Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication

[Charles Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>]

While those of us in California have been sleeping and then getting the work of the day started, this conversation has moved on to many new issues. I have also watched your video and I understand your perspective a bit better.  I think I agree with you on almost all fundamental points--in that the way to think about concepts as lines of development on both the individual and social level. I like very much your emphasizing "lines of development" and then the recognition of the strategy of investigating idealized typical paths.

Vygotsky was explicit about mechanisms of conceptual development on the individual plane, using  idealized typical paths of daily experience and schooled/disciplined/scientific learning (in a world where only a small part of the population were extensively schooled and where there was a dominate and presumed coherent ideal of scientific knowledge), and he was most interested in the integration of the two lines as one moved beyond idiosyncratic thought and beyond shallowly comprehended repetition of "scientific" formulas. 

However, to understand the social circulation and historical development of conceptual terms we need to understand a different (though intersecting) set of processes of lines of social development of concepts.  Although Vygotsky opens the door to this world, he was not explicit in developing the ways in which concepts emerge and gain currency in an evolving socio-communicative world. Some of those social historical mechanisms have to do with the loosely structured semantic worlds of languages that provide orientations for our experiences, but other parts have to do with more specific language practices within specific social groupings, both in their core form and their penumbra of cultural infusion into other domains.  And other parts have to do with the built environment or the intentional rearrangement of the environment, which also organizes our experience and provide the occasion for naming things.  These different communicative and material practices each have their own
 sets of expectations that make them more or less "disciplined" in different ways.   (BTW, I agree that spectrum was the wrong term as the variation is much greater than on a single dimension--rather each has its own set of characteristics.) 

Further, the action and communicative worlds are not purely of either ideal type and our lines of development are not either of those idealized typical paths. For the purposes of my article, you could say that I worked from two idealized typical paths of social development--first the open social processes of language development and then the more restricted ones of academic disciplinary discussion.  But then I put the first idealized path aside to focus on the other as the more easily analyzed, and then focused in an even more idealized way on the emergence and circulation of highly visible "concept terms." That was a heuristic move.  In any event what I am attempting in this piece to do is to set out some of the social, historical and communicative mechanisms for social lines of conceptual development, and then locate the individual experience within these social, historical, communicative trajectories.

Finally, before I go back to my paid work, the reason I did not use the word projects for the work of academic disciplines is that disciplines involve institutional histories and structures that may at any time include people with a variety of objects and projects, though the disciplinary field does align them to some degree.  As well certain moments in the group history may lead to even greater alignment in projects and objects, as in the race to discover the mechanism of genetic inheritance.  While my project has many shared elements with others in my profession of teaching of writing, it is far from aligning on all scores, just as my project has mixed alignment with the projects of people on this list, though we all share enough to engage in (I hope) mutually interesting interchange.  Of course we all have fantasies that others will recognize the wisdom of our projects and align more fully with us.  That in part keeps us talking with each other.

Best,
Chuck

----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Monday, November 12, 2012 7:17 pm
Subject: Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> Thanks Charles. The example I gave was intended to challenge the idea 
> 
> that concepts can be understood in terms of a typology or system of 
> classification. Rather I think the approach should utilise "ideal 
> typical paths of development." And this is what I see Vygotsky doing.
> 
> That said, your further explanation of how you understand "scientific" 
> 
> as what I would call an ideal typical case of "not only the secular 
> institutions and disciplines of the academy and professions, but also 
> 
> those of the spiritual domain, the performing and graphic arts, 
> commerce 
> games and sports, politics, criminal culture, and other domains that 
> have a robust alignment of practice..." I think that small 
> qualification 
> goes a long way to giving people cause to think when they read Vygotsky.
> 
> 
> Andy
> 
> Charles Bazerman wrote:
> > I look forward to your elaborations and will view your video.
> > Chuck
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> > Date: Monday, November 12, 2012 6:27 pm
> > Subject: Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> >   
> >> I'm sorry for being so obscure, Chuck. I am still working on how to 
> 
> >> explain my position. But all I am proposing is my reading of 
> Vygotsky 
> >> on Concepts as set out in "Thinking and Speech." Nothing more. I 
> >> certainly do not think concepts are "philosophic phantasms," 
> although this is 
> >> the most common response to discovery of the kind of points I am 
> raising: 
> >>
> >> "Well, if concepts are not like this, then they must be philosophic 
> 
> >> phantasms and not worth chasing after."
> >>
> >> I am fine with locating yourself in this world in a pragmatist way, 
> 
> >> etc., etc. I do nothing different. Though I am not sure what you 
> mean 
> >> by "communal" and other allusions to "community." Maybe my video
> >>
> >> https://vimeo.com/groups/129320/videos/35819238
> >>
> >> explains it better. Yes, I think there is a "more grounded 
> approach," 
> >>
> >> though those are not words of mine. I am certainly not trying to 
> "deal with concepts in an abstract way," in fact that is a fair 
> definition of what I am opposing.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >> Charles Bazerman wrote:
> >>     
> >>> Andy, I am not sure I see what you are driving at, and thus I do 
> not know how to continue the discussion.  I know you have written and 
> just published a book on concepts, but I have not read it. 
> >>>       
> >>> Are you suggesting that there is a more grounded approach to 
> concepts or that concepts dissolve and that we should not chase after 
> them as philosophic phantasms?  
> >>>       
> >>> I am trying to deal with concepts not in an abstract philosophic 
> way 
> >>>       
> >> but in a pragmatist way based on the social circulation of terms 
> and 
> >> their use in communal practices and then on what evidence we can 
> glean 
> >> about internal phenomena--and as I say in the essay, my primary 
> >> activity system and project as a teacher of writing has to do with 
> 
> >> helping people engage with public circulation of words which people 
> 
> >> find of value in their endeavors and in their personal 
> understanding 
> >> of the world which they act within.  To that task I bring the 
> >> resources of Vygotsky and activity theory.  I do not claim an 
> >> epistemic position outside those realms of practice.  So what are 
> you 
> >> trying to persuade me and others of, or what difficulty in my 
> pursuit 
> >> of my practices within my activity systems do you want me to attend 
> to?
> >>     
> >>> Once I have better bearings of the intersection of our interests, 
> I may be able to say something more useful.
> >>>       
> >>> Chuck
> >>>       
> 
> 
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