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Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17

In connection with the crisis at 7, Vygotsksy says:

   “Facts show that in other conditions of rearing, the crisis occurs
   differently. In children who go from nursery school to kindergarten,
   the crisis occurs differently than it does in children who go into
   kindergarten from the family. However, this crisis occurs in all
   normally proceeding child development. ...” (LSV CW v. 5, p. 295)
I think this is crystal clear. Biology and culture interact in child development. And when we are talking about culture, we mean the interaction between institutions objectifying the wisdom of ages, and the social practices of all parts of a community today, different from those institutions: the complex human conditions into which the child is growing: future-oriented as he says.
The crisis at 17 (or 16 or 18 or 19 ...) is the same. Every child goes through it, but it is different in different societies. The children of every society do go through it, because contra Vygotsksy, who shared some European prejudices, every society produces children who think in true concepts because such adults are needed to manage the affairs of society, its justice system, its foreign relations, its economy, etc., etc. Not every single child of course, but every normally and fully developing child. Not necessarily a crisis, not necessarily at 17.
What I was struck by is the idea of concept which is implicit in how Vygotsky conceives of the transitional age. 

Andy
Jay Lemke wrote:

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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