[Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started SOCIOLOGY | PSYCHOLOGY

Sat Jun 10 20:29:59 PDT 2017

Anthropologists have a lot to say about culture/mind co-constitution. Arthur Kleinman did the classic study of culture and mental health where he looks at the syndrome neurasthenia which was a very common diagnosis in China at the time, and asks if it is the same thing as depression. He suggests that it isn't. 

The DSM used to have a category of "culture bound syndromes" but if I recall correctly, they got rid of it in the latest DSM (much to the dismay of many psychological anthropologists - if I've followed the politics correctly). Perhaps we could call anxiety a culture (and time) bound syndrome?

Eugene reikhel has also done some cool work on the placebo effect. And I've heard other interesting research about what it takes to get the placebo effect to work. Things like white and light blue pills working better in places like Italy (think Italian flag...). Fascinating stuff. Culture is definitely in the mind, or, perhaps "it (at least partly) IS the mind".

Also, I recently heard that researchers are once again allowed to experiment with psychotropic drugs. I suspect that some interesting research will result...

Greg 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 10, 2017, at 4:12 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I offer the following link to a NY Times article:
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/style/anxiety-is-the-new-depression-xanax.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&_r=0 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/style/anxiety-is-the-new-depression-xanax.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&_r=0>
> 
> The article is titled “Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax”. The connection between psychology is made explicit: 
> 
> "While to epidemiologists both disorders are medical conditions, anxiety is starting to seem like a sociological condition, too: a shared cultural experience that feeds on alarmist CNN graphics and metastasizes through social media. As depression was to the 1990s — summoned forth by Kurt Cobain, “Listening to Prozac,” Seattle fog and Temple of the Dog dirges on MTV, viewed from under a flannel blanket — so it seems we have entered a new Age of Anxiety. Monitoring our heart rates. Swiping ceaselessly at our iPhones. Filling meditation studios in an effort to calm our racing thoughts.”
> 
> What I wonder is how CHAT has dealt with mind altering drugs, for example, Prozac and Xanax. And consider the placebo effect, which operates on the mind and body through suggestion, much as language does, not through some blunt biological mechanism. I am pointing to the tool/sign distinction between tool and sign. 
> 
> Depression is seen in this article as the an aspect of the zeitgeist of the late 20th century, and anxiety as part of the zeitgeist of the early 21st century. Did Hegel talk about psychoactive drugs: alcohol, caffeine, etc.? Did Marx? Did Vygotsky? Certainly anthropologists have touched on the topic, though only Carlos Castaneda pops into my head. :( 
> 
> Respectfully
> Henry
> 
>> On Jun 10, 2017, at 10:15 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Does Vygotsky not move beyond the dichotomy sociology | psychology when he
>> acknowledges ("Concrete Human Psychology") that "any higher psychological
>> function was a social relation" and "personality: the ensemble of societal
>> relations"?
>> 
>> On emotions you might find interesting the work of Randall Collins,
>> "Interaction ritual chains", which acknowledges the constitutive relation
>> between individual and collective emotions
>> 
>> Michael
>> 
>> 
>> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
>> 
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Applied Cognitive Science
>> MacLaurin Building A567
>> University of Victoria
>> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
>> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>> 
>> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
>> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>> 
>>> On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 9:03 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In advancing this  thread exploring  sociology/psychology and their
>>> connections, Andy explores how these connections can be thought about
>>> within a single science or theory. This opens up the question of multiple
>>> approaches to how we relate sociology and psychology within differing
>>> sciences using uniting  frames.
>>> 
>>> Greg introduces the book (Affective Circuits) which is attempting to move
>>> beyond the concept of the nation state and the sending/receiving polarity
>>> of ‘methodological nationalism’
>>> The difficulty becomes this focusing on multitudes of understanding
>>> (multiple cultural, economic and political contexts – simultaneously
>>> unfolding).
>>> Then holding this multitude while considering kinship and intimate
>>> relations.
>>> The intent of this book to open up new ways of thinking about migration in
>>> which the search for marriage or ties to kin can sometimes re-place the
>>> search for work.
>>> The focus of the book exploring the way EVOKING powerful emotions regulate
>>> and disrupt ‘affective circuits’.
>>> 
>>> Definition of Affective Circuits:
>>> The social formations that emerge from the sending, withholding and
>>> receiving of goods, ideas, bodies, and emotions.
