Parallels of metacognition in Giddens and Bourdieu?
Paul Dillon (dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com)
Sat, 10 Jul 1999 08:11:49 -0700
I've been wondering whether anyone has looked into the potential parallel's
between activity theory's concept of metacognition and the concepts of
"discursive consciousness" and "reflexivity" that one finds in the works of
Giddens and Bourdieu. I sense that there is a field for inquiry here that
might prove particularly useful for looking at the question of context which
also has clear parallels in Giddens' notion of regions, regionalization, and
locales and Bourdieu's notion of fields Both of these authors draw an
important distinction between practical consciousness (Giddens) or practical
sense (Bourdieu) which is the mode of knowledgeable action characteristic of
"knowing how to go on" with an activity and the discursive consciousness
(Giddens) that one uses to account for what one is doing to others. This
accounting activity is always a potential but usually not required.
Furthermore, the concern with the structural duality of the "pscyhological
cell" which Vann (http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/reviews/contexts.html)
so strongly empahsized as fundamental to activity theory psychology would
seem to have analogs in both Giddens' theory of structuration and Bourdieu's
theory of habitus. It seems to me that all three directions have their
hands on the same elephant and my gut feeling tells me that someone else
must have noticed this and perhaps done some work on comparing them,
hopefully with some rigor. I can see some useful areas for
cross-fertilization, in particular with respect to Giddens' lack of any
notion of the derteminative role of tools (instruments), Bourdieu's limited
handling of social interaction, and the seeming absence of a sociologically
grounded notion of the reproduction of power relations in activity theory.
Paul Dillon