I have recently been going through the archives, rereading Artin's papers,
reading critiques of the whole conception of development and am left with
the question, what is development?
I guess what is troubleing me is how it is used by cultural psychology,
activity theory, community of practice etc. tends to take all the meaning
out of the term. Looking through the x-practice archives it appeared the
dialougue was aimed at developmentalists. Personally, I am more in line with
Mary when she states "but I don't believe in development". Alot of the
literature I have been reading makes a strong case that development is a
political, ethnocentric, gender loaded, ideological concept to begin with.
Another take on development that both Piaget and Vygotsky supported was
"qualitative changes" be it evolution or revolution. Most literature I have
read does not seem to adhere to this definition either. In making our
approaches more culturally appropriate (an important move in my view) we
have moved away from the qualitative component of various activities such as
play, education etc.
I am probally using the word "our" and "we" too loosely, but what is meant
by saying development occurs in a cultural context? Development as a concept
appears to come from 1) a biological unfolding and 2) qualatative change and
niether seems to capture how I see it being used by most cultural-historical
theorists.
In many ways it seems the trend is more anti-developmental in the true sense
of the word. A move away from either abstracted biology or particular
activities facilitating some sort of qualatative change. An emphasis on
either would tend to support some form of universalization that would
transend activity or practice.
I quess a question that emerges for me is how is development in a cultural
context different from learning or identity formation in a cultural context.
I am not making a case to resurrect the classical conception of development,
but rather questioning if the concept has outlived its usefulness.
Nate
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:01:40 PST