Re: [xmca] The belated reflections on Anna's and Peter's article

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Certainly East and West have had very different lines of intellectual work,
as Sasha Surmova recently pointed out. But there have been some common
roots, and there ought to be some points of contact. Sasha's comments have
got me imagining an article that would explore work in the west that can
connect with the CHAT work in the east, perhaps for mutual benefit.

My imaginary article would start with the proposals in the 1970s for a new
kind of social science which could overcome the dualism of (individual)
agency and (social) structure by focusing on the mutual "constitution" of
person and social world. It is this "constitutive" relation that I think we
see at the heart of the work of Vygotsky, Leontiev and others.

Charles Taylor in political science, Clifford Geertz in anthropology,
Anthony Giddens in sociology all made such a proposal. They differed on the
details, but they agreed that this new kind of inquiry would involve
interpretation, and it would require immersion in the practices of a form of
life, that's to say field work.

But there's a huge debate right now over what field work involves. That's
worrying: if we're engaged in cultural-historical inquiry we need to know
what culture is! In an important article James Faubion has identified the
ontological preconceptions of the vast majority of work in cultural
anthropology: that culture is bounded, integrated, and systematic. Culture
is like a tropical island with a clear and fixed boundary, one part is much
like any other (so that every member is alike), and the parts work together,
so that by studying one we learn about the whole. With these preconceptions
the task of the field worker is to find the field and cross the boundary to
enter it, participate as much like a member as possible, and observe the
world that become visible as a result. Field work is participant
observation.

But these preconceptions have led to enormous problems both methodological
and conceptual, and Faubian sketches the new ontological preconceptions that
have started to replace them. Culture is now seen as dispersed and multiple,
contested, and dynamic. The field worker is always an outsider, a stranger,
representing what is foreign. Field work requires mapping the order of a
form of life, but also exploring the work of ordering, the work that
dynamically *constitutes* the subjects and objects of a form of life.
Writing reports is not neutral description, but a poetic and political act
that invites others to see the world in a new way. And here an emancipatory
interest starts to enter the picture.

But what exactly is constitution? My imaginary article would trace this
concept back to Kant, who viewed it as the way mind forms representations of
an external world. As I've mentioned here before, this view has played out
in the work of Husserl, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann, and continues in those
like Gergen and many discursive psychologists who look at language primarily
as a form of representation. Here, I think, are the "cultural 'signs'" that
Sasha is rightly dismissive of. The majority of work in the west on culture
and discourse treats it precisely as no more than signs - that's to say,
representations, that's to say, merely as how the world 'appears' rather
than how it actually is.

But there has been another line of work on constitution, a line which can be
traced back to Hegel (and surely before) and then to Merleau-Ponty,
Garfinkel, and one could surely include Marx here (though I'll get to him in
a moment). Hegel provides one of the common roots that east shares with
west. This work has emphasized embodied practical activity as the basis for
the work that constitutes both subjects and objects. It also developed the
notion that Vygotsky highlighted in his earlier work, though I'm not sure he
was able to stick with it fully - that consciousness is not in some mental
realm but in behaviour. And that *includes* conceptual and abstract thinking
(Merleau-Ponty is key here). In this line of work, thinking is not mental
representation, it is practical activity. That doesn't mean it is merely
practical know-how - it can also be abstract conceptualization.

So here Garfinkel's ethnomethodology finds a connection with a certain kind
of ethnography, keenly focused on constitution. What they both tend to lack,
however, is a recognition that people engaged in practical activity often
*mis*understand themselves and their world. Immersion in practices is *not*
the direct root to understanding how forms of life operate that it seems to
be. Sasha emphasized the importance of Marx's analysis of alienated labor,
and it has had a tremendous impact in the west too.

We need to return to Hegel and to Marx, and to the suggestion that
alienation and false consciousness require a kind of investigation that goes
beyond participants' practices, one in which we try to get a sense of the
big picture which the participants themselves lack, especially the way
things have worked out historically. Several sophisticated kinds of critical
inquiry have explored this further. Habermas proposed that a rational
reconstruction of both societal change and ontogenesis is needed for us to
diagnose the contradictions in a current form of life and steer it
appropriately. Bourdieu proposed a reflexive inquiry that examines its own
fields of scientific capital and the corresponding scientific habitus.
Foucault emphasized genealogy as a kind of historical analysis that didn't
impose narratives of progress. Each of them was focused centrally on
constitution: how social order and person are mutually implicated. Each of
them had an emancipatory interest, trying to foster human freedom by
increasing human awareness. What they *lacked*, interestingly, was the kind
of sophisticated psychological analysis that is evident in Vygotsky's work.

This might seem an eclectic collection of thinkers and thoughts. But I think
coherent connections can be drawn among them. For better or worse it draws
not only from sociology but from other social sciences too. It clarifies the
importance in the west, just as in the east, of social analysis that is *at
the same time* psychological analysis (as Sasha put it). It tries to
overcome or avoid dualism. It points to some strengths in western work that
could perhaps be of use as CHAT works to define itself, as well as
weaknesses where CHAT could help. (As Andy has noted, it's very odd that
Habermas has never shown interest in Vygotsky, for example.)

But as I say, it's just in my imagination!

Martin


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