Re: [xmca] motive/project

Mike.Martin, on "choosing a unit of analysis": according to
the 18th/19th century Germans who created this idea, yes of
course, it is all about tracing the immanent development of
the thing itself. But history has shown surely that tracing
the immanent development of the thing itself actually takes
serious intellectual effort, even once you know what "the
thing" is, i.e., what particular science or problem needs
investigating, which is actually a matter of free choice.

Paul, I think your observations about the need to mine the
theoretical resources of activity theory, rather than invent
new models is very wise. Whatever we think, I am sure that
the future is with one or another variety of Activity
Theory. And I am personally pretty happy with the first two
"levels" of Leontyev's system and how they interconnect with
each other and the third level, viz., activity.

However, I remain of the view that Vygotsky actually was
closer to the mark with retaining his focus on interactions
between just two individuals in order to unlock the dynamics
of societal phenomena. Marx had the same idea after all with
the idea of the commodity relation.

Andy

Paul Dillon wrote:
> mike,
>
> I don't think the historical questions about the Russian revolution and fates of the individual forerunners of CHAT and their work after Stalin took control and Trotsky went into exile can help us deal with the central problem that you mention: 'The answer with respect to contemporary capitalism then becomes the focal topic,"
>
> But I think that Engestrom provided a framework for pursuing that answer: ie, studying the manifestations of the primary contradiction between use value and exchange value. Peter has published a lot on this: e.g., secretaries playing solitaire on the computers as an example to their own struggle to reappropriate the use value of their time. The problem, to my mind, isn't the absence of appropriate theoretical tools in CHAT itself, but the absence (with a few exceptions, Helena and Peter stand out, who have pursued research into these domains. Engestrom "runaway objects" and the dynamics of use value/exchange value in the contemporary globalized economy also deserve attention since, just as the bourgeoisie in the 16th-18th centuries emerged in the interstices of the feudal society with its lord-peasant primary contradiction, it would seem that a new class is emerging in the interstices of the capitalist contradictions in the dominant society. The
> resolution of contradictions sublates the contradiction itself in a new conceptual order, not the triumph of one of the sides of the previous order.
>
> But there are conceptual tools in CHAT for addressing these problems and I"m not sure that finding "new models" should replace an incomplete exploration of the existing model.
>
> Paul
>
>
> --- On Sat, 12/20/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
> To: phd_crit_think@yahoo.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 3:42 PM
>
> Paul-- I think this is what Martin was suggesting re activity and unit of analysis:
> I have a problem with Andy's idea of "choosing a unit of analysis".
> Doesn't the unit analysis come out of a process of movement from the
> abstract to the concrete.
>
> LSV in T&S was seeking to understand the development of higher psychological processes and proposed word meaning as such a unit. I think he also thought of it as a germ cell, the development of which he seeks to
>
> trace in, for example, the blocks experiment that Paula introduced into the
> discussion and which some of us have been fussing over.
>
> And, yes, I think that Peter and Anna were focused primarily on the goal of consistently exploring how particular social structures,
> with their power constellations and systems of privilege shape
> development has not typically been pursued within CHAT".
>
> The answer with respect to the USSR is presumably Stalinist hijacking of the revolution (or the general wrong headedness of Marx, depending upon one's
>
> views of that history). The answer with respect to contemporary capitalism then becomes the focal topic, although discussion of the paper, including my own contributions to it, may obscure that aim (probably a symptom of the problem, maybe even a clue to the answer?)
>
> mike.
>
>
>
> And yes,
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Andy, Martin, everyone,
>
>
>
> I have a problem with Andy's idea of "choosing a unit of analysis". Doesn't the unit analysis come out of a process of movement from the abstract to the concrete, a process that Marx first described in the Grundrisse, "The Method of Political Economy"?
>
>
>
>
> I haven't read all of Vygotsky, really glad to have gotten mike and david's freebies, but as I understand what I have read, didn't he adopt a similar procedure when coming up with "word-meaning" as a unit of analysis?
>
>
>
>
> I continue to mull over this question of linking the smaller systems of social interaction that are the "pan de todos los dias" (can't think of a good translation) of CHAT to the larger macro-structures towards which Sociology orients itself: class. strata, ideology, forms of authority, legitimacy, social structure in general, etc.. Wouldn't these "notions" be comparable to the abstractions with which we begin the journey, they are totally abstract. Marx wrote:
>
>
>
>
> When we consider a given country politico-economically, we begin
>
> with its population, its distribution among classes, town, country, the coast,
>
> the different branches of production, export and import, annual production and
>
> consumption, commodity prices etc.
>
>
>
> It seems to be correct to
>
> begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to
>
> begin, in economics, with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the
>
> subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination
>
> this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for
>
> example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an
>
> empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g.
>
> wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division
>
> of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour,
>
> without value, money, price etc. Thus, if I were to begin with the population,
>
> this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I
>
> would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever
>
> more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards
>
> ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations.
>
>
>
> I don't clearly understand Andy's idea of substituting the notion of "project" for activity system as a way to go beyond the meso- and micro- levels of analysis. But perhaps I've begun to grasp why Peter and Ana could place Schutz at the most central point of contact between theories concerning the manifestation of sociological macro-structures in individual "conduct" and theories concerning the intermediate formations on which CHAT normally focuses.
>
>
>
>
> Are we just trying to hook up theories or are we trying to overcome the problem that Peter and Ana indicated in their article: " . . . the goal of consistently exploring how particular social structures, with their power constellations and systems of privilege shape development has not typically been pursued within CHAT". If that type of exploration is the goal shouldn't we focus on the dimensions of power, privilege, etc. in activity systems, recognizing that these are abstractions which will give way to ever finer ones, until we get down to that simplest determination which would define the correct unit of analysis?
>
>
>
>
> Hmm. . . still muddling along.
>
>
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 12/19/08, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
> From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>
> Date: Friday, December 19, 2008, 9:07
>
> AM
>
>
>
> I certainly have had extended thinking time on this topic lately because I
>
> do believe it gets to the heart of the issue at hand. Consider the
>
> following sentence:
>
>
>
> "Appropriate an engaged activity." No motive, no desire just a
>
> process.
>
>
>
> It may not fulfill the requested hermeneutic unit of anlaysis but it
>
> certainly makes a statement about what does go on in human development in
>
> the cultural/societal domain. just a thought
>
>
>
> eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Martin Packer
>
>
>
> <packer@duq.edu> To: "eXtended
>
> Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>
> Sent by: cc:
>
>
>
>
>
> xmca-bounces@web Subject: Re: [xmca]
>
> motive/project
>
> er.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 12/19/2008 09:47
>
>
>
> AM
>
>
>
> Please respond
>
>
>
>
>
> to "eXtended
>
>
>
> Mind, Culture,
>
>
>
> Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
>
> Andy,
>
>
>
> I'm struggling to catch up with piles of xmca messages after a week away
>
> from the computer, but your comment here caught my attention. Perhaps you
>
> would agree with me that the selection of the commodity form as the unit
>
> of
>
> analysis was based on the presumption that it contains the key
>
> contradiction
>
> of a capitalist economy. This suggests to me that the identification of a
>
> unit has to be based on a consideration of the whole in which it is found.
>
> And this in turn suggests that there can be no unit of analysis for
>
> 'activity' in the abstract, but rather a variety of units each of which
>
> depends on the concrete whole which one is studying. As you suggest,
>
> 'wooing' is an activity that is possible only in the 'world' -
>
> the form of
>
> life - of romance. So, when we select a unit we will need to acknowledge
>
> both the spatial and temporal discontinuities among distinct forms of life.
>
>
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> On 12/18/08 9:34 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>> f I sing to my beloved while standing outside
>
>> in the rain, in what sense am I "using" something? There is
>
>> a school of thinking that would say, it makes me
>
> feel nice
>
>> to be wooing my beloved, therefore I am using her to make me
>
>> feel nice. But all that is really bankrupt, isn't it? We
>
>> have to get into the idea of romance and find in the
>
>> figuring of the world according to a concept of romance, a
>
>> set of motives, which motivate the series of related
>
>> practices which make up the universe of romantic activity.
>
>> "Use" applies OK only to a resicted sense of motivation.
>
>
>> Andy
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
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