The "levels of analysis" discussion reminds me of a short film piece called
"Powers of Ten" produced by some folks at IBM that Mike C. showed me
several years ago at LCHC. I continue to use it in classes and research
group as a neat heuristic to think about the "levels" question. The film
(and accompanying book for which I do not have a reference) takes a visual
look at levels of organization, starting with a family having a picnic,
expanding "outward" by powers of ten until the our frame of reference is
beyond the universe, and then downward by powers of ten to the subatomic
level. This is perhaps a nice metaphorical example of the sort of camera
that Gordon and Eugene, and perhaps all of us hope for.
In some real sense the universe is a "whole," despite the analytic
necessity of parsing it because it is inappropriate to use the same
explanatory principles for different levels of organization (e.g. ontogeny
and sociogenesis), the latter point having been made perhaps most clearly
by Vygotsky. I remain concerned, however, with backing into assumptions
that society and the individual are a seamless monistic whole except for
the analytic activities of social scientists. There are objective, albeit
socially constructed tensions between ontogenesis and the development of an
activity, for example, and between an activity and larger-scale
sociocultural change. Phil and Jay's discussion of power and coercion in
education is a wonderful example of this. If we assume that these tensions
are merely a product of our analyses, and not reasoning by participants in
our studies and society, it becomes difficult to address any sense of
opposition, resistance, or conflict in how we learn/develop.
King
__________________________________________________________________
King Beach Phone: 517-353-0637
448 Erickson Hall Fax 517-353-6393
Sociocultural Research Group Email: kdbeach who-is-at msu.edu
CEPSE, Educational Psychology Server: SCRG who-is-at msu.edu
Michigan State University Web: http://www.educ.msu.edu/
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA units/Groups/SocCult/SCRG.html
__________________________________________________________________