RE: HALF A COCONUT in response to Jay Lemke's comments: > I like your term "ur-solidarity" and the idea that this is more than social convention. My sense is that there is more to the social structure and social relations that occur in activity than simply the milieu we join as newcomers, although there is that too. I think what happens is that in the activity of building social structure is the generation of Ethos - the guiding principles of social relations and activity combined. When newcomers arrive, they do not simply adopt the Ethos. Rather, if the community ethos is repugnant to them (which insome organizations it might be, of course not this one, but originating from NY
I can think of a few that might turn off some)...then they would not join. Repugnance, then, would be the outer parameter defining refusal to join/participate. Curiosity would define the minimal parameter - attraction. Some sort of common ground with the ethos or guiding principles as they areilluminated or performed in activity by existing members of the community would
then be grounds for participation - true engagement.Once a newcomer joins, she/he contributes to the further development of Ethos through engagement in activity. All activity is an expression or performance of
the community ethos. I think ethos is what is at the core of any activity system. It does notpre-exist, but develops along with and through the initial social structure and
activity. It?s a tertiary artifact of activity. Theoretically, I borrow more from sociology on the concept of Ethos but include Tomasello?s concept of joint mediated activity as well.Ethos is ?the underlying deep structure of a culture, the values that animate it, that collectively constitute its way of life? (Eisner 1994, p. 2) (emphasis added). Ethos is the ideational environment in which people interact, a set of
guiding principles emerging and developing through the dialogic interaction of the members of a shared discourse (Eisner, 1994). Dialogic or perspectivalrepresentations of ethos emerge through interaction with others and enables the
development and sustenance of ?collective practices and beliefs? (Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003). In this way, we can see it emerges from ?the relationship between people and [represents] the values and principles underpinning policy and practice (Glover & Coleman, 2005). Its importance is that ?an ethos is evaluative? and ?manifested in many aspects of the? community and has a pervasive influence ?in the shaping of human perceptions, attitudes, beliefs? (p. 311). It is, then, at the heart of the emergence and development of productive,collaborative, and distributive practices. If we substitute, for example, Ethos
for Consumption in Engeström?s expression of activity, it would seem that we could imagine ethos as a mediational force (means) in all realms of activity,production, collaboration (exchange) and distribution forms part of the context that is interwoven in actions and activity - it would be the glue that holds the
center, if you will. In other words, organizations stay together not simply because of what they do ? or the success of what they do, but because of they believe in the social importance of what they do. Obviously ethos doesn't develop overnight and so including it in understanding the underlying social structure of activity and production accommodates the respective contributions of newcomers and old-timers in ongoing activity. It is also imagines ethos as an ?unfinished product? much like the concept of co-configuration. Karen Karen C. Spear-Ellinwood PhD Candidate, College of Education Dept. of Teaching, Language & Sociocultural Studies kse@email.arizona.edu Cell: 520-878-6034 phone: 520-829-0749 ------------------------- Quoting xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu:
Send xmca mailing list submissions to xmca@weber.ucsd.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu You can reach the person managing the list at xmca-owner@weber.ucsd.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of xmca digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Half a coconut (Jay Lemke) 2. elluminators please illuminate! (Mike Cole) 3. Fwd: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From 2-? (Jay Lemke) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:27:40 +0200 From: Jay Lemke Subject: Re: [xmca] Half a coconut To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed; delsp=yes I certainly understand that both Michael's MCA editorial on this, and a lot of the background literature, may not be familiar to many xcma- ers. And my timing in retrospect was not good in the midst of another ongoing discussion. In any case, I think there are important issues, and we can maybe find a time and occasion to get more into some of them. As to the always-already ongoing "communitas", the ground of co- activity that is suggested as the basis for a sort of ur-solidarity that is not simply a social convention, it's always already there in the community into which we come, whether by birth or immigration. A bit like what newcomers to xmca must sense when they first arrive in our online co-activity! JAY. Jay Lemke Professor Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Jul 25, 2009, at 2:15 AM, Mike Cole wrote:Seems like you only got stunned silence back on this, Jay. Part of the problem is almost certainly that many readers of xmca do not read MCA, so when we do not have a common text to refer to, we are in a fix. The part of what I take from this that overlaps other matters I am working on at present is the following: "the notion of an ontological or pre-discursive, actional solidarity seems very close to Victor Turner?s famous _communitas_: originating in the underlying experience of co-activity, which is prior to social structural relations and can be glimpsed when these are set aside (his liminality, Bakhtin?s carnival)" I am not sure when the "underlying of co-activity" begins. Perhaps its there in utero. Perhaps (a la Trevarthan) its there as primary intersubjectivity at birth. But co-activity also appears to require adjustments upon infant and mother's parts (and more so for fathers). I know this comment does not address the ontology/truth/morality issues involved, but those are beyond my powers to grok without a lot more help!! mike On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 6:02 AM, Jay Lemke wrote:I recently had a chance to read more carefully Wolf-Michael Roth's MCA editorial on Solidarity and Responsibility. I know that there was some prior discussion of it here, in a thread about the eyes of a coconut, but that seems to have veered off from what seems interesting to me in the editorial, which was highlighted by Derek Melser at one point. I don't know if I've missed any subsequent discussion, but don't find it in the archives, at least with a google search. So here are some notes on the ideas and arguments in the editorial, for any who are interested. (W-M R and I have been on a firstname basis for a very long time, but he's "Roth" in the notes because it's shorter!) Notes on Roth editorial MCA Solidarity and Responsibility. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 16: 105? 116, 2009. = Roth appears to argue from Is to Ought, from a holistic-extension notion of primal solidarity in being/doing, prior to discursive notions of voluntary solidarity, for a moral responsibility to respect, indeed to privilege uniqueness in the Other, rather than simple not-I differentiation and the corresponding notion of a constructed collective and its artificial solidarity. = the notion of an ontological or pre-discursive, actional solidarity seems very close to Victor Turner?s famous _communitas_: originating in the underlying experience of co-activity, which is prior to social structural relations and can be glimpsed when these are set aside (his liminality, Bakhtin?s carnival) = Turner also argues in parallel with Buddhist philosophy (prajna vs vijnana, or roughly intuition vs discursive reason), that difference is the product of social relations and discursive semantics, while what precedes them is more holistic. = the notion of partes extra partes with which Roth characterizes his view of the ontology of unique wholes is a bit ambiguous in the philosophical tradition there is a Cartesian version of it which is atomistic ? every part exists outside of and independent of every other part, and which leads to a view of space as consisting of just one damn place after another, only externally relatable and then there is also the Leibnizian version, which I think is the one Roth is using, in which each thing or place is an extension or diffusion of its own unique qualities, but in which a principle like that of the mirroring of monads allows larger scenes to also be wholes, within which qualities may extend across what on smaller scales are parts apart from one another, hence providing the sort of holism of absolute differentnesses or uniquenesses that Roth seems to want = Roth takes all this finally to classrooms, schools-as-educating communities, and the paradoxes of democracy. If we are all unique within larger wholes, then it makes sense to pay attention to others? viewpoints when decisions are to be made, indeed the more diverse the input the more likely a good, or at least an as-thoughtful-as-possible decision. Some such decisions are not really decisions, outcomes are largely predetermined by circumstances (habitual, predictable, routine); but others require breaking out of predictable patterns, choosing the risky or unlikely alternative, creating new options ? and so new wholes, within which we all become newly unique-again. (Which, by the way, is in itself a good moral argument for democratic decision-making, since we are all always affected in fundamental ways by decisions. Despite our cultural and masculinist preference for the illusion of our independence. Being unique and partes extra partes does not, in the holistic paradigm, insure our independence, just the opposite. This might go some way towards explaining the popularity of Cartesian atomism, where we can just ignore the other atoms.) Voluntarist solidarity, Roth is arguing, I think, is dangerous because it presupposes the atomist Cartesian ontology of our being: we begin and remain autonomous, we choose to come together in communities. What can be chosen, can also not be chosen. What is voluntary can be suspended, delegated to dictators, elites, teachers, curriculum bureaus. Holistic solidarity, like communitas, on the other hand arises in our being and doing together, which is a condition into which we are born and from which we never entirely depart (having internalized so much of it before we even try to get away). But it is nonetheless a condition that also reinforces our uniqueness (or supports it, or from which it is emergent, depending on your metaphysics), and from which we can no more get away than we can get away from ourselves. But I am still not entirely sure that Roth is not over-claiming on how much democratic Ought is derivable from the holistic Is. Bakhtin is fairly casual about the logic of the ideational and the axiological (in his later terms), or the twin answerabilities of response and responsibility. I am not well enough read in Levinas to say in his case. Personally I don?t see why we should want to ground the moral-ethical in the