This is the posting by which Mike initiated/suggested the practice of Xlist
subconferencing in 1989.
cheers
Eva
******************************************************
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 89 14:04:55 pdt
From: mcole who-is-at weber (Mike Cole)
Subject: re-mediation
To: xlchc@ucsd.edu
Dear Recipients of XLCHC e-mail;
Arne ends his most recent message by commenting on the meandering
nature of XLCHC discussion-- "a noisy party with many talking groups,
people going in and out, difficult to join for outsiders." (This following
a very on-target continuation of the discussion of the implications of the
blind person/stick/dog/other person example). Here I want to comment on his
general comment about the xlchc discussion.
Last week I visited the American Ed Research Assoc meeting where I
encountered a fair number of xlchc readers. As it turned out, most were
actually associated with lchc at one time or another, so it was natural to
inquire about their reactions to this activity. Several reactions were
expressed, but a couple stand out.
1. Several women commented that it is a male-dominated discussion.
There was no concensus on the reason for this. In part, it results from the
fact that there are many more men than women on the network to begin with.
But beyond that, several women expressed the notion that the STYLE of
discussion was male-oriented.
2. There are several American minority group members on XLCHC who also
expressed their reluctance to enter the discussions for various reasons.
Given that a major purpose of this discussion is to have a NON-
dominating discussion among geographically/institutionally distributed
people who share certain intellectual interests, and perhaps certain values
(so many people have joined that I am not at all certain of the latter, and
perhaps misjudge the former), it is unhappy to think that we are
unwittingly recapitulating some of the same power structures we struggle
against in our formally designated work lives.
As those of you who have been reading for a fairly long time know, our
initial idea was to have four or five centers send summaries of their local
discussions relevant to the broad topic of culture and mind to xlchc as a
stimulus to discussion. We have also discussed the idea of joint readings
of articles of mutual relevance.
What has developed instead is a mixed pattern with some summaries of
local discussions being posted, some "thought problems" posted, some
queries, some "position statements." From the little analysis we have done
there is a form of discourse that is somewhere between vygotskian chaining
and complexes (mostly the former).
Some people I talk to say, Don't tinker," things are fine. But
speaking for myself I would be happier to see some changes. I'm thinking
about a goal that we might try to urge into emergence in common in the
following:
Would it be possible, using XLCHC, to create an example of
non-dominating discourse, something like a Habermasian ideal discourse as I
vaguely interpret him? From many points of view, such a utopian common goal
appeals to me in conjunction with a lot of participants in the xlchc
interchanges.
To accomplish that goal, we have to have a strategy for overcoming
the various lines of domination that one could identify, various "binary"
them-us relations that are REAL in our group. We cannot nor would we want
to do that by achieving uniformity! Our great potential strength can come
only from intelligent organizing of diversity. Ergo. We need to diversify,
but we do not want to loose ALL commanality so that we conflict with each
other uselessly
I have a two step procedure that I would like to propose. First, we
will send everyone's address to everyone, and whatever info we have on who
you-all are (not much in a lot of cases!). Second, we will urge EVERYONE to
create whatever subgroups they would like to send mail to. For example, I
would like to subgroup with people who used to be physically and
institutionally part of our lab. Yrjo might like to subgroup with Sylvia
and others to discuss work. Women might like to subgroup to discuss
feminist perspectives, latinos, etc.etc.etc. This set of categories SHOULD
me like a Chinese menu. Overlapping membership would be the strategy. And,
to keep some common discourse, which might include news from subgroups for
general discussion (on tools, on cultural evolution, on blind stick with
seeing eye persons, etc.) as well as general topics of presumed general
interest. Maybe we will just fractionate, of course. But if we
concientiously try to work toward a non-dominating discourse by creating
valued diversity with interaction.
If folks take responsibilities with group alias, on their local
machines, NO centralized control is necessary. On the other hand, perhapps
someone out there would like to take responsibility for creating a more
sophisticated system that would foment our discussion.
On substance. Without reflection, the seeds of this discussion will have
to grow in their scattered ways, with no common intelligence about what
constitutes a friendly environment for culturing such socio-cultural
entities as new kinds of discourse. But maybe local coherence is all we
want on the network, with the next level of interaction more clearly
mediated by local activity systems.
Anyway, I hereby suggest some intelligent and friendly differentiation.
Wanna subgroup anyone? And about what?
mikec
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:03:27 PST