dillonph@smtplink.laccd.edu

dillonph@smtplink.laccd.edu
Wed, 08 May 96 11:07:00 pdt

Assuming that the self description requested should focus on those
aspects of myself that would indicate a motivation to participate in
the xmca listserv, I will not describe my hobbies or children but
offer the following:

My academic background is development anthropology with a Latin
America/Highland Andes area specialization. I received a Ph.D. from
Cornell University in 1984 after completing a historical/ethnographic
dissertation on the articulation of modes of production in
Huancavelica in the central Peruvian Andes. Following that I returned
to Peru and worked for USAID for 3 1/2 years after which time I had
become as disillusioned with development agencies as they had with me.

Returning to Los Angeles for personal reasons I worked for several
years teaching in juvenile court schools before taking a research
analyst position with the Los Angeles Community College District which
I hold at present.

Currently, my principal areas of intellectual interest are Eastern and
Western philosophy, particularly phenomenology. Marxist thought has
been a major formative influence for me; particularly the efforts to
overcome "vulgar materialist" and reductionist tendencies. Hence I
have been influenced by the entire lineage extending from Lukacs
through Critical Theory. In general I esteem the continental
traditions of social thought more highly than the Anglo-American ones.

My fundamental intellectual problem is social/institutional learning.
Although I spend most of my day believing that humans actually have no
conscious control over their collective actions, I maintain a diluted
faith that "reason might prevail", as Habermas would say, and that my
children's grandchildren might be able to develop into enlightened
beings in a world that their parents, grandparents, and great
grandparents avoided destroying. As part of my labor for livelihood I
develop information and decision support systems which aim at
supplanting market information as a basis for policy development and
implementation..

I've been reading xcma at the behest of a good friend who forwards me
email but would like to participate because I believe that I could
make a contribution to what seems (for the most part) a superficial
understanding of dialectical materialism and Marxist theory within
whose framework Vygotsky (sp!) developed his theory of learning and
which I believe essential to any theory of praxis by whatever name it
announce itself.