>... The last section on epistemological implications of
>the five attributes is very interesting reading. The reader gets
>a different "feeling" about activity theory. I suppose this
>comes from Arne's schooling in the early German influence.
For me it is very hard to see what you mean by re-reading this
old text, of course. I would be happy to learn where you found
contrasts to other presentations of the CHAT ideas, because this
would perhaps help me to understand the "different feeling" that
I have when I read North American texts...
In re-reading the text I hit upon this part of a paragraph:
>... a renaissance of the Vygotskian approach to the social
>formation of mind (Wertsch 1985) is well on its way. The
>development of an interdisciplinary and scientific theory of
>the formation and development of social, collective knowledge
>seems now possible, if the many valuable contributions to such
>an end that have been produced by scholars of other backgrounds
>(e.g. Mead 1934, Elias 1987, Bourdieu 1977) are taken into
>account. In my view, the Marxian approach to societal and
>cultural development will be able to fulfill this task - just
>because it is going through a *healthy crisis* presently.
This was written in 1990, and I would not write it again today.
In going back to the roots, to Hegel and other German Idealists,
and comparing how those same sources were taken up in the early
American pragmatist philosophy, and later educational and
cultural politics (Dewey, New Deal, ...) my then already weak
conviction has evaporated. A Marxian approach as such is presently
non-existing, and whether there will be a renaissance or some
new synthesis in the next century, I simply cannot say, and,
what's more, I don't even care...
My present reckoning is that the conceptual net, and the
methodological procedures, of CHAT can stand on their own, there
being no need anymore to anchor them in a definite reconstruction
of their history.
Arne.