Hi Mike,
You wrote:
> But if I understand you (and Ray) properly, we would still be dealing with the
> same SOCIO-CULTURAL processes that "make something" of variations that members
> observe, whatever the biological status of the individual involved. These
> processes would simply be working with different kinds of usable distinctions.
>
> Is that right?
This is what I meant, and in fact I drew very heavily on Ray's chapter in
developing my argument in the paper (of course I canıt say what Ray would
make of my use of his work!). Thanks for calling attention to this, and for
putting it more clearly than I have in this conversation thus far. One
thing I might add to how youıve formulated the issue (and I suspect this is
in line with what you wrote) pertains to ³the variations that members
observe² Iıd emphasize that institutions have been organized so as to
prepare the way for these observations. Further down the same page, Ray
went on to say that "in allowing schools to become the site of sorting for
recruitment into the wider social structure ... we may have made it
necessary to invent occasions - millions of them - to make learning
disabilities institutionally and unnecessarily consequential" (272-273).
It's the organized consequentiality Ray talks about that I'm mostly
concerned about in my paper - both consequential success and consequential
failure are socioculturally produced, insofar as they require something to
be made of observable differences, whatever their constituents.
For me this evokes Latourıs point, possibly made in his mca review of
Hutchinsı book a few years ago, that landmarks (e.g.) donıt simply exist out
there in the world to be reconciled with maps theyıve been put there
exactly because of the map. So the map and the observable world have
co-developed, in a kind of Bartlett-ian "gap closing" writ large. In fact,
it occurs to me as I write this that Latourıs version of symmetry would
likely be a better way to formulate the issue than the original social
constructivist versions, insofar as it allows a role for objects to ³speak
back,² as it were, possibly allowing the biological concerns that youıve
raised a clearer place.
Kevin
On 7/24/06 6:45 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for continuing the discussion, Kevin.
>
> For other reasons I am re-reading Ray Mc Dermott's "acquisition of a child
> by a learning disability" which
> I think is relevant to you discussion of symmetry. You write:
>
> Second, just as STS work insists on symmetry in accounts of
> knowledge and technology - i.e., that we need similar forms of explanation
> for both claims that become accepted as true as well as those that donıt,
> and similar forms of explanation for technologies that are successful and
> those that arenıt I was saying that success and lack of success in
> learning have to be considered as outcomes of the same sorts of processes.
>
> I think this is very much in line with a major point that Ray makes. And,
> going back
> to his paper, I find him anticipating my concern about a focus on social
> mechanisms
> vis a vis distinctions that may have other constituents. Vis a vis the
> notion of a child
> "having" a learning disability, Ray wrote:
>
> Notice that the claim here is not that we have no children who for whatever
> reason learn
> much slower or in different ways than others. It is only that without social
> arrangements
> for making something of the differential rates of learning there is no such
> thing as a LD. (p. 272
> of Chaiklin and Lave, Ed. Understanding Practice).
>
> For me this raises the referent of your phrase, "same sorts of processes."
> I take it that if we
> were dealing with a child who had a documentable brain lesion in broca's
> area and who was
> experiencing some difficulty learning to read, this would be a relevant fact
> about rates of
> learning (some believe they have such date for kids labelled ld-- a separate
> topic). But if I
> understand you (and Ray) properly, we would still be dealing with the same
> SOCIO-CULTURAL
> processes that "make something" of variations that members observe, whatever
> the biological
> status of the individual involved. These processes would simply be working
> with different kinds
> of usable distinctions.
>
> Is that right? (I am cc'ing ray in hopes that he will correct me if I am
> wrong and others can also
> learn from the correction, or lack thereof).
>
> Concerning activity systems vis a vis COPS. I surmise that someone wanting
> to use a CHAT insted
> of a COPS position would point to the analytic categories that constitute an
> activity system as a source
> of greater specification that tells you where it might be interesting to
> look. (What the heck, I will cc Yrjo
> on this note in case he can enlighten us on it).
>
> Anyone seen a good movie on global warming recently? Whew!!