>>> These social formations being multitudes that occur simultaneously.
>>> 
>>> Alfredo, emotions and infrastructure operating across multiple LATERAL
>>> sites or contexts seems to be a complex question.
>>> 
>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>> 
>>> From: Andy Blunden
>>> Sent: June 9, 2017 7:50 PM
>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started SOCIOLOGY | PSYCHOLOGY
>>> 
>>> Er. "not do any research on the dynamics of the institutions
>>> of formal education (for example) by by"
>>> should be "do research on the dynamics of the institutions
>>> of formal education (for example) by"
>>> 
>>> Sorry,
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>> 
>>>> On 10/06/2017 12:03 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>>> Alfredo, in every science there are specialisms which are
>>>> necessarily pursued in relatively independent research
>>>> communities, despite being part of the same science. What
>>>> makes all these specialisms parts of the one science is
>>>> the use of concepts which are shared across the whole
>>>> science and are necessarily connected in the constitution
>>>> of the science. CHAT is such a science; its basic concepts
>>>> such as artefact-mediated actions and activities are basic
>>>> to both psychology and social theory as we approach it.
>>>> Therefore the educational psychologist may *not* do *any
>>>> *research on the dynamics of the institutions of formal
>>>> education (for example) by *by *dint of the fact
>>>> "activity" is a shared concept, discoveries from one
>>>> research field can enter the research in the other, and
>>>> from time to time problems in educational psychology will
>>>> find their solution in the social theory of formal
>>>> educational institutions, and vice versa.
>>>> 
>>>> Andy
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>> 
>>>>> On 10/06/2017 5:11 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
>>>>> I had to make a pause in my contributing to the
>>>>> discussion, as we (my family) are these days relocating
>>>>> from Victoria to Europe (in Spain at the moment). But I
>>>>> have kept  wondering (and wandering) around the topic
>>>>> that came up in Yasuko Kawatoko's article concerning
>>>>> emotion and infrastructure, and then about ANT and CHAT.
>>>>> And so I was thinking that the question relates to that
>>>>> of the connection between sociology and psychology, does
>>>>> not it? For is there the possibility of a psychology
>>>>> without a sociology in either ANT or CHAT?
>>>>> 
>>>>> To travel from Victoria to Alicante, we (2 adults and a
>>>>> 7-year and a 2-year) had to take a drive (a friend drove
>>>>> us) from (no longer) home to the airport, then, after a
>>>>> number of procedures at the airport, got into a plain to
>>>>> fly Victoria - Calgary; then Calgary - Amsterdam; then
>>>>> Amsterdam - Madrid, then a taxi that would drive us to a
>>>>> high-speed train to Alicante. Then a (family) drive from
>>>>> Alicante to a small town in the province of Valencia.
>>>>> That's an infrastructure. And that's a lot of affect
>>>>> generated. I could not help but to think on the relation
>>>>> between infrastructure and emotion all the way...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Alfredo
>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Larry
>>>>> Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>>> Sent: 02 June 2017 07:05
>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>>> 
>>>>> Michael, to pick up this thread:
>>>>> “ The important part of the quotation is this: "*the
>>>>> methods* in
>>>>> and through which members concertedly produce and
>>>>> assemble," and these
>>>>> include making the very production and assembly available
>>>>> to each other.
>>>>> 
>>>>> In particular the phrase:
>>>>> 
>>>>> “in and through which” the methods are assembled [arranged].
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here is the way that Kenneth Liberman makes a similar
>>>>> observation within a note # 1
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1 The phrase ‘‘in and as of’’ intends to retain the
>>>>> actual state of affairs of a social practice. Instead of
>>>>> conceiving of a metaphysical object, ‘‘science,’’ which
>>>>> ‘‘has’’ certain practices, a science consists of its
>>>>> practices. It does not exist apart from them; in fact,
>>>>> the task of any inquiry into the lebenswelt origins of
>>>>> sciences takes its departure from this recognition. A
>>>>> science is nothing more than, and nothing less than, the
>>>>> activities of its practitioners. The phrase promises to
>>>>> retain the important insight, which is consistent with
>>>>> Husserl’s own phenomenological discoveries, that a
>>>>> science does not merely exist in its practices, it exists
>>>>> as its practices. The perspective is vital to an
>>>>> anti-essentialist inquiry, and the phrase is employed
>>>>> frequently in ethnomethodology (cf. Garﬁnkel, 2002, p.
