Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

I am not up with the whole discussion on this thus far, but just a thought about developmental processes, apropos LSV's apparent lapse into mechanical determinism.

Given so much else in his work, it seems an odd lapse. So I'll offer not so much an interpretation of his words, as of his topic, that might make the idea that each next step is determined by the one before not sound so implausible.

In complex systems theories about development, the logic of determinism is transformed from its classical look. Rather than the Newtownian notion of rigid, mechanical, causal determinism of a later state by a prior state (total predictability), one has instead the notion that no later state is accessible unless the system has already attained the prior states along what, in retrospect, we think of as its developmental trajectory. That is, there are no shortcuts to later developmental "states" (i.e. complex networks of interdependent processes with multiple feedback loops, cross-catalysis, etc.). The only way you can reach a "higher" state is by having already got to the prior state, for it is only from that state that you can "develop" to the later ones. It is in the precursor state that you first become sensitive to the kinds of environmental input, and capable of making the kinds of responses to that input, which potentially lead on to the next state.

Each next state is in this sense determined by the previous state. Maybe one should say governed by, or directed by, or afforded by, or "developmentally determined" by?

Developmental trajectories are an odd case of semi-predictability. If you look across members of a species, in relatively similar environments, then you see much the same developmental sequences. The average trajectory of the species, the developmental trajectory envelope, within which there is always micro-variation and individuation, is predictable. Any given individual developing system is at every moment in time contingent and can fail, or even diverge. But most of them tend not to diverge very much, and the primary reason is that prior states are setting them up for a specific, narrow range of next-states, and too much divergence will run afoul of all the complex interlocking constraints and affordances both within the system and between it and its environment. Evolution has tried out all the blind alleys and left signposts for the few paths forward that will actually be viable.

The dependence of development on environmental input (or alternatively, the proper definition of the developing system as a developing system of organism-environment interactional processes) has left the door open for institutional, socio-cultural input as well (with some adjustments to the relevant timescales). "Crises" would seem to represent times when the organism-environment relationship, the person-institution relationship, has to change to keep on the viable path. The signposts in this case are carried in the "external genome", i.e. the cultural-artifactual surround, the input from conspecific others, and most importantly, the aspects of that input that are institutionalized in the sense of relatively slowly changing and predictably present for the developing organism/persona [ignoring for the moment the issue of how to best define the relevant unit of analysis]. 

Such social input (expectations, demands, resource shifts, etc.) creates (relationally) "crises", and "ages" or stages of the life-course, which form a sort of developmental envelope for other changes, such as in higher intellectual functions, emotional commitments, etc. Many societies ritualize key transitions (while perhaps leaving others non-salient) in rites de passage, but all societies are engaged in "managing" (if that is not too deterministic or agentive a term) life courses and development. Which certainly don't end with "adulthood" (if you're lucky), or with "scientific concepts".

It may even be the case that there are "super-crises" that occur for particular generational cohorts that happen to reach the time for a "normal" crisis (and for needed social support to get on to the next stage) just at the time when, institutionally, the wider social system is in crisis and no longer automatically providing that support. Or when the next older generation, that is normally the means for giving the support, finds itself already on a diverging cultural-historical trajectory that no longer positions it to provide the support. Such is the risk of living in interesting times.

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Senior Research Scientist
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California - San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0506

Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Professor Emeritus
City University of New York







On May 25, 2011, at 9:02 PM, mike cole wrote:

> Hi David-- There are too many issues here to comment on in one note. I have
> no further comment on the reviewing issues. But even with respect to LSV and
> crisis at age 7 (funny how little difference a decade can make in
> discussions at the right level of abstraction!) you touch on several
> important issues. I want to ask about the following because it seems
> overstated to me, or maybe just wrong.
> 
> *But I think that internal development always occurs in such a way that
> there is a unity of personality and environmental factors, that is, every
> new step in development is directly determined by the preceding step.*
> 
> Even allowing for your nuanced notion of internal as "the internalized" it
> is unclear how "unity of personality and environmental factors" implies, let
> alone is synonymous with "every new step in development is directly
> determined by the previous step."
> 
> I am brought back to the previous discussion initiated in a note of Larry's
> about loosely coupled systems. On the surface at least this looks way too
> mechanical to me, not to mention uncertainty about what the steps are and
> what the teleology is that allows one to talk of steps as if new and
> previous meant higher and lower.
> 
> Interesting about campiness and "acting as if" but part of a related, but
> different discussion.
> mike
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:15 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> 
>> This is almost the very last thing that Vygotsky wrote in the book on Child
>> Development. It's the Crisis at Seven, not seventeen, and it's the last page
>> of Volume Five, 296:
>> 
>> "It is my impression that the crises actually have an internal source and
>> consist in changes of an internal nature. There is no precise correspondence
>> here between external and internal changes. The child enters the crisis.
>> What has changed abruptly outward? Nothing. Why has the child changed so
>> abruptly in such a short time?"
>> 
>> Of course, Andy could STILL be right--that is, the crisis at seventeen
>> might be caused not by the external circumstances of looking for work but
>> only by the shiver of anticipation that the future produces. But Vygotsky
>> makes it clear that's not what he has in mind.
>> 
>> "Our idea is that we must object not to the bourgeois theories of the
>> critical age levels, or the idea that the crisis is a very profound process
>> interwoven into the course of the child's development, but we must object to
>> the understanding of the internal nature itself of the process of
>> development."
>> 
>> Vygotsky then points out that the bourgeois theories he refers to mean,
>> quite literally, raging hormones. That is what "internal" means to them.
>> 
>> "But I think that internal development always occurs in such a way that
>> there is a unity of personality and environmental factors, that is, every
>> new step in development is directly determined by the preceding step. This
>> means that development must be understood as a process where all subsequent
>> change is connected with what went before and with the present in which the
>> features of personality that have developed previously are now manifested
>> and now act."
>> 
>> Vygotsky concludes that if we understand "internal" as referring to the
>> internalization of experience, there can really be nothing wrong with the
>> idea of an "internally" caused crisis.
>> 
>> Now, to me this suggests that the idea of a crisis rooted in the child's
>> anticipation of entering the labor market is seriously flawed. It just
>> doesn't take into account the PREVIOUS history of the child.
>> 
>> Now, that previous history, where is it? Alas, Vygotsky did not live to
>> write it. But in a sense, THIS is it: this is the chapter on the Crisis at
>> SEVEN, after all, not the chapter on the Crisis at Seventeen.
>> 
>> So what does Vygotsky say about the Crisis at Seven? Well, he says that
>> children develop a sense of CAMP, that is, acting "as if" rather than acting
>> directly as themselves. The child walks "as if" walking instead of just
>> walking. The child draws attention to the squeaky quality of his own voice
>> when talking "as if" talking. Vygotsky notes that Charlie Chaplin's comedy
>> works largely because it is devoid of camp; he acts with childlike naivete
>> and directness which is quite inappropriate to any adult role; he simply
>> acts instead of acting "as if".
>> 
>> Let me return, but only briefly, to the unpleasant topic of my rejections
>> and the emotions they stirred up. I think the focus on my work is a little
>> misdirected: I should have approached this as an MCA reviewer MYSELF, and
>> pointed out how unconstructive it is IN GENERAL to dish out "do not
>> resubmit" reviews with ad hominem comments that cast aspersions on the
>> author's committment to scientific seriousness and base this on nothing but
>> "tone".
>> 
>> I should have pointed out as an MCA reviewer MYSELF (that is, one of those
>> Andy and others are thanking) that it is in my interests that the editors
>> uphold the principle of blind review, the principle of RARE outright
>> rejection and the GENEROUS use of "resubmit", the principle of multiple
>> reviewers, and last but not least, the principle of the "no a-hole rule":
>> that is, no drama, no ad hominem, and total civility, particularly where
>> rejections are concerned.
>> 
>> My comments on papering the bathroom walls with my rejection notes and also
>> my free admission that I am, basically, a dysfunctional writer weakened
>> this. But they were also meant to improve the tone of the discussion (and
>> perhaps even the quality of the journal). I admit; I do think there are very
>> few emotionally fraught discussions and even serious scholarly ones that
>> cannot be improved by the introduction of humor.
>> 
>> True, campiness had the unfortuate effect of strengthening the accusations
>> of flippancy and unseriousness (which I don't take very seriously) and,
>> alas, directing more attention towards myself (which I do). But there are
>> two great advantages to campiness that every seven year old becomes acutely
>> aware of and which even the seventeen year old does not outgrow.
>> 
>> First of all, the campiness of "as if" is a real protection against the
>> kind of suicidal feelings that Andy describes. But secondly, and more
>> importantly, when we get "hot under the collar" and we say things that are
>> extreme,  which is, as Mike points out, an inevitable concommittant of any
>> deep discussion about deeply held beliefs, then there is an important
>> EXCEPTION to the general xmca rule of total civility and complete
>> intolerance of intolerance.
>> 
>> Incivility, even in its most extreme forms (e.g. jokes that denigrate Jews,
>> which as a Jew I make free with or the use of "queer" by gays and racial
>> epithets by black people) is acceptable as long as it is self-directed. I
>> think the child at seven discovers this, and it is a very important
>> discovery indeed. It is, in fact, a central and difficult concept in the
>> child's MORAL development.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>> 
>> 
>> --- On *Wed, 5/25/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17
>> To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 3:25 PM
>> 
>> 
>> Andy--
>> 
>> I guess I am simply having trouble interpreting texts on xmca at the moment
>> in general! Sorry
>> 
>> The issue of the "back end" of the transition to adulthood is not passe, of
>> course! Quite the opposite, it is a new academic industry and a major life
>> issue of millions of people around the globe in ways that were
>> unanticipated
>> by our forbearers. And it certainly is fraught! Both for participants and
>> analysts. Ask any 35 year old unemployed BA living at home with parents or
>> the parents or Ethiopian high school leaver who cannot find work!!
>> 
>> Does LSV use the term, institutionalized age-levels? The institutions part
>> of this process ordinarily goes under-theorized by psychologists and I seem
>> to have missed that.
>> mike
>> 
>> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@mira.net>>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I did not mean to impute a framing of the question in those terms to you
>>> Mike, but I can't quite see why you describe the idea of what Vygotsky
>> calls
>>> the "transitional period" ending in the "beginning of adulthood" as
>>> something passe and fraught. Is there a country in the industrialised
>> world
>>> which does not have an age (or ages) at which the person qualifies to
>> vote,
>>> drive cars, give informed consent, join the army, run for election, serve
>> on
>>> juries - all those rights which characterise adult citizenship in a
>> country?
>>> Vygotsky says these instituionalised age-levels "depend on enormous
>>> practical experience" (LSV CW 5p187) so it seems a fair conclusion to
>> draw
>>> that there is some reality behind a hear-universally institutionalised
>> idea,
>>> some basis in patterns of child development in the given society.
>>> Mind you, he also says "We do not include youth (i.e. the period between
>>> adolesence and adulthood) in the scheme of age periods of childhood for
>> the
>>> reason that theoretical and empirical studies equally compel opposition
>> to
>>> stretching child development excessively and including in it the first
>>> twenty-five years of human life. In the general sense and according to
>> basic
>>> patterns, the age eighteen to twenty-five years more likely makes up the
>>> initial link in the chain of mature age than the concluding link in the
>>> chain of periods of child development." (LSV CW 5p196) But that is really
>>> not my concern. I am not writing a book on child development! :) It's
>> those
>>> youth I am most interested in. The development which proceeds on the
>> basis
>>> of a person's thinking and acting in concepts is a different kind of
>>> development than that which he or she goes through during childhood, and
>>> does not exhibit the same laws.
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> mike cole wrote:
>>> 
>>>> We also did not write about the transition to adulthood at what used to
>> be
>>>> called the beginning of adulthood, a frought notion indeed. There is not
>> a
>>>> large literature on that topic which is only pre-figured in the first
>>>> edition of our textbook when we were allowed to include a life-span
>>>> treatment of development.
>>>> mike
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@mira.net>
>> <mailto:
>>>> ablunden@mira.net<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ablunden@mira.net>>>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>   Apologies Gregory. I slipped a note about Vygotsky in the middle
>>>>   of my commentary on Cole, whereas in fact, Mike did not refer to
>>>>   Vygotsky in this chapter.
>>>>   Culpa mia.
>>>>   Andy
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>   Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>       Ivo and Andy,
>>>>       Also in the adolescence section of Mike's textbook is
>>>>       reference to William Damon. He has a wonderful 3-D graphic of
>>>>       the development of self-concept from infancy through adolescence.
>>>>       His writings on moral development are quite good too. The
>>>>       major point that I always appreciate is that moral development
>>>>       should not be considered separately from development of
>>>>       self-concept (Andy, you might appreciate the way in which
>>>>       development of self-understanding and development of social
>>>>       understanding are caught up with each other - the development
>>>>       of an I that is We?).
>>>>       Although I don't recall any explicit reference to Vygotsky, he
>>>>       draws on an Vygotsky's kin (according to some), the American
>>>>       pragmatists James Mark Baldwin and William James.
>>>>       Damon and Hart 1992. Self-understanding and its role in social
>>>>       and moral development. In Lamb, M. and Bornstein, M. (Eds.)
>>>>       Developmental Psychology: An advanced textbook. pp. 421-464.
>>>> 
>>>>       Graphic is on p. 433.
>>>>       I'm happy to share a copy directly but prefer not to
>>>>       distribute widely.
>>>>       -greg
>>>>       __________________________________________
>>>>       _____
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>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>       http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>   --
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>   *Andy Blunden*
>>>>   Joint Editor MCA:
>>>>   http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
>>>>   <
>> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
>>>>   Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <
>> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>>>   Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>>>>   <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>>>   MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
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>>>> 
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> Joint Editor MCA:
>>> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>>> MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>>> 
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