Mike wrote:
>What are all the figures from Rogoff about that are shadded to show different
>foci-- individual, group, entire setting with all its particiipants? How can
>one draw such pictures and make such distinctions and then say they are not
>distinctions.
You are right. But in addition to those figures, she has written many
things saying that one cannot "analytically separate" the individual and
the context. When Valsiner reviewed her 1990 book (in HUMAN DEVELOPMENT,
1991) and suggested that she really was accepting separability, she wrote a
rejoinder rejecting his characterization of her position as "inclusive
separation" (1992) where she said "personal and cultural processes are not
separable units or objects, nor are they fused" (p. 317). One of my points
in "Unresolved tensions" is that, within the context of the Giddens-Archer
debate, such a statement contradicts itself; either they are analytically
separable, or they are not (and thus are "fused").
There are other explorations of the conflation Mike notes. I have just
re-read Bonnie Nardi's chapter (in 1996, CONTEXT AND CONSCIOUSNESS)
identifying several differences between activity theory and what she calls
"situated action models," the latter including what I call the
inseparability theorists: Rogoff, Lave, and Suchman. XMCA-ites will be
happy that Nardi concludes that "activity theory seems to me to be
considerably richer and deeper than the situated action perspective" (p.
89). As I am increasingly drawn to sociological perspectives, I agree with
Nardi that "situated action models make it difficult to go beyond the
particularities of the immediate situation for purposes of generalization
and comparison" (p. 92).
R. Keith Sawyer
http://www.keithsawyer.com/
Assistant Professor
Department of Education
Washington University
Campus Box 1183
St. Louis, MO 63130
314-935-8724
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