With this in mind, I appreciate Jay's notion of backing up to the last=
bifurcation, and the fractal visualization he conjurs suggests that it may=
be good to explore many of the forks, in parallel, simultaneously. Eva=
notes the difficulties of trying to do this personally, spending all of=
one's time in the library, and the obvious alternative is division of=
labor. So Paul Cobb's work, though many of us will disagree with his units=
of analysis, and interpretion of results, is to be appreciated. As Cobb=
has had some carefully designed experiences with people, I think it is also=
useful to re-interpret those experiences within a CHAT framework, as one=
can do with the meta-language appropriated by children when participating=
in a setting with such-minded researchers.
In a manner of speaking, we are always going down the wrong fork. Or=
perhaps we need all the forks in our understanding of the world, and so it=
is useful to read our contemporaries who have traveled down a different=
fork than us in pursuit of our heros' legacies as well as our heros' foes=
and their followers. =20
As a re-formed constructivist and Piagetian, I appreciate the notions of=
assimilation and accomodation as a dual process in the description of=
internalization of activity, and have found those more detailed than=
appropriation for describing change in the individual, although the dual=
process ignores the cultural sense that appropriation captures. Having=
been spending more time lately trying on the CHAT goggles, I also partially=
agree with Cobb when he writes:=20
Analyses conducted in this tradition
therefore leave little room for psychological approaches,
such as constructivism, that focus on the individual.
(Cobb et al., 1997, p. 152)
And in hindsight, it is because, once I put on a CHAT goggles, the world is=
transformed, and knowing the genesis of an individual, ignoring the=
cultural influences of people and things, is no longer an interest for me. =
Other questions open up that become far more interesting. With the=
goggles, I see the impossibility of isolating the individual from=
influences qua interactions with the researcher. Indeed, turning the=
goggles on CHAT per se, the very notion of determining the boundaries of a=
zoped is problematic, in that to accomplish this, one must study two=
different settings, and one always interacts with the subjects in some way,=
even if to help compose the setting -- and ultimately it is impossible to=
determine what one subject can do independently. Rather, to be=
ultra-careful, one can only make comparative statements of performance in=
this setting vs. that setting.
But I also partially disagree with Cobb, because I AM interested in the=
inner mind, as it plays a role in individuals who are the agents in=
activity. Individuals, through their own development, contribute to the=
development of their institutions, and society in general, often in=
unexpected ways, and those collectives, in turn, contribute to the=
development of the individual. As Nikiforov, nicely puts it, "That is why=
no matter how important it is to describe activity in terms of the social=
relations it embodies, it is no less important to describe it as creative=
self-expression by an individual." and I'm sure he does not put the=
individual in isolation, but rather considers the individual in mutual=
constitution of activity with other individuals. It is not a matter of=
ignoring intramental processes, but rather of recognizing their relative=
importance and relation to other processes that contribute to human=
performance in the settings we study.
The problem is, I think I am wrong.
Bill B.
-----------------
(1) I found the paper through the EUFRAT list. Eva made it downloadable at=
:
DIALECTICS AND MODELLING IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS (Symposium on Philosophical
Aspects of Information Systems, 1998)
http://schutz.psy.aau.dk/papers/