> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Serpell [mailto:serpell@umbc.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 3:05 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: sociocultural-historical genesis of Vygotsky's theory
>
>
> I found Karpov & Haywood's ( 1998, American Psychologist ) paper on the
> "two ways to elaborate Vygotsky's concept of mediation" interesting for a
> number of reasons. First, in relation to my query posted on XMCA last
> month, despite their explicit attention to the two geopolitically distinct
> strands of research inspired by Vygotsky's theory, the authors never
> mention culture as a relevant consideration for interpreting why these two
> lines of research have focused on distinctly different aspects of the
> theory. I wonder why ?
First, in my view, there is different understanding of the notion of culture
by Russian scholars in general and Vygotsky in specific than by modern
American use (both in popular and in academic contexts). In Russian, the
word "culture" ("kul'tura") highly connotes with the "high quality" and
"education" (in broad sense) and "art" (like in "Ministry of Culture" as a
part of Russian government). For example, in Russian you can say
"cultureless behavior" ("bezkul'turnoe povedenie") which can be translated
as "ignorant behavior" or even as "barbaric behavior." In Russian, "culture
of service" ("kul'tura obsluzhinvaniya") means "quality of service." Many
English wordings like "culture of a group" are not easy to translate in
Russian. What is similar between Russian and English use of the word
"culture" is that they are both applied to "ethnicity." I'm sure that this
is just a tip of an iceberg of differences and similarities.
Second, in Russian culture in general and in Vygotsky in specific, there is
much more focus on history then culture. It may be not overgeneralization,
that in many contexts Vygotsky viewed culture as a specific historical stage
of the development of a society. Culture is viewed as history.
> The American emphasis on what the authors term "metacognitive" mediation
> seems to me to have arisen from a dissatisfaction with Piaget's emphasis
> on the child's direct interaction with the physical world. Thus many
> neoVygotskian analyses in the US have focused on how the focal child
> interacts with adults and older children in learning about the physical
> world. Vygotsky's Law (inter before intra) provided a sharp theoretical
> formulation to justify a shift of emphasis that situated the child's
> developing cognition within a social context. To some degree this has
> served as an antidote against the Western cultural tendency to treat
> individual minds in isolation, and to objectify scientific knowledge.
I agree with the first part about Vygotsky's theory being an antidote
against the Western cultural tendency to treat individual minds in
isolation. However, I'm not sure that I agree with the second part of the
statement. I think that this is a specific Western use of Vygotsky's
conceptual framework that makes Vygotsky's stress on social nature of
individual's development " an antidote against the Western cultural
tendency ... to objectify scientific knowledge." I could not find any
postmodern themes in Vygotsky (unlike Bakhtin). In my view, Vygotsky had no
less modern "project" (using Sartr's term) than Piaget. Nevertheless, I
think it is very legitimate to use Vygotsky's framework to justify
postmodern point of views.
> Why then did this emphasis on the social situatedness of cognitive
> development not command the same priority attention for Russian (and other
> Soviet) psychologists ? Was it perhaps that, in the sociopolitical context
> of soviet socialism, acknowledgement of the social interdependency of
> cognition was less at risk (the water in which the fish were swimming, as
> it were) ? Karpov and Haywood offer no explanation, but assert that in
> their enthusiasm for elaborating Vygotsky's other type of mediation
> (termed "cognitive") into a "theoretical learning" approach to the design
> of instruction, Russian researchers have "underestimat (ed) ... the role
> of students' collaborative problem-solving activity"(p.33).
In my view, Vygotsky (like Davydov) would be very much against situated
cognition. I think that Vygotsky was one of the first scholars who noticed
and highly praised decontextualization as desired development in people (see
Jim Wertsch's 1985 book on this). Again, people who do situated cognition
can find good quotes from Vygotsky to support their claims. Vygotsky
emphasized that cognition is shaped by practices and relations that people
are involved. There is only step to situated cognition that in my view ,
Vygotsky did not make due to his "modernist" mindset rooted in Hegel.
> The second thing that stood out for me in Karpov & Haywood's description
> of the Russian account of cognitive mediation was its unproblematized use
> of the concept of "internalization". In the "theoretical learning"
> approach to instruction, we are told that "teachers teach methods of
> scientific analysis, and the students then master and internalize these
> methods in the course of using them." (P.31).