> mike
>
> On 7/24/06, O'Connor, Kevin <kevin.oconnor@rochester.edu> wrote:
>>
>> mike, bb-
>> Interesting issues raised here, and I find myself agreeing in general with
>> what both of you have to say. I wanted to respond to respond to a couple
>> of
>> points, and raise a question of my own.
>>
>> bb mentions the quote I used from Lave at the end of the article about
>> adopting ³an inclusive focus on all participants equally, as each
>> contributes to the making of differences of power, salience, influence,
>> and
>> value of themselves and other.² I agree of course that each participant
>> might not contribute equally to the differences that are realized in the
>> interaction, and that this warrants attention in its own right. I think
>> that my main point in bringing this up, though, had to do with my
>> dissatisfation with the relative absence of discussions of important
>> differences of these sorts in much of the ³learning sciences,² including
>> approaches that draw on CoP work. This was related in a couple of ways to
>> my point about the need to take what I called (loosely borrowing a term
>> from
>> science and technology studies) a ³symmetrical² stance on the analysis of
>> learning contexts.
>>
>> First, both ³success² and various forms of ³lack of success² have to be
>> considered, as opposed to the tendency of ³cognitive apprenticeship²
>> research to focus only on successful learning (which btw seems to me to be
>> the result of a somewhat inappropriate use in studies of human learning of
>> criteria developed for evaluating AI systems). In the context of this
>> field, then, just bringing differences into the conversation seems
>> essential. Second, just as STS work insists on symmetry in accounts of
>> knowledge and technology - i.e., that we need similar forms of explanation
>> for both claims that become accepted as true as well as those that donıt,
>> and similar forms of explanation for technologies that are successful and
>> those that arenıt I was saying that success and lack of success in
>> learning have to be considered as outcomes of the same sorts of processes.
>> I used the term ³cultural production² to describe these processes, and I
>> think this term can be interpreted rather broadly to include the 3rd
>> generation chat approaches that bb mentions or at least, I find that
>> chat
>> work thatıs been done on boundary work, polycontextuality, etc., resonates
>> in many ways w/ where Iım coming from, even if I havenıt used that
>> specific
>> framework.
>>
>> I do have a question for bb, following on this. Youıre right in saying
>> that
>> I find ³community of practice² too much of a gloss in making sense of the
>> student project I studied. I think the CoP notion can be useful
>> heuristically, but issues of internal tension and conflict will always
>> arise
>> in some form if weıre alert to them. Itıs not clear to me though just how
>> ³activity systems² avoid this problem what does alertness to the
>> potential
>> relevance in specific instances of interaction of multiple activity
>> systems
>> get us that we donıt get from alertness to the potential relevance of
>> multiple communities of practice, or discourses, or social worlds, or
>> ecosocial systems, etc.? And how do we know which ones are relevant? My
>> inclination is to start from interaction and trace out the threads that
>> take
>> me to institutions, to history, etc., based on what ³metadiscourses² seem
>> to
>> be in play in the interaction. (In this sense I guess Iım closer to a
>> mediated action perspective, with Latourıs instructions to ³follow the
>> actors² guiding the analysis.) Iıd be interested in hearing what you (or
>> others) see as the important differences between 3rd generation chat and
>> recent, as opposed to initial, formulations of CoP.
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/20/06 10:42 PM, "bb" <xmca-whoever@Comcast.Net> wrote:
>>
>>> Yup, IMHO historical analysis is essential to illuminate 'downward
>> causation'
>>> and its many forms of embedded asymmetries. I've drawn upon my
>> trivial own,
>>> but there are copious others far more compelling, e.g. the stories of
>> Phillis
>>> Wheatley and Hellen Keller appearing in the latest AERJ are well worth
>>> reading.
>>>
>>> bb
>>> -------------- Original message ----------------------
>>> From: "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>>>> I like your highlighting of "acting into a context" bb. I am still
>> fumbling
>>>> around with the ideas in Kevin's paper, the use of context being one of
>>>> them.
