Thanks, N.
One of my favorite variations on this theme comes from Maurice Natanson in
The Social Dynamics of George H. Mead (1973) The Hague: Narinus Nijhoff:
"Persons are process and process is diversifying interpersonal transactions."
Molly
At 02:37 PM 12/30/02 -0600, N wrote:
>http://www.cepaosreview.cjb.net/
>
>VOLUME 1
>
>Number 3, June, 2002
>Número 3, Junho, 2002
>
>Cultural Psychology:Theory & Method - Introduction
>Carl Ratner
>
>After many decades of self-imposed insulation from cultural issues,
>psychologists belatedly and reluctantly have been forced to recognize that
>psychological phenomena are constituted in certain ways by cultural
>processes. This recognition has led to the development of a field of
>studies called cultural psychology. Broadly conceived, it seeks to
>comprehend the ways in which psychological phenomena are part of cultural
>life and are interdependent with other cultural phenomena. In 1910 Dewey
>wrote a statement that expresses a central tenet of cultural psychology.
>He said that the processes that animate and form consciousness lie outside
>it in social life. Therefore, the objective for psychologists is to use
>mental phenomena (e.g., perception, emotions) as clues for comprehending
>the life processes that they represent. This task resembles the
>paleontologist's who finds a number and variety of footprints. From these
>he goes to work to construct the structure and the life habits of the
>animals that made them. Just as the paleontologist would be remiss to
>restrict his attention to describing footprints themselves, analyzing
>their elements, comparing them to each other, and discovering the laws of
>their arrangement in space—while failing to explore the living organisms
>and habits that they epresent—so psychologists are remiss in restricting
>their attention to describing states of consciousness, their elements, and
>interactions, while failing to link consciousness to real-life processes
>of human beings. "The
>supposition that these states [of consciousness] are somehow existent by
>themselves and in this existence provide the psychologist with readymade
>material is just the supreme case of the 'psychological fallacy'"
>(Dewey, 1910, p. 250; see also Vygotsky, 1997a, pp. 272273, 327 for a
>remarkably similar statement).
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 01 2003 - 01:00:08 PST