Date: Sun, 23 Dec 90 13:51:18 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9012232151.AA16145@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xact@ucsd.edu Subject: appropriation Cc: avb@bst.home.demos.su, kolya@comlab.velham.su, olyam@comlab.velham.su, peg@tommy.velham.su Status: R A colleague has asked me about various uses of the term, appropriation, in cultural-historical activity theory. In particular, she was interested in whether Vygotsky used the term and how "appropriation" differs from internalization. The term, appropriation, in English, comes from the latin, "to make something one's own." In Russian the word is prisvoenie. The etymology of prisvoenie is a little difficult for me to figure out. There is no separate word akin to "svoenie" as far as I can tell so I am guessing that it would be parsed pri-svoe-(e)nie. Pri means "with," "around" as a prefix form. Svoe means "one's own" and so far as I can tell, enie as a suffix is sort of a gerund form. If this is the case, then prisvoea^YI #omes pretty close to the latin-english version, "making something one's own" but it may be that my parsing is incorrect. It is a little difficult to see how appropriation thus interpreted differs from interiorization so long as one does not adhere to a copy theory of interiorization. Could anyone help with this? Is there, perhaps, a special discussion in Leontiev derived from Marx? Date: Fri, 28 Dec 90 15:31:41 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9012282331.AA02553@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xact@ucsd.edu Subject: appropriation Status: R So, Dennis, Appropriation is adaptation**transformation**artifact mediation according to Leontiev? mike From: Denis Newman Subject: Re: appropriation To: cole@casbs.stanford.edu Cc: avb@bst.home.demos.su, kolya@comlab.velham.su, olyam@comlab.velham.su, peg@tommy.velham.su, xact@ucsd.edu In-Reply-To: <9012232151.AA16145@casbs.Stanford.EDU> Date: Fri, 28 Dec 90 11:11:29 EDT Mail-System-Version: Status: R Leontiev has a chapter "A Propos the Historical Approach to the Study of the Human Psyche" in Problems of the Development of the Mind (Progress Publishers, 1981) that is useful reading on the concept of appropriation. His point is that the biological notion of adaptation is not appropriate for the individual's mastery of "social objects, of objects that embody human abilities moulded ewring the development of socio-historical practice". "The spiritual, mental development of individual men is thus the product of a quite special process, that of appropriation, which does not exist at all in animals..." Animals inherit their species' adaptation to the environment. But^X,={xw>4Yo/^^^VZ--^^-^V%I^U1e different process: "...just as the opposite process does not exist for them [animals] either, viz., that of objectifying their faculties as objective products of their activity." (p295) So, then the question arises: how does the child begin to "perform practical or cognitive activity in relation to [the objective products of human activity] such as would be *adequate* (though not, of course, identical) to the huMau activity embodied in them (p 294). Leontiev gives one example from his own observations of a baby learning to drink from a cup showing that the baby's mastery of the cup as a tool is care@1V6~P>^_^_>KQ^U (scaffolded) by the adult. Once language is mastered, it can be used to instruct. Modellm.^^4->h{Y%=9ed also-^P^Pis point is that without direction by adults, the child cannot begin engaging in activities that are adequate to the activities embodied in the produ;z1. He argues that "interiorisation" is a necessary process for humans because of the necessity of appropriating the achievements of mankind's historical development" which come to them as "external phenomena (objects, verbal concepts, knowledge)." So, it seems that appropriation and interiorisation aze!not the same thing--appropriation necesitates interiorisation. That is, the child cannot simply "adapt" to cultural objects. But do the two processes always co-exist? e.g., can objects be appropriated without being interiorized? When the baby appropriates the cup, is something also interiorized? I suspect that only things like "verbal concepts and knowledge" end up being interiorized. What would it mean to interiorize a cup? Just to confuse things a bit, I should note that Peg Griffin, Mike Cole and I used "appropriation" in another sense in our book, The Construction Zone. There we talked about a teacher's appropriation of an action or product of the child. Our suggestion was that a means for constructing understandings in instructional interactions was to display for the child how his product or action wAsRinterpreted in the task that the teacher understood them to be engaging in. This notion I think helps to get more specific about how children might engage in activities that are adequate to the objects without already having interiorized them. Happy New Year! -Denis Denis Newman Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Phone: (617) 873-4277 10 Moulton St. Internet: dnewman@bbn.com Cambridge, MA 02138 USA AppleLink: cg0644 Date: Mon, 31 Dec 90 10:22 EDT From: Subject: appropriation and internalization To: xlchc@ucsd Original_To: JNET%"xlchc@ucsd" If my memory serves me right, Vygotsky did not use the term "appropriation." Given that Leont'ev DID talk about internalization as an important notion, it would seem that appropriation and internalization are not the same for him. In many respects, however, I think the connection between the two processes is very important. Indeed, I think the\ term "internalization" is often not very useful and indeed is all too often misleading. It leads one off on wild goose chases to find the internal and reinforces the unfortunate external-internal split that characterizes so much of psychology. Addison Stone and I have worked some of this out in our chapter on internalization in the 1985 volume CULTURE, COMMUNICATION, AND COGNITION: VYGOTSKIAN PERSPECTIVES. Also of course Denis Newman, Peg Griffin, and Mike Cole have dealt with appropriation in their recent Cambridge book. Jim Wertsch Clark University Worcester, MA 01610 JWERTSCH@CLARKU Date: Mon, 31 Dec 90 09:44:03 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9012311744.AA05428@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: appropriation Status: R Dear Colleagues, Jim wertsch has just sent a very interesting note on the topic of "appropriation" but I am afraid it will be impossible for those you not on XACT where the initial discussion occurred. Jim's "error" is a symptom of the difficulty that people have keeping track of different "levels" of the XLCHC system which seems determined to hang on to its horizontalness. Perhaps it is a signal that the topic is ripe for summary by xact. Since I started this discussion, let me summarize the steps not visible, some of which are in the form of earlier messages. Not shown, because my records are complexly distributed, is the initiating note, which I wrote earlier and don't have to hand. Here's the background. I am engaged in discussion about various theoretical terms with my Soviet colleagues involved in the "Velham Project," wherin we are attempting jointly to develop a theory/practice/methodology for joint work at a distance, the topic being activity/mediation/development. I get a phone call from a friend who does not use e-mail. She is interested in the differing uses of the term, appropriation, in recent American writing on development as it relates to varieties of Soviet theory using this term. I sent a message, on xact I believe, to explore the meaning of the term on behalf of the colleague who phoned. Denis Newman sent an answer. I responded and so did Ethel Tobach, but to Denis. So a very interesting message from Ethel is floating around somewhere, in FAVOR of internalization versus appropriation. What I want to do now is get Jim and Ethel's messages side by side to see if I can figure things out. I give a formula which represented my first pass at an answer. ** means "in interaction with". So there's the background. Next comes a couple of messages. I will summarize the xact discussion again when things cumulate up a bit, unless I can get\ Arne or Kiyoshi to take a turn. mike Date: Tue, 1 Jan 91 03:18:10+0900 From: e34685 Message-Id: <9012311818.AA19847@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> To: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU, xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: appropriation Cc: e34685 Status: R A happy New Year ! I am now preparing a mail on "pricvoenie" , citing some paragraphes from the work of Prof.E.A.Budilova "Philosophical Probremes in Soviet Psychology ". According to Leontiev,A.N. internalization is mechanism of "pricvoebie". Of course Vygotsky never used this term. A.N.Leontiev introduced it from the work Marx & Engels. Rubinshtein critisized the interpritation of "pricvoenie" by Leontiev. I will write in detail in next mail. It takes much time to translate Russian text into English. Sorry to respond a little too late. Ist day of 1991, Tokyo, K.Amano Date: Mon, 31 Dec 90 09:45:52 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9012311745.AA05440@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: background on Alienation Status: RO Here are part of the past messages. I have cleaned them up only enough to reduce the length of the document. >From dnewman@BBN.COM Fri Dec 28 08:15:41 1990 Return-Path: >From: Denis Newman Subject: Re: appropriation To: cole@casbs.stanford.edu Cc: avb@bst.home.demos.su, kolya@comlab.velham.su, olyam@comlab.velham.su, peg@tommy.velham.su, xact@ucsd.edu In-Reply-To: <9012232151.AA16145@casbs.Stanford.EDU> Mail-System-Version: Leontiev has a chapter "A Propos the Historical Approach to the Study of the Human Psyche" in Problems of the Development of the Mind (Progress Publishers, 1981) that is useful reading on the concept of appropriation. His point is that the biological notion of adaptation is not appropriate for the individual's mastery of "social objects, of objects that embody human abilities moulded during the development of socio-historical practice". "The spiritual, mental development of individual men is thus the product of a quite special process, that of appropriation, which does not exist at all in animals..." Animals inherit their species' adaptation to the environment. But humans engage in an entirely different process: "...just as the opposite process does not exist for them [animals] either, viz., that of objectifying their faculties as objective products of their activity." (p295) So, then the question arises: how does the child begin to "perform practical or cognitive activity in relation to [the objective products of human activity] such as would be *adequate* (though not, of course, identical) to the human activity embodied in them (p 294). Leontiev gives one example from his own observations of a baby learning to drink from a cup showing that the baby's mastery of the cup as a tool is carefully supported (scaffolded) by the adult. Once language is mastered, it can be used to instruct. Modelling is mentioned also. His point is that without direction by adults, the child cannot begin engaging in activities that are adequate to the activities embodied in the products. He argues that "interiorisation" is a necessary process for humans because of the necessity of appropriating the achievements of mankind's historical development" which come to them as "external phenomena (objects, verbal concepts, knowledge)." So, it seems that appropriation and interiorisation are not the same thing--appropriation necesitates interiorisation. That is, the child cannot simply "adapt" to cultural objects. But do the two processes always co-exist? e.g., can objects be appropriated without being interiorized? When the baby appropriates the cup, is something also interiorized? I suspect that only things like "verbal concepts and knowledge" end up being interiorized. What would it mean to interiorize a cup? Just to confuse things a bit, I should note that Peg Griffin, Mike Cole and I used "appropriation" in another sense in our book, The Construction Zone. There we talked about a teacher's appropriation of an action or product of the child. Our suggestion was that a means for constructing understandings in instructional interactions was to display for the child how his product or action was interpreted in the task that the teacher understood them to be engaging in. This notion I think helps to get more specific about how children might engage in activities that are adequate to the objects without already having interiorized them. Happy New Year! -Denis Denis Newman Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Phone: (617) 873-4277 10 Moulton St. Internet: dnewman@bbn.com Cambridge, MA 02138 USA AppleLink: cg0644 Date: Tue, 1 Jan 91 17:45:10 pst From: yengestrom@UCSD.EDU (Yrjo Engestrom) Message-Id: <9101020145.AA23446@weber.ucsd.edu> To: JWERTSCH@CLARKU.BITNET Subject: Internalization Cc: xlchc@ucsd.edu Status: R In the new issue of Review of Educational Research (vol. 60, number 4), there are two interesting articles that deal directly with Vygotskian notions of internalization. One is written by Asghar Iran-Nejad and titled 'Active and Dynamic Self-Regulation of Learning Processes'. This paper claims, among other things, the following: "In particular, there is no room in it (the Vygotskian theory of internalization) for individual creativity..." (p. 575) and: "First, the sociocultural theory permits tool-mediated executive control to be the only source of internal self-regulation, operating on a store of totally static and passive tools. Second, there is an identity problem inherent in the conduit nature of internalization: Internal tools are 'the same as' external tools." (p. 576) The other article is written by Carl Bereiter and it's titled 'Aspects of an Educational Learning Theory'. Personally I find it more intriguing and productive.Bereiter tries to identify a new unit of analysis for learning research, one that would include some portion of 'the Outer World' into cognitive analyses. Bereiter suggests that 'contextual modules' would be such units. As an example, he gives the contextual module of public speaking. While Bereiter seems to think that such a unit is pretty compatible with the Vygotskian notion of mediated action, I think it is much closer to such ideas as Barker's behavior settings and Goffman's frames (curiously enough, both authors are absent in Bereiter's list of references). What do you people think? Yrjo Engestrom LCHC, UCSD Date: Tue, 1 Jan 91 19:36:28 pst From: anicolopoulou@UCSD.EDU (Ageliki Nicolopoulou) Message-Id: <9101020336.AA25142@weber.ucsd.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: appropriation and internalization Status: R I have been following the discussion about "appropriation" and "internalization" which was set off by Mike Cole's query (on behalf of a colleague not on the network) about different uses of these terms. My comments here might not relate directly to Mike's friend's original question; but the responses by Jim Wertsch and Denis Newman raise some very interesting and crucial issues about the relation of appropriation and internalization that I would like to pursue further. The general consensus of their responses seems to be that "appropria- tion" and "internalization" (in Denis Newman's comment, "interiorization") are closely connected but not exactly the same thing. However, everyone seems to have a hard time pinning down precisely HOW they want to draw the distinction. But then Jim Wertsch goes on to make a further point, which seems to be that the notion of "appropriation" is preferable to the notion of "internalization." At least, that is how I read the following: "Indeed, I think the term `internalization' is often not very useful and indeed is all too often misleading. It leads one off on wild goose chases to find the internal and reinforces the unfortunate external-internal split that characterizes so much of psychology." And this comment seems to accord with the tenor of a number of other such comments I have heard other people make over the last few years. While I think I sympathize with many of the concerns behind these comments, I am not sure I agree. (And I'm not sure that Jim Wertsch would really agree with all the implications of his own comment, either.) I think one of the advantages of a (carefully formulated) notion of internalization is precisely that it can help MAINTAIN the analytical distinction between "internal" and "external" in mental life, and that this is a useful distinction. Let me try to be clear about what I mean. It is obviously a bad idea to think (as psychologists often do) in terms of a sharp or rigid separation between "internal" and "external," or to imagine that the "internal" can somehow be conceived and studied in ISOLATION from the "external" (especially the socio-cultural). The point is to understand them as ANALYTICALLY distinct but, at the same time, constantly interacting and interpenetrating in complex ways. (Without that, one really is giving up any strong conception of the individual mind, which seems extreme.) What is involved is a dialectical process, and I think the notions of "appropriation" and "internalization" could be used to capture different elements (or facets) of this process. So I would argue that internalization (properly understood) is as important and useful a notion as appropriation. Let me try to suggest how the relationship between them might be conceived. The way I see the relationship of these two notions of appropriation and internalization is that they emphasize two DIFFERENT ASPECTS of the SAME PROCESS: the process of interaction and interpenetration of the individual mind with its surrounding (social and cultural) world. "Appropriation," on the one hand, focuses on the active side of the interplay between the individual ("internal") and his or her cultural world ("external"). It expresses the "moment" (in Hegelian language) in which the individual grasps and assimilates elements from the world, and puts them to use. "Internalization," on the other hand, focuses on the SHAPING and TRANSFORMATIVE impact that the "external" has on the "internal." My feeling is that if we don't focus on internalization in this sense we tend to minimize (if not totally forget) the fact that the individual does not only "take in" bits and pieces of information for instrumental purposes. He or she also takes over ORGANIZING COGNITIVE STRUCTURES, and these become part and parcel of the individual's OWN cognitive organization--i.e., the mental structures by which the individual perceives, interprets, and organizes the world. "Internalization" has occurred when the individual's cognitive structures have been reshaped in ways that influence and direct subsequent mental activity--ideally, by increasing the scope and power of the individual's mental capacities. (This is yet another way of capturing the point that Giddens formulates by saying that structure is simultaneously constraining AND enabling.) So in this framework, incidentally, it is important to distinguish--as Vygotsky does, in effect if not always explicitly--between simple learning and COGNITIVE CHANGE (DEVELOPMENT). One can talk of COGNITIVE CHANGE only if what has been taken over from the "outside" has brought about a reor- ganization of the individual's cognitive STRUCTURE. Often, the "inputs" are simply incorporated into the already existing cognitive structures (simply added on to existing knowledge), and then we may have learning but not (necessarily) development. At other times ("internalization" strictly speaking) they help bring about a major reorganization of the structures themselves, whereby the individual begins to view and interpret the world in a different way, develops new or different cognitive capacities, etc. (When this distinction is not kept in mind, Vygotskian socio-cultural psychology is in danger of being confused with simple learning theory.) So this perspective can help maintain the analytical distinction between the structure and activity of the individual mind, on the one hand, and the structures of the "external" world within which it acts and develops, on the other--but WITHOUT conceiving of a rigid or artificial separation between the two in PRACTICE. (Thus, THIS notion of internalization does not at all encourage the kind of "wild goose chase" against which Jim Wertsch rightly cautions us, in which the attempt is made to study "internal" mental states or characteristics in isolation from their socio-cultural matrix.) The notion of internalization I have been advancing entails that the individual's cognitive structures (whose existence and effectiveness we recognize analytically) can in practice ONLY be inferred and evaluated through observing the ways that the individual INTERACTS with and INTERPRETS his or her social and cultural world. (To draw on another commonly used distinction, we have to recognize the inextricable interplay between "internalization" and "externalization," without forgetting the analytical distinction between the two. Certain forms of internalization allow for, and are EXPRESSED THROUGH, certain forms of externalization.) Obviously, all this is only a preliminary suggestion; but I think this is the best direction to go in addressing the issues involved. Ageliki Nicolopoulou LCHC / U. of California, San Diego (e-mail: anicolop@ucsd.edu) Date: Tue, 1 Jan 91 21:50:50 PST From: packer@garnet.berkeley.edu Message-Id: <9101020550.AA26867@garnet.berkeley.edu> To: cole@casbs.stanford.edu, xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: internalization Status: R I've had to print and read Ageliki's message on appropriation and internalization to assimilate it (!) and do it justice. I'm curious to see what the response is to this, perhaps muddled, objection. The distinction between internal mental or cognitive structures and external social structures repeats a Cartesian dualism, and leads us into all sorts of pseudoquestions such as how `accurate' the internal represents the external; how the external gets inside, or is taken up, etc. We can get around these problems by trying to characterize a single kind of structure, and then considering the different ways in which people participate in this structure; rtheir perspectives on it; their modes of engagement in it. This structure is one of practice; practical activity; social practice. The only `internal' structure a person has (of the kind that interests us) is neuroanatomical, biochemical. (And actually it *doesn't* interest us very much). What happens when people learn is that they change the structure of practice that they are engaged in, and/or they change their mode of engagement, their style or manner of involvement. I guess the chemical operation of their brains changes too, but there is no distinct cognitive change, in the sense of internal mental structures. People come to view and interpret the world in a different way because this practical structure changes. Where is it stored? you ask. It must be represented in the head. No, I boldly reply. It inheres in objects, artifacts, the material arrangements that surround each of us. My body knows its way around the things in my bathroom cabinet, and the way I shave is stored in the cabinet overnight, not in my head. Now perhaps I exagerate. I think to myself, in words and shapes, while I pause in typing this, and that is certainly part of a private, personal aspect to my life. But it's not *most* of what I do; and I don't belive I do even this by using cognitive structures. Yet we seem to place covert scheming and plotting at a developmental pinnacle. Now I'm not sure where "internalization" fits with this, if at all. If it's the development of things like inner speech then I would argue its only one small part of development. I'd prefer to think that Vygotsky was struggling to describe how a person shapes projects and an identity from the cultural possibilities he finds himself in. For this reason I vote with Jim Wertsch, that appropriation is a less misleading term/notion. Martin Packer U C Berkeley Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 17:09:06+0900 From: e34685 Message-Id: <9101020809.AA05816@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: On the term "appropriation" Cc: e34685 Status: R On the term "prisvoenie"(appropriation) I prepared this mail for the first question by M.Cole in XACT, but while I was doing the work of translation of some phrases of Budilova, the discussion proceeded and moved into XLCHC. So I put this mail into XLCHC. ------------------------------------------------ I have been also asked often by students or colleagues about the difference among "pricvoenie","ycvoenie" and "ocvoenie" in Russian. Psychological dictionaries published in USSR always give an explanation enough about "ycvoenie" (assimilation), but never about "pricvoenie". Only a small dictionary by C.Tolman in Newsletter of ISCRAT, vol.1 gives some explanation to it by citing some phrases from the works of A.N.Leontiev. It may be right to think that A,N,Leontiev introduced this concept firstly into psychology, taking it from the work Marx and Engels "Die Deutsche Ideology", maybe from the phrase "The appropriation of a total of instruments of production is, for this reason, the development of a totality of capacities in the individual themselves". Then the German term "Aneignung" was translated into Russian word "pricvoenie". As Denis Newman pointed out, A.N.Leontiev explained in detail on the problem of man's "pricvoenie" of socio- historical experiences in his own paper " A propos of the historical approach to the study of the human Psyche" (firstly published in "Psychological sciences in USSR", Vol.1 Moscow,1959, and it was also included in "Izbrannie pcixologicheskie proizvedeniya, Tom 1. 1983 and English version was in the book "Problems of the development of mind"(published in Moscow in 1981). This paper is very famous and is translated in English. So I cite here today some paragraphs from the last chapter of a very excellent book of Prof.E.A.Budilova "Filosofskie probremy v sovetckoi psikxologii,Moskva, 1972, Philosophical Problems of Soviet Psychology" 1972). I expect that these paragraphs will explain the concept of "appropriation" in the theory of Leontiev. In the next mail I will continue the discussion on the problems between appropriation and internalization. K.Amano, Department of Education, Chuo University, Tokyo,Japan ------------------------------------------ Mental development as the product of process of appropriation "pricvoenie". from the last chapter "Social Dependency of Psyche" of Budilova(1972), 308-312 At the end of 50th A.N.Leontiev proposed the idea of social dependency of Psyche, according to which mental development is the result of a special process, a process of appropriation and he has elaborated this idea for these decades. This idea pursues the end to clarify the law of socio-historical determinism of human Psyche, which Vygotsky set in his time. A.N.Leontiev singles out predominantly the qualitative distinction of human Psyche as the result of socio-historical development of a humankind and opposes it to the biological law of the world of animals. A.N.Loentiev writes, "Spiritual, mental development of individual man is thus the product of a quite special process,that of appropriation, which does not exist at all in animals,just as the opposite process does not exist in them either,viz.,that of objectifying their faculties as the objective products of their activity"( *1 ) . A famous paragraph of K.Marx, "...The appropriation of a total of instruments of production is the development of a totality of capacities....." serves as the basis of introduction of the term into the psychological theory. A man lives in the world of objects, in which human abilities created in the process of socio-historical development of practices are embodied. As this world stands before each man along the whole length of his ontogenetic development, he must appropriate psychological qualities and abilities which are included in the world of social objects. Not only social, but also special psychological significance is interpretted in the thesis of Marx that the appropriation of a total of instruments of production is the development of a totality of capacities in the individual themselves. It is proposed that objects of external world surrounding a man, being products of activities of people, embodies in themselves both psychological characteristics and abilities of people. "That is possible, precisely because these characteristics and abilities acquires an objectified form". Therefore Psyche has different forms of it's being in a man and in material or spiritual objective products of human activity. While a man performs the activities with these products, which are adequate to activities having produced them, he Psyche included in them and kept outside. "....Special process of mastery ( in Marx) is carried out in the process of human activity in relation to objects and to phenomena of surrounding world which embodied the achievement of historical development of human abilities."( *2 ). The process of appropriation, assimilation or mastery is also considered as the general principle of mental development of a man, which ensures special determination of Psyche. "....Only as a result of this always active process the individual can express a truly human nature in himself, i.e.those characteristics and abilities that are the product man's socio-historical development "( *2 ). Internalization, through which both the appropriation of many kinds and forms of activities created social- historically and their transformation into internal psychological processes take place, is considered as a mechanism of process of appropriation. Therefore the process of appropriation consists, firstly, in performing activities that is adequate to the human activity embodied in the products to be appropriated, and secondly in that activity is constructed from without by the person who teach it. >From this point of view all psychological processes are considered as the processes of appropriation. In the light of this requirement the processes of perception and thinking are defined( *3 ). Appropriation is characterized as " the process of reproduction by individual of the abilities which have been acquired by Homo sapiens in the process of his socio-historical development"( *4 ). Individual "can become a human being only as the result of appropriation of human realities"( *5 ). Since the contemporary type of a humankind developed biologically fully and finally, "the achievement of development of psychological abilities have been fixed and transmitted from generation to generation in a special form, that is, in the external objectified form, or in the externalized form"( *6 )." Development and formation of psychological functions and abilities, which are proper to a human as a social being, takes place only in human society, only in the form of assimilation, mastery of the experiences of proceeding generations"( *7 ). Thus genesis of Psyche is distinguished and opposed each other between animals and human. In the world of animals the ontogenetic development of organs performed in the process of their interaction with environment, is realization of characteristics of their species. A human realizes achievement of socio- historical development in the radically different form from biological one. According to A.N.Leontiev the socio- historical development takes the effect of biological laws and social-historical laws extend both to the development of the society and to the development of individuals constructing society. A special form of transmitting of achievement of proceeding generations to the next ones takes place in human society, that is, the achievement are embodied in material and spiritual products of human activities and human specific psychological abilities can be developed through the mastery of these products by each person. As a special mechanism of ontogenetic development it is also considered that " the process of appropriation realizes the fundamental necessity and a fundamental principle of ontogenetic development is reproduction of characteristics and abilities of human being created historically in the characteristics and abilities of each individual"( *8 ).It follows from this thesis that a fundamental principle of mental development is reproduction of characteristics and abilities embodied in objects created by people. According to this idea the development of a man is subordinated to only social laws: "An era of predominance of only social laws takes place....( *9 )". In contradistinction to evolution of animals the development of a man, being also dependent on external conditions, is not the process of adaptation in the true sense of biological meaning of this term. Interaction between a man and nature is mediated, regulated and controlled by his activity. "The means, capacities and skills needed to carry out this activity that mediate his relation with nature, he find, moreover, in society, in the world that is transformed by the social-historical process. In order to make them his own means, his own capacities, and his own skills, he has to enter into relations with people and with objective human reality"( *9 ) In accordance with the thesis about the different origins of ontogenetic development in an animal and a man, a search for the mechanism distinguishing behaviors of people takes place. Two types of mechanisms effecting cooperatively, unconditioned and conditioned reflex, guarantee the behaviors of animals. Experiences of species are fixed in the mechanism of instinctive behaviors with unconditioned reflex and individual experiences formed ontogenetically makes behaviors of species adaptive to changing elements of surrounding environment. A new social-historical form of accumulation of an experience is characteristic of a man. This experience is the result of development of people of many generations. In this sense a human experience is of species, but it's essential difference from the experience of an animal is that a human experience can not be transmitted in a hereditary way. The process of appropriation of social-historical experiences constitutes also "mechanism of social heredity"( *10 ) according to the expression of A.N.Leontiev. As human specific experience of species, the process of appropriation is, in principle, different from the process of acquisition of individual experience by animals. "This experience is not in the hereditary organization, is not inside, but outside, that is, in the external objective world, in the human specific objects and phenomena surrounding human being. This world, the world of industry, sciences and arts, really expresses human nature, total of it's social-historical transformation; this world bears a man,-- human nature in itself."( *11 ). Citing a famous idea of K.Marx about it that objective existence of industry is " a perceptibly existing human psychology ", A.N. Leontiev believes that this idea "has general and moreover decisive significance for scientific psychology"(*12). This significance comes out to a great extent, when we consider the process of labour, not from the aspect of objectification of human abilities and energy in products of their activity, but from the aspect of their appropriation by individual. The idea of K.Marx expressed in , "Each of human relations to the external world....sight,hearing, smell,taste,touch, thinking, contemplation, feeling, desire, activity, love, ...in other word, all organs of individuality, are appropriation of objects, appropriation of human reality in their objective relation or in their relation to objects", is interpretted as above-mentioned in the application of it into psychological theory. The conclusion done by A.N.Leontiev is important: "The process of assimilation is performed in the course of development of real relation of a subject with the world. This relationship depends, not on the subject, not on his consciousness, but is determined by the concrete- historical social conditions of his life and by the way how his life is organized under these conditions. This is a reason why the problem of perspective of psychological development of a human and humanity is, first of all, the problem of justified and rational organization of lives of human society, that is, the problem how to organize the society so that it may give each person practical possibility to assimilate achievement of historical processes and to participate creatively in increasing these achievement. Such is a socialistic communistic society. "( *13 ) -------------------------------------------------- *1 Ov ictoricheckom podxod k izucheniyu pcihiki cheloveka. v Tom 1 22p. *2 O formirovanie sposobnostei, v 1959,142p *3 Karl Marks i psixologicheskaya nauka, Voprocy psixologii, 1968,No5, 10-11 *4 Biologicheskoe i sotsialinoe v psihike cheloveka, Voprocy psixologii, 1960,No6,25p *5 Same with *3, 10p *6 Same with *4, 24p *7 O sotsiarinoi prirode psihiki cheroveka, Voprosy filosofii, 1961,No1,28p *8 Same with *1, 25p *9 Same with *1, 19p *10 Same with *1, 40p *11 Same with *2 11p *12 Same with *1 21p *13 Same with *7 40p Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 05:14 EST From: WHANG@HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU Subject: The distinction of internalization and appropriation! To: xlchc@ucsd.EDU X-Vms-To: MAILER%"xlchc@ucsd.edu" Status: R Dear XLCHC Networkers! I agreed with Ageliki Nicolopoulou's distinction of internalization and appropriation. The distinction makes us remind that the cognitive development is not free from the social cultural context. This means that the cognitive development in Vygotskian is not same as the Piagetian's approach. I think the higher mental functions in Vygotsky is more concerned on the social cognitive development. Internalization in Vygotsky's model denotes the process in which the objects in a specific social context acquire a symbolic format in the human mind. This internalization involves the first experience of an object. However, we can not consider the internalization as the final stage of higher mental function in which symbols are used as a medium of expression. If we accept the distinction of internalization and appropriation, internalization is only a prerequisite or an antecedent for the social cultural mode of thought. That is, the internalization itself is not a necessary and sufficient condition for the cognitive process in a specific social context. The development of social cognition necessarily involves the construction of an internal reality to facilitate proper social behavior in specific social contexts. Therefore, the social mode of thought is an intrinsic component of social behavior in a specific social situation. I assume that the social mode of thought determines the meaning and rationale for social behavior or social interaction in specific social situations. This means that the internalized higher cognitive function creates a context for proper social behavior and facilitates social behavior in the context through the mediation of social symbols. Thus, social context gives meaning to social behavior while simultaneously defining and limiting it. More significantly, social context encourages the expression of particular behavior patterns. For instance, the kitchen in an individual's home is likely to stimulate sensations and behavior associated with cooking, eating, and commensality. In this way, the kitchen encourages or promotes relaxation. However, an individual undergoing high stress may not respond to the context, "kitchen," because the extent to which place influences behavior is limited. The meaning or regulating function of social context is not resident in the setting itself but becomes explicit through cognitive processes directed toward the setting. That is, the internalized higher mental functions prepare the context for social behavior. Appropriation is the process of linking appropriate behaviors to the social context or is the process of appropriating the social context for proper social behaviors. This process utilizes information from the social context and the social context provides the guidelines for associated behaviors. This process occurs automatically and implicitly, driven by social norms and values, and unless interrupted, it is smooth and unnoticible. It is taken for granted that one bathes in a bathroom, eats in a kitchen, works in an office, and plays in a playground. Only when there is some abberation does it become obvious that there is a detailed mechanism dictating the linkage of setting with appropriate behaviors. While idiosyncracies are tolerable, inability to adapt behavior appropriately within contexts indicates an abnormal behavioral development. I consider Vygotsky's internalization concept is insufficient to explain how higher mental functions influence social behaviors unless it is complemented with the concept of appropriation. His model assumes that all objective information about the external world is social. He does not suggest a process that could explain how objects are transformed from their absolute physical existence to a given social context. Because Vygotsky makes an ideological assumption that all human higher mental functions are social, his model can not identify the duality of objects at the level of cognitive process. Essentially, for Vygotsky, higher mental functions have their origin in society rather than in individual cognitive activites because cognitive function is only meaningful within social contexts. However, the meaning of social objects is created and organized within the individual's cognitive process. It is critical to understand that according to Vygotsky's model, the individual has no impact on the social context. We have to make and suggest a model for a social cognitive development process in which the individual creates and organizes his or her own idiosyncratic social mode of thinking which conforms to the external social context without directly replicating it. One of the major distinctive features of the social mode of cognitive development is its capacity to construct a cognitive structure to represent the social context for acceptible social behavior. The cognitive structure is simply a cognitive organization of social items. One of the functions of this cognitive organization is to provide a structure (the cognitive structure) for the expression and understanding of specific behavior patterns for a given social context and for the execution of particular social behaviors. All social behavior is based on the social context in which the physical and social dimensions of objects are mutually combined. The inadequacy of Vygotsky's model lies in its failure to account for the Janus-faced quality of every object. The social mode of cognition is a dual phenomenon, consisting of internalization and appropriation. Each object in human experience exists simultaneously in two distinct, yet overlapping, ways; "internalization" and "appropriation." For Vygotsky there existed a single social dimension or "plane" that made the external object into a mental object. Although the senses gather data about the external world in a comprehensive and systematic fashion, the data gathering process is neither total nor random. The process is dynamic, occurring between the new and given information (e.g, Bartlett, 1932; Goffman, 1974; Mandler, 1979, Minsky, 1975; Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Schank & Ableson, 1977). We have to make a model to account for the process in which physical properties that are inherent within the object are selected by the mind in accordance with social criteria. The model has to be designed to explain the process whereby objective qualities are interpreted and transformed into social qualities (and vice versa) and how people utilize the social qualities of the objects in a social context. Maybe, we can design the model in terms of the social schema. The creation of social schema for objects in a social context and the application of those schema to the creation of social behavior involves a dynamic interaction between internalization and appropriation processes. These two processes occur not only in a serial fashion but also operate in parallel. Experiences with objects provide the basis for social schema in addition to the reconstruction of the schema. The development of the social mode of thought is the creation and reconstruction of social schema through two levels of experiences; primary and secondary and two processes of the social mode of thinking; internalization and appropriation in the social context. According to Vygotsky, initially the social mode of cognitive development is interpersonal and subsequently is transformed into intrapersonal. However, the intrapersonal "plane" is not the final stage for the social mode of cognition. The higher mental functions which are created through the interpersonal process operate as a context for the intrapersonal higher mental functions. Our model recognizes that every object embodies physical and social properties and that these properties are in a dynamic state of perpetual mutual interaction. The transfer between interpersonal and intrapersonal higher mental functions is not a linear process but rather it is a dynamic interactive process. Afterall, the intrapersonal higher mental functions govern the interpersonal functions. -Above discussions are based on an extracted part of my working paper. Comments and critics are welcomed. Sang-Min Whang Dept. of Psychology Harvard University whang@husc3.harvard.edu whang@husc3.bitnet^Z Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 09:10:46 PST From: danorman@UCSD.EDU (Donald A Norman-UCSD Cog Sci Dept) Message-Id: <9101021710.AA09844@cogsci.ucsd.edu.UCSD.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.EDU Subject: Please don't throw out the internal Reply-To: dnorman@ucsd.edu Status: R I am somewhat appalled by some of the statements I have just been reading: I suspect that some of you are confusing "mental" or "internal" with "conscious." No. Conscious activity is just one (small) aspect of internal mental processes. Even as I start my sabbatical seclusion in order to write a book on the importance of the external, I do not throw away all that we have learned about internal mental events. Vygotsky knew this: that is why the transformation of external to internal played such an important role in his writing. Modern cognitive science puts symbolization and conscious thoughts at the beginning of much learning, not the end point. The end point is automatic, non-conscious performance, probably mediated by what amounts to rewiring or restructuring the underlying neural circuitry. Some of the comments I have read seem not to realize this. Symbolic processing is thought to be important in the early stages of learning -- not the later stages. It is NOT important for skilled performance. It is important when there is a breakdown. Breakdowns or unexpected events or other difficulties often require reversion back to the slow, studied performance that reflects conscious reflection and deliberate planning and reasoning. Symbolic processing is critical in some kinds of activity, and even if you think it is a limited activity, don't discount it. Learning through writing (as we are doing with one another now) requires a formal representational mode, both on the page (computer screen) and in the head. One correspondent said that the only internal stuff of interest was neurological, and we didn't care about that. Wow. I am in a department that prides itself on merging behavior, biology, and computation into one seamless web. In fact, I wrote that description and hired the faculty. Are you trying to exclude me from LCHC? Did early students of cognition overdo things and ignore the social and the external? Yes. As a result, much of that early work is relatively useless. But this doesn not mean that you can throw away the notion of internal representation (not necessarily conscious, let me remind you). If you can imagine yesterday's meal (or tomorrow's), then you must be doing some sort of re-creation or synthesis from internal structures. The internal is tightly coupled with the external and with social constructions. But that doesn't mean we should ignore it, nor that it is wrong to be precise about what can happen internally, and what cannot. To show you where I stand: I like the term internalization. Don Norman INTERNET: dnorman@ucsd.edu Department of Cognitive Science 0515 BITNET: dnorman@ucsd University of California, San Diego AppleLink: dnorman La Jolla, California 92093 USA FAX: (619) 534-1128 Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 10:01:19 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9101021801.AA09112@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: hoohaa/internalization Status: R Don- Be more specific! What note(s) set you off? I read your theory as focusing on the nature of the double sided transformation from operations to actions or from actions to operations. That sounds like pure cultural-historical theory to me. The language of that system is internal speech which is truncated, predicative, action oriented from ego's point of view. Don- You will be interested to know that in several LCHC lab meetings I have gotten into hot water because I adhere to a kind of script theory as part of a larger dramatic metaphor for human thought/action. The question is, where is the representation? How is it distributed across organism, medium, other organizism? There are several LCHC Newsletter articles exploring Gibson/Vygotsky links so it should not surprise anyone that this borderland is being explored. Zaparozhets was greatly admired by Gibson (as he is by Zinchenko or Ivanov, the cultural historian). In exploring those borders, a lot of folks can appear to be "on the other side of the fence" and when that happens and you get extreme notions of either/or theories that are simply inadequate now. I would HATE to see the stale gibson/representation discussions of the 80's to be carried into this discussion. Your note was a great tool for thinking with. I think you are adhering to Leontiev's theory of activity, but not exploring the transformations between action and actvity, goal and motive. Representation, do we agree, is a process. There are no images without time extent implied by their structure. Or don't you agree? mike Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 10:37:18 PST From: packer@garnet.berkeley.edu Message-Id: <9101021837.AA14197@garnet.berkeley.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: internal and external Status: R Let me clear up some confusions! First, neurology is obviously not uninteresting. It is, however, on quite a different plane than either social activity or mental events like imagination or memory. With respect, I'm skeptical about the project of reduction involved in creating a "seamless webb" encompassing action, biology and computation. Second, I fully agree that breakdown leads to deliberation and planning. But I don't see in what sense these are *internal*. They are, rather, parts of a different kind of engagement in the world; a kind of activity that is, indeed, slow and studied. To try to describe this as a process of interaction between an internal structure (mind) and an external structure (world) has, I would claim, been proved an impossible task by several hundred years of philosophy. In particular, we would have to find a way of describing the world's structure independent of all human perception. How? There are subjective and objective aspects of any situation; my memory of yesterday's meal is always part of an ongoing course of activity; it is today's meal that reminds me of the past. If the kicthen is not a relaxing place today this is because of what I am *doing* in the kitchen today. I try not to eliminate the internal in favor of the external, but to suggest that we need to refigure *both* to eliminate their opposition. ________________ Martin J. Packer Social and Cultural Studies Division Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley (415) 643-5363 (415) 642-7127 bitnet: packer@ garnet.berkeley.edu Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 10:42:41 pst From: anicolopoulou@UCSD.EDU (Ageliki Nicolopoulou) Message-Id: <9101021842.AA21699@weber.ucsd.edu> To: cole@casbs.stanford.edu, packer@garnet.berkeley.edu, xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: internalization Cc: anicolop@weber.ucsd.edu Status: R With respect to Martin Packer's objection to the notion of "internalization," here is a quick (first) response: Don Norman's message ("Don't throw out the internal") is a very effective answer, I think, to most of the points Martin raised. Until I read Don Norman's message, I was going to write a longer response myself; but that's not immediately necessary now, because his message is very well put and very much in the right spirit. (And to think that I have suspected his program of neurological reductionism!) The problem with your position, Martin--at least, the way you formulate it--is that it actually abolishes the mind in the manner of behaviorism, and I'm sure that's not where you want to wind up. (I know that I will fight the good fight against behaviorism to the death!) It also, incidentally, abolishes the conscious actor. You talk about "the person" forming projects, etc. Who is this person, if there's no "internal" structure besides anatomy and neurology? When I have had the time to read and think about all the relevant messages, I might try to respond at greater length. Ageliki Nicolopoulou LCHC / U. of California, San Diego (e-mail: anicolop@ucsd.edu) Message 11: >From dnewman@BBN.COM Thu Jan 3 04:55:54 1991 Received: by tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp (5.57/6.4J.6InfoServer-1.0) id AA18723; Thu, 3 Jan 91 04:55:45+0900 Received: from weber.ucsd.edu by ucsd.edu; id AA15431 sendmail 5.64/UCSD-2.1-sun via SMTP Wed, 2 Jan 91 11:47:13 -0800 Received: from ucsd.edu by weber.ucsd.edu (15.11/UCSDGENERIC.4) id AA24026 to LEGALL@PITTVMS.BITNET; Wed, 2 Jan 91 11:45:46 pst Received: from BBN.COM by ucsd.edu; id AA15180 sendmail 5.64/UCSD-2.1-sun via SMTP Wed, 2 Jan 91 11:45:40 -0800 for xlchc@weber.UCSD.EDU Message-Id: <9101021945.AA15180@ucsd.edu> From: Denis Newman Subject: appropriation To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 14:42:54 EDT Mail-System-Version: Status: R A few comments on various contributions to the appropration discussion: I think the problem of the external-internal split that Jim Wertsch mentions might be overcome by always emphasizing externalization as a companion process when internalization is mentioned. Externalization is really the creative process (which gets away from the criticisms that Yrjo Engstrom cites which are based only on the internalization side of the process.) Martin Packer's bold suggestion that only the external is important is another means for avoiding the external-internal split. But I think I would side with Ageliki Nicolopoulou's point that these are useful analytic distinctions within a continuous process and with Don Norman's plea not to throw away all of psychology. On Martin Packer's first question about Piaget's assimilation-accomodation process: Piaget described adaptation of the individual during development as assimilation and accomodation. Adaptation is just what Leontiev says is not appropriate for describing human development and that's where appropriation comes in. So appropriation and internalization is not assimilation/accomodation in Piaget's sense. But I'd like to go back to a question I asked a while back. Is it sensible to talk about internalizing a cup (or other such tool)? It makes sense to talk about appropriating it but the cup is not internalized (is it?). Thus, it is not at all a matter of choosing between the terms appropriation and internalization. Leontiev makes a distinction (which seems to anticipate the more recent, and popular concept of "cognitive apprenticeship" (Collins, Brown et al)) that contrasts learning to drink from a cup which can be modelled and physically scaffolded with learning a "new mental action". The mental action can't be guided in the same way. "The [mental] action needs to be presented beforehand to the child as an external one, i.e., it needs to be exteriorised. It is in this exteriorised form, in the form of a developed external action, that it is initially formed. Only afterwards, as a result of its gradual transformation ... is it interiorized" (p314). (Now, does it make sense to say that the externalized form is appropriated prior to internalization?). A final comment is just to say again that I think externalization is really a key to a lot of this. Is there a corresponding concept in Piaget or cognitive science (before Don Norman's contributions)? I did see a mention of the notion as a basis for eliminating the concept of schemata in a paper by Rumelhart et al in the PDP book. -Denis Denis Newman Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Phone: (617) 873-4277 10 Moulton St. Internet: dnewman@bbn.com Cambridge, MA 02138 USA AppleLink: cg0644 Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 12:26:41 PST From: packer@garnet.berkeley.edu Message-Id: <9101022026.AA19680@garnet.berkeley.edu> To: dnewman@bbn.com, xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: appropriation Status: R J, see your therapist for more info on the way dreams are part of an ongoing project! Ageliki, I *would* like to abolish the notion of the person as only a set of cognitive structures. The person is, first of all, a locus of agency. We have personal identity to the extent that we are members of social communities, and to the extent that we are engaged in projects that give unity to our lives. The epistemic subject of much cognitive science is not the person, either. The person is *part* of a structure that incorporates artifacts, institutions, other people... This structure is neither internal nor external, the way these terms are usually understood. I think Dennis Newman is right to say that appropriation is quite different from PiagetUs account of adaptation. This was what motivated me to question AgelikiUs interpretation of internalization and appropriation as dialectical terms that express a relationship between inner and outer. Learning to deal with a cup is a good example. One might say that the cup is internalized in the form of an internal, mental representation, but this leads to difficulties of the kind I mentioned earlier (what are the cupUs `objective features' ?; how much of the context is represented too?, etc.). To say the cup is appropriated means, I think, that one grasps the practical possibilities that it embodies as ones own. In so doing one develops fresh capacities; not so much new knowledge, but new ways of acting that ones culture has made available in and through this artifact. Again, this is not to save the external and eliminate the internal; it is to try to make sense of a world where objectification has embodied practice in artifacts. This is surely not the `external' world as it is typically understood. But if not, and if as a consequence Vygotsky's account of the external world is quite different from Piaget's, his understanding of the internal will be different, too. ________________ Martin J. Packer Social and Cultural Studies Division Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley (415) 643-5363 (415) 642-7127 bitnet: packer@ garnet.berkeley.edu Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 13:19:02 -0800 From: agre@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Phil Agre) Message-Id: <9101022119.AA05217@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: inside Status: R For those with lingering doubts about the existence of *something* one would want to call "inside", I recommend Mary Carruthers' "The Book of Memory" (Cambridge, 1990), a very scholarly history of medieval mnemonic techniques, including a lovely account of the lore surrounding Thomas Aquinas' memory. Having committed large parts of the classical philosophical canon to memory, he would compose his own treatises while staring into space, "re-reading" whatever sections of Aristotle or Augustine he wished to consult. When it came time to commit his treatises to paper, he would assemble as many as four secretaries and dictate a paragraph to each in turn, supposedly a different treatise to each secretary. This may say more about the high regard in which memory was held during that time than about Aquinas himself, but having practiced some of the techniques myself I find the story believable. Of course, this isn't an occasion for a lapse back into cognitivism (cf the illustrations accompanying George Miller's article in Scientific American in 1956, in which Descartes' philosophy was depicted with a drawing of a person's head full of filing cabinets), but it is a good, stiff challenge to us to figure out what version(s) of "inside" we really want. Phil Agre University of Sussex PS Carruthers' book is not the easiest reading. Everyone tells me that the most entertaining book on the subject is Jonathan Spence's "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci". Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 13:36:47 pst From: anicolopoulou@UCSD.EDU (Ageliki Nicolopoulou) Message-Id: <9101022136.AA27203@weber.ucsd.edu> To: dnewman@bbn.com, packer@garnet.berkeley.edu, xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: appropriation Cc: anicolop@weber.ucsd.edu Status: R A response to Martin Packer's response to Denis Newman: No one said that a person is ONLY a set of cognitive structures-- or even that the mind is only a set of cognitive structures. The point is that one can only talk about a "locus of agency" or an "identity" if there is a relatively continuous and discrete SUBJECT; and one can only talk about a subject if there is some distinction between "internal" and "external." (I realize that it is fashionable in some circles now to want to eliminate the subject. But then one would also have to abandon notions like "identity," "agency," "forming projects," etc., etc.) To see the formation of mind as an essentially socio-cultural process, and to understand mental (and practical) activity as inextricably embedded in a socio-cultural matrix, does NOT require or imply giving up the notion of "mind" entirely. Certainly it doesn't for Vygotsky and his followers. If one takes that step, then the result is a very different (anti-Vygotskian) psychology., postmodern) psychology. (Again, to think of the difference between "internal" and "external" as an ANALYTICAL distinction is not at all the same as imagining that the "internal" actually exists in some sort of isolation--a point that Denis Newman caught quite well.) I agree that much contemporary cognitive psychology ALSO does not have an adequate conception of the person (or of mind, or agency, etc.), but that's another point. Martin also raised (again) another question about my original message that he'd asked in a previous communication, so perhaps I should respond to it: Is my discussion of "appropriation" and "internalization" parallel to (or a restatement of) Piaget's notions of "assimilation" and "accommodation"? The answer is no. The position I was trying to advance represents, I think, a synthesis of Vygotsky and Piaget. (Or, rather, it is basically Vygotskian; but it fleshes out some of the Piagetian elements which Vygotsky in fact accepted and took over-- "appropriated" and "internalized"--but did not fully elaborate explicitly.) To repeat a point I made in my original message: If we give up Piaget's insight here (especially in terms of the analytical distinction between simple "learning" and cognitive "development"), then what we have is not Vygotskian socio-cultural psychology but simple learning theory. Well, enough for the moment. I may not have convinced Martin, but maybe at least I've clarified what I was getting at? Ageliki Nicolopoulou LCHC / U. of California, San Diego (e-mail: anicolop@ucsd.edu) Date: Wed, 2 Jan 91 22:56 EST From: Subject: MORE APPROPRIATION To: XLCHC@UCSD Original_To: JNET%"XLCHC@UCSD" Original_cc: JAG APPROPRIATION, INTERNALIZATION, INFECTION AND TRANSCENDENCE THE PROBLEM: It seems that there are two developmental problems to be solved -- and the variance of opinions about appropriation and internalization may relate, at least, in part, to the degree to which both problems are recognized. - On the one hand we are socio-cultural -- and as such we "reproduce" our species history -- relating in some way to the "pre-made" world of artifacts and concepts that socio-historically await us. All of this with a little help from our friends. Marx, I am sure would agree. - On the other hand we have the potential for "seeing through" the pre-made world. We do not merely reproduce our species history but also, in some basic way "go beyond it". Much of what is going on in non-developmental disciplines (e.g. Post-Structuralism; Feminist critique; Cultural critique; Cultural Psychology?) is about "seeing through" attempts to neatly package reality in a "comfortable" socio-historical fashion. And, I am positive, Marx would also agree (in fact "The German Ideology" -- indicated as a source of the concept of appropriation -- is also a testament to the stress on de-mystification that was the essence of the Marxist CRITIQUE of social "knowledge".) + As developmentalists we often stess the positive and rhapsodize the socio-historical means of "transmission" or "recruitment" of cultural being. + As "criticists" -- we stress the "seeing through" of socio-historical formulations -- presented as hegemonic realities. THE POINT: If we can "see through" then there must be some part of our being in the world which is transcendent and "free" -- even though the world is often hegemonically presented as the only world there can be. If we are to have a full developmental theory it would seem that both problems would have to be dealt with -- neither appropriation nor internalization deal with the full problem. There is a part of the problem which is more like a disease metaphor -- cultural infection and its cures. Whether the cure is on the level of praxis -- "troubles leading to re-reflection" or "modes of activity -- social practices which lead to questioning" or on some more transcendent level -- a la Piaget -- I am not committed. But, to the notion that cognition must be as much as "seeing through" as a "seeing" I am clear -- whether or not either process is conscious. One of the problems with scaffolds -- is that you can hang people from them -- as well as paint the ceiling. Cheers -- Happy New Year! Joseph Glick City University of New York Graduate School 33 W. 42nd St. New York, NY 10036 (212) 642-2550 O (212) 353-9200 H (212) 477-8235 FAX JAG@CUNYVMS1 (BITNET) Date: Thu, 3 Jan 1991 14:44 EST From: FISHBEIN@UCBEH.BitNet Subject: Piaget, Appropriation, and internalization To: xlchc@UCSD.BITNET Message-Id: <91E058DEE0609655@UCBEH.SAN.UC.EDU> X-Envelope-To: xlchc@UCSD.BITNET X-Vms-To: IN%"xlchc@ucsd.bitnet" X-Vms-Cc: FISHBEIN Status: R Just a brief anecdote to help clarify Piaget's view. About 20 years ago I started struggling with trying to understand Piaget. I was particularly having difficulty with his idea that "operations" were "interiorized actions". (As an aside, as a co-translator of one of Piaget's books, I can tell you that there is no definitive translation of any of his technical terms.) One morning, very early, I was giving breakfast to my young son, and in a kind of dreamy state. There were sunflower seeds on the table, and my son kept giving me some of them, and then taking them back. Then it hit me. Jeremy was making an action and then reversing it. Wasn't that what Piaget meant when he talked about reversibility? When you can, in your mind, give someone sunflower seeds, and then take them back, you have interiorized reversibility.- the actions which reverse other actions. Now, Piaget was not at all clear how this process of "interiorization" came about. My pretty careful reading of much of Piaget leads me to conclude that he often posited new mental processes which were not the outgrowth of other existing mental processes. I think that "interiorization" is one of those processes. I'm not sure that creating "appropriation" helps us very much, in that we have to ask where that process came from. Anyhow, it is clear to me that in Piaget's theories is the idea that the external actions of self do get internalized. Hal Fishbein@ucbeh.bitnet Fishbein@ucbeh.san.uc.edu Date: Thu, 3 Jan 91 14:20:30 pst From: yengestrom@ucsd.edu (Yrjo Engestrom) Message-Id: <9101032220.AA21516@weber.ucsd.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Externalization Status: R Denis Newman suggested that we should always emphasize "externalization as a companion process when internalization is mentioned." He stated that externalization is the creative process, which "gets away from the criticisms" in had referred to. I don't think just mentioning or even emphasizing the notion of externalization get away from anything. This fundamental "companion process" is all but ignored in serious studies inspired by the Vygotskian legacy. It is very common for this reason that people (like Iran-Nejad in Review of Educational Research) take the cultural-historical school to be a one-sided theory of internalization only. The very early studies of the original Troika of the cultural-historical school (Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Luria) did include experimental work on externalization. This is nicely pointed out by Luria in his 'The Making of Mind': "In 1929 our group devoted ourselves to a study of early 'significative' activity, by which we meant the way in which children come to engage in activities that give significance to the stimuli that they are asked to master, thereby creating their own instumental, mediated activities. We developed the idea of asking children to invent pictograms, pictures of their own choosing, to help them memorize a series of abstract words." (p. 50) Of course, Vygotsky's early 'The Psychology of Art' is in itself a treatise on externalization. And Leont'ev adds very interesting observations on the emergence of new activities: "These are the ordinary cases when a person undertakes to perform some actions under the influence of a certain motive, and then performs them for their own sake because the motive seems to have been displaced to their objective. And that means that the actions are transformed into activity. Motives of activity that have such an origin are conscious motives. They do not become conscious, however, of themselves, automatically. It requires a certain, special activity, some special act. This is an act of reflecting the relation of the motive of a given, concrete activity to the motive of a wider activity, that realizes a broader, more general life relation that includes the given, concrete activity." (A. N. Leont'ev: 'Problems of the Development of the Mind', p. 238) So we are dealing with two interesting 'mechanisms' involved in the externalization and creation of the new: 'signification' and 'displacement of motives'. Both are closely related to reflection. And both are what I call 'expansive' processes where the context of the given is transcended and a new, wider context is created. Now to my knowledge, these crucially important ideas have pretty much remained at a programmatic level - and as I said above, they have been largely ignored by current studies inspired by the Vygotskian legacy. My own research focuses on those very expansive processes, particularly as they occur in connection with disturbances and breakdowns in work activities. Does anyone know of related literature or research? Yrjo Engestrom LCHC, UCSD Date: Thu, 3 Jan 91 14:40:11 pst From: yengestrom@ucsd.edu (Yrjo Engestrom) Message-Id: <9101032240.AA23272@weber.ucsd.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Internalization, Piaget Status: R Let's be clear about one thing: the cultural-historical idea of internalization differs fundamentally from that of Piaget's. Piaget did not see the origins of higher mental functions in culture. He never took artifacts and 'the world out there' as very serious objects of study, except as representatives of logical structures the origins of which seem to be more biological than anything else. One of the best critical treatises on Piaget's epistemology (in English) is Marx Wartofsky's article 'From genetic epistemology to historical epistemology: Kant, Marx, and Piaget'. In: L. S. Liben (Ed.), Piaget and the foundations of knowledge. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Yrjo Engestrom LCHC, UCSD Date: Thu, 3 Jan 91 20:28 EST From: Subject: re: Internalization and Piaget To: xlchc@ucsd Original_To: JNET%"xlchc@ucsd" Original_cc: JAG Right on Yrjo! Lets take it one small step further. Piaget and the Social-Historical school are not the same -- and internalization in one theory is not like either internalization or "reflection" in the other theory. What does a theory of mind need? I think it needs both sorts of things. On the one hand we have a socialized mind for good or for ill. On the other hand we may need a mind that can see through its socialization. This could be somewhat approximated by the sorts of stuff that Piaget took as his focus. At the risk of throwing Scandinavians at Scandinavians I recommend a book that takes some of these issues head-on. Ron Eyerman False Consciousness and Ideology in Marxist Theory Almqvist & Wiksell International Humanities Press, 1981 The book focuses on both the epistemological focus of Marxist theory (ies) and the issue of epistemology that is faced by theorists of development in the social-historical conditions of late capitalism. Joe Glick JAG@CUNYVMS1 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 14:04 CDT From: NMINICK@nuacc.bitnet Subject: internal/internalization/appropriation To: xlchc@UCSD.BITNET Message-Id: X-Envelope-To: xlchc@UCSD.BITNET X-Vms-To: IN%"xlchc@ucsd.bitnet" Status: R The exchange between Packer and Nicolopolau -- and others -- on these issues reflects a very real tension between the Vygotskian and the ethnomethdological and hermenutic traditions that I am fascinated by and think should be explored. As reflected in Packer's initial note, there is a very strong tendency in the latter traditions to pitch the psychological as linked to the individual altogether -- and for good reasons. In my view, however, this reaction to existing conceptions of the psychological of throwing out the psychological/internal in general is precisely parallel to the behaviorist move that Vygotsky criticized so strongly in his early work. As Packer suggests in his later notes -- and as Vygotsky said -- the task is to reconceptualize the psychological/internal. A piece of the solution, I think, is to focus on how both the external world and the external world are defined by social practice. This allows one to talk of the internal and external in the same frame of reference without -- I think -- slipping into issues of representational accuracy and so on. Two probes: Martin Packer: Do you see some conceptual tension between your initial note on this topic and some subseuent ones? Are these voices reactions to different discourses? Jim Wertsch: What is your reading of this extended discussion and does your discomfort with "internalization" imply a rejection of the "internal" that Ageliki and Don Norman insist on (as I would as well). Norris Minick Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 13:44:08 PST From: packer@garnet.berkeley.edu Message-Id: <9101042144.AA25258@garnet.berkeley.