> This sounds like a fascinating project. I think you might find it
>useful to look at the multidimensional coding approach that I describe in
>my 1996 *Mind, Culture, and Activity* paper on Macrodevelopmental
>Analysis. The community in that case was a community of scholars, not a
>geographic locale, but the paper shows how the coding process can be
>applied to both individuals and to communities. Let me know if you and
>your local library do not have a copy of the journal.
>
> David
David, I read your MCA paper with interest. But my general approach in the
work I've mentioned (of schools in a Michigan community) has been an
interpretive one; that is to say, I try to preserve the 'plurivocity' of
the actions, talk, and events that transpire, and the way their
interpretation shifts with context. How "quality" of schooling connotes
different things in different discourses, for example. Coding, in my
opinion, loses this characteristic.
I've sketched the logic of this kind of analysis in a couple of places:
Packer, M. J. (1985). Hermeneutic inquiry in the study of human conduct.
American Psychologist, 40, 1081-1093.
Packer, M. J., & Richardson, E. (1991). Analytic hermeneutics and the study
of morality in action. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of
moral behavior and development. Volume 1: Theory, (Vol. 1, pp. 335-372).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
What's different in what I'm trying to do in this project is the attention
that's necessary to the larger systems in which contexts are located.
Martin
================
Martin Packer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh PA 15282
(412) 396-4852
fax: (412) 396-5197
packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu
http://www.duq.edu/liberalarts/gradpsych/packer/packer.html