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Re: [xmca] Current edition of Theory & Psychology

On your first point Arturo. I think you make valid points in relation to Yrjo's and Mike's articles. Jaakko Virkkunen tried to go further and introduce a broad consideration of the wider social and historical context, and I found the effort laughable and abandoned reading his article after a few pages. I appreciated the insights in Yrjo's theoretical section, which I shared earlier, but as you say, it is all based on the fact that management has already invited him in as an expert with a brief to facilitate change. Like Steve Gabosch, I have been through a number of these exercises as an employee and the supposed "empowerment" of employees these guys go on about is a charade. I am sure Yrjo is not like any of those I experienced, but my own interest comes from experiences in organising change in the teeth of opposition from management, and it is very different.
On your final paragraph, you refer to some true things, Arturo, but things I take to be the core concerns of CHAT. 

Andy

Arturo Escandon wrote:

Hi Andy.

While I believe Mike et al's paper is outstanding and inspiring, I do
not see an analysis of the macro structures that shape that kind of
intervention.

What I miss from accounts of procedures is a language of description
of the general context in which the intervention or mutual
appropriation is going to be carried out. Again, the "context" is
given almost for granted and assumed to be constant.

When some institution in Finland gives funding to a researcher to get
another organisation sorted out by means of an intervention it is
proof of the kind of research and consultancy culture Finland has
developed over decades. Where does the power to implement the right
intervention come from. It does not come from from the internal
"contradictions" of the activity system but from a culture that is
able to recognise the values of such an implementation, a research
culture embedded in political and social systems that legitimate those
interventions. In other words, a culture that is able to grasp and
solve contradictions creatively before they reach a political
standstill or social crisis. So here you have the researcher taking a
vantage point. Overall, this reminds me of the business consultancy
that is commissioned by top authorities of a given industry. You need
some form of umbrella authority that paves the way to recognising the
intervention as valid (you need a credible authority).

In Mike's case, the power comes from the implicit recognition of
social bankruptcy. That is a case which better resembles many
situations where neoliberalism and public policy have failed big time,
and therefore I see it has the chance to be applied in many more
contexts than the plain intervention depicted in the papers written by
Engestrom and his colleagues. The researcher cannot take a vantage
point but agents are willing to give a try just because everything
else has failed.

I have seen Japanese researchers trying to implement interventions
shaped by the principles given by Yrjo. They fail again and again not
because they do not apply those principles or fail to use the right
unit of analysis but because their mandate is ridiculously limited and
they lack a principle of authority (are you able to change the
educational system or even the culture of one particular school with
one single case study that took months to arrange against all odds,
despite the fierce opposition from agents involved?). In such a
context, intervention is seen as a technical tool or method, not as a
philosophical principle or methodology. Where you can implement mutual
appropriation in Japan? Well in communities in Fukushima that have
witnessed their government's failure in dealing with the nuclear
crisis and no longer trust it.

The issue of the unconscious. I believe the notion of subject in CHAT
is that the subject emerges after taking position by means of an
attempt in appropriating cultural tools: the processs of objectivation
of the subject and subjetivation of the object. But mastery is not
rational. Subjects use words before they know their meaning.
Pseudoconcepts are used before truly concepts are formed. Complete
sets of conceptual systems are mastered before one has a clear idea of
what those systems are for or their affordances. How do we deal with
implicit semiotic mediation in the intervention? The unconscious is
underneath the tension between sense and meaning. The sign ties,
establishes relations, but also produces breaks and disjoints.

Best

Arturo


On 11 November 2011 08:57, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

That's a very interesting series of points, Arturo!
Could I just ask you to elaborate a little on what you meant by "the
unconscious in sign-making" and "the problem of fetishism of the sign."
I guess that you are right that in almost any social context (the US
included I suspect), the kind of project that Mike writes about can only be
implemented by surruptitiously moving the goal posts set by the recognised
authorities, by a kind of subversion, making use of openings created by
manifest social crisis.
As I'm sure you know, I am in agreement with your critique of the failure to
satisfactorily "marry" psychological concepts with sociological concepts, in
CHAT or anywhere else for that matter. But doesn't the kind of project Mike
is talking about, where goals are immanent in the project itself, and the
project is thoroughly and explicitly collaborative, go some way to
addressing this problem?

Andy

Arturo Escandon wrote:

Just wanted to point out that there are places where you cannot even
think of implementing a simple plain standard design experiment, let
alone an ad-hoc intervention because educational settings and
institutions are thought to be mere knowledge
reproduction-distribution centers. Research is the job of the Ministry
of Education. "Joint activity"? What on Earth is that in Japan except
the illusion of freedom framed under top-down cosmological structure.
I am afraid that most of the cases depicted in the journal are a
reproduction of the cultural conditions existing in few settings, in
few communities, in a handful of countries. Am I able to implement an
intervention or mutual appropriation in the Japanese educational
context? No. Am I able to do it in "local communities", yes, but under
considerable restrictions. However, I am guessing that the most
effective interventions in local communities spring from social
crisis, not from planned activity, that is, some sort of punctuated
equilibrium in which the community changes or perish.

I am very curious about (1) how the structural constraints and
affordances of organisations themselves shape those mutual
appropriations and how we can account for them; (2) how the mediating
means themselves are unequally distributed (knowledge differential):
in order to bridge the differences established by the lack of a common
repertoire of meanings you have to engage in meaning making, creating
in fact a new differential; (3) the unconscious in sign-making or
using activity. Educational activity brings consciousness at the
expense of bringing unconsciousness as well. I have not read a single
decisive work addressing the problem of fetishism of the sign, on
which a theory of the uncosciousness could be integrated into CHAT,
except for works that deal with the problem of "the ideal".

Seeger asks the right questions but I believe there is much more out
there about ways of marriaging psychology and sociology to give a
better account of agency. At the end, the issues raised by Sawyer are
still relevant: CHAT keeps operating with a process and methodological
ontology whereby the individual and the social are inseparable but
does not provide a clear cut language of description of how the social
structure shapes activity or, to put it in Seeger's terms, how power
shapes discourse (and consciousness and identy).

Best

Arturo


On 10 November 2011 23:41, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:


The current edition of Theory & Psychology looks very special. I admit I
have at this stage only actually read the article by Mike Cole, Robert
Lecusay and Deborah Downing-Wilson, but it is a special issue on CHAT and
interventionist methodology, with articles by a number of people from
Yrjo
Engestrom's CRADLE and also Falk Seeger, who is guest editing the Special
Issue of MCA on Emotions.

Mike's article elaborates on what the participants call a "mutual
appropriation" approach to developing theory and practice. Instead of
implementing a project design and then modifying it in the light of the
reseacher's experience, the researchers go in to a local community with
very
open ended ideas about how and what they want to achieve, and engage with
their community partner, learn about their (the partner's) project, offer
assistance and resources and share knowledge and objectives and ....
mutually appropriate. The article describes the results of a specific
project which is an exemplar of "mutual appropriation" which has grown
out
of the 5thD after-school programs which LCHC began in the 1980s.

The article is actually very moving. I personally think that this kind of
work is tackling the main problem in front of us cultural-historical
cultural psychology people today. If you don't subscribe to Theory &
Psychology, I don't know how you can get to read the paper. Maybe someone
has a solution there. But it is a must read. I will read the remaining
articles in the special issue, but this is a real high.

Andy


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: 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

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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: 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







--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: 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

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xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca