RE: [xmca] Radius of Subjectivity

Several years ago I saw a video that spoke to disability in a way that
has come to make a lot of sense to me.

The parents of a child with fairly severe disabilities worked hard to
find the supports for their child that would allow him to have 'an
enviable life'. That is, given the constraints of the individual's
disability, in their shoes, would it be an enviable life?
As a result of this, I purchased adaptive skiing lessons for my
handicapped husband's 50th birthday. He learned to ski with a sit-down
ski and outriggers. Next we found recumbent bikes that you pedal with
your hands. We're looking at kayaking for next year. We already sail...
He is also dyslexic, by the way, and has become an avid consumer of
books on tape.... sometimes we all listen to the same book (we have a
six year old, too).

Another result was to move his severely handicapped mother (stroke,
heart trouble, unable to walk more than a step, etc) from our home into
an assisted living facility. We could no longer give her an enviable
life - we had begun to resent the demands on our lives and felt guilty
because she didn't get the social opportunities she really enjoyed and
hungered for. She is happier, now, in a facility where there is always
someone to chat with, somewhere to motor to in her electric cart, and
family that chooses to visit rather than resenting obligations.

In Gary's case, it was to find ways that we could all be together as a
family... Some research was involved, but a lot of it was convincing
Gary he had value and that we could create new ways of being together.
Yeah, there are some things that are not going to happen... hiking Mt.
Kilimanjaro together... but there are a lot of new horizons, it's was, I
think, a matter of facing his prejudice... that is, prejudgments (a
little Gadamer to sweeten the pot). Best of luck...
~ Em

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Paul Dillon
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 5:52 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Radius of Subjectivity

Andy,
   
  Have you read any of Giddens' books? He seems to me to be the one who
has most explictly tried to connect the levels you identify for a
stable-state (purely stochastic,, no chaos or cusp points included)
social system. I don't think he really adresses the historical
dimension too well but then who does?
   
  My dad had a stroke when he was almost eighty. He never was able to
deal with the sudden limitation of his world: not being able to drive,
ride a bicycle, not being able to express what he was thinking. His
frustration became a death-wish.. It seems that there's something about
flexibility implicit in being able to learn, fmaybe letting go of the
remembered radii and just starting dealing with the horizons defining
where you find yourself . My dad never did. Hope your partner works
it out.
   
  Paul
   
  Paul
  
Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
  What I was trying to get at is to do with the individual/structure
problem:
intuitively we know that "agency" is a real thing, but social science
teaches us that history is governed by laws, not the will of
individuals,
we know we can make certain choices about the path we take in our own
lives, but do we have any say over which roads are available? can we
change
the landscape? We have a "mind of our own", but are we not simply
expressions of this or that aspect of the Zeitgeist?

So putting the ability raise our arm on the same scale with overthrowing

capitalism, with maybe changing attitudes about teaching maths in San
Diego
somewhere in the middle, it changes things. Instead of having 2 or 3
different questions that seem to belong to different worlds, one has a
continuous scale. We see that one person can change EG the attitude of
people in a whole city to gays by agitating and getting a new laws
passed,
which for someone else is just an unchangeable fact of life. But there
is
no sharp line. People can expand their radius of subjectivity.

Practical example: 15 months ago my partner had a stroke and is now
quite
disabled. Formerly she would be out of the house every day doing this or

that. For 15 months she has been outside only if I drive her to rehab or

something. The government has offered to buy her an electric scooter
(which
she is competent to drive BTW) but she says: "What do I need that for?
Where would I go?" So my problem is, how do I expand her "radius of
subjectivity" in the sense of having an interest again in the world
outside, so she sees a point in getting agency in that world outside the

front door? So I am thinking agency, knowledge and identity are
interconnected here. If she is no longer "tied up in" things happening
around town, she doesn't need agency; if she *can't* participate in that

big world outside due to lack of mobility, she loses interest in that
world. Vicious circle.

