Psychological universals across cultures?
Paul H. Dillon (dillonph who-is-at tidepool.com)
Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:55:33 -0700
>Chris,
>
> Speaking for myself I have at no time attempted to situate the
discussion of reification "within the broader talk of cross-cultural
discussions." To talk of cross-cultural discussions before having situated
one or another "culture" within the framework of socio-cultural evolutionary
stages is reductionist. It is also reductionist to fail to distinguish
between the individual and social behavioral systems, on one hand, and the
individual and intersubjective domains of meaning, on the other. Why is it
so difficult to see that the "culture" of Lakota Siooux in 1836 can be
compared with the culture of South Central Los Angeles in 1996 only after
having situated both within the total context of social reproduction of
which they are a part?
>
> I feel that this is what is going in such works as Lave's "Situated
Learning" which seems to imply that there are constants in the
apprenticeship of traditional Mayan or Zapotecan midwifes that con be
compared to the constannts of the apprenticeship of anthropological
fieldworkers studying with Evon Z. Vogt in Zinacantan. Something tells me
"Not so quick!" This is certainly true but there is quite obviously
something missing, something important: to wit, the larger framework within
which the respective apprentice's attainment of mastery has significance
(subjective/intersubjective meaning) and the socio-behavioural consequences
of that attainment.
>
> The notion of a "universal psychological process" is flawed insofar
as it does not recognize that psychological processes are determined by the
social relations that produce them and that these relations evolve, or to
use the terminaly of 19th century marxist throught, are historically
determined. To use a metaphor: a wheel is a wheel, sure, but to talk about
the wheels of bicycles and Formula I race cars doesn't really lead one very
far in understanding what those wheels are all about or why they assume the
shape they do.
>
> Yes Trobrianders made things, and even more importantly, what they
made was only possible because they made it on the basis of what had been
made by others before them, extending all the way back to the stone chipping
labor of hominids in Africa. Even more, since all of these "things made",
these accumulations of previous labor in the form of objects, were also
symbolic, intersubjectively shared systems of meanings, they required, like
any language, a language community within which they took on significance
and which allowed their transmission from generation to generation. The
term "community of practice" implies a microlevel abstraction that is
extremely valuable but I think it leads nowhere unless the micro-situations
in which individuals involved in social relations with a common set of
tools, artifacts, etc, is firmly situated in relation to the social
evolutionary, or if you prefer, historically determinate parameters.
>
> So to answer your specific question quite simply: "No, you do not
use, make, or remember things in thes same way that Trobriand Islanders
cerca 1870 did." But now, in 1996, not only you and the Trobriand
Islanders, but probably most people in the world are converging to common
ways of using, making, remembering, etc. as the fundamental commodity
relations of capitalist production eradicate the last vestiges of cultures
and societies organized around precapitalist relations of production.
>
>
>Paul
>