[Xmca-l] Re: [External] Re: General check-in?

Fri Apr 10 13:14:54 PDT 2020

Hello all -
Longtime lurker on this list, emerging occasionally to send little dispatches from SQIP. But I read much of what comes through. I'm in Pittsburgh, in a small neighborhood whose close connections make me feel both immense gratitude and wonderment.

Every day as I drink my morning coffee I write a few pages in a notebook, and recently those have been taken up with these questions: what do I do? Or as Mike puts it, what can we do, whoever we is, or are? The question I keep coming back to, and that I encountered so often in my work with people shaded under the umbrella of the "autism spectrum" diagnosis that brought me to this list, is how do we relearn the ability to think of ourselves in terms of a we - one that is neither confined to the claustrophobic intimacy of the dyad nor lost in the abstractions of national identity or homogenizing social structures, but that occupies some space in between. This "larger social unit" that David evoked in that earlier email, which - in being neither binary nor undifferentiated (not the one or the one-and-the-other or the all, but the several) - seems like it itself teaches us to think about our place in space and time and history in a distinct way. I'm excited, in a way that had been hard for me to access in the last few days, about the possibility of engaging the wisdom of this list in this and other projects.
Wishing you well,
Elizabeth

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@UCSD.EDU>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 2:22 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [External] [Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

Hi Rein --  Its great to hear from Estonia.  The Tulvistas used to be contributors to this conversation, back in the day.  Your cultural-historical
tradition, entwined with your semiotics, educate us all.

How are you and your social circle thinkig about the current historical crisis/crises in terms of the future of democracy and debates about what
follows in terms of possible forms of political economy.? I am "seeing" a very strong movement on the part of my government to fulfill our founding
fathers's single worst nightmare:  That a president would become king, and the states his vassals.  This imagining is reinforced almost daily as I scan
the horizon.  A new form of nationalist authoritarianism. I might even live long enough to experience it.

As critical, committed, cultural-historical, social scientists, who teach in universities tasked with creating and "transmitting" our knowledge to next generations,
what special skills do we bring to our social roles and its obligations? Beth has described going through a qualitative transformation in her social role that is tightly
bound to her obligations to her students and their students. David points to a future in which classroom spaces will not be used for their designed purposes for
at least 2-3 years, assuming a globally distributed vaccine, or else it will be entirely a form of distance education that the world has never before experienced.
Either way, inequalities will be exacerbated. etc. You all of this.

So what can WE do (whoever we is?).
Here is what I imagine from the perspective of a vulnerable 82 year old and almost four decades of xlchc-->xmca:
 Many people associated with XMCA, and many more who are associated with a variety of allied enterprises, have for decades become
"experts" in the design of new forms of educational activity  (or medical activity, or milk delivery men's mathematical practices, or tailors eeking out a
living in an impoverished country)

If I were a youngster and into branding, I might say that CHAT is expert in creating hybrid,multimedia, systems of activity, ones that afford the design of
the kind of "heterogeneous attunement." -- the kind of attunement that promotes learning and development  in zones of proxmal development.
However, I am not a youngster and my plate was pretty full before this second shock wave,

I am thinking about this as an "act locally but think globally" way to deal with a world where people must band together but can only survive by their networked ties to other.

XMCA may not be the best place to discuss such matters. Your note with its "two kinds of social distancing" set me off.
Here the medium seems to promote forms of chaining that leave only buried traces of the by-passed links. Then they silence
those who feel disempowered by the male-domination. whiteness and status that have been apparently unstoppable although
it is not the wish of any of those who participate. This happens not just on xmca, but in other fora where everyone does not want it to happen.

My hope is that Cultural Praxis, which the MCA editors are re-vivifying, will provide more tools to ensure that we retain the diversity essential to any sort of cultural-historical theorizing or practicing.

My whole ruble
mike
PS-   How do we hybridize your two kinds of social distancing to create effect environments for education?

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 1:30 AM Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee<mailto:rein.raud@tlu.ee>> wrote:
Hi everyone,

Sorry for not having been very active lately, as I’ve been submerged in lots of reading and writing, and the situation with the crisis has created an even more conducive atmosphere for that. In Estonia, the situation is more or less under control, and social distancing has been in our second nature for ages, although now that it is encouraged, it is suddenly no longer so natural.

Stay safe and keep up the good work!

With best wishes,

Rein

**********************************************
Rein Raud
Professor of Asian and Cultural Studies, Tallinn University
Uus-Sadama 5, Tallinn 10120 Estonia
www.reinraud.com<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reinraud.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cfeine%40duq.edu%7C4b80132482f44c3da5cf08d7dd7c8fc9%7C12c44311cf844e4195c38df690b1eb61%7C0%7C0%7C637221399371358343&sdata=%2Fzn8qtariPBMqy99mKH4xwHXbGz2kgszdJzTFPhCKog%3D&reserved=0>

“Meaning in Action: Outline of an Integral Theory of Culture”(Polity 2016)<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpolitybooks.com%2Fbookdetail%2F%3Fisbn%3D9781509511242&data=02%7C01%7Cfeine%40duq.edu%7C4b80132482f44c3da5cf08d7dd7c8fc9%7C12c44311cf844e4195c38df690b1eb61%7C0%7C0%7C637221399371368339&sdata=mlt%2FYrK0LxubXFYNkeZK04VKHhbK7NJgn0nVQo2COrc%3D&reserved=0>
“Practices of Selfhood” (with Zygmunt Bauman, Polity 2015)<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpolitybooks.com%2Fbookdetail%2F%3Fisbn%3D9780745690162&data=02%7C01%7Cfeine%40duq.edu%7C4b80132482f44c3da5cf08d7dd7c8fc9%7C12c44311cf844e4195c38df690b1eb61%7C0%7C0%7C637221399371368339&sdata=m1rZ2PIcpz%2Fj%2BhWU1PrtL4%2FvarACr5Iybe3V4%2Fw658I%3D&reserved=0>

--
Being a social scientist is like being a geologist who studies rocks in a landslide. Roy D'Andrade
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For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members of LCHC, visit
lchc.ucsd.edu<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flchc.ucsd.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cfeine%40duq.edu%7C4b80132482f44c3da5cf08d7dd7c8fc9%7C12c44311cf844e4195c38df690b1eb61%7C0%7C0%7C637221399371368339&sdata=MskPiw%2FJKx3g%2B8e%2FKsFAqqEKH5emDJ03KfhyThnEZ2g%3D&reserved=0>.  For archival materials and a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit lchcautobio.ucsd.edu<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flchcautobio.ucsd.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cfeine%40duq.edu%7C4b80132482f44c3da5cf08d7dd7c8fc9%7C12c44311cf844e4195c38df690b1eb61%7C0%7C0%7C637221399371378332&sdata=iO0%2BW2F90oiLinSktb%2FGzIYeiv5C51XB%2Bym5OImIyB8%3D&reserved=0>.

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