Re: [xmca] If all hopes are lost for establishing a more workable social system , then please tell me where A.N.Leontyev has gone wrong with his definition of "Personal Meaning"

Well, Geertz was right after all. No *consensus gentium*. It's hard to be
one up with him.

In Southern Africa, there are groups of people that would argue about Hamlet
in exactly this way. It was thoroughly entertaining, and great for an
anthropologist to give it to such in such detail.

The advent of HIV/Aids for example here, is understood in rather different
ways to *Western* medicine, and drives local people dilly. There are issues
concerning the presence of a sick person in a village, they will make
everybody else ill, and must be driven away; and children are not talked to
about death--they just become orphans. (Losing your mother counts as being
orphaned.) Friends are not allowed to talk to the dying mother, otherwise
they can be accused of bewitching the sick mother in the first place. By the
same token nobody makes a will.

Sorry (Mike) I don't have any references for this, but we have done
extensive training of local counsellors in the field, and these and other
impediments to helping people have been shared with us. Professionally
trained social workers work with the two models in their heads.

Carol

On 02/03/2008, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Great that you picked up on this Martin, and I think I see other potential
> contributions higher up
> the list of messages.
>
> To those concerned with this question, which I assume is everyone on XMCA
> if
> they are interested
> in the ideas generaly discussed here, I warmly recommend the very
> easy-to-read and thought
> provoking account of discussing hamlet with agricultural people in rural
> Nigeria not long after
> World War 2 written by Laura Bohannan (Bowen), who wrote *Return to
> Laughter
> * about her overall
> experience, but this little piece about one beery day during the rainy
> season.
>
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/home/idris/Essays/Shakes_in_Bush.htm
>
> As with the discussion of IQ I suggested earlier, the direction this piece
> takes suggests that
> we mistakenly overlook those domains of "everyday life" in
> "technologically
> less complex" societies
> which make a difference that makes a difference in THEIR lives. And in
> those
> domains, which are
> the special province of THEIR cognicsenti (sp?), the complexity of thought
> often defeats even Oxfordian
> anthropologists. The problem, of course, is that we have, more or less by
> definition, no way of making
> relevant comparisons even after we trip over the fact that we all know
> college professors who cannot
> explain the phases of the moon.
>
> If you have a distaste for reading about such matters, try getting ahold
> of
> Kurusawa's "Dersu Usala." Very
> pretty to look at, and as neat an exposition of the primitive mind
> hypothesis and its problems as one could hope
> for.
>
> mike
>
> PS- Luria, Vygotsky, children and the Uzbekis is certainly a worthwhile
> topic and not irrelevant to some arguments
> in contemporary Russian psychology as well as this discussion, but
> personally I would rather not return down that rabbit hole until we put
> some "first hand account" anthropologically inspired, data on our white
> screens. Of course, you all will push things in directions you prefer
> as well!!!
>
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
> > On 3/1/08 2:37 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > If there
> > > is cultural evolution, or progress in history, how does one adopt a
> > cultural
> > > historical, activity perspective that declares thinking to be
> functional
> > > systems that include the accumulated
> > > artifacts of the community without concluding that thinking in, say, a
> > small
> > > agricultural village high in the Andes just to pick up on Paul's
> > current
> > > environment, is less complex because
> > > the range of activities seems limited, the mediational means limited,
> > > etc.?
> >
> > I think this is a central conundrum, and I'm trying to sort out my
> > thoughts.
> >
> > First, I keep having to remind myself that progress is not a
> > characteristic
> > that history possesses in itself. Progress is a story we tell about
> > history.
> > At best, it's told by the survivors. At worst, by the victors. There's a
> > wonderful, horrifying book that offers a people's history, documenting
> the
> > 'rise' of American civilization on the backs of the indigenous and the
> > poor... (I've lost the title.)
> >
> > Second, I think Marx's own account of history was complex and probably
> > contradictory. (I need to check Hayden White's Metahisory for his
> reading
> > of
> > Marx's narratives.) For example, capitalism develops workers'
> capacities,
> > albieit in a lop-sided manner, while it exploits them. Capitalism leads
> to
> > socialism, indeed it's a necessary step. but in large part this is
> because
> > it generates the greatest misery for masses of people, who finally can
> > take
> > no more. No simple progress here.
> >
> > Third, it's interesting to compare the chapters in Ape, Primitive, Child
> > written by Vygotsy with those written by Luria. The former seem to me
> more
> > nuanced. Vygotsky writes very evocatively and sensitively about the
> > psychology of 'primitive' peoples. The richness of their vocabulary, for
> > example, is lost when their language becomes more abstract.
> >
> > And according to the notes I was taking when reading this book, "Even in
> > Luria¹s writing about his expedition [to Uzbekistan] two voices can be
> > discerned, two distinct and competing conceptualizations of the changes
> he
> > observed. Let us begin there." My notes, sadly, stop there! And the book
> > is
> > not here.
> >
> > Third, when there are qualitative reognizations, judgments of progress
> are
> > no easy matter. Kuhn taught us that paradigms are 'incommensurate':
> there
> > is
> > no common measure to judge them by, because each of the criteria is
> > internal
> > to a paradigm.
> >
> > I guess that just as physicists have become accustomed to the need to
> make
> > assessments such as 'faster' or 'slower' always relative to a frame of
> > reference, we have to do the same. History may have been progress judged
> > from the frame of some anglo-saxon white males, but... and the cognition
> > of
> > a mountain villager may be assessed as embodying important forms of
> wisdom
> > from the perspective of people searching for a way to stop damaging the
> > planet.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>

-- 
Visiting Researcher,
Wits School of Education
6 Andover Road
Westdene
Johannesburg 2092
011 673 9265  082 562 1050
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca