As for Vygotsky, In Child Psychology of his collected works he deals with
class in a little more depth. The context is mostly a critique of Piaget
and others in their strong middle class bias in regard to research. My
understanding was that he was calling for research that took class as more
central. In *Psychology of Art*, an earlier piece, his description of
social psychology seemed to point toward a psychology that could by pass
ideology (class).
As far as CHAT, if she can be considered a part of, I am finding Walkerdine
emphasis on class very influential. What I am finding interesting in this
regard is Walkerdine, Nik Rose, Foucault and others considered "posts"
seemed to have a strong emphasis on class. Let us not forget that Foucault
in Dicipline and Punish quoted Marx on several occasions. What is
interesting is that in their migration to the U.S. their emphasis on class
seems to be qualified as "structural" something to move beyond.
I am currently reading *Daddy's Girl* by Walkerdine and in my view class is
very central. Also her critique of "child centered pedogogy" in *The
Mastery of Reason* it was very much situated as "bourgeois' society where
class took on central importance. Nik Rose work on govermentality puts
forth a similar analysis. What is frustating me terribly at this moment is
how that aspect of their work is somehow secondary and they are simply
deconstructing without a social consciousness.
Class tend to be defined as something lacking content or in the negative
rather than the positive. This is difficult for me because its a big
aspect of my subjectivity especially since entering the middleclass domain
of higher education. Is that subjectivity merely a false consciousness or
is their content there. There seems to be important bourgeois tools
involved that I don't want to or have my children denied of, yet I also
don't want to lose my consciousness in the process. If its simply false the
solution lies in appropriating a bourgeois conscious, but if there is
content it becomes a little more difficult. I see Walkerdine pointing
toward the latter.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Dillon <dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com>
To: XMCA <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 2:51 PM
Subject: question on class
> somtime ago Mike made the following pronouncement: "human brains cannot
> operate in a survivable manner, for individual or society, except trhough
> and in the medium of culture."
>
> It seems that things get hot when we start dealing with what that medium
> might be even when we agree in principle that human brains are part of a
> system that is composed of other and various kinds of human artefacts and
> structures that exist independently of the brain.
>
> Today, while dealing with the ever problematic issue of how to treat
various
> administrative categories of ethnicity, thinking the inevitable: i.e.,
> administrative ethnic categories are, among several things, glosses for
> social class, it struck me that I haven't ever seen a discussion on xmca
of
> class as a factor in Vygotsky inspired research. Perhaps it isn't even in
> Vygotsky. I can't remember seeing anything in the two Vygotsky books
I've
> read (Stds on Hist of Bhvr, Thght & Lng). But I also haven't seen
anything
> in any of the various secondary books and articles I've seen.
>
> Nevertheless, if Vygotsky was working within the framework he professed
to
> be working in, it would be inescapable for some issues of class, or
class
> consciousness to be somewhere in the discourse (whether as issues of
> bourgeois or proletarian culture, etc.)
>
> It would seem even more inescapable when looking at formal education (the
> framework within which scientific concepts become an issue) which
initially
> emerges as a framework for maintaining class structures (ample evidence
> available from cultural and historical record of stratified societies).
> Following Willis', Learning to Labor, or Eckert's, Jocks and Burnouts, we
> see that high schools in our society perform this function on the down
side
> through an interplay of the school's institutional activities and
> multi-generational working class networks through which the teenager
> journeys. We also know that prep schools perform this process at the
> narrower end of the social pyramid.
>
> Isn't this an example of internalization? Are there any studies of class
in
> the CHAT tradition or studies in which class figures as an important
> element/category? At this point it's not crucial for me to know how
"class"
> is defined as long as it includes a reference to the individual's
relation
> to the productive process in sectoral terms, just whether some notion of
> class is employed.
>
>
> Paul H. Dillon
>