Re: [xmca] Lave and McDermott

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Tony
I've been mucking around on the internet and came upon this interview with
Z Bauman.  What a fascinating man. At the beginning he is referring to MONO
-logic or a single mytho-logic that is destroying the public sphere. At the
end of the interview he ends with a message of HOPE that we can
re-constitute a more vibrant public sphere or what is often referred to as
"common ground"

Certainly speaks to the hope germinating in the  "Occupy Wall Street"
message to challenge the mono-logical tryanny of the debt narrative. The
video segment can be accessed at

http://www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/bauman/teaching/interview.php

His notion that sociologies as hermeneutical enactments have the  task  to
defamiliarze the familiar background assumptions of our mono - logic seems
appropriate to bring into the discussion of J. Williams article.

Larry

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:28 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> This may be of relevance:
>
> Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. /Consuming life/. Malden, MA: Polity.
>
> With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is
> transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society,
> individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the
> commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time a, the
> merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople.
> They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the
> term the market.
>
> The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they
> covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing
> attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of
> consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of
> consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded
> secret, of the consumer society in which we now live.
> In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist
> attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects
> of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification,
> communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of
> knowledge, and value preferences.
>
> The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the
> worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity
> markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance
> to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book
> by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.
>
>
> On Sun, 30 Oct 2011, Julian Williams wrote:
>
> Andy, Larry
>>
>> I was indeed 'inspired' by the Lave and McDermott article: the
>> methodology is seductive, and generative metaphor is a powerful means
>> sometimes to gain insights.
>>
>> But what took me to that article and forced me to work with it was in the
>> end the need to understand learners' alienation from learning (and so
>> themselves) in schooling. L&M say that schools take (by force) everything
>> from the learner -  in the same way that capital takes everything from
>> labour, and gives back nothing -  and so the analogy begins...
>>
>> Let me tell a story - I talked to a student from a well-to-do
>> stock-broker background (where expectations on him seemed high)  who got
>> into a university Physics course ... I asked him where/how he got his
>> interest in Physics... he said he wasnt really interested in Physics, but
>> he chose it because 'it would look good' on his CV/ resume and 'especially
>> from a top university like this'. This is the kind of extreme case of
>> alienation in schooling/academe that interested me.
>>
>> But the L&M analogy is not - I found -  theoretically satisfactory: hence
>> my journey back to Marx from 1844 to 1867... If I am right then the
>> use/exchange contradiction arises not JUST (and not essentially) from the
>> forced conditions of learning in school, and the 'competition' between
>> learners etc., but from the fact that the learner is preparing themselves
>> to labour, and so they are working on developing themselves as 'labour
>> power' for the labour market, i.e. to sell themselves to capital ('labour
>> power' is the commodity-proper).  This is not just consumtpion, it is a
>> particular kind of consumption of education for a future role as exploited
>> (also exploiter) ... . I am still working on this and expect to still be
>> plodding away until ... well, for a while...
>>
>> In the MCA paper I told how I began to find Bourdieu's work useful in
>> fleshing out the notion of 'educational/cultural capital' in the analysis
>> of schooling: I am still at this idea. I think that this 'educational
>> capital' may also have a kind of 'educational use/exchange value' type of
>> contradiction. Of course here we have a problem of terminology and it is
>> important to distinguish between Marx's analysis of commodity proper and
>> the terms Bourdieu uses for 'capital' in the cultural fields....
>>
>> Larry - I agree that 'values' is what is at stake here ...
>>
>> julian
>>
>> ______________________________**__________
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] on
>> behalf of Larry Purss [lpscholar2@gmail.com]
>> Sent: 30 October 2011 16:55
>> To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Lave and McDermott
>>
>> I want to address one particular aspect of the article from page 282 on
>> the
>> "methodology" that Lave & McDermott engaged in their analysis of
>> schooling.
>> Williams wrote,
>>
>> "This is a pure metaphoric analysis with the economy as the SOURCE and
>> education as the TARGET domain.... L & M call it a GENRE of translation,
>> but GENERATIVE metaphor is also close. Generative metaphor generally
>> benefits from a dialectic between source and target domains and is by no
>> means a one - way transfer of meaning."
>>
>> L & M's  methodology therefore is a genre of translation or text analysis.
>> A hermeneutical process of interpretation of economic objects from one
>> domain transferred into another object domain of learning. This
>> translation
>> process is attempting to generate insight into the contradictions between
>> two distinct aspects of economic narratives within the source domain
>> and translating this economic contradiction into  the narratives of USE
>> and
>> the narratives of EXCHANGE [currency, credentials, grades, MEASUREMENTS,
>> etc] within educational discourse. This process of translation does point
>> to the DOMINANT metaphor [and myth] that has colonized our current
>> intersubjective relationships and generates a particular FORM of valuation
>> that alientates the person from their own needs [yearnings] and also puts
>> the person in a PARTICULAR form of COMPETITIVE intersubjectivity with
>> others. The fundamental value questions
>>
>> "What do I owe the other?" &
>> "What do we owe the other?"
>>
>> IS fundamentally a question OF VALUES. Epistemology and practice
>> [knowledgeability] become colonized by a single  mono LOGIC of EXCHANGE
>> VALUES that is like a black hole that gravitationally pulls all
>> alternative VALUE genres into its orbit.
>>
>> I agree that this genre of USE and EXCHANGE contradictions does express
>> the
>> DOMINANT genre of globalization, but is it monolithic?  Are there
>> alternative genres with alternative metaphors that can escape the orbit of
>> metaphors of exchange and explore alternative notions of value that answer
>> the question "What do I {we} owe  the other?" in ways that explore VALUES
>> that speak more directly to the yearnings of the heart as expressed by
>> Bellah in his book "Habits of the Heart". A value narrative that
>> re-visions
>> the public sphere and "common ground" and needing to be VALUED in our
>> humanity as central to our notions of what we owe the other.
>>
>> Williams article, in my reading, does capture the centrality of our
>> current
>> arrangements of alienated labour but I want to explore alternative
>> narratives that IMAGINE relationships and a SOCIAL ETHIC that calls for
>> answers and responses in genres of dialogical communication [speech and
>> text and artifacts] that call for deepening our narratives of instrumental
>> USE values and EXCHANGE values into genres of dialogue and communication
>> within common ground.
>>
>> I hope the Occupy Wall Street movement,  does not get locked into the
>> exchange genre of redistributing the 1% wealth to be more equally
>> distributive. This leaves the narrative in the realm of exchange values.
>> Can we possibly move the conversation to notions of "common ground" as a
>> fundamental re-visioning of the question "What do we owe the other?"
>>
>> Schools are only one activity institution that needs to engage with this
>> re-visioning our SOCIAL ETHIC to move beyond exchange values. William's
>> article points to the challenges of moving beyond debt narratives [that is
>> now global] and may require vision [and "faith" as meaning making in a
>> future alternative] where we answer that what we owe the other is to build
>> places where the person's yearnings for fellowship and security are
>> recognized as best expressed within a radically new value genre.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 6:36 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Andy
>>>
>>> I appreciate these opening comments on this months article for
>>> discussion.
>>> You wrote,
>>>
>>>
>>> "The student-teacher relationship is *not *a /customer-service provider
>>> relation/. A school is a place for the production of labour power
>>> (inclusive of all the social relations presupposed by labour power, not
>>> just know-how!), not accumulation of capital"
>>>
>>> Your cautionary tale or comment on metaphors as images that "capture" the
>>> imagination.
>>>
>>>  I wonder if these metaphorical images may then expand and develop and
>>> transform into a single mono logic which colonizes our actual concrete
>>> social relations into its mytho-logical orbit. Mytho logic as
>>> hermeneutical
>>> narratives [traditions, texts]  that constitute or in*form our actual
>>> social relations.  Metaphors as "vehicles" for a particular mytho
>>> logic. Capital and debt hermeneutical notions colonizing the multiple
>>> dialectical productions of labour power under a single mytho logic.
>>>  Terms
>>> such as human "capital" which are meant to critique the "debt" mytho
>>> logic
>>> becoming captured within the orbit of this one particular mono logic.
>>>
>>> Andy, your experiment of taking Marx's  "depth" analysis within
>>> PARTICULAR
>>> social relations of commodification and then ABSTRACTING the FORM but
>>> altering the metaphorical CONTENT as having unintended consequences.
>>>
>>> This is a way of glancing back to our earlier discussion of the "debt"
>>> mytho logic and the occupy wall street movement as expressing a yearning
>>> [motivation] for a new mytho logic that no longer has the debt "exchange
>>> VALUE" mono logic as a single pervasive text. Our "personalities" express
>>> MIXED motives that can no longer be subjugated to a single mono logical
>>> VISION.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 2:46 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  And attached is Episode 2, Julian Williams' article.
>>>> "Toward a Political Economic Theory of Education: Use and Exchange
>>>> Values
>>>> of Enhanced Labor Power"
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Andy Blunden wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The current MCA article for discussion is aPeter Jones' commentary on an
>>>>> earlier MCA article by Julian Williams, which in turns develops the
>>>>> ideas
>>>>> of Lave & McDermott's reading of Marx's 1844 immanent critique of (Adam
>>>>> Smith's 1776) theory of political economy. A long thread! I will
>>>>> confine my
>>>>> comments here to Lave and McDermott's article, by way of background to
>>>>> the
>>>>> issues taken up by Williams and Jones in successive issues of MCA.
>>>>>
>>>>> About 30 years ago, I was interested in the foundations of mathematics,
>>>>> in particular Marx' study of mathematics, and I tried an exercise
>>>>> somwhat
>>>>> like Lave & McDermott's. I took the first page of  Marx's /Capital /and
>>>>> made a word substitution in it (basically making the commodity
>>>>> relation a
>>>>> metaphor for a mathematical equation) and was very pleased with the
>>>>> result.
>>>>> Fortunately, the idea went no further than a discussion over coffee
>>>>> with
>>>>> Cyril Smith, and I never tried it again. Nonetheless, I learnt from the
>>>>> exercise, in much the same way I think people learn by writing a haiku
>>>>> or
>>>>> putting their ideas in verse. By subjecting an idea to some extraneous
>>>>> but
>>>>> rigid discipline, one forces oneself to more closely examine the idea,
>>>>> and
>>>>> in an objectified kind of way, which can give fresh insights. In this
>>>>> sense, I can see that the group that read Marx's 1844 essay "Estranged
>>>>> Labour" and substituted "labour" with schoolwork, a.k.a. "learning,"
>>>>> would
>>>>> have learnt a great deal about Marx's approach and deepened their
>>>>> already-sophisticated critique of modern schooling. But I think the
>>>>> result,
>>>>> when written out, carries as much confusion as clarity, and at worst
>>>>> could
>>>>> promote a very formal and superificial understanding of Marx's
>>>>> approach and
>>>>> serve to undermine the very deep critique of formal education that
>>>>> these
>>>>> writers have produced. Because (as I see it) confusion only gets
>>>>> compounded
>>>>> as the paper goes on, I will confine myself to one metaphor from early
>>>>> in
>>>>> the paper. After that, the mixture of profound understanding and
>>>>> radical
>>>>> confusion I found too much to cope with.
>>>>>
>>>>> But before beginning, Marx did also have ideas about public education,
>>>>> and http://www.marxists.org/****archive/marx/works/subject/**<http://www.marxists.org/**archive/marx/works/subject/**>
>>>>> education/index.htm<http://**www.marxists.org/archive/marx/**
>>>>> works/subject/education/index.**htm<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/education/index.htm>>has
>>>>> some of these.
>>>>>
>>>>> Early on, the authors refer to a section in /Capital /which is often
>>>>> cited in this context. The point Marx is making is that a teacher in a
>>>>> private for-profit school is in exactly the same position as a
>>>>> wage-worker
>>>>> in a for-profit factory. In this context, the schoolkids are the
>>>>> consumers
>>>>> of their services, not the labourers. But Lave and McDermott see that
>>>>> when
>>>>> Marx says it makes no difference whether it is a school or a sausage
>>>>> factory, that this shows somehow that the students are "like" wage
>>>>> workers.
>>>>> Later the authors say that "production in education might be more akin
>>>>> to
>>>>> what Marx calls distribution in political economy." I tend to agree
>>>>> with
>>>>> the authors that a central function of public education is the sorting
>>>>> of
>>>>> youth into well-credentialed future-productive workers and failures
>>>>> destined to low-value labouring. That is how labour power is produced.
>>>>> But
>>>>> making the analogy of this to the separation of the labourers from
>>>>> their
>>>>> means of labour and the sundering of society into two classes, wage
>>>>> labourer and capitalist, is perverse. Bourdieu had a good theory of
>>>>> "educaional capital" but in fact the word "capital" is a misnomer in
>>>>> Bourdieu's work, or at least it has a different meaning than it had for
>>>>> Marx, and cannot be derived by metaphor or generalisation.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have written too much already, and must stop. Dialectics means taking
>>>>> relations *concretely*. So when Marx began /Capital /with an analysis
>>>>> of
>>>>> the commodity relation, he was able to unfold the whole of economic
>>>>> life
>>>>> out of the commodity relation because of contradictions inherent in
>>>>> *that*
>>>>> relation. If we abstract the *form *of the argument and insert
>>>>> materially
>>>>> different terms, as if we were looking at a theorem of Boolean symbolic
>>>>> logic, in which the indiuvidual terms are utterly without content, then
>>>>> what results may be pleasing to Alain Badiou, but not to any Marxist or
>>>>> serious educationalist, I think.
>>>>>
>>>>> Metaphors work because the source and target domains are homologous in
>>>>> some respects but *not iin others*. Care must be taken in using
>>>>> transformations of this kind. The student-teacher relationship is *not
>>>>> *a
>>>>> /customer-service provider relation/. A school is a place for the
>>>>> production of labour power (inclusive of all the social relations
>>>>> presupposed by labour power, not just know-how!), not accumulation of
>>>>> capital, except in the case of the private education factories, which
>>>>> are
>>>>> incidentally also profit making enterprises.
>>>>>
>>>>> These comments were by way of introduction. Julian Williams took his
>>>>> inspiration (I believe) from Lave and McDermott's study, and the MCA
>>>>> paper
>>>>> which results tackles the question concretely.
>>>>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>
>>>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Here is the Outlines article that starts the sequence leading to Jones.
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> believe the Williams piece has been posted.
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>> ------------------------------****----------------------------**--**
>>>> ------------
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/****toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1>
>>>> <http://www.**tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/**1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
>>>> >
>>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.****aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>>> <http**://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?**partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
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>>>>
>>>>
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> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK  DE  19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> ______________________________**_
>
> "those who fail to reread
>  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>
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