Re: [xmca] motive/project

Martin:

Humbly I admit the sentence is of my own making. I like the use of
appropriate from the early days of the fifth dimension project. It was
used to counteract the idea that in order to learn students must first
behave. So the LCHC staff decided to expect the students to appropriate
necessary studious behavior rather than telling them to 'sit still',
'behave'. The term 'engaged activity' comes from the social work
literature for elderly residents in nursing homes; the idea is the
residents taking part in engaged activity remain healthier.
Yes, Martin, I too am coming to the conclusion that perhaps a universal
unit of analysis is unreachable. But perhaps dependant upon the context in
which one is asking, " what is the contradiction?"

eric

                                                                                                                               
                      Martin Packer
                      <packer@duq.edu> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      Sent by: cc:
                      xmca-bounces@web Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
                      er.ucsd.edu
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               
                      12/19/2008 12:02
                      PM
                      Please respond
                      to "eXtended
                      Mind, Culture,
                      Activity"
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               

Eric,

Your use of the term 'hermenutic' is apt, because the notion of the
hermeneutic circle is that one needs to interpret each part of a text in
terms of the whole and vice versa.

I'm suggesting that there is no unit of analysis for activity in general,
but a unit for each particular form of life one wants to study. But I'm
also
suggesting a general criterion for the selection of a unit of analysis:
that
it contain/embody the central contradiction of a form of life. But of
course
one cannot know what that contradiction is for certain until one has
completed the analysis. So the hermeneutic circle applies: one begins with
a
hunch/hypothesis about the contradiction, selects what seems the
appropriate
unit of analysis, analyzes the form of life, and on the basis of what one
finds one may need to select a different unit.

Where is your sentence quoted from?

Martin

On 12/19/08 12:07 PM, "ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org" <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
wrote:

>
> I certainly have had extended thinking time on this topic lately because
I
> do believe it gets to the heart of the issue at hand. Consider the
> following sentence:
>
> "Appropriate an engaged activity." No motive, no desire just a process.
>
> It may not fulfill the requested hermeneutic unit of anlaysis but it
> certainly makes a statement about what does go on in human development in
> the cultural/societal domain. just a thought
>
> eric
>
>
>
> Martin Packer
> <packer@duq.edu> To: "eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent by: cc:
> xmca-bounces@web Subject: Re: [xmca]
> motive/project
> er.ucsd.edu
>
>
> 12/19/2008 09:47
> AM
> Please respond
> to "eXtended
> Mind, Culture,
> Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Andy,
>
> I'm struggling to catch up with piles of xmca messages after a week away
> from the computer, but your comment here caught my attention. Perhaps you
> would agree with me that the selection of the commodity form as the unit
of
> analysis was based on the presumption that it contains the key
> contradiction
> of a capitalist economy. This suggests to me that the identification of a
> unit has to be based on a consideration of the whole in which it is
found.
> And this in turn suggests that there can be no unit of analysis for
> 'activity' in the abstract, but rather a variety of units each of which
> depends on the concrete whole which one is studying. As you suggest,
> 'wooing' is an activity that is possible only in the 'world' - the form
of
> life - of romance. So, when we select a unit we will need to acknowledge
> both the spatial and temporal discontinuities among distinct forms of
life.
>
> Martin
>
> On 12/18/08 9:34 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> f I sing to my beloved while standing outside
>> in the rain, in what sense am I "using" something? There is
>> a school of thinking that would say, it makes me feel nice
>> to be wooing my beloved, therefore I am using her to make me
>> feel nice. But all that is really bankrupt, isn't it? We
>> have to get into the idea of romance and find in the
>> figuring of the world according to a concept of romance, a
>> set of motives, which motivate the series of related
>> practices which make up the universe of romantic activity.
>> "Use" applies OK only to a resicted sense of motivation.
>>
>> Andy
>
>
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Received on Fri Dec 19 10:40:43 2008