[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Text

[Martin Packer]

Wow, very graphic!  At first I thought my microsystem had exploded!  :)

The 20,000 dollar question for me has always been, why is culture in the macrosystem? Is there no culture in my here-&-now interactions with other people? (Well, perhaps in my case not!)

Martin




> On Jan 29, 2018, at 6:34 PM, Jonathan Tudge <jrtudge@uncg.edu> wrote:
> 
> Greetings, Martin,
> 
> I hope that this works (taken from a powerpoint presentation).
> 
> 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 Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 6:22 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> 
>> 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
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
> <PPCT (Tudge, 2008, p. 69).pptx>