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: inner/outer revisited Status: R I'd like to wade back into the hot water again, at the risk of muddying it, with a more articulated account of my proposal of a few days ago regarding the internal and external. Obviously there is an interiority to the modern subject. It is inner space, the mind's eye, the place of dreams, imagery, mental arithmetic, and the mnemonics that Phil Agre mentions. But it is a constructed, not a natural, space. The inner/outer division is too suspiciously close to the private/public split of the modern world for us not to notice this. (Cf. Berger, Berger & Kellner, "The homeless mind." And Charles Taylor, "Sources of the self: The making of modern identity," is very good on the twin roots of this modern inwardness.) Just like the distinction between the genders, the distinction between inner and outer realms rests on a biological substrate, but it is socially and culturally constructed. It has been quite different in different historical epochs (dare I cite Foucault?). It seems to me, though I may be wrong, that if we assume this inner/outer distinction in our analytic categories, then we lose sight of the process of its genesis, taking it to be natural, pregiven, a priori. We freeze the dialectic in one of its several moments. Piaget did not perhaps quite do this, but nor could he explain where the internal realm comes from. As Hal Fishbein implies, the semiotic function arises quite magically (Wilden makes the same point in "System and structure"). Practice then is not an interaction between internal structures and external objects; it is out of practice that objects are constructed (objectification), even though the circumstances of their production are covered up, and it is out of practice that an inner space of planning and calculation is constructed (internalization), and *its* production covered up. What seems to be the starting point of our analysis - subjects interacting with objects - is actually the *end* point. This isn't a new argument; Marx made it frequently (Stuart Hall's 1973 "A `reading' of Marx's 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse" is very good on this, though hard to obtain.) We need to examine the active processes that give rise to the inner and outer, the subjective and the objective, subjects and objects, and we need to do this in a way that avoids reducing these processes to either inner or outer. "Appropriation" as several contributors have used it here, and in my reading of Vygotskians elsewhere, seems to refer to a person's engagement in social practices; one might say that internalization and objectification (externalization?) are two aspects of appropriation, but not reducible to it. Appropriation => subjects w. capacities + objects w. properties Development, in this account, is not the result of internalization; it is a change in appropriation, which results in both internalization *and* objectification. In my previous terms, it is a changed manner of engagement in practice. To view development only as an internal transformation of the subject (a la Piaget) is to split this process in half, and again to cover up the subject's historical and cultural production. Development is a change, first of all, in what a person (or people - the subject may not even be the biological individual, but that's another story) is *doing*, materially. The place for critique in all this, rightly called for by Joe Glick, lies in the potential for the subject to recognize the processes of production, and so attempt to transform them. I can't tell whether I'm restating the obvious, what Piaget, Vygotsky, and Old Uncle Tom Cobley all new in their hearts, of if I'm far out on a limb that's about to be hacked off. If its too appallingly post- Vygotskian I apologize. ________________ Martin J. Packer Social and Cultural Studies Division Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley (415) 643-5363 (415) 642-7127 bitnet: packer@ garnet.berkeley.edu Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 14:09:30 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9101042209.AA16769@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Post-Vygotskian? Status: R I liked Martin Packer's formulations a lot, although I worry about putting "+" signs in equivilance functions. That is why I tried to introduce the convention of ** (which is to square something in the fortran I learned as a lad) to mean, roughly "in interaction with" the other factors in the equation. We are not talking addition here, nor simple interaction, but something like, "fusion under constraint" (or simply fusion). And we irreducibly have three "loci," suject, object and medium (which in the human case is cultural/artifactual writ large). Martin: As I understand it, your view leads to the notion of qualitative differences in mind according to cultural-historical circumstances. How does this lead you to think about cross-cultural variations? How is this view different from Levy-Bruhl, upon whom both Vygotsky and Piaget drew? (I have just been writing on Piaget and LB, so the topic is very much in my semiotic system. mike Michael Cole Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 202 Junipero Serra Blvd. Stanford, California 94305 cole@casbs.Stanford.edu (415) 32-2052 Fax: (415) 321-1192 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 14:50:21 PST Message-Id: <9101042250.AA28239@garnet.berkeley.edu> To: NMINICK%nuacc.BITNET@lilac.berkeley.edu, xlchc%UCSD.BITNET@lilac.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: internal/internalization/appropriation Status: R Norris, I've not been following a doctrinaire hermeneutic line in this discussion (and so perhaps I've drifted). I've recently been reading both Marx and the existential marxists (Fefebvre, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, etc.) to try to get a better grip on practice. Marx doesn't talk much about the production of subjects; Heideger no much about the production of objects, at least as commodities. Both alone and together, they challenge the prevailing, Enlightenment psychology of human nature. A melding of the 'existential analytic' with an analysis of the conditions of production would be an interesting project. Martin Packer U C Berkeley. QUIT Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 15:04:45 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9101042304.AA17067@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Levy Bruhl Status: R Martin message back to me, intending to message xlchc, that he had not read Levy-Bruhl to which I responded (not realizing he had erred in his audience, so privately) that I had not read lots of the stuff that folks refer to here, and that levy-bruhl is worth reading in the raw (How natives think is one of the classics), and that Jean Lave criticizes his views in her book on Cognition in practice, and that I have some printed pages on this subject if he is interested. Since Martin meant to have you read his note, and I would have responded on xlchc if he had, there's the summary. Peeter Tulviste, who is hiding from e-mail somewhere in east-central massachusetts has an excellent discussion of L-B, Durkheim, and the whole problem of cultural difference/relativity in a new book coming out some year or other in English. Peeter considers my relativist leanings to be the result of my sentimental liberal world view! mike Michael Cole Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 202 Junipero Serra Blvd. Stanford, California 94305 cole@casbs.Stanford.edu (415) 32-2052 Fax: (415) 321-1192 Date: Fri, 4 Jan 91 22:23:36 pst From: yengestrom@ucsd.edu (Yrjo Engestrom) Message-Id: <9101050623.AA04067@weber.ucsd.edu> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Subjects and objects Status: R Martin Packer characterized appropriation as interplay of internalization and externalization (objectification). I think this is essentially the idea that Marx and Leont'ev wanted to express. On the other hand, Packer drew a schema: appropriation => subjects w. capacities + objects w. properties This is very much a non-mediated, dualistic schema. It is Piagetian, but not Vygotskian. For Vygotsky and the rest of the cultural-historical school, you always need a third, mediating element between the subject and the object. I recommend Lektorsky's book 'Subject, Object, Cognition' (Moscow: Progress, 1984). Yrjo Engestrom LCHC, UCSD Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 22:49 EST From: Subject: appropriation To: xlchc@ucsd Original_To: JNET%"xlchc@ucsd.bitnet" Much of what has been said on both sides of this debate has been very edifying for me. One particular angle which has not yet emerged is of special interest to me. It concerns the reciprocal effects of socialization and group membership. The following is an excerpt from a commentary I prepared recently on several chapters for a book in preparation including the one by Jim Wertsch and his colleagues, to which he refers in a recent message to xlchc. The commentary is entitled: The interface between socio-cultural and psychological aspects of cognition the book is edited by N. Minick, E.Forman & Addison Stone, entitled "The institutional and social context of mind: new directions in Vygotskian theory and research". The excerpt covers 2 more screens after this one: Wertsch, Tulviste & Hagstrom develop their "sociocultural approach to agency" by proposing a refined version of Vygotsky's account of the "internalization" of overt speech in the course of development, using Bahktin's (1981, 1986) notions of: appropriation and ventriloquism ..... On a more subjective plane, another measure of embeddedness is variously termed ... membership, or ownership. Although Tharp argues cogently for the radical view that the only "true teaching is responsive teaching ... that is, assisting performance of by teachers", he acknowledges the paradoxical phenomenon that over the ages and across many cultures a much commoner paradigm for school instruction has been what he calls "the recitation script": assigning tasks and assessing performance, a discourse pattern described by Mehan (1979) as teacher initiation - pupil response - teacher evaluation (I-R- E). As Wertsch, Tulviste & Hagstrom point out: "For many pupils, participation in this pattern of discourse seems to foster some kind of cognitive growth. In such cases, the process is probably one in which the pattern of teachers' questions is taken over and mastered by pupils." Others, failing to make this connection, "are left in a position where passive responses are all that is required." A highly efficacious mode of remedial intervention was designed by Palincsar & Brown (1984), in which poor readers were engaged in "reciprocal peer-teaching", taking turns as dialogue leaders and in this teaching role generating summaries and predictions, and clarifying misleading or complex sections of text. The theoretical basis for the success of this method is explained by Wertsch, Tulviste & Hagstrom as follows: "the pupil is given responsibility for formulating and initiating the communicative sequence ... and thereby put in the position of judging the appropriateness of others' responses... Instead of leaving the teacher in the position of ultimate 'cognitive authority', pupils are required to appropriate this social language." The process of appropriation, or "taking on cognitive authority", imparts to the developing individual not only confidence in her competence to act autonomously, but also a sense of membership in the group and corresponding ownership of its cultural resources. The authority of the claim "this is my language, my culture, my community" is simultaneously based in a sense of belonging (of being owned and accepted by the group) and in a sense of control (of owning the medium and hence having the power to use it skillfully and innovatively). Since this is a significant phenomenological aspect of enculturation, I find the term appropriation to be much more apt than "ventriloquism", which seems to connote a quite different kind of agency. In appropriating a cultural resource, I claim to be responsible and intelligible by virtue of shared participation in and ownership of a system of meanings (D'Andrade, 1984). A ventriloquist, on the other hand, pretends not to be responsible for the utterance he generates. --------------------- Robert Serpell Telephone: (301)455-2417 Psychology Department (301)455-2567 University of Maryland Baltimore County 5401 Wilkens Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21228 Fax: (301)455-1095 USA Telex: 62882984 (UMBC Bookstore) Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 14:27:28 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9101062227.AA19624@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: Organization Status: R The following message out organizational changes in xlchc is rather long. If you do not want to read it, hit q at the --more-- prompt and then d. ----- Dear XLCHCers, Over the past few weeks a subset of about fifteen or so xlchc participants have been discussing suggestions for improved organization of xlchc dicussions on the subconference called xorgan@ucsd.edu. Shortly after Chirstmas Jaromir Janousek (Charles U., Prague) and M.Cole (UCSD, LaJolla) summarized the discussion, distributed the summary on xorgan and elicited further comment. Now it is time to send the tentative conclusions out to the full membership. We found it convenient to divide the suggestions into three categories which vary in the requirements for implementation. I) Mechanical/technical simplifications --------------------------------------- 1) To simplify bookkeeping arrangements: Those who join should say so on XLCHC or whatever subconference they hear but those who withdraw from the system should simply send a message to pbengel@ucsd. Rationale: participation spreads by word of mouth and we cannot prevent people joining in this way, so we should simply encourage a little self introduction. However, when signing off they will be knowedgeable enough not to bother others. 2) A membership list will be distributed periodically to all members. 3) All members will be given a document upon joining the system that will include an origin myth, current customs, and some hints about using e-mail in the xlchc subculture including a sample ".mailrc" file for creating alias and filtering out unwanted header information. The document will be a sort of "constitution" which can be amended when needed to facilitate the evolving needs of the users and minimizing dependence on the technology. 4) LCHC will provide a "help" person (pbengel@ucsd.edu, 619-534-4006) who will field questions and seek help for those she cannot handle directly. II) Simple organizational customs ---------------------------------- **NB** These are PROVISIONAL suggestions for customs that appear to have wide support. Additions, objections, alterations are expected to crop up as the group culture evolves. 1) Every participant should label the content of her/his message as clearly and as briefly as possible. 