and their development as part of social activities or practices. In CHAT circles, this issue is very much discussed and the Vygotskian legacy seems to offer possible venues for further inquiry. But I am curious about the possibilities that stem from ANT (or the version your article draws from). In which way does this framework help you characterise this affective dimension (Yasuko and anyone else), and how does it address the issue of growth, of development?
>>>
>>> Thanks for engagement,
>>> Alfredo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of 川床靖子 <kawatoko@r-aquaparks.com>
>>> Sent: 28 May 2017 09:57
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>
>>> Dear Larry Purss,
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for John Wylie’s article, “Landscape, absence and the geographies of love.” It beautifully describes what we experience in our mind when we face and view (magnificent) landscape. I like the following phrase: Our “stories of life and love weave together landscape and memory.” In this sense, absence and presence are mutually constituted.
>>>
>>>
>>> In the same way, past and present, participation and non-participation, culture and sub-culture, everything is mutually constituted in a series of context of interactions among human, non-human, and machinery, in other words, under the sociotechnical and historical arrangements.
>>>
>>> I am for the author’s way of exploring things; that is, “bringing to light things previously hidden or lost, unearthing memory, making the invisible visible.” In my cases, “talking” is important to make invisible visible. Talking is part of practice. What and how individuals talk about artifacts they use, fellow members working together, personal and public stories regarding the place become important resources to make the invisible visible for the researcher, while simultaneously the individuals’ talks give the individuals opportunities to make their own practice visible and to constitute their own participation in the (work) place.
>>>
>>>
>>> Larry, yes, I am applying this approach to the subject of the Yuzuru Party.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> 2017/05/28 午前0:22、Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> のメール：
>>>>
>>>> Yasuko,
>>>> Thank you for your personal narrative,  introducing your ways of walking through *tactile* places.
>>>>
>>>> I will open my response through revivifying Ueno’s sense of spirit in our walking alongside Ueno and  listening:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> “Participation in a community is realized through the process of making the community *visible* to the participants.”
>>>>
>>>> Participants create *boundaries* between communities and make them *visible* each time they discuss codes or categories, and in doing so, they are able to constitute their own participation in the community.
>>>>
>>>> Yasuko, you are applying this approach (way of tactile walking) in your approach to the *subject of* (not object of)
>>>> The Yuzuru Party. (distributing agency)
>>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>>>
>>>> From: 川床靖子
>>>> Sent: May 27, 2017 12:31 AM
>>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] xmca new discussion started
>>>>
>>>> Dear xmca members,
>>>>
>>>> Thank you very much for putting my article under discussion at xmca.
>>>>
>>>> Let me introduce my research career briefly.
>>>>
>>>> Until the 2000s, I had done some research in company’s workplaces or institutionalized systems where some “strategy” called by Michel de Certeau (1984) could work, and investigated the ways of relations among individuals, artifacts and machineries in those spaces: the practice of repair technicians in a copy machine company, the practice of operators under the introduction of new production system (Toyota Production System) in the US manufacturing company, and the technology of a care needs assessment under the nursing-care insurance system in Japan.
>>>>
>>>> After that, I have been interested in everyday practices by ordinary people, especially women and old people who live in farm villages or small towns in Japan. In everyday practices that are “tactical in character”, people “make (bricolent) innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules”, referring to Michel de Certeau (1984). I have tried to explore, and described vividly ordinary people’s tactics, more specifically, the procedures, bases, effects, and possibilities of those collective activities. For example, the practice of old women who were engaged in a “happa (leaf) business” in a mountain village, and the practice of women weavers group with the objective of developing traditional hand-weaving skills and sharing Matsusaka cotton with the next generation (current issue).
>>>>
>>>> I think I am a type of researcher who takes pleasure in walking around here and there in search of interesting humans collective activities. The important thing for me is how vividly I can describe interactions among people, artifacts, and machinery that I find interesting in the places. For the sake of cultivating more fruitful viewpoints in the field, I might need some more theoretical bases that I lack unfortunately.
>>>>
>>>> I hope I have your many productive suggestions to our works.
>>>>
>>>> Yasuko Kawatoko
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>