ontological, in the nature of things. Isn?t that theology? Because a God exists, we should do what He says? Isn?t a secular philosophical version of this kind of argument just another desire to privilege the ontological, the factual, the true over the Good? For me the good, the ought, in its many forms and aspects, has its own standing, equal with the true, and not subordinate to it. The good and the true, or by degrees as we really experience them, the more or less desirable, the more or less likely, along with the more or less important, the more or less surprising, serious/humorous, mysterious/ comprehensible, etc. all stand as equal partes extra partes in relation to one another. As they do in the semantics of our language. And I think as they also do experientially and phenomenologically, though the holism of experience will be something not so neatly corresponding to semantic categories, will feel like something more of a mish-mash, at least as seen from the neat typologies of language and philosophy done in language. From here this discussion could go in many directions, so I will stop for now and see what others may say. Jay. Jay Lemke Professor Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke _______________________________________________ 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------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:26:31 -0700 From: Mike Cole Subject: [xmca] elluminators please illuminate! To: "eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 A "seat" licence appears to cost $100.00 for elluminate. Those using it-- what does a site licence cost and who pays for it where you are?? mike ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:40:10 +0200From: Jay Lemke Subject: Fwd: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ;From 2-?To: XMCA Forum Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed;delsp=yes Mike sent this but it went only to me. He wanted it to go to the list. Jay Lemke Professor Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke Begin forwarded message:From: Mike Cole Date: July 25, 2009 2:26:14 AM GMT+02:00To: Jay Lemke Subject: Re: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ;From 2-? Reply-To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu Yep, you got at what I was trying to discuss, Jay. And some of the factors that I thought might provoke such spotty "precociousness." I do not know Halliday well enough to know if what you describe explains what I was asking about, the general set of considerations you raise resonate. David Kel and I discussed these issues a little by phone (taking advantage of his presence in my time zone for a while). It seems like the absence of kids being able to use speech on behalf of their own motives in the way classrooms ordinarily work -- e.g. they are in the responder role and have to guess at what the teacher is after/about -- would reduce the complexity of the thoughts to which they can give expression. I believe that some of the electronic comm media such as elluminate (as described by people in recent notes) may be an example of conditions under which students can be more in control of what they get to say and as a result get more agentive, excited, and perhaps, even learn more. mike PS-- Long ago -- like in the early 1980's -- some of my colleagues at LCHC found that if they had an asynchronous discussion group that accompanied the live class, some of the students who never responded, or did so only with difficulty, were leaders in the a-synchronous interactions. My guess was that the shift in medium changed the constraints on communication, "freeing" some who could not manage the pace of the classroom. Not entirely unlike the frequent comment that many people who mostly read but do not write on xmca are knocked over by the pace and rapid shifting. On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Jay Lemke wrote: I am replying to Mike's much earlier message about context and speech complexity, though I've read the subsequent discussion, mainly because I remain interested in the original issue he brought up. I know the discussion has shifted, as it so often does, more to critiques of ideas of internalization, but that seems to have happened in part because one reading of Mike's question led to the suggestion that internalization was an important part of the answer. My version of his question is this: How do we understand the phenomenon of young speakers producing much more complex forms of speech in activities in which they appear to have more intrinsic motivation and authentic interest, compared to activities in which they are just following someone else's lead? I am not an expert on early childhood language development, but I am a developmentalist in the sense that I analyze meaning-making across all timescales as a building up of later meanings on top of earlier ones to reach greater complexity and efficacy. Just as in biological development the complexity and efficacy (for something) of later stages depends on the foundations laid in earlier ones (hence the link with evolution). I believe it is a well-known phenomenon in language development -- and I mean that term as shorthand for increasing complexity and efficacy in (self- or other- directed) speech as an integral component of some larger activity -- that new speakers occasionally produce much more "advanced" speech than the average of what they produce in some time frame (i.e. speech more like the average in a much later timeframe). I think this is also true of other sorts of longer-term learning processes. There are just time when it all comes together for us and we perform with an apparent capability well ahead of our usual performances. We