[Xmca-l] Re: "Context" or Object of activity

[Andy Blunden]

I can't follow your message at all, David, but perhaps a few
words of explanation will help.

Faced with, for example, a design experiment like 5thD, of
course, the project leaders and researchers are aware of the
importance of the context of the project and know that the
success or early failure of the project will depend on
events coming out of an unbounded context (s well as the
resilience and self-sufficiency of the project). The problem
is (1) how to conceptualise this unbounded context. (2) If
you want to use the method of analysis by units, you ask
yourself what is the relation between a unit of analysis and
the context of the research. But (2) answers (1).

(2) In designing the project you will analyse the unbounded
context by means of analysis by units; specifically, you
would understand that the world is made up of projects.
These projects can be conceptualised as *mediating*
elements, because the project which forms the subject matter
of the research has *collaborative relationships* with a
range of projects (the university, the local council, etc,
etc.) and these projects, when you add all of them up, are
the world. Still unbounded, but by means of analysis by
units you have an approach. The context is analysed in terms
of its units, projects, and those projects with which the
subject project collaborates are the mediating elements and
are in focus. No guarantee, but a start.

So (1) the context is not *included* in the "unit of
analysis" but is subject to analysis by units itself. The
world is not a subordinate part of one of its units.

This is in fact how Mike approached the problem.

Andy


------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 2/02/2018 8:25 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> The late Leo van Lier, who more or less single-handedly
> created an "ecological applied linguistics" after he moved
> to the USA from Peru, used to tell a story about getting
> his eldest child, a boy who grew up speaking Spanish and
> Quechua, to speak an English sentence. Children who do not
> know what language can be easily trained to repeat
> meaningless phrases out of context (I have a lot of data
> on this), but children who already speak one language tend
> to be quite careful about speaking a new one (and they
> seem to be particularly careful about who gets to hear
> what language). So the boy refused to speak any English at
> all for a full year. One day Leo was in a supermarket
> buying breakfast cereal, and the boy was riding in the
> shopping cart. They passed another cart with another child
> and exaclty the same brand of breakfast cereal. The boy
> pointed to the other cart and then to their own and
> distinctly said "That...on that".
>
> I don't see how the context of "that" is unbounded, Andy.
> Yes, the cereal in question bears my name, but no, the
> relationship is not close, or not close enough to do me
> any good, as my father used to say over breakfast. But I
> don't see why I cannot draw a boundary between the
> breakfast cereal and my own name (as Bronfenbrenner does)
> and say that the box and the cart are part of the context
> of situation and the name and the Road to Wellville are
> not. To say that "context" in this situation is an
> "unbounded abstraction" is like saying that today's
> weather is an unbounded abstraction. Weather, like any
> other context of situation, is a context bounded by text.
> One of the boundaries that text places on context is
> distinguishing a context of situation from a context of
> culture. That, as I understand it, is the distinction
> between a micro-context and a macro-context, to use
> Bronfenbrenner's labels. Or, if you like, the distinction
> between weather and climate.
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Recent Article in /Mind, Culture, and Activity/ 24 (4)
> 'Metaphoric, Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A
> Commentary on “Neoformation: A Dialectical Approach to
> Developmental Change”'
>
> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full>                                        
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 10:39 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     As Mike has pointed out on numerous occasions the
>     "context" of even the most modest project or action by
>     an individual, may turn out to be a
>     geopolitical/historical event. There is no boundary
>     which can be draw such that 'nothing outside this
>     boundary counts as context'. So, when a theorist
>     refers to 'context', either they have privileged
>     God-like prescience or they mean by "context" the
>     entire, unbounded totality of events in the world
>     during or prior to this action. So to refer to this
>     unbounded totality with the term "context" and join it
>     to either the research subject or within the "unit of
>     analysis" is to utilise an "unbounded abstraction."
>
>
>     The issue raised here is not whether analysis is
>     impossible of course, but simply, what is the
>     appropriate methodology for researching unbounded
>     totalities?
>
>
>     Andy
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     Andy Blunden
>     http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>     <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>     On 1/02/2018 12:09 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
>>     ....
>>
>>
>>     That said, I am very sympathetic to the idea
>>     that "context", if it is external in the sense of
>>     arbitrary, does not add much to our
>>     understanding. But Andy, how does your point about
>>     "unbounded abstraction" connect to this?
>>
>>
>>     Alfredo
>>
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>
>