On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Mike Cole wrote:
>
> Chuck-- By the time we get to Chapter 8, I am starting to ask the following
> question directly: Is it possible to develop a psychology that starts from
> an analysis of culturally organized activity not contrived by an experimenter.
>
> If we cannot do this, in what way is cultural-historical psychology also
> activity theory?
> mike
> >
Mike, I don't understand your point. Any analysis is contrived in
the sense that we choose what to observe, if when and how to
intervene, participate, etc. But maybe that's too obvious.
Given this inevitability, isn't research yet another cultural
historical activity whose norms interact with other cultural
practices? Research doesn't reveal, it provides an account based
upon some conventions agreed to by the community of practice.
Or have I got this wrong?
djc
------
Don-- In the chapter under discussion, I start out on my snark
hunt. Can I make a case for the possibility that people who
call themselves psychologists can start from observation, in
particular from observation of units of analysis that usefully
connect up with what I'll gloss as everyday activities. My answer
is yes, and on the way to that answer, I think I address the ways
in which the practices associated with schooling and testing, etc.
are "everyday" within certain cultural-historical formations. Perhaps
I do not do this adequately. In fact, I CERTAINLY don't do it
comprehensively, because I am trying to trace out one of many
possible useful ways of thinking. Research of the kind I end up
engaging in does not "reveal" in the sense implied by the context
of your remarks. Rather, it provides a "decentered" but not
totally authoritative view of the object.
My goal, again, was to show that it is possible to start
with everyday activities as the unit of analysis-- it is of course
a product of analysis and not a "pure reality" there to become
manifest through relalation.
I hope that throughout the book I make it clear that I
am discovering for myself old knowledge, well known to many but
not me, and piecing together my understandings as I go. I am not
making imperial claims for either cultural psychology or psychology.
But I am taking the perspective, for the purposes of this book,
to explain to psychologists who wonder why culture is so difficult
to keep in mind the history that makes that issue so difficult. And,
within that framework, I have tried to make suggestions about how
to think about that problem.
That is not the only framework I am interested in, but it
is that framework that I adopted. I am personally oriented forward,
so to speak. What do we need to do to understand the variations in
family of cultural-historical approaches such that we can more
adequately deal with the horendous problems facing our children?
mike