Keith writes that Vygotsky is read by Americans more as if he and sibs
were action theorists than structural theorists. This formulation
suggests a gaggle of dichotomies that float around as if all those
on the left side were equivilant to each other and in uniform contrast
with those on the right. As in:
action-structure
action-activity
agency-structure
function-structure
etc
Your note substitutes, vis a vis (say) discussions involving Wertsch
and Engestrom, the action/structure dichotomy for the action/activity
dichotomy/contrast. If you want to stir things up some more, toss
"context" into the brew.
About AMerican readings by psychologists of vygotsky: I started out
interpreting him through neobehaviorists of the 1950's who also
drew s-x-r diagrams that were even sometimes triangular and not
linear. Many adopted him as a social learning theorist, a variant of
the same way of thinking.
The average psychology graduate student in any department of psychology
I have been associated with is required to take virtually no history,
let alone history of ideas, let alone history of the humane sciences.
Rather, they get, a most, a version of the history of psychology that
is based heavily on secondary sources, and only occasionally, are they
taught by someone who thinks that socio-historical-cultural as terms
bear interesting and varied relationships to each other.
mike