>>>> If we consider context to be a relational term that is never static,
>> always
>>>> in-production, we are always helping to create the contexts we are
>> "acting
>>>> in
>>>> to." In a parallel way, we are always creating the subject
>> positionings
>>>> that position us. When I get to that thought I start to worry about the
>>>> issue of
>>>> symmetry. Sure, we make history, BUT not under conditions of our
>> own
>>>> choosing. And, from the perspective of an individual as part of a
>> social
>>>> group (in assymetrical relations such as your describe from your
>> history) it
>>>> sure does not feel symmetrical.
>>>>
>>>> As you say, lots of thoughts generated by Kevin's article.
>>>> mike
>>>> On 7/20/06, bb <xmca-whoever@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I've finally had a chance to read Kevin's paper and fully appreciate
>> his
>>>>> bringing together cultural production and language. It's a big
>> challenge to
>>>>> bridge theoretical frameworks and I think it takes a great deal of
>> care to
>>>>> weave them together. It's clear that I need to read more of
>> Silverstein to
>>>>> understand that approach to contextualization and language. Kevin's
>>>>> observations and analysis are densely written. I agree that cognitive
>>>>> apprenticeships, which place emphasis on the 'official view', fail to
>>>>> capture the abundance of what happens in complex situations. But then
>> I
>>>>> also think that Kevin shows that 'community of practice' is too much
>> of a
>>>>> gloss with the micro-truck project, which itself involves several
>>>>> institutions as sites of identity construction and a larger scale of
>>>>> organization which is the micro-truck project itself. Kevin's
>> analysis
>>>>> pulls me toward wanting to parse these organizational structures more
>> fully
>>>>> and integrate them more completely into the ana!
>>>>> lysis o
>>>>> f language and identity.
>>>>>
>>>>> When I was a grad student at UMass I took a course at an institute in
>>>>> Cambridge ma, and felt the differences in
>> identity-related-to-institution
>>>>> constantly, and although in the end I did as well as any of the
>> others,
>>>>> there was still something in the air that I, being from UMass, the
>> state
>>>>> school, was just not at the same level. This was especially apparent
>> to me,
>>>>> having temporarily made the ecological transition to the institute,
>> and I
>>>>> only wish now that I had transcripts of what was said to bring to bear
>> an
>>>>> analysis like Kevin's and find out whether there was any basis to my
>>>>> impressions. Quelle dommage. Nevertheless, I would prefer to use
>>>>> Engestrom's multiple activity systems model rather than put it into
>> relation
>>>>> to a CoP framework. Third gen chat would facilitate the
>> differentiation of
>>>>> institutions, and bring to bear the mediational nature of technology,
>> as
>>>>> well as traditional institutional roles (div of labor).
>>>>>
>>>>> Kevin writes "A central point here is that when we do not privilege
>>>>> official under-standings of context, it becomes possible to examine
>> how
>>>>> participants not only act into an official context, but also orient to
>> it
>>>>> from the perspective of other, unofficial and sometimes competing
>>>>> contexts." which raises the issue of how
>> participants privilege some
>>>>> 'perspectives' over others, but in indexing the language of privilege
>> to
>>>>> context, it seems that context must be much better defined than in the
>> CoP
>>>>> approach to cultural production. Putting "an inclusive focus on all
>>>>> participants equally, as each contributes to the making of differences
>> of
>>>>> power, salience, influence, and value of themselves and other" might
>> not
>>>>> produce the most comprehensive analysis as each participant does not
>>>>> contribute equally in making the differences of power -- once a power
>>>>> differential is established, such as what foreshadows the interactions
>>>>> between one enrolled in a prestigious institute and one who is!
>>>>> not, t
>>>>> here are serious inequalities that persist with the cultural
>> production of
>>>>> (1) institutions over long time scales and (2) people over ontogenetic
>>>>> timescales. I've felt this personally, as I presume we all have
>> through
>>>>> institutions of higher education.
>>>>>
>>>>> I really enjoyed this paper and the thoughts it has stimulated about
>> these
>>>>> issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> bb
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>
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