The first is an article by Renee van der Veer, "The concept of culture
in Vygotsky's thinking." The second is a commentary on van der Veer's
article by Ageliki Nicolopoulou & Jeff Weintraub, to which the journal
gave the title "On liberty, cultural relativism, and development."
One of the points we make (in a necessarily brief and glancing way) in
our commentary is that, without setting out to do so explicitly, van der
Veer's discussion helps to bring out certain features of what might be
called a theoretical and ideological "identity crisis" under the surface
of current sociocultural psychology. And this is the same identity
crisis to which Mike (in effect ) alluded in his message.
That is: For many western scholars who have drawn on the ideas of
Vygotsky and his school, part of what makes his perspective attractive
is precisely what seems to be its affinity with progressive concerns and
agendas. However, this appropriation of Vygotskian ideas is complicated
by the fact that, since Vygotsky's time, there has been a major shift in
the predominant self-understanding of what it means to be "progressive"
(or "left" or "critical"). To put it a bit too simply (in a longer
discussion, all this would have to be qualified and elaborated, with the
exceptions filled in): For most of the past two centuries, being
"progressive" has usually involved a principled rejection of relativism
(and with someone like Habermas, for example, it still does). At the
end of the twentieth century, however, and especially in the English-
speaking intellectual world, for a great many people being progressive
means precisely to be sympathetic to one or another form of relativism
(ranging from moderately soft forms of cultural relativism to the more
extreme varieties of self-conscious "deconstruction" and "post-
modernism").
On the other hand, it's not clear how much relativism is compatible
with any serious conception of DEVELOPMENT (or with the idea of working
for social changes that will IMPROVE the human condition). So people
aren't quite sure whether they should be relativist or anti-relativist
(whether or not the question is put in precisely those words). (And
neither alternative is entirely satisfactory by itself; and most
attempts to do both at once have their own problems.)
Van der Veer (who also doesn't put the matter in exactly the terms
I've just used) argues that Vygotsky's conception of culture drew on
several sources, and that the "progressive" strain in his thinking (and
that of his collaborators) was associated with a `package' of
materialism, technological reductionism, unilinear evolutionism, and an
invidious dismissal of "backward" cultures. Now, I think this is not
the whole story, but there's enough to this picture to make it troubling
(and some of Piotr Szybek's comments on the "westernizing" dimension of
Vygotsky's intellectual persona, which he shared with a major stream of
the Russian/Soviet "progressive" intelligentsia--"more Western than any
Westerner and more modern than any modern man or woman--are to the point
here). But, as we try to suggest, the historical and theoretical
alternatives are more complicated than a simple either/or. For example,
John Stuart Mill's argument in ON LIBERTY very self-consciously sets out
to combine a strongly anti-relativist and even (explicitly)
"progressive" position with an equally strong defense of the value of
individual and cultural "diversity," of individuality and "experiments
in living," of cultural and intellectual openness, and so on. (On the
other hand, Mill also begins the book by off-handedly recognizing a
distinction between "barbarian" and "civilized" societies, in a way that
will now seem off-putting to many readers--though it probably would have
struck Vygotsky as pretty self-evident. But then nothing is simple;
and, anyway, Mill is just one example to make the more general point
that the terms of these debates need to be refined and complexified.)
... and so on (I've passed over the whole can of worms that one gets
into when one starts poking into the historical and theoretical
relationships between "materialism," "idealism," "culture," "progress,"
and so on). None of this amounts to a major intervention in the
relevant debates, which go back a long way. But people interested in
these issues might find something to catch their interest in the next
issue of CULTURE & PSYCHOLOGY.
Ageliki Nicolopoulou
Department of Psychology
Lehigh University
17 Memorial Drive East
Bethlehem, PA 18015-3068