Re: [xmca] Current edition of Theory & Psychology

[Ivan Rosero <irosero@ucsd.edu>]

Arturo, two things coincide for me in reading your email:  1) I've been
working for the last 4 years in the same collaboration that
Lecusay,Downing-Wilson,Cole have written about, and 2) I too share the
following concern:

----
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).
----

As the authors have described, the community setting in which this latest
of LCHC's projects has unfolded does not permit even the relatively loose
structures that were the hallmarks of previous 5D projects --this is where
the ad-hoc stumbling upon interesting things to do together is such an
important component of the dual sense of "appropriation".  In the social
space that has been created between LCHC and Town and Country there exists
(as I have experienced it over the last four years) an enduring liminality
that refuses to come to closure --neither LCHC participants, including grad
students, staff, and undergraduate students, nor T&C participants have
arrived at any definite position vis a vis what we are doing together.  The
kids get older, new ones arrive, some teens have left, club and group
structures change, entire families move out.  UCSD's side of the story is
more predictable in the institutional sense of allowing year-on-year
planning of classes and recruitment of students, as well as, of course, the
staying power of UCSD as a much longer running process than the
collaboration itself.  But this can only explain the brute sense of our
continued presence, one which would be impossible to impose in any case, so
that we still have to try and explain the delicate sense of our continued
presence --what is happening in the space of this
cross-cultural/cross-institutional intersection that keeps pulling together
(in a delicate way) such a heterogenous amalgam of participants --a
constant churn of undergraduate buddies, a more stable set of grad
students, a constant, but slowly changing, stream of kids, Ms. V., and the
few community parents that regularly lend a hand?

You and Andy have said that there must be some kind of crisis, and this may
be so, but if this is what is allowing the participants to come together
anew, it is not the kind of crisis that can be compared to, say, Occupy
Wall Street, or Greece, or the Arab Spring.  It might be that I lack the
requisite social imagination, but the way I see it, what is special about
this collaboration is that it holds together without disclosing to its
participants directly how this is happening.  We have been at it for four
years, and it isn't obvious to me why, as a T&C elder says, we "keep on
keeping on".  This is especially true in light of severe, and recurrent,
frustrations on every side.  For example, in the absence of UCSD students,
homework does not get done nearly as regularly as when they are there
--this creates a huge problem for Ms. V, who must still try to satisfy this
community need in our absence.  Sometimes we at LCHC find ourselves at odds
with local customs and decisions, to which we nevertheless submit in order
to keep on keeping on.  But where are we keeping on to?  (Especially
without access to clear-cut language with which to explain any of this!)

So, these kinds of open-ended interactional spaces elicit from their
participants a degree of patience that is rarely seen anywhere --more or
less equally distributed!  Southeast San Diego, where T&C is located, is
not unique in all the ways that its inhabitants are systematically
marginalized, and it is a fact that local community organizers (I've been
at some of their meetings) look on UCSD and charitable institutions with
very suspicious eyes.  In the face of these realities, mutual appropriation
is one factor, but not a wholly explanatory one for the loose
holding-together that is going on here.

Whatever the answers are, it is impossible for me to conceive of a
satisfying explanation that does not include affective-imaginative
dimensions.  The way I see it, the mystery here is not how power/structure
shapes discourse/activity, it is why this collaboration holds in the face
of what would normally be insurmountable difficulties.  Good will and
patience all around?  Maybe, but this only pushes the question deeper into
the affective-imaginative life of this collaboration.

Ivan


On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 6:26 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Continuing my sharing of the current edition of Theory & Psyhology,
> attached are scans of Deborah Downing-Wilson, Robert Lecusay and Mike
> Cole's paper (which I have been so excited about) and the first 16 pages of
> Yrjo Engestrom's paper (I have omitted the case study) which is a concise
> synopsis of his current views on activity and concepts.
>
> Andy
>
>
> Andy Blunden 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<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>
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________**____________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: 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>
>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> 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