Re: [xmca] motive/project

Andy,

you wrote:   " . . . 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."

when you say "closer", I think i need clarification, closer to what?  Unlocking the dynamics of societal phenomena?   I'm not clear what that means?  Maybe it's clearer to others

I'm also not sure what this set of claims implies.  Why is developing a theory of "societal phenomena" on the basis of dyads closer to the mark?

For one thing, there are clearly social phenomena whose dynamic cannot be reduced to dyadic interaction between individuals .In kinship systems (as basic a social phenomena as there is) it is not possible to reduce  a generalized kinship systems, with exchanges between lineages of the form  (A->B->C->A) to rrestricted exchange, of the form (A<-->B).  Like squaring a circle..Yet the notion of incest in which the relationships between these "groups" is defined constitutes one of the most powerful "tool/artefact/3rd order model/ whatever" for the regulation of social behavior.  e.g., Malinowki's description of the young Trobiand male who climbed high up a palm tree and leaped to his death, unable to bear the shame of having been discovered sleeping with his "classifcatory" matrilateral cousin...  

 Neither do I understand exactly why you think that Marx's commodity theory contained the idea that the interactions of "two individuals" unlock the "dynamics of societal phenomena."  I feel incompetent to comment on whether this "idea" suitably characterizes Vygotsky's theories.   But I can give my reasons for questioning its applicapbility to Marx's theory of commodities.

 The analysis of the commodity form in  Capital v.I Ch1 provides the theoretical cornerstone of Marx's  critique of political economy.   In Marx's critique theoretical categories (value, surplus value, relative surplus value, etc.) replace tbe categories of the everyday capitalist economic organization (e.g., wage, price, profit.).  The derivation of these theoretical categories  from the commodity form, even the identification of the commodity form as the "secret" of the capitalist system, constituted the end point of more than a decade of directed investigation .  The preparatory writings for Capital, e.g. Outline of a Critique , Contribution . . ., Grundrisse) do not use the commodity-form  to generate the economic categories  The commodity-form in these pre-Capital writings is not the "unit of analysis".  To the contrary,   Marx starts with the  the everyday categories of capitalist economic organization. Though he identified , the
 theoretical categories of value, surplus value, etc. in the early writings he had not yet  accounted for or deduced them from the commodity form.  The identification of the commodity-form as the "germ" for explaining the everyday categories comes as s the end result of more than a decade of research and analysis of the a phenomena presented in the everday categories that hid and fetishized the reality of the social nature of commodities themselves. 

Marx's analysis of the commodity form  has nothing at all to do with individuals, either figuratively (human individuals) or logically ( (x=y ) =>  x and y are individuals). ..  Rather, there is simply a question of equivalence relations between of "products" of human productive activity.  How much iron equates to how much corn?  There is really no "individual" involved, The processes are social, the agents exchanging the corn and iron might well be companies, collectives.  Of course there are only two poles here, but that doesn't convert the variables at either end of the double arrow into "individuals" in any other than a purely formal sense.  One could easily (and Marx does) insert n-tuples in place of individual variables on either end of the exchange. 

This is also true of societies whose economies  are not based on the production of commodities.     Marcel Mauss  repeatedly stressed that reciprocity relations
(pre-commodity economic relations) did not exist between individuals,
but between groups .

Well, those are my reasons for disagreeing with your claim about starting with individuals or dyads to explain "societal phenomena"  both inparticular, i.e., the nature of the commodity-form, and in general, i.e., including non-capitalist "societal phenomena".

Paul
 

--- On Sat, 12/20/08, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
To: phd_crit_think@yahoo.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 5:16 PM

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"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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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Received on Sun Dec 21 01:54:19 2008