Bill,
From Jaan Valiner's Culture and the Development of Children's Actions,
"The central issue of Vygotsky's theoretical thinking is the development of
qualitatively novel ("higher") psychological functions in the history of
cultures and ontogeny of children in the process of organisms' (i.e.,
culture, or child) goal-directed acting on their environments. In child
development, the developing child and the cultural environment of the child
are intrinsically related. The cultural environment is organized by active
members of the culture who belong to the generations older than the child.
The environment itself quides the child toward the personal (but socially
assisted) invention of culture. Furthermore, the "social others" of the
child may assist in child development directly, by becoming involved in the
instruction (Russian: obuchenie) process (pp. 147-148)."
The process of personality formation does indeed begin in the environment
but Vygotsky makes a clear distinction between what is environment and what
is the person by means of speaking about internalization of this mediated
action. Much of what today's scholars understand about Vygotsky comes from
Wertsch's work and Wertsch in fact believed Vygotsky to be wrong about his
ideas concerning this internalization process (See Wells, 1999) and so it is
no wonder their is confusion as to whether Vygotsky was merely a behavorist.
Vygotsky's thoughts concerning thinking and speech are critical to
understanding why Vygotsky is not only concerned with environment. On page
153 of Valsiner's Culture and the Development of children's actions, "The
idea that words that are originally commands for others develop into means of
regulating oneself is one of the cornerstones of Vygotsky's explanation of
the ontogeny of speech and thinking." And then instead of the often quoted
section from Mind and society we get this quote from a 1960 Russian version
that is translated by Valsiner, "We could formulate the general genetic law
of cultural development in the following way: every function in the cultural
development of the child comes onto the stage twice, in two respects;
first-in the social, later-in the psychological, first in relations between
people as an interpsychological category, afterwards within the child as an
intrapsychological category. . . All higher psychological functions are
internalized relationships of the social kid, and constitute the social
structure of personality. Their composition, genetic structure, ways of
functionng-in one word-all their nature is social. Even when they have
become psychological processes, their nature remains quasi-social. The human
being who is alone also retains the functions of interaction."
What starts out as environmental does not remain environmental. Therefore
the determinism of an individual may have remnants of social guidance but
becomes owned completely by the individual. Valsiner goes on to relate an
analysis made by Vygotsky concerning a family of three boys who are being
raised by an alcoholic mother. Alll three boys experience the same
environment but the internalization of these circumstances is different in
all three boys. Vlasiner writes, "The social world within which a person
develops was, for Vygotsky, a total whole rather than a system of separate
"variables." Within this total field, the person situates his or her
subjective world, becomes interdependent with the social field, and is quided
by the latter (and yet preserves and develops a personal antonomy). . .novel
synthesis (of felling, or of new knowledge) occurs where the
personal-psychological field intersects with the social surroundings.
Specific features are at times differentiated out from these holistic fields,
and a description of the particular relation of the persona and the world is
then possible (pg. 157)."
More references would be Van der Veer and Valsiner's Understanding Vygotsky:
a quest for synthesis and the 4th Volume of Vygotsky's collected works from
Plenum Press and published in 1997. The introduction to that Volume is by
Joseph Glick and speaks directly to the selected way in which Vygotsky has
been presented to today's readership.
40 degrees during the St. Paul Winter Carnival is pretty pathetic,
Eric
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