2) Contributors should carefully consider length. There are at least two schools of thought on length: Some feel that 1 1/2-screenfuls should be the norm. Others are opposed to length restrictions, but suggest that long messages be preceeded by a warning of length. III) More complex possibilities ------------------------------- Contributors made a number of interesting suggestions that raise fundamental issues we are not prepared to deal with definitively, but about which we must take some actions and which we hope will generate additional discussion. Some of the suggestions: - To have the ordered array of "boards" with differing goals - There is a need for more focused discussion groups with a different set of rules, how this would be different needs to be spelled out - To create dynamic forums and subforums - To bring together people who share an interest in some topic and who will continue the discussion off-network in an n-person exchange - To have a group of experts for given communication to prepare summaries,to structure the process and to consider the proposals - To have occasional summaries - Graduate students are welcome to participate in the discussions, but ought they to have an additional subconference structure (xgrad) of their own? - Take measures to increase participation of women and minorities. No concrete suggestions for accomplishing this were put forward. Current state of our thinking: The members of this discussion group are generally not particularly adept in the use of e-mail and there is pretty frequent confusion concerning where messages are from and to whom the answer should go: a particular subconference or the "plenary level" of XLCHC. The consensus seems to be that we should retain the subconferences, recognizing that "leakage" will occur between them. The following points capture what we were able to achieve. 1) To have functioning subgroups and the possibility of switching from the plenary XLCHC forum to the subgroups and vice versa be as free as possible.The subgroup should be the product of consensus of at least three participants who would appoint a facilitator/editor. 2) The FE of the subgroup would be responsible for providing feed-back for the plenary forum by a summary (either by writing it her/himself or by finding a voluntary summarizer/translator) at times that seems appropriate. 3) Everybody should be able to join any subgroup. A current list of subgroups and their membership will be sent out to the present membership and new members. It will be updated periodically. 4) There is widespread agreement about the need to foster/facilitate active participation of as diverse a group as possible. 5) We believe it would be very beneficial to the growth of discussion if a cross section of the membership would participate in writing summaries of discussions,but we do not know how to arrange for this. At present, we believe that FE's of each sub-conference should recruit their own summarizers. 6) Some questions were not taken up, or were not widely discussed, but are of obvious concern. One of these is the question of language. We have had volunteer translations from German and Russian, but we have no systematic mechanism for this. It was also suggested that we might work actively for promotion of more user friedly software and perhaps consider using a regular Bulletin Board. Conclusion ----------- The suggestions we have made are based on a mixed consideration of whatpeople requested, what would be possible, and what would be attainable given our resources. For example, we cannot provide more than minimal support to users, but many whom we would like to be in interaction with NEED support. The realization of this medium/activity's potential for multivoiced discussion seems inconsistent with too much moderating, but some form of summarizing on behalf of the growth of discussion seems worthwhile. We attribute a lot of significance to the development of a sort of "Whole XLCHC Introduction/Cheatsheet" in place of a list of hard and fast rules. The contents of this form of "information sheet" as it evolves over time should serve as a kind of artifact for the concensual building of joint activity. Through tracing the growth of a common "etiquette," the growth of some common origin myths, and analysis of the quality of the products of joint discussion, the information sheet will become an index of the development of a common "culture." This document would then also be a means of collective self-regulation and theoretical contemplation. We welcome suggestions for change or elaboration from XLCHC membership at large. As a mechanism for collating membership suggestions without overburdening those who are not interested, we ask that comments be sent to xorgan@ucsd, which will coordinate these changes and services. Anyone in xlchc is welcome to joint xorgan, but you may write to it without joining. We will wait for a week or so after sending this out to draft our first "XLCHC Introduction and collective cheat sheet" to give everyone time to send in their favorite hints for using mail effeciently, their suggetions for changes in THESE suggetions, etc. Michael Cole Jarek Janousek Center for Advanced Study Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 09:58 EDT From: ELLICE@vms.cis.pitt.edu Subject: internalization, etc. To: xlchc@ucsd.EDU Message-Id: X-Envelope-To: xlchc@ucsd.EDU X-Vms-To: IN%"xlchc@ucsd.edu" Status: R Another source that I have found useful in understanding the relations between internalization/externalization/objectivation is Berger & Luckmann's "Social construction of reality". Their treatment of these topics are more sociological than our discussion has been--but, in many ways, issues such as institionalization, legitimation, social roles (in a dynamic sense), and notions like primary and secondary socialization provide necessary additions to this discussion, in my opinion. For those of you who know this book, you will recognize that many of its sources have been mentioned as primary sources for these ideas. According to Berger & Luckmann, there are three essential moments in the dialectic between individual subjectivities and the social world: externalization, objectivation (reification), and internalization. They begin with the premise that subjective experience exists and proceed to build the social world from there. The process is not complete until this socially constructed world in internalized by another generation as if it were the only possible one. Creativity is build into their system through individual's attempts to organize, coordinate, and understand the complex and quite incoherent multiple institutions that they participate in. Socialization is multifacited because of these multiple institutions: the family, the peer group, the work place, religion, etc. Secondary socializers like peers play an important part in introducing children to the multiple realities that they will need to make coherent in their own way in order to act. Ellice Forman University of Pittsburgh ellice@pittvms From: Steve Draper Date: Mon, 7 Jan 91 14:11:50 GMT Message-Id: <16064.9101071411@kite.psy.glasgow.ac.uk> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Status: R Don Norman (2 Jan) sketches a trajectory for "much learning" that goes from conscious (may be written) representations to unconsicous automated behaviour; the conscious representations may be preserved for use in handling breakdowns. Very recently I have become interested in a sketch of learning that goes in the opposite direction. Alan Kay (e.g. in Laurel's recent compendium "The art of HCI design") cites Bruner as suggesting a progression of representations: enactive -> iconic -> symbolic It would seem that enactive (to do with physical behaviour) representations are usually associated with unconscious and symbolic (to do with language) with conscious. Bruner seems to suggest this sketch both as a gloss for a child's overall development; and as a model for anyone's progressive grasp of some new topic. This seems an attractive model-sketch for skills like finding your way round a new city, or using a computer interface. First [enactive] you learn to execute some rather fixed procedures, heavily supported by environmental cues rather than by internal models. (This is where I would fit in the idea of action supported by models that may be not in the mind but distributed between, say, mind and environment; and hence consistent with some of Gibson.) Later ([iconic] you begin to get an overview of these experiences by internalising representations like cognitive maps. Later still [symbolic] you may manage abstract thinking and generalisations about the topic. There seems to be a lot to be said for this progression, though perhaps the association with conscious/unconsicous or even with normal action versus breakdown may not really hold. P.S. Is externalisation = applying knowledge to make original plans (in the Artificial Intelligence sense?). I.e. demonstrating "transfer", to use traditional educational terminology. Appropriation = grasping affordances, and building an enactive representation; But not necessarily constructing a mental model that is a replica of the object - such mental models would be iconic or symbolic, in Bruner's terms. Steve Draper Dept. of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, U.K. (dial U.K. - ? (44)) 041-339 8855 ext.4688 steve@psy.glasgow.ac.uk From: Steve Draper Date: Mon, 7 Jan 91 14:11:50 GMT Message-Id: <16064.9101071411@kite.psy.glasgow.ac.uk> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Status: R Don Norman (2 Jan) sketches a trajectory for "much learning" that goes from conscious (may be written) representations to unconsicous automated behaviour; the conscious representations may be preserved for use in handling breakdowns. Very recently I have become interested in a sketch of learning that goes in the opposite direction. Alan Kay (e.g. in Laurel's recent compendium "The art of HCI design") cites Bruner as suggesting a progression of representations: enactive -> iconic -> symbolic It would seem that enactive (to do with physical behaviour) representations are usually associated with unconscious and symbolic (to do with language) with conscious. Bruner seems to suggest this sketch both as a gloss for a child's overall development; and as a model for anyone's progressive grasp of some new topic. This seems an attractive model-sketch for skills like finding your way round a new city, or using a computer interface. First [enactive] you learn to execute some rather fixed procedures, heavily supported by environmental cues rather than by internal models. (This is where I would fit in the idea of action supported by models that may be not in the mind but distributed between, say, mind and environment; and hence consistent with some of Gibson.) Later ([iconic] you begin to get an overview of these experiences by internalising representations like cognitive maps. Later still [symbolic] you may manage abstract thinking and generalisations about the topic. There seems to be a lot to be said for this progression, though perhaps the association with conscious/unconsicous or even with normal action versus breakdown may not really hold. P.S. Is externalisation = applying knowledge to make original plans (in the Artificial Intelligence sense?). I.e. demonstrating "transfer", to use traditional educational terminology. Appropriation = grasping affordances, and building an enactive representation; But not necessarily constructing a mental model that is a replica of the object - such mental models would be iconic or symbolic, in Bruner's terms. Steve Draper Dept. of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, U.K. (dial U.K. - ? (44)) 041-339 8855 ext.4688 steve@psy.glasgow.ac.uk Date: Tue, 08 Jan 91 07:39:06 PST From: Charles Tolman Subject: Appropriation To: xact@ucsd.BitNet Status: R p The Russian word prisvoenie probably does not have a Russian etymology of its own but is a translation of the German "Aneignung." Leontyev's use of the term is an obvious borrowing from Marx for whom the word was intended to denote the peculiarly human productive relation to the world. When we deal with the world we transform it according to our own needs--this is Aneignung. It is the basis of the concept of property. This relationship to the world is different from that of pre-cultural animals who merely adapt to their surroundings. Aneignung is also the basis of human history or cultural evolution, as opposed to biological evolution. As Leontyev makes quite clear, a psychology based, as were the earlier American functionalisms, only on the biological concept of adaptation will inevitably fail to appreciate peculiarly cultural nature of the human psyche. Appropriation [Aneignung] is a concept intended to help us do a better job of this. As for the relationship between appropriation and interiorization, I think Don Newman's reading of Leontyev is correct. On this question I have run across the following in a very fine book on the concept of appropriation by Werner Roehr [Aneignung und Persoenlichkeit. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1979]: He is speaking about the relationship between appropriation and learning. He rejects the identification, partly because it implies an equally false identification of appropriation and interiorization. "Es zeigt sich also, dass eine Identifizierung von Aneignungbegriff und Lernbegriff die Spezifik beider verfehlen muss. Waehrend Aneignung auf Interiorisation reduziert und damit ihres Wesens, der Produktivitaet, beraubt ist, erscheint das Lernen als Moment von Aneignungsprozessen zu deren Ergebnis verkehrt. Unbeschadet allerWiderspruechlichkeit der verschiedenen von Lompscher gebrauchten Lernbegriffe laesst sich daher die Schlussfolgerung ziehen, dassjede derartige Identifizierung nicht nur theoretisch falsch ist, sondern in ihren praktischen Implikationlen auch eine Beeintraechtigung der Entwicklung von Aneignungsfaehigkeiten bedeutet (p. 116). Among other things, interiorization cannot grasp the essentially productive aspect of appropriation. Charles Tolman P.S. Mike, would you send me a test message direct from your current address. My attempts to reach you direct have all been returned. I might be able to get you on the "reply" mode. Thanks. Date: Wed, 9 Jan 91 02:35:39+0900 From: e34685 Message-Id: <9101081735.AA06294@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> To: XACT.ucsd.edu Subject: On appropriation & internalization Cc: e34685 Status: R On Appropriation & internalization I am afraid a little that some are discussing the problems of appropriation, taking the idea (not concept) of "pricvoenie" (appropriation) of A.N. Leontiev as, as if, one corresponding to (or comparing to) the idea of "internalization " of Vygotsky interpretted in the framework of A.N.Leontiev . If we consider the both theoretical frameworks of A.N.Leontiev and Vygotsky, I think that we should set the idea of " appropriation" of A.N.Leontiev againt the idea of "sign mediation" or more exactly "genesis of consciousness(higher mental function) through mediation by signs(speech) and psychological tool" Of course one origin of the idea "appropriation " of Leontiev came from the idea of social-historical origin of higher mental function of Vygotsky(or Marx), but A.N.Leontiev began to abandon or to think little of the idea "sign mediation" of Vygotsky, when he introduced the idea "appropriation" into psychological theory (A.R.Luria and his followers held this idea of Vygotsky). This difference of view points of both great scholars appears also in the understanding of processes of internalization or of the role of internalization in mental development. Vygotsky analyzed fairly enough the process of internalization in the experiments on devEm?