Andy
At 04:16 PM 13/11/2007 -0800, you wrote:
>Andy, Eric
>
> I'm not sure that Vygotsky's ZPD is at all similar to what Lewin had
in
> mind . It seems that Giddens microspaces -- that eclectic stew of
> Bourdieu's fields and Garfinkel's ethnomethodological frames are the
> already elaborated concepts that encompass what is being proposed in
the
> various terminologies being discussed in this thread.. . But, as far
as
> I understand, these theoretical constructs, have a totally abstract
> relationship to Vygotsky's ZPD: the notion of a boundary, a very
> abstrract notion at that, something limiting individual agency (which
> doesn't have a whole lot to do with subjectivity in any event).
>
> It seems to me that the learning process at the core of Vygotsky's ZPD

> isn't a key factor in Lewin, Garfinkel, Giddens, or any other
> formulations of "radii" I've read in this thread. In all of these
> micro-sociological frames, the boundary has nothing at all to do with
a
> learning relationship between someone competent in a task and someone
> gaining competency. Lewin's idea was almost geometrical. Do you think
> Vygotsky's was? From what I understand the ZPD is not a boundary that
> can be reduced to a metric any more than can the feelings of
blossoming
> wonder or or monstrous terror.
>
> What d'ya think>
>
> Paul
>
>Andy Blunden wrote:
> Thank you Eric. You and David have given me the kind of pointers I
>suspected were out there.
>Andy
>At 11:58 AM 13/11/2007 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >Andy:
> >
> >Radius of subjectivity is not new but providing different language
for
> >social situations can help introduce new thinking about the age old
> >question, "Why and How are humans what they are?"
> >
> >Consider the following quote regarding Kurt Lewin:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > For Kurt Lewin behaviour was determined by totality of an
individual's
> > situation. In his field
> > theory, a 'field' is defined as 'the totality of coexisting facts
which
> > are conceived of as
> > mutually interdependent' (Lewin 1951: 240). Individuals were seen to
> > behave differently according
> > to the way in which tensions between perceptions of the self and of
the
> > environment were worked
> > through. The whole psychological field, or 'lifespace', within which
> > people acted had to be
> > viewed, in order to understand behaviour. Within this individuals
and
> > groups could be seen in
> > topological terms (using map-like representations). Individuals
> > participate in a series of life
> > spaces (such as the family, work, school and church), and these were
> > constructed under the
> > influence of various force vectors (Lewin
> > 1952).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >this was taken from the following website:
> >http://wilderdom.com/theory/FieldTheory.html
> >
> >or consider Jaan Valsiner's Zone theory that suggests people develop
based
> >on their zone of free movement, society's zone of promoted action and
the
> >specific zone of proximal development ( as defined by Seth Chaiklen).
> >
> >I for one appreciate your input and believe if you were to
extrapolate
> >further you may be onto a successful philosophical tool Andy!
> >
> >eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Andy
> > Blunden
> >
> >
> > et> cc:
> >
> > Sent by: Subject: Re: [xmca] Radius
> > of Subjectivity
> > xmca-bounces@web
> >
> > er.ucsd.edu
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 11/08/2007
> > 06:44
> >
> > PM
> >
> > Please
> > respond
> >
> > to
> > "eXtended
> >
> > Mind,
> > Culture,
> >
> > Activity"
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >My reason for splurting the thought on to the list was the suspicion
that
> >it was not original.
> >There are differences though. The idea of "radius" as a measure
unites, for
> >
> >example, both "society" and the "individual", which people regularly
talk
> >about as two distinct levels needing some kind of bridge between
them, and
> >you have people talking about "agency" in quite contradictory ways,
using
> >the same word for what appears as two different things, but actually
> >involves different radii which has a continuous scale. Plus you
mention a
> >trichotomy, but a quite different trichotomy to identity, agency and
> >knowing.
> >Andy
> >At 03:17 PM 8/11/2007 -0800, you wrote:
> > >Andy--
> > >
> > > Great! But wait....
> > >
> > > What's the relationship between your "radii of subjectivity" (and
my
> > > "event horizon" and Mike's and LSV's "social situation of
learning"...how
> >
> > > the terms proliferate!) and the trichotomy (if that is what it is)
> > > "operation", "action", and "activity"?
> > >
> > > That's my question!
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > > Seoul National University of Education
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
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> > >_______________________________________________
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> >
> > Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> >mobile 0409 358 651
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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>
>Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
>mobile 0409 358 651
>
>_______________________________________________
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>
>
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Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Tue Nov 13 20:42 PST 2007