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

Fri Apr 10 17:39:38 PDT 2020

Mike,
As to your ps, do you think that our universities really have anything to
offer Zaza’s student other than a few letters after his name?
Sounds like he’s already doing it.
Dunno. Am I being too cynical?
Greg

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 6:24 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Wonderful to hear from you Zaza!
>
>
> Do you guesstimate it will take Higher Ed several years to re-organize to
> the point where their accreditations are for real? Or that the credits will
> narrow
> in content,  sapping them of the broad aims of education?  If so, might
> not your skills find a home in a project for designing intermediate forms
> of activity
> for college students and grads?   Seems like you should get to know Kris's
> Guiterrez's Prolepsis Design Group at Berkeley/CU Boulder. Their current
> course,
> started in January before  covid-19 hit, is an eye opener in its ability
> to coordinate 40 or so academics from grad school to grave-approaching
> to think about the convergence between CHAT and Critical Learning Sciences.
> I believe they are planning a redesigned repeat for the fall.
>
> Don't be a stranger. *we *need you.
>
> mike
>
> PS-- Hopefully some working member of the professoriate present here an
> help your student. Sounds like a wonderful person to be around.
> So you are a perfect person to get a special interest group (or whatever
> the name is) going!
>
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 4:44 PM Zaza Kabayadondo <
> zaza.kabayadondo@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Uus-Sadama+5,+Tallinn+10120+Estonia?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>> 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>
>>> .
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> 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.  For archival materials and a narrative history of the
> research of LCHC, visit lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
> --
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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