At 1:16 PM -0400 5/3/01, Bill Barowy wrote:
>One problem, Eric, with framing culture as a variable external to a person,
>is that it is possible, and perhaps logical, to extend that dichotomy to
>every person. If so, then culture is "out there" independent of every one.
>
>And so if culture is independent of everyone, then one wonders how cultures
>ever got started, how they change, and how they die.
>
>to draw upon one of the tenets from the xmca home page it is also what is
>meant by "analysis of human and theoretical approaches that place culture
>and activity at the center of attempts to understand human nature."
>
>bb
I think it would help to look at this in terms of the relationship
between individual and culture, in terms of Il'enkov's relation
between the general and the particular and in terms of Holzkamp's
relation between societal and individual action, the latter being the
concrete personal realisation of the generalized action potential.
Culture is then not external; culture is not a box into which we are
placed (the argument Ray McDermott makes (1993) with respect to any
'context' in the volume on Understanding Practice).
Michael
------------------------------------------------------ Wolff-Michael Roth Lansdowne Professor Applied Cognitive Science MacLaurin Building A548 Tel: (250) 721-7885 University of Victoria FAX: (250) 472-4616 Victoria, BC, V8W 3N4 Email: mroth@uvic.ca http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/ ----------------------------------------------------
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