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

Fri Apr 10 16:42:53 PDT 2020

Hello all,

I am also a lurker on this list. I'm reporting from San Jose, California. I
have been following the resources, discussions, and arguments since I was a
graduate student at Stanford. The resources were so so helpful in getting
me to the finish line on my thesis. One of my chapters (on prototyping in
Zimbabwe) was published on MCA thanks you all the encouragement from Mike
Cole. After graduating I worked at Smith College starting up their design
program and teaching students and faculty how to use prototyping in their
practice. I left academia, out of dismay at how much of the agenda within
the university is shaped by high net wealth individuals. I started working
at a consulting company focused on higher education, thinking this would
get me closer to the ground. We advise college presidents on strategy. The
pandemic has been a mess. Most are confused, scared, worried. Some are
pretending it's business as usual. There are a lot of ambulance chasers.
There are also a lot of visionaries for whom the crisis makes it easier to
push forward initiatives that have long stalled.

I've been working with a young man based in Nairobi. He's 21, brilliant,
highly accomplished and reached out to me to get advice on deciding to go
to college. He had taken several years off to follow his passion. He has
been building an education initiative that gets local kids excited about
developing sustainable solutions to local problems. Their curriculum would
make Luria proud. Because of the shelter in place mandate in my county, and
a flexible work schedule, I've had more time to Zoom with him. I took
advantage of that to introduce him to Karl Marx. Here's to the next
generation!

Sincerely,

Zaza

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 1:17 PM Dr. Elizabeth Fein <feine@duq.edu> wrote:

> 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> 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
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 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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