>>>>> 92, 99, 138, 207, 211, 246, 247; Garﬁnkel and Wieder,
>>>>> 1992, p. 175).
>>>>> 
>>>>> So the two  phrases
>>>>> “in and through which” & “in and as of” are indicating a
>>>>> way of making visible a work  or a method or a discipline
>>>>> AS practices.
>>>>> 
>>>>> For further elaboration here reproduced  a  full page of
>>>>> the article written by Kenneth Liberman where note #1 is
>>>>> generated: This page  may be taking us off topic or it
>>>>> may be relevant?? This page  is bringing in another
>>>>> approach exploring the origins of ethno “methods”.
>>>>> 
>>>>> “ While Husserl provided the direction for our
>>>>> ethnomethodological investigations, the lived work of
>>>>> various sciences––in their coherent, work-site speciﬁc
>>>>> organizational Things-in-distinctive-details, case by
>>>>> case for the particular sciences––are obscured by
>>>>> Husserl’s use of formal generalities in both The
>>>>> Gottingen Lectures and The Crisis. Regrettably, and as a
>>>>> certainty, both of Husserl’s treatises lose the
>>>>> phenomenon they were written carefully to describe. That
>>>>> is, they lose the phenomenon of the actual work-sites of
>>>>> any science. And there they also lose the instructed
>>>>> actions of the scientists, i.e. their actual
>>>>> world-generating collaborations. They lose the phenomenon
>>>>> by losing just-how their instructed actions are
>>>>> administered to reveal for the scientists their work, as
>>>>> well as the objects they are studying. In Husserl’s
>>>>> program, the lebenswelt origins, being only formally
>>>>> exhibited by the lectures, do not actually describe any
>>>>> lebenswelt practices.
>>>>> They do not exhibit lebenswelt practices with
>>>>> lived-in-the-course instructed actions. They merely
>>>>> allude to lebenswelt practices. The real achievement of
>>>>> Husserl’s program, then, is that the actual lived work of
>>>>> sciences are alluded to as lived practices. And that is
>>>>> no small achievement. The Gottingen Lectures and The
>>>>> Crisis assert the promises of Husserl’s monumental
>>>>> program. Their incongruous anomaly is that their promise
>>>>> was neither noticed nor recognized by bench practitioners
>>>>> of any science. The program of The Crisis was never taken
>>>>> up by scientists, nor was it welcomed as ﬁlling a ‘‘gap’’
>>>>> in the coherence of a particular science, in and as of
>>>>> its discovered topics and practices.1 Nevertheless,
>>>>> despite the fact that scientists rarely welcomed
>>>>> Husserl’s inquiries, in epistemological philosophy the
>>>>> program remains venerated as Husserl’s achievement. Yet
>>>>> even there Husserl’s program has not been taken up in a
>>>>> radical way, as the familiar haecceities2 o
>>>>> f an actual science. It has only been used to
>>>>> illustrate cases for ep
>>>>> istemological arguments about the sciences. Hence, the
>>>>> task of taking up Husserl’s program seriously remains.
>>>>> This is not to say that no ground has been gained. Very
>>>>> little in The Gottingen Lectures redescribes the lived
>>>>> work of any actual science. On the contrary, the lectures
>>>>> forcefully point to the absence of haecceities in any and
>>>>> every particular science. These absent details can
>>>>> involve the shop talk, local gestural organization, the
>>>>> local endogenous practices of social order production and
>>>>> accountability, and their coherent substantive material,
>>>>> which might include board notes, personal notebooks,
>>>>> diaries, diagrams, scribblings, books, ....”
>>>>> 
>>>>> The theme here is the shift from a theory  being
>>>>> “formally exhibited” within  disciplinary methods to
>>>>> re-mark what was previously  formally exhibited to become
>>>>> a method of describing lebenswelt practices. [ethno
>>>>> practices].
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: Wolff-Michael Roth
>>>>> Sent: June 1, 2017 5:48 PM
>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks Martin,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I do not view what I am saying--though it is differently
>>>>> said---from what
>>>>> you quote. The important part of the quotation is this:
>>>>> "*the methods* in
>>>>> and through which members concertedly produce and
>>>>> assemble," and these
>>>>> include making the very production and assembly available
>>>>> to each other. In
>>>>> all of this, some things are unquestioned, and Garfinkel
>>>>> wrote considerably
>>>>> on the invisible background assumption . . .
