[Xmca-l] Re: Unit of Analysis

Thu Sep 7 19:11:37 PDT 2017

Alfredo, by "visceral" I mean it is something you know 
through your immediate, bodily and sensuous interaction with 
something. In this sense I am with Lakoff and Johnson here 
(though not being American I don't see guns as quite so 
fundamental to the human condition). Consider what Marx did 
when began Capital not from the abstract concept of "value" 
but from the action of exchanging commodities . Commodity 
exchange is just one form of value, but it is the most 
ancient, most visceral, most "real" and most fundamental 
form of value - as Marx shows in s. 3 of Chapter 1, v. I.

I have never studied climatology, Alfredo, to the extent of 
grasping what their unit of analysis is.

In any social system, including classroom activity, the 
micro-unit is an artefact-mediated action and the 
macro-units are the activities. That is the basic CHAT 
approach. But that is far from the whole picture isn't it? 
What chronotope determines classroom activity - are we 
training people to be productive workers or are we 
participating in social movements or are we engaged in 
transforming relations of domination in the classroom or are 
we part of a centuries-old struggle to understand and change 
the world? The action/activity just gives us one range of 
insights, but we might analyse the classroom from different 
perspectives.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
On 8/09/2017 7:58 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
> I am very curious about what "visceral" means here (Andy), and particularly how that relates to the 'interrelations' that David D. is mentioning, and that on the 'perspective of the researcher'.
>
> I was thinking of the Hurricanes going on now as the expressions of a system, one that sustains category 5 hurricanes in *this* particulars ways that are called Irma, José, etc. How the 'visceral' relation may be like when the object is a physical system (a hurricane and the climate system that sustains it), and when it is a social system (e.g., a classroom conflict and the system that sustains it).
>
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Dirlam <modesofpractice@gmail.com>
> Sent: 07 September 2017 19:41
> To: Andy Blunden; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Unit of Analysis
>
> The issues that have arisen in this discussion clarify the conception of
> what sort of entity a "unit" is. Both and Andy and Martin stress the
> importance of the observer. Anyone with some experience should have some
> sense of it (Martin's point). But Andy added the notion that experts need
> basically to be able to agree reliably on examples of the unit (worded like
> the psychological researcher I am, but I'm sure Andy will correct me if I
> missed his meaning).
>
> We also need to address two other aspects of units--their classifiability
> and the types of relations between them. What makes water not an element,
> but a compound, are the relations between the subunits (the chemical bonds
> between the elements) as well as those with other molecules of water (how
> fast they travel relative to each other), which was David Kellogg's point.
> So the analogy to activity is that it is like the molecule, while actions
> are like the elements. What is new to this discussion is that the activity
> must contain not only actions, but also relationships between them. If we
> move up to the biological realm, we find a great increase in the complexity
> of the analogy. Bodies are made up of more than cells, and I'm not just
> referring to entities like extracellular fluid. The identifiability,
> classification, and interrelations between cells and their constituents all
> help to make the unit so interesting to science. Likewise, the constituents
> of activities are more than actions. Yrjo's triangles illustrate that.
> Also, we need to be able to identify an activity, classify activities, and
> discern the interrelations between them and their constituents.
>
> I think that is getting us close to David Kellogg's aim of characterizing
> the meaning of unit. But glad, like him, to read corrections.
>
> David
>
> On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 10:08 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, but I think, Martin, that the unit of analysis we need to aspire to
>> is *visceral* and sensuous. There are "everyday" concepts which are utterly
>> abstract and saturated with ideology and received knowledge. For example,
>> Marx's concept of capital is buying-in-order-to-sell, which is not the
>> "everyday" concept of capital at all, of course.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
>>
>> On 7/09/2017 8:48 AM, Martin John Packer wrote:
>>
>>> Isn’t a unit of analysis (a germ cell) a preliminary concept, one might
>>> say an everyday concept, that permits one to grasp the phenomenon that is
>>> to be studied in such a way that it can be elaborated, in the course of
>>> investigation, into an articulated and explicit scientific concept?
>>>
>>> just wondering
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 6, 2017, at 5:15 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Not sure if others might feel this is an oversimplification of unit of
>>>> analysis, but I just came across this in Wortham and Kim's Introduction
>>>> to
>>>> the volume Discourse and Education and found it useful. The short of it
>>>> is
>>>> that the unit of analysis is the unit that "preserves the
>>>> essential features of the whole".
>>>>
>>>> Here is their longer explanation:
>>>>
>>>> "Marx (1867/1986) and Vygotsky (1934/1987) apply the concept "unit of
>>>> analysis" to social scientific problems. In their account, an adequate
>>>> approach to any phenomenon must find the right unit of analysis - one
>>>> that
>>>> preserves the essential features of the whole. In order to study water, a
>>>> scientist must not break the substance down below the level of an
>>>> individual H20 molecule. Water is made up of nothing but hydrogen and
>>>> oxygen, but studying hydrogen and oxygen separately will not illuminate
>>>> the
>>>> essential properties of water. Similarly, meaningful language use
>>>> requires
>>>> a unit of analysis that includes aspects beyond phonology,
>>>> grammar, semantics, and mental representations. All of these linguistic
>>>> and
>>>> psychological factors play a role in linguistic communication, but
>>>> natural
>>>> language use also involves social action in a context that includes other
>>>> actors and socially significant regularities."
>>>>
>>>> (entire chapter can be found on Research Gate at:
>>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319322253_Introduct
>>>> ion_to_Discourse_and_Education
>>>> )
>>>>
>>>> I thought that the water/H20 metaphor was a useful one for thinking
>>>> about
>>>> unit of analysis.
>>>>
>>>> -greg
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>>> Assistant Professor
>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>>> Brigham Young University
>>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>>> WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
>>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>>
>>>
>>>
> >