>
> I was challenged by a distinguished philosophical psychologist at a talk I
> gave recently for attributing the concept of "appropriation" as a central
> feature of cognitive development to Barbara Rogoff rather than to
> Vygotsky. And when I asked for some clarification, I was assured that
> Vygotsky was very much opposed to the dichotomy of internal vs external
> that underlies the concept of internalization. Our discussion turned to
> issues of language and translation, and I began to wonder whether the term
> "internalization" might be a mistranslation from Vygotsky's Russian text
> of what should really have been translated as "appropriation".
I found interesting discussion of the origin of Vygotsky concept of
"internalization" in Valsiner and van Veer's 1994 book on Vygotsky. He
barrowed it from Freud (via Luria who was the chair of the Russian Freudist
society in 20s). I know that Barbara Rogoff was heavily influenced by
Bakhtin in development of her concept of "appropriation." Bakhtin use of the
term "appropriation" ("prisvoienue" literally means to make somebody else'
property one's own) is very different than Vygotsky's use the term of
"internalization."
Bakhtin's term is about a special dialogic relation. For example, when I
have heard English wording "fixing a cat," like many foreigners, I couldn't
understand how damage of castration purposefully inflicted to an animal by
the owner can be called "fixing" which often means recovering from
malfunction. However, soon I started use the phrase "fixing kids in school"
with the sense of my full ownership. I have my own meaning of the phrase
(which is "castration kids who do not fit the mainstream system") that is in
a dialogic relation with educational system and some part (self-centered) of
mainstream American culture.
In my view, in contrast, Vygotsky's use of the term of internalization is
about privileging mastery of solo activity over joint activity: what was
social becomes psychological. It is very instrumental term and aimed at a
modernist project of "educating people" by giving them skills to be more
"self-sufficient" (Vygotsky used "self-control") and able. This is very
schoolish term.
My conclusion is that the current English translation of Vygotsky's term
"internalization" in regard to Vygotsky's work is very appropriate
> Is there any substance to that idea, I wonder ? I am aware that the
> English word pairs "speech/language" and "teaching/learning" have been
> problematized with respect to early translations of Vygotsky's works.
I agree. I think that Chapter 6 of famous the Mind in Society 1978 book
should be re-translated. The use of the word "learning" is very confusing
and wrong for several very different Russian terms. Instead of the current
title of the chapter "Interaction between learning and development", in my
view, it should be "Interaction between instruction and development" or
"Interaction between education and development" (or something like that).
>Can
> any of the bilinguals and textual experts on Vygotsky's writing clarify
> for me whether this is also true of "internalization/appropriation"? Or
> did Vygotsky have another term in his vocabulary that translates as
> "appropriation" ? (Any page citations to available English translations of
> Vygotsky would be much appreciated on this last point).
>
> In case it is not apparent, the connection that I draw between these two
> issues is as follows. If indeed the preoccupation with social situatedness
> in Vygotsky's theory is partly a reflection of a cross-cultural contrast
> between the context from which his research and writing originates and
> that of post-1960 American psychology, then perhaps its lower salience in
> Russian elaborations of the theory is connected with use of the concept
> "internalization," which lacks the social underpinnings of the alternative
> concept "appropriation". K & H cite Jerome Bruner (1966) as stating that
> "culture ... is not discovered; it is passed on or forgotten". But for me
> "passing on" is too simple a transmissionist expression, incorporating
> what Lakoff & Johnson criticize as "the conduit metaphor". That part of
> the culture that is taken on by the next generation is what makes sense to
> them to such an extent that it becomes their own, or "appropriated". And
> this sense of ownership is intimately connected with a sense of membership
> of the community of practice that it informs (Serpell, 1997a).
Good point!
I hope that my comments are helpful. However, please, do not treat my
comments as privileged just because Russian is my native language, I read
Vygotsky in Russian, or I studied psychology in Russia from Davydov and his
students. My opinion on the matter should be taken as one among others.
What do you think?
Eugene
>
> Robert
>
> Robert Serpell tel:
> 410 ) 455 2417
> Psychology Department 455 2567
> University of Maryland Baltimore County
> 1000 Hilltop Circle
> Baltimore MD 21250 fax: ( 410 ) 455 1055
>
>