>>>>> 
>>>>> Michael
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
>>>>> 
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --------------------
>>>>> 
>>>>> Applied Cognitive Science
>>>>> MacLaurin Building A567
>>>>> University of Victoria
>>>>> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
>>>>> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
>>>>> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>>>>> 
>>>>> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
>>>>> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
>>> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
>>> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Martin John Packer
>>>>> <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi Wolff-Michael,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I agree with most of what you’ve written, but not the
>>>>>> suggestion that EM
>>>>>> starts from the assumption that people (simply) make
>>>>>> visible order that has
>>>>>> its origins somewhere else. I’ll quote from an
>>>>>> encyclopedia article by Doug
>>>>>> Maynard and Teddy Kardash:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Ethnomethodology is an area in sociology originating in
>>>>>> the work of Harold
>>>>>> Garfinkel. It represents an effort to study the methods
>>>>>> in and through
>>>>>> which members concertedly produce and assemble the
>>>>>> features of everyday
>>>>>> life in any actual, concrete, and not hypothetical or
>>>>>> theoretically
>>>>>> depicted setting…. Members of society achieve this
>>>>>> intelligible
>>>>>> organization through actual, coordinated, concerted,
>>>>>> procedural behaviors
>>>>>> or methods and practices.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jun 1, 2017, at 7:27 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
>>>>>> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com<mailto:wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin,
>>>>>> I would have thought that ethno*methodology* is the
>>>>>> study of the methods,
>>>>>> the work, people use to make social orders visible. In
>>>>>> this, it is very
>>>>>> different from all other research, qualitative and
>>>>>> quantitative. Garfinkel
>>>>>> describes it as *incommensurably different *from, among
>>>>>> others,
>>>>>> interpretive studies of social life. He distinguishes EM
>>>>>> from formal
>>>>>> analytic studies, all those that have to specify methods
>>>>>> because these
>>>>>> methods are different from the methods people use in
>>>>>> everyday life. EM does
>>>>>> not dispute the results of other research; its interests
>>>>>> are completely
>>>>>> elsewhere.
>>>>>> Practically, EM is interested in change if it is what
>>>>>> people do; it is not
>>>>>> interested in the change but how people do make change
>>>>>> and the required
>>>>>> work visible to each other.
>>>>>> Michael
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --------------------
>>>>>> Applied Cognitive Science
>>>>>> MacLaurin Building A567
>>>>>> University of Victoria
>>>>>> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
>>>>>> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
>>>>>> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
>>>>>> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
>>>>>> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
>>>>>> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil
>>>>>> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
>>>>>> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Larry, I also was thinking that visibility, in other
>>>>>> EM/CA studies also as
>>>>>> instructability, speaks to change. A
>>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>>> From:
>>>>>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>>>>>> mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>>>>>> mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>>>>>> on behalf of Larry Purss
>>>>>> <lpscholar2@gmail.com<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com
>>>>>> Sent: 02 June 2017 01:44
>>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin,
>>>>>> This sentence,
>>>>>> “Creating and sustaining order always requires change”
>>>>>> And therefore makes visible change as the norm
>>>>>> Seems to be pregnant with an evocative enacting of
>>>>>> possibility for novel
>>>>>> kinds of social fabric[continuing with the weaving theme]
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
>>>>>> Sent: June 1, 2017 4:18 PM
>>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yes, I agree with what you say. I guess I used the word
>>>>>> change where I
>>>>>> meant development. So I am going to change my question:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What do and could do researchers concerned with
>>>>>> development (social,
>>>>>> personal) with EM.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> You recently shared with us a beautiful book on the
>>>>>> topic of development.
>>>>>> How does EM feature in it?
>>>>>> Alfredo
>>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>>> From:
>>>>>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>>>>>> mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>>>>>> mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>>>>>> on behalf of Martin John Packer
>>>>>> <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co<mailto:
>>>>>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>>
>>>>>> Sent: 02 June 2017 00:40
>>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: xmca new discussion started
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi Alfredo,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I’ve always thought that EM deals very well with change,
>>>>>> because it does
>>>>>> not treat stasis as the norm. EM is the study of the
>>>>>> methods that people
>>>>>> (actants) employ to create and sustain order, various
>>>>>> kinds of order.
>>>>>> Creating and sustaining order always requires change.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jun 1, 2017, at 5:24 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil
>>>>>> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
>>>>>> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>>>>>> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
> 