Philip,
I found your response interesting because I took King's statement as being
rather consistent with both Jim and Mike. It seems to me why the tool is
important when examining the individual is because a strict agent-action
distinction is not useful. Second it seems why the tool or artifact is
useful is because that is how we exchange content with things like social
insitutions.
When I read King's message, Wertsch's book, *Mind as Action* resonated in a
compatible rather than a contrasting way. I also thought of the
artifact-child/children-teacher/university student relation which was the
focus in the videos on the 5th D CD.
I would agree that if we have no "collective subject" the analysis loses a
certain degree of meaning, but that subject does not have to be an
individual? The over focused emphasis on the individual is just one
disciplinary view point in a multi-diciplinary theoretical model. For me, it
seems the task is to examine the individual in/through activity not the
other way around.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip White [mailto:Phillip_White@ceo.cudenver.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2000 5:08 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: chat unit of analysis
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes: actually, King wrote:
>Phillip and Paul,
>
>I think the concept that Nagarjuna's verse refers has been translated as
>"dependent origination," in which causation is the result of relations or
>correlations rather than the various Aristotelian forms of causation
>(material, efficient, formal, and other other that I can't remember).
>Essentially there is no agent-action distinction in dependent origination,
>and agency is vested in the relation as it develops. Thus persons and
>social organizations bring each other forth. This does have some
>interesting implications for what might be appropriate units of
>analysis...
>
>--King
i'm much intrigued by this - daunted, too.
if the unit of analysis moves much larger past the individual and the
tool, as Wertsch does, or looking at the 'context specificity' and the
individual, as suggested by Valsiner, or, finding an activity setting
where one is both analyst & participant - which then means to be the unit
of analysis is the individual and the context specificity - as suggest by
Mike in "Cultural psychology" ....... then, it seems as if the unit of
analysis becomes too multi-faceted - to cumbersome. hence, i'm daunted.
can you say anything else about this, King?
phillip
>
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \
Buddha speaking to Vasettha:
One is not a brahmin by birth,
Nor by birth a non-brahmin.
By action is one a brahmin,
by action is one a non-brahmin.
So that is how the truly wise
See action as it really is,
Seers of dependent origination,
Skilled in actions and its results.
Action makes the world
go round,
Action makes this
generation turn.
Living beings are bound
by action
Like the chariot wheel
by the pin.
phillip white
third grade teacher
doctoral student
scrambling a dissertation
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 01 2000 - 01:00:38 PDT