|{Y5 of selective reaction,attention and speech and so on, and single out the four stages of development{ (1)primitive and natural stage,(2)the stage of naive psychology,(3)the stage of external sign and external operation, (4) the stage of evolution(or internalization; in Russian "vrashivanie" (the stage of 2rZoting" in the translation by N.Minick)} and three type of internalization(see the chapter 4 of "Thinking and Speech " and the chapter 5 of " History of development of higher mental function"). It is very interesting that Vygotsky did not use the term "internalization"("interiozastuya" in Russian) and used term "vrashivanie", when he spoke of his own theory, although he used term "internalization" when he dealt with other theory of internalization. And "vrashivanie" for Vygotsky always designates either the process in the above- mentioned stage(4) or the process of transformation from interpsychological functions to intrapsychological functions, that is, the process of reconstruction of higher mental functions by internalization of sign(speech). Moreover,he stresses that higher mental function are qualitatively restructured by "vrashivanie". Vygotsky writes: "On "vrashivanie", that is, on conversion of functions insides, a complex transformation of all structure of functions takes place. As experimental analysis shows it needs to mention the following as the important ^] ^oments of it's transformation: (1)substitution of function, (2)change of natural function( of elemental p^V/nesses which are the basis of higher mental function and become a component of higher mental function),(3)generation of new psychological functional systems(or systematic functions), which take a role played before by individual functions in the structure of behavior."(from "Orudie i znak v razvitie rebenka", Sobranie sochinenii,tom 6, p15 ). When we examine the idea of "appropriation" and the concepts "internalization" and "externalization " of A.N.Leontiev and his followers, we can easily find that the concept of "vrashivanie" of Vygotsky was enlarged to a great degree by them. Of course the long-term works of P.Ya.Galiperin, N.F.Talizina and others contributed much to elaboration and development of the concept of internalization. A.N.Leontiev writes; "The interiosations of actions,i.e.the gradual conversion of external actions into internal,mental one, is a process that necessarily takes place in man's ontogenetic development. Its necessity is determined by the central content of a child's development being its appropriation of the achievements of mankind's historical development, including those of human thought and human knowledge. These achievements come to him as external phenomena(objects,verbal concept,knowledge).". As far as we consider lhDt "internalization " is to be a psychological mechanism of realization of appropriation of the achievements of mankind's historical development for Leontiev and we take into account the theory of Galiperin, not only conversion of actions of external speech into internal, but also the transformation of objective (or materialized) action into verbal plane, and even the shaping or organizing actions in objective social action stage should be regarded aa a process of internalization. This difference in understanding of internalization between Vygotsky and Leontiev is also refleted in understanding of the relationshi` detween external and internal structure of activity(or actions). Leontiev's hypothesis on the isomorphism between external and internal structure of activity does not agree with that of Vygotsky. {?b 7e`#an answer Denis Newman's question "when the baby appropriates the cup, is something also(ioteriorized? ". (XACT, Yes, the action with a cup has been already internalized in the baby, as far as he/she can use a cup with him/herself for drinking milk or water. In the case of motor skills with a folk and a knife i^RAwith a bicycle etc.,, of course,the execution of an action always remains external, but orientation and control part of it are internalized in the process of acquisition of skills in the stage of objective social action according to the theory Galiperin and Leontiev. At the stage when a baby begin to observe how mama or papa use a cup and want to use a cup, it should be considered that something begin to be internalized. But the main problems seems not to be here. The problem seems to concern with whether theoretical framework of Leontiev with the concept "appropriation","internalization" and "internalization" is enough for explanation and for the study on psychological development from the point of view of activity theory or not. I think much problems remain unsolved. For example, problem of relationship between external and internal structure of an activity or an action. According to the Leontiev's hypothesis on the isomorphism between external and internal structure of activity, all of the content and structure of activity formed in the social objective activity stage is to be kept in the internal mental stage, when it is internalized into it's stage. It may be possible, when the process of internalization is well organized. But is it not possible that a some new moment will happen to arise in the process of internalization when we change the condition of it ? I suppose that it is possible. The second example of problems is the relationship between internalization and externalization. In the process of internalization of an action or an activity does this process proceed without any externalization ? Or may the process of externalization appear also ? I can not say anything about it, but this relationship may depend upon the way of organization of activity. But how do they relate ? The third example of problems is one concerning the relation of "internalization"(or appropriation) of an activity (or an action) with the conditions of an actor. According to the theory of A,N,Leontiev and Galiperin, any one can acquire any activity created by people of proceeding generations and can reproduce their activity and abilities, (on condition that he/3hl does not have a special damage in the brain) when we can organize their activity well. It may be right. But the effect of acquisition of the activity for the future development will be not same with different actors(for example, the effect of acquisitionof speech of a certain language by a child will be extremely different from the effect in the case of an old man). This third examp,d9reminds me of the discussion on the problems of human abilities between Leontiev,A.N. and Rubinshtein. Rubinshtein criticised the application of idea "appropriation" of Marx into psychology by Leontiev in his paper "Problem of abilities and problems of psychological theory, Problems of psychology 1960". Now I have no time to explain his criticism in detail. I write here only points of his criticism: (1) The concept "pricvoenie" (appropriation) of K.Marx will not serve as the basis of the idea that human abilities are the result of appropriation of achievements of human socio-historical development. (2) The idea of Leontiev of psychological development with the concept of "appropriation", "internalization" and "internalization" is a sort of mechanical determinism in the sense that it always neglects the conditions of subjects of human activity. Please some one, in Moscow or anywhere, would take a trouble to explain Rubinshtein's criticism to,^L2ontiev's idea of "pricvoenie" ? I will put this mail into Xact, expecting that some one in Moscow will responce to it. But if necessary, please put it into XLCHC. ------------------------------------------------- K.Amano, Chou University, Tokyo Date: Wed, 9 Jan 91 12:55 EDT From: Subject: internalization and appropriation To: xlchc@ucsd Original_To: JNET%"xlchc@ucsd" My problem with the term "internalization" do not mean that I believe there is no need to speak of the internal. Indeed, I think some formulatin such as Don Norman's makes sense and does provide a way to find productive linkages between a sociocultural approach and cognitive science. Internalization is a tricky term for several reasons. The first of these has to do with parsimonious description. If a procedure such as counting, let alone something like skiing, is mastered, why don't we just call it that (i.e., mastered)? Is there anything else to be accounted for by describing it in terms of internalization? To do so is all too likely lead us to look for objectified entities on an internal plane. A simple test of this point is to ask oneself in cases where internalization is used whether the term "master" wouldn't work equally well. If it does, I think it is wise to be careful about using internalize. It all too often leads us to look for mythical internal entities. A second point that is important here has to do with a what seems to me to be a correct claim by Leont'ev. IF we want to use the term internalize, it is essential to understand that it refers to a process whereby an internal plane of consciousness is FORMED, and not to a process of transferring somethinng external to a pre-existing internal plane. Enough for now I'm sure. Jim Wertsch JWERTSCH@CLARKU Psych. Dept. Clark University Worcester, MA 01610-1477 508/793-7265 From: PO61170%DHHUNI4.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU To: xact@ucsd.edu Date: 91-01-09 09:53:10 MEZ Status: R XACT-Subject: Appropriation, Property, "own or proper sense" XACT-Thema: Aneignung, Eigentum, Eigen-Sinn Length: 50 lines, 2 1/2 screens, 45 minutes work (08:45-9:28). Abstract: The Etymology of the German name (Aneignung) for the concept of appropriation shows the underlying metaphora (socially well known procedures) of either: -- taking a ready-made object or spatial region as one's own, within or without legimitate grounds, or: -- reconstructing an individual version or "token" (Peircean) of a certain "type" (ditto) of skill, knowledge, culture, &c. Accordingly, if we expand (dutifully stretch) the psychological concept of appropriation as given by AN Leontyev, we may build on the second metaphor by looking at concrete cases. A batch of these then should be analyzed as to complexity, requisite level of regulation, &c -- in order to find concrete sub-types (e.g. appropriation of skills like drinking from a cup, versus of knowing how to persuade Daddy to go out with Me :-) it might be copied from a friend and her daddy). Another consequence of this strategy of theory building is to look at boundaries implied in "proper" or "own". We then get a clear picture of what is "within", and what is "outside". Please notice that all of the above applies as well to persons as it would to the joint activity of a cooperating group. I therefore propose to also expand the notion of interiorization to encompass the "inside" of groups, i.e. shared action regulation and thinking, in which the various semiotic means and shared habitual styles are the analogues to "cognitive structures and plans" attributed to individual persons. Main text: Not yet written. Encouragement for further baking would be O.K. Critique usually works faster. :-) Arne. _____________________________________________________________ Dr. Arne Raeithel, Dpt. of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 2000 Hamburg 13, Federal Rep.of Germany ------===========------- ------ e-mail path:<<>>??<<>> po61170%dhhuni4.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu ------===========------- ------ Above works from SOME Internet-Nodes only. Our mailer does not notify sender in any way (no bouncebacks). E-Mail does get lost, or takes the usual mail time (weeks...). Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 07:08:47 PST From: cole@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Michael Cole) Message-Id: <9101101508.AA02813@casbs.Stanford.EDU> To: xlchc@ucsd.edu Subject: appropriate Status: R I have been enormously helped by the discussion on this topic. I echo Amano-san's request for help from Soviet colleagues vis a vis the Rubenshtein/Leontiev discussion, but even without it, several issues have become clearer. I was especially struck by the appropriation/internalization/rooting contrast. Especially the latter concept helps me to understand a kind of symmetry in Vygotsky's thinking, or am I misinterpreting? Here is what I mean. When speaking of the relation between learning and development, LSV says that learning should lead development and that in zones of proximal development (zopeds in my dialect) the goal of the teacher is to get at about-to-bud processes, while for environmental processes to be appropriated/ internalized, they must be rooted in the ongoing child system. Both sides of the process are developmental in complementary terms, or so it seems to me. Laura makes a good point when she notes the danger of carrying over meanings from one set of social arrangements to another, but as Arne's message points out, the origins of "appropriation" in Marx have a long pre-capitalist/ industrialized society heritage. When Denis, Peg Griffin, and I were discussing these issues a few years ago, another usge of appropriate was also a part of our thinking. this is appropriate as an adjective (in a phrase like "She said the appropriate thing.") That is, in everyday scenes people only partially understand each other and as a rule have somewhat different interpretations of the ongoing activity. Educational interactions are certainly of this type, and formal instruction was a major arena for discussing learning and development. This second sense of appropriate is important because it warns us that in the production of everyday interaction (a la Goffman inter alia) people act appropriately to the circumstances, they "pass" while "managing," so that whatever aspects of the interaction are appropriated and rooted in their subsequent structure cannot be uniquely specified, but will share the constraint that they were appropriate to the interactions from which they are derived. This is NOT a copy theory of internalization a la social learning theory in the US. to think it is invites the kinds of misunderstandings that Yrjo tells us appeared in the Educational Researcher. Mike PS- I found Beaudrillard's Political Economy of Signs very interesting, but we have not discussed his semiotic re-interpretation of Marx. along with prior discussions about Sahlins, White, etc. and the current discusion about appropriation, it might be useful. Michael Cole Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 202 Junipero Serra Blvd. Stanford, California 94305 cole@casbs.Stanford.edu (415) 32-2052 Fax: (415) 321-1192