> please, i love this phrase, 'exhale some ethnocentric smell'... can u elaborate? thanks.
What I was trying to say is that any development may have a teleologic
perspective.
The expression CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, criated/used by Vygotsky to name
that process through witch people learn how to think categorially,
mediated by culture - as to say, by language/words - points clearlly to
a teleologic goal: the conceptual thinking as condition to cientific
knowledge, transformation of reality, "victory" over nature.
I know there are much critical studies on Vygotsky that points its
"ethnocentric perspective", once he established a specific kind of
thinking as the most high level of action and mental functioning.
Nevertheless there are some parts of his texts in witch it is possible
to "see" how he tries to call attention to the relativeness of all those
"bennefits" implicit to categorial thinking (Studies on history of
development: The ape, the primitive and the child - when he writes on
natural and mediated attention in primitive behavior, for example).
And also, in 'Thinking and Speach/Thought and Language', one may
consider his distinction between MEANING and SENSE - when he reffers to
Syanislavsky's acting coach sistem, before begin to state that he could
not go beyond word dictionarilly meaning.
DEVELOPMENT and UNDERDEVELOPMENT are words witch points to concepts
related to specific networks of meaning and sense frameworks:
NEGOTIATION is the key-word to explicitate its use.
It scares me a lot when I hear statements on development as it was
something universal, as to say "euro(pe)centric", not considering
multiple perspectives of seeing things, or different cultural kinds of
thinking, praxis and believes.
I'm not saying that was Jay's discourse case or inttention. My querry
was in order to call some attention to the "Other" (Lacan's) or "others"
(Wallon's/Bahktin's)involved in such a interdisciplinaire and
multicultural forum like XMCA. Or, in other words, "to put some wood on
fire", to ask for some problematization of the words
DEVELOPMENT/UNDERDEVELOPMENT use in academic discourse.