[Xmca-l] Re: As of 2020, the American Century is Over

[David Kellogg]

I think our tradition has always been incredulous of frontiers for the same
reason we are skeptical about elements. It's not really "as a plus" or
"interdisciplinary" or "bridges not walls". It's more, "What is this thing
you are calling a wall really made of?".

One of the first of many distortions our elementary school kids have to
learn is that there is a "science" class that includes biology and
chemistry but not history and civics and a "social studies" class which
includes history and civics but not biology and chemistry.

Similarly, our kids learn that there is a "morals" class that isn't the
same thing as "civics" or "ethics". I would like to teach them that this is
something like the difference between Korean music and Western music or
Asian painting and oil painting or Chinese and Western opera. But there's a
little more to it than that.

I don't think Vygotsky would see any of these distinctions as fundamental
or essential. We can place one discipline in the background in order to
foreground another (for me it's always language, and for you it's always
labor). But we don't forget that we're the ones who just did that.

In Midnight's Children, the Mumbai magicians are all members of the Indian
Communist Party and consequently sworn, devout materialists. They can only
bend reality so long as they remember that they are real themselves.
.


David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!UlLtbsnFYEU9uxUVpDtxIQgmzNmz2wz8fSVWuS79pILRH1ca52_dzQdUUlPohs0Vq847Mg$ 

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
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On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 11:36 AM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:

> Oh for heavens sake, someone has to take a shot!
>
> As a psychologist, what I find new, different, and useful about cultural
> psychology is its proposal that human psychological functioning occurs
> first (phylogenetically, historically, and ontogenetically) between people,
> as a social process, and is mediated by cultural artifacts.
>
> That’s not to ignore the genetic or the biological, because the use of
> artifacts transforms the people who use them, biologically, neurologically,
> and even genetically.
>
> And issues of equity enter because (s)he who has the artifacts has the
> power(s)…
>
> good night   :)
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
> On May 13, 2020, at 12:30 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Great list of references, Phillip.
>
> As someone who teaches outside the school context, as compared to what I
> think is the majority of people on this list, I often have to push myself
> to justify why I feel so at home in the Vygotskian tradition (or CHAT, or
> socio-cultural tradition). I notice that my bookshelf looks a lot like
> yours.  If I walked into your study and looked at your bookshelf I’d
> probably have a good laugh.
>
> So what do these people have in common that defines them as being part of
> one tradition?  And compared to what?
>
> Focus on language, social interaction, paying attention to history, paying
> attention to context - and the assumption that international is a plus?
>
> As compared to avoiding genetics, testing, individualism, anything defined
> by national boundaries?
>
> On a big scale, in other words, what’s special about the sociocultural
> approach?  Why do I recognize your list?
>
> Thanks — H
>
>
>
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen.wordpress.com
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com__;!!Mih3wA!SsKJXlr9aEy4tVMsmtn0J43hDh_QJCslrIAhqqU4D5SFpiipG-a9GR2v_QkbGfqbERpNQg$>
>
>
>
>
> On May 7, 2020, at 7:18 AM, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Helena & Henry -  yeah, the Choudry & Williams paper re:figured worlds and
> power was a pleasure to read - nuanced and evocative.  i was reminded of
> Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind, in which one of his assertions is
> that one of the attributed of learning - change in which a difference makes
> a difference - stochastic. also, i think that Yuval Noah Harari's assertion
> in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, that it was with the emergence of
> language that as one of the five great apes groups we were able to imagine
> figured worlds that don't exist - what he describes as the Cognitive
> Revolution.
> it was somewhere in the early 2000's that i wrote a review of Identity and
> Agency in Cultural Worlds for MCA.  thought i had first come across Dorothy
> Holland's work through Margaret Eisenhart's instruction on ethnographic
> methods and educational research. even earlier, at a conference in the
> early 90's Eisenhart suggested that every school have an anthropologist as
> a learning/teaching resource for classroom teachers.  of course, Shirley
> Brice Heath, as well as Kris Gutierrez, and Jose Lemon (Dancing with the
> Devil) are great exemplars of that, amongst too many others to mention.
>
> again, Helena, many thanks for the paper.
>
> phillip
>
>
>
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