In this paradigm, society, social organization is seen as "larger than" an
individual, as the end stage (at the moment) of the complex evolution
process. At the same time, the "individual" is conceptualized as a
"natural", "biological" organism.
I see the move to the "socially determined actiivity", towards "social
determinism" (soft or hard), as an attempt to get away from this paradigm.
There are numerous examples which show the interdependency and
coconstruction of the social and individual forms of activity and levels of
organization. The conceptual and methodological gains of taking the
"socially slanted" explanations are clear and undoubtable. Yet the above
outlined paradigm is standing in the way of the full explanatory
consistency. This becomes apparent in the attempts to either, on one hand,
proclaim the concept of an "individual" to be merely a western-european
historical/cultural/political artefact and not a "scientific" unit of
analysis (radical position); or, on the other, to keep some kind of a
dualistic explanation keeping both the "individual" and the "social" as a
possible explanatory level and trying to find the way of their interaction
(soft position);
However, the above outlined concept of evolution is not the only one
possible. In fact, there is another evolutionary paradigm which is implicit
in the work of Vygotsky, Mead, Ray Birdwhistle, K. Lewin and some other
"social determinists". In this paradigm, "social" precedes "individual" as a
level of organization, thus making "individual" the highest
socio-psychological system. In that way, "individual" is a fully "socially
constitued" system, but not fully "socially determined" system. "Individual
differences" are a "normal" concept, not contradictory to "social" because
each individual has her/his unique personal history - just like each
socio-cultural community differs from others on the basis of its unique
history. "Individual agency", "individual freedom", "individual motivations"
are not regarded as lacking something "social" or being an unexplained
"biological", "non-social" aspects. Rather, these are "supra-social" or
"social-within-individual", or "intra-psychological" aspects of the
functioning of individuals as socio-psychological systems of organization.
This evolutionary paradigm is the most apparent in Vygotsky's treatment of
the development of inner speech as a cognitive tool. Instead of Piaget's
(classical evolutionary) notion that speech develops from "autistic -
through egocentric - to fully socialized" activity, Vygotsky describes
development form "speech as social communicational tool - through
semiaudiable 'egocentric' speech on the way to become - the
intrapsychological cognitive symbolical tool".
There are many more examples of this paradigm in Vygotsky's work, but I'll
stop here, for the moment.
Ana
_______________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
(215) 843-2909 [voice] (215) 843-2288 [fax] (h)
(215) 685-4767 [voice] (215) 685-5581 [fax] (w)
pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
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