[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Text

[Martin Packer]

Hi Jon,

Would it be possible for you to post here the figure you mentioned in your message, page 69 of your book? 

Martin

"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)



> On Jan 29, 2018, at 10:24 AM, Jonathan Tudge <jrtudge@uncg.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi, Mike,
> 
> There are a couple of problems with the 2005 book.  One is that the papers
> are drawn from UB's writings from the 1970s to the early part of this
> century.  As is true of Vygotsky's writings (and probably any theorist who
> wrote over a significant span of time) it's really important to know the
> date of publication.  The other problem is that at least one of the
> chapters is incomplete, and there are errors in at least one other.
> 
> As for the concentric circles or the matrioshka--they're both excellent
> examples of how powerful metaphors can go powerfully wrong!  Both are
> utterly misleading, in that they really focus attention on the different
> layers of context (and even then don't make sense--the mesosystem consists
> of overlapping circles, as in a Venn diagram).  Nonetheless, you're
> right--UB continued to use the metaphor in his final publications.
> 
> However, his theory really developed a lot from the 1970s onwards (see Rosa
> and Tudge, 2013; Tudge, 2013), and from the early 1990s onwards "proximal
> processes" were the centerpiece of his Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT)
> model.  These are essentially the everyday activities in which developing
> people engage, and they always and only occur in microsystems.  However,
> what goes on in microsystems is always influenced by (a) the person
> characteristics of the developing individuals of interest and those of the
> others with whom they interact, (b) the characteristics of the context,
> both proximal (as in the nature of the microsystem in which those
> activities are occurring) and distal (the macrosystem, which for him was
> culture, whether considered at the level of society or within-society
> cultural groups), and (c) time, which includes both the need to study over
> time (longitudinally) and in time (the prevailing social, economic, and
> political climate).    A graphic representation that better reflects his
> developed position than the concentric circles can be found in Tudge
> (2008), on page 69.
> 
> I actually think that he rather dropped the ball on culture,
> unfortunately.  I really like his writings on this in his 1979 book and in
> his 1989 (or 1992) chapter on ecological systems theory.  Reading his 1998
> (or 2006) handbook chapters you'll find virtually no mention of the impact
> of culture (or macrosystem) despite drawing on Steinberg et al.'s research
> on adolescents from different racial/ethnic groups.
> 
> Don't feel bad, though, if you have always just thought of Bronfenbrenner's
> theory as one of concentric circles of context--you're no different in that
> regard from just about everyone who has published an undergrad textbook on
> human development, not to mention a majority of scholars who have said that
> they've used UB's theory as foundational for their research (see Tudge et
> al., 2009, 2016).
> 
> If anyone would like a copy of any of these papers, just send me a private
> message to jrtudge@uncg.edu
> 
>   - Tudge, J. R. H. (2008). *The everyday lives of young children:
>   Culture, class, and child rearing in diverse societies.* New York:
>   Cambridge University Press.
>   - Tudge, J. R. H., Mokrova, I., Hatfield, B., & Karnik, R. B. (2009).
>   Uses and misuses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human
>   development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review, 1*(4), 198-210.
>   - Rosa, E. M., & Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of
>   human development: Its evolution from ecology to bioecology. *Journal of
>   Family Theory and Review, 5*(6), 243–258. DOI:10.1111/jftr.12022
>   - Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner. In Heather Montgomery
>   (Ed.), *Oxford bibliographies on line: Childhood studies*. New York:
>   Oxford University Press.
>   - Tudge, J. R. H., Payir, A., Merçon-Vargas, E. A., Cao, H., Liang, Y.,
>   Li, J., & O’Brien, L. T. (2016). Still misused after all these years? A
>   re-evaluation of the uses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human
>   development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review*, *8,* 427–445. doi:
>   10.1111/jftr.12165.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Jonathan Tudge
> 
> Professor
> Office: 155 Stone
> 
> Our work on gratitude: http://morethanthanks.wp.uncg.edu/
> 
> A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing
> gratitude in children and adolescents
> <https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
> Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
> 
> My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge
> 
> Mailing address:
> 248 Stone Building
> Department of Human Development and Family Studies
> PO Box 26170
> The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
> USA
> 
> phone (336) 223-6181
> fax   (336) 334-5076
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 6:20 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Jon --
>> 
>> Nice to see your voice!
>> 
>> I only have Urie's 2005 collection, *Making Human Beings Human, *to hand. I
>> checked it out
>> to see if the terms activity and context appeared there. Only sort of!
>> Activity is in the index, but context is not (!). I attach two pages from
>> the book for those interested (and able to read my amateur
>> photos). Here it seems that activity and context coincide at the micro
>> level, but perhaps only there?
>> 
>> Concerning embedded circles and context. It turns out that the person who
>> induced Sheila and me to write a textbook on human development was U.
>> Bronfenbrenner. And this same U.B. discussed with us how to represent his
>> perspective circa 1985, pretty early in the task of writing the first
>> edition. His use of matroshki (embedded dolls) as a metaphor and his
>> rhetoric at the time (and in 2005 as well) invites
>> a concentric circles representation. We discussed other ways of trying to
>> represent the idea and he
>> said that our representation came as close as he could figure out.
>> 
>> In the 2005 book he refers to my work as combining a Vygotskian notion of
>> context with an anthropological one (p. 126), and uses the term "ecological
>> context." I assume that most of my Russian colleagues would argue that LSV
>> used the concept of "social situation of development," not context. I have
>> no idea how he would respond to Yrjo's declaration that the activity is the
>> context, but it does not seem too far off from what is written on the pages
>> attached.
>> 
>> Perhaps someone on xmca who is skilled at searching texts in cyrillic could
>> search for his use of the term, context. I have always been curious about
>> what such a search would turn up, but lack the skill
>> to carry out the query.
>> 
>> And perhaps you have written something about the mistake of interpreting
>> U.B.'s notion of contexts using embedded circles we could learn from??
>> Certainly the passages on p. 46 remind me of the work of Hedegaard and
>> Fleer, who also draw upon U.B.
>> 
>> mike
>>