CP11:

Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:32:08 -0700 (PDT)

In the final chapter Mike returns to the issue of how the two psychologies
might be reintegrated around culture and artifacts as central to human
life and cognition ( and which he later points out only come alive and
take on meaning in human activity, making ecological validity a key
problem in investigating mind, culture, artifacts and activity, for these
phenomena die unless in real process). Towards the end Mike points out, as
well, that Vygotsky seemed not be be sufficiently sensitive to the
context/activity dependence of artifacts, their use, and their cognitive
consequences, and thus was not attuned to issues of ecological validity.
He further examines the continuing tensions that riddle the
enterprise of seeing culture and mind as co-constitutive (I might
phrase it: What are humans such that they make culture which they then
live in, and what is culture such that humans make it?) rather than as
separate variables that might influence each other. The key difficulty is
the dependence on context and activity themselves being mutually
constitutive.
As indications of directions to move in, Mike points to the
flexibility and provisionality of metaphor, current social science concern
for context and practice and interdisciplinarity, and Luria's romantic
science, in which tradition he places the interventions of the Fifth
Dimension.

Some questions
--what do you think of the critique of LSV?
--how would those of you not from psychology describe the integrative
project from the perspective of your disciplinary porjects?
--how do you understand or resolve the issue of context as given for
activity and context as made for activity?
--what would you add or subtract from Mike's list of current resources
supporting cultural psychology and related enterprises?

Let's keep this discussion going for a while. Perhaps you might want to
return to earlier issues you may feel we have not adequately dug into.

Thanks for participating, or even just giving your lurking support.
Chuck