I will check if my library holds MCA, so I can follow up these references.
I'm sure it will.
Thank you all for your input, but I am still struggling with my direction
here. My interest is not academic or that of a historian or of a teacher.
My interest is to understand how we could live with modern industry but
without money. This means I want to know what sort of people we must be so
live in such a way.
So, my interest in pre-capitalist peoples is only instrumental, if any.
There is a fundamental methodological problem: I want to understand what in
the psyche of modern people is formed by money and what, on the other hand,
would the psyche of the citizens of a future world without money be like? I
cannot directly observe the activity we might or might not engage in. I
know the psyche of modern human beings, but how can I discern what is
formed by collaboration in global economy and what is not, since the global
market it absolutely ubiquitous? A person living with modern industry but
not money does not exist, so is unobservable.
So, I need an approach to this study. Ethics I believe is central,
indicated in Vygotsky's "tool-and-result" methodology. The problem is a
developmental one, so I need to be able to study the beginnings of the
process of change, in its embryo, even if a future psche is only
speculation. "Experiment" here is subject to an extreme requirement in
terms of being able to grasp the complexity of the higher functions, since
what I am interested is in its essence a property of the world economy.
I think the problem is first of all a methodological one.
Andy
PS: Judy mentioned the fact that we all value abstract reasoning. I presume
in reference to the fact that the capacity for abstract reason has its
historical origins in commerce? If I understand you correctly Judy, of
course we all value the capacity for abstract reasoning, just as no-one
wants to go back to animism and witch-hunting, but equally we all know that
the roller-coaster we are on is taking us somewhere we really don't want to
be, don't we?
At 09:00 AM 16/12/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Andy--
>
>One of the messages in the math reference threads reminded me that
>the Fall 1995 MCA had a large section put together by King Beach and
>Naoki Ueno on money-mediated exchanges, historical change, and mathematical
>practices in contrasting parts of Nepal. I am not sure why I didn't think
>of this before, perhaps because young children are not the focus of these
>papers. Still, they should be relevant.
>mike
>
>
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational |
| solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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