appear to leap forward, and then fall back. Is this just luck? sometimes perhaps, and sometimes it is the over- interpretation of the observer, reading more meaning into the speech than may have been "intended" (another shorthand). But we also know that in the case of speech, receptive understanding encompasses such more complex forms, even if active production rarely or never-before has shown them. And that of course has something to do with the more complex forms being present in the environment, the community, the co-activity with others. So the fact that it may not be reproducible, or that it may not recur across different settings, may not necessarily mean that it was not "intentional" (i.e. functionally and deliberately meaningful on the part of the new producer). It may have arisen in play, in exploration of wording-possibilities. It may have arisen in a less-self-monitoring context where inhibitions against more complex production for fear of errors, ridicule, communication failure, etc. were much reduced (like speaking a foreign language when just a little drunk). It may have been driven past all inhibitions or obstacles by intense desire or need. Or it may have been abetted by particularly supportive circumstances. My own hypothesis about what Mike seems to be describing is that precocious speech is more likely to occur when more complex meanings are easier to build up on top of already familiar meaning-speakings. Halliday gives some examples of this for spoken dialogue, where very complex verb tenses will appear that are far more complex than those normally (or ever) seen in written text, because speakers build up time-relational meanings on top of prior speakers sayings. This is micro-developmental, on the logogenetic or text-production timescale (seconds to minutes). What circumstances support such short-term climbing to new heights? it may be a particular speech-partner, it may be a particular familiar topic, it may be a rush of need or desire to make the more complex meaning, which is a meaning that has become appropriate to the moment in the ongoing activity because we have been able to get that far in terms of building connections on connections, meanings (including those made by nonverbal gestures, actions, etc.) on meanings. It seems reasonable to me that there ought to be a strong social- situational correlation between activities in which we are heavily personally invested, or just really enjoy or want or need, and those in which the other factors I've suggested are available to support climbing unusually high up the ladder of meaning complexity -- i.e. of meanings built on other meanings. What do you think? JAY. Jay Lemke Professor Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Jul 20, 2009, at 6:06 AM, Mike Cole wrote:Hi Lois-- I appear eerily unable to communicate the issue that is the focus of my attention which is not whether kids imitate the language around them, but for the difference in performance of the same kids, within hours or so of when they first say something complicated, to "revert" to a simplified version of that utterance at about the level of what they do when asked to repeat an utterance dreamed up by an experimenter to test some theory of the process of grammatical development. The kids are performing in both cases. But in one case they are performing to achieve THEIR goals. In the other they are performing to achieve goals they have little understanding of. Something or other ideas think furiously. Neither you nor David, so far as I can tell, addresses the question I am asking. Since you both know a ton more about language acquisition than I figure I am being totally dense. What am I missing here? About Vygotsky writing *Something which is only supposed to take shape at the very end of development, somehow influences the very first steps in this development. *I believe that Vygotsky is stating a very widely held view of the process of development, one which can be found in many scientific sources but which also has deep roots in the Judeo-Christian (and probably lots of other traditions). Here is a version of it from T.S. Elliot, "East Coker" but I believe it is also intimately related to the idea of a spiral of development which is often found in Hegelian and Marxist thought. Anyway, here is one catholic-convert's expression of the idea: In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf. Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto. In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon, Where you lean against a bank while a van passes, And the deep lane insists on the direction Into the village, in the electric heat Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone. The dahlias sleep in the empty silence. Wait for the early owl. In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie? A dignified and commodiois sacrament. Two and two, necessarye coniunction, Holding eche other by the hand or the arm Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles, Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes, Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth Mirth of those long since under earth Nourishing the corn. Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death. Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning. * * On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Lois Holzman < lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:Hi All,Mike's post sent me back to my most recent thinking on imitation (two weeks ago!) as well as to my language development research in the mid-70s with Lois Bloom. I do recall that my first published article (Imitation in Language Development: If, When and Why) was one of a handful at the time that focused on spontaneous imitation as opposed to elicited imitation, such as Slobin's study Mike refers to.OUr findings from longitudinal data from 6 children from single words to syntax were quite interesting: by our operational definitions, some of them didn't imitate and their language development was similar to those that imitated. Those that did imitate, imitated what they were in the process of learning, and not what they knew well nor what was beyond them. Today I would say they imitated what was in their ZPD and that their imitations were part of creating that ZPD. So it seems to me that the change referred to ?to the more simplified form? could be understood as the child making meaning with what has been said, playing with it, creating with it, using it. For the social situation doesn't end just because the child is alone--s/he takes it with her/him; it becomes part of her/his life world and repertoire. What I can add about the relevance to school is the importance of opportunities for language play, and especially the kind of creative imitation Vygotsky believes is critical for very young children. For the most part schools do not create opportunities for children to play with language in the way that is described here. We've created this thing called "vocabulary" which they are obliged to learn. Children are asked to get the correct or finished version tas quickly as possible?and they are typically given simplified language to help them do this. There is little of the playfulness that happens when the language around you is not simplified, and you are free to play with and use it in a variety of ways. Perhaps helpful in adding to what I am saying is part of this quote from Vygotsky, which I wrote about in an article several years ago and resurrected for a just completed chapter for Cathrene-Ana-Vera's upcoming volume: But is fully developed speech, which the child is only able to master at the end of this period of development, already present in the child?s environment? It is, indeed. The child speaks in one word phrases, but his mother talks to him in language which is already grammatically and syntactically formed and which has a large vocabulary*? *Let us agree to call this developed form, which is supposed to make its appearance at the end of the child?s development, the final or ideal form. And let us call the child?s form of speech the primary or rudimentary form. The greatest characteristic feature of child development is that this development is achieved under particular conditions of interaction with the environment, where this ?form which is going to appear only at the end of the process of development is not only already there in the environment ? but actually interacts and exerts a real influence on the primary form, on the first steps of the child?s development. *Something which is only supposed to take shape at the very end of development, somehow influences the very first steps in this development. *(Vygotsky, 1994, p. 348?the article is The Problem of the Environment, appearing in The Vygotsky Reader) Apologies for the slightly abridged version of the passage. Not surprisingly, I "relate" creative imitation to performance.... Lois Lois Holzman, Director East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy 920 Broadway, 14th floor New York NY 10010 tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324 fax 212.941.0511 lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org www.eastsideinstitute.orgwww.performingtheworld.org loisholzman.org On Jul 16, 2009, at 5:00 PM, Mike Cole wrote:David's note of a few days ago on 3-7 year old changes in egocentric speech reminded me of an old article by Slobin and Welch (reprinted in Ferguson and Slobin, *Studies of Child Development, 1963) *that it took a while to track down. The study is often cited in studies of elicited imitation where an adult says some sentence and asks a little kid to repeat it. Kids simplify the sentence in normal circumstances ("Where is the kitty" becomes "where kitty") and other such stuff. There is a pretty large literature on this. But when I went to find the phenomenon in the article that had most struck me, I could not find it in the recent lit on elicited imitation. The phenomenon seems relevant to the monologic, dialogic etc speech discussion. The phenomenon is this: When a 2yr/5month old child is recorded saying "If you finish your eggs all up, Daddy, you can have your coffee." they can repeat this sentence pretty much as it is right afterward. But 10 minutes later it has become simplified a la the usual observation. Citing William James (the child has an "intention to say so and so") Slobin and Welch remark: If that linguistic form is presented for imitation while the intention is still operative, it can be faily successfully imitated. Once the intention is gone, however, the utterance must be processed in linguistic terms alone -- without its original intentional and contextual support." In the absence of such support, the task can strain the child's abilities and reveal a more limited competence than may actually be present in spontaneous speech (p. 489-90). This kind of observation seems relevant in various ways both to language acquisition in school settings and to my reccurrent questions about the social situation of development. Is it relevant to the discussion of egocentric and social speech, David? mike _______________________________________________ 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------------------------------ _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca End of xmca Digest, Vol 50, Issue 63 ************************************
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