Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:...all of this is so ABSTRACT. Why not look at concrete people doing concrete things ...
Michael, I both whole-heartedly agree with you, and cautiously disagree. I agree because examining particular examples, including and sometimes especially at the dialogue level, as you often very effectively do in your research, is an essential and necessary part of the process of rising from the abstract to the concrete. But I disagree to the extent that doing so is **counterposed** to the equally necessary process of concrete generalization.
If we remain at the level of particular cases we are in danger of being unconscious prisoners of the very abstractions we are questioning in the first place - the abstract must be transcended not just by the concrete particular, at concrete people doing concrete things, but by the concrete general - by the collective, general historical processes underling these particulars.
The trick, as I see it, and this is what I see you striving to do in your work, and CHAT research working toward in general, is to be able to work well in both the empirical (particular) and theoretical (general) realms of the concrete. The process of ascension of course, is never-ending and always spiraling forward (and in good times, more upwards than downwards!). Where theory gets problematic, and where I think you are voicing your frustration, is when theory slips back down toward the abstract general (categorical thinking) and abstract specific (just "facts"), instead of upward toward the concrete, where the real processes become revealed at all their levels.
But the problem there is not theorizing, per se, it is methodology, and that is where, again, I wholeheartedly agree with you - applying theories about how consciousness "reflects" reality to particular cases, to cases where concrete people are doing concrete things, is a very necessary and essential methodological part of the process. It is a necessary step out of individual "facts" and abstract "categories" toward developing sciences of the realities themselves, not just our abstract statements about them.
A very good recent example of an article rich in particular examples of concrete people doing concrete things - and doing concrete thinking that is worth thinking concretely about - is Helena's article in the current MCA. "Using Activity Theory to Understand How People Learn to Negotiate the Conditions of Work"
For those that have not yet taken a look at it, see Andy's Dec 18 post. http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2008_12.dir/0198.htmlHelena discusses quite a few examples in article - possibly enough for three articles :-)) - of which I will mention two. I bring these stories up for several reasons. One, to support Michael's point about seeking concrete examples - it really is necessary, and these are especially strong examples for activity theorists. And I know that no one disagrees with Michael on this. Two, to give people ideas for everyday workplace (and home and school) situations where "reflection" and "motive" and other key CHAT concepts can and should be discussed.
And third, to emphasize that Helena does something very, very important in her paper that I think is the beginning of a breakthrough - she is showing us how activity theory can be used to describe **conflicting motives**. This idea, of course is hardly new in an of itself, but I think she takes the principle further along and shows us some new and effective ways to incorporate the idea of conflicting motives into CHAT.
It is when motives **conflict** that reflection, subjectivity, emotions, etc. etc. really get interesting - and puzzling to theorize. When motives are **conflicted** within the same person or institution - that is when modern psychology really gets going. And where CHAT has some of its biggest challenges and opportunities.
Something to keep in mind is that open discussion of everyday conflict and class struggle and opposing social forces and so forth was NOT a readily available topic of analysis for Leontiev and 2nd generation Soviet activity theorists to discuss. They could refer to the problems of capitalism, but everyday life in the USSR was another matter. Class conflict, as we all know, had been 'officially' eliminated by the end of the 1920's in the USSR, rendering discussion of real social contradiction and conflicting motives in the USSR abstract and usually best avoided. But now, there is nothing stopping 3rd generation CHAT from going to town on this.
So here are two of Helena's stories which I think are very good examples of "conflicting motives" and contradictory "reflection processes."
One story Helena tells, something of a composite story, was a factory where forklift drivers who have to weave through the factory to move things around are suddenly given a bonus for increased productivity. One young worker speeds up, an older worker hurts their back trying, a third worker gets the drivers together in an impromptu meeting to discuss keeping the work pace steady, and not competing with one another because it creates competition, erodes safety, etc. What were these three different workers thinking? What social forces, needs, motives, objects were they "reflecting?" How did the different motives (company productivity/profits, making a bonus, safety, solidarity, etc.) manifest themselves - **reflect** themselves - on each of these workers, and in turn, get reflected back?
The other story in Helena's article I am bringing up is useful because it is archetypal for a whole category of commonplace workplace, home, school etc. problems.
This situation involves a unionized janitor service in a large office building, where janitors enter offices at night and throw out the trash - and stuff left near the trash. You can already see the problem. A janitor gets suspended for throwing out some papers left near the trash by some lawyer - but these papers were not supposed to be thrown out.
The players in this drama are: the lawyer who accused the janitor of throwing out the papers, the janitor, the company that hires the janitorial service, the janitorial service company, the union, the union rep, the supervisor, all the janitors in that building, all the office workers, and their managers.
The janitor, an older Polish woman, contacts her union rep about having been suspended. The janitorial company wants to fire the janitor to demonstrate to the office building managers they were making a "corrective action." The union rep says wait a minute, lets take a look around.
Turns out the policy was supposed to be that trash that is not actually in trash cans is supposed to be bagged, left near the trash can, and LABELED with an orange sticker. BUT the orange sticker rule was not being used consistently by the office workers, (something the union rep was able to easily prove), so the janitors were just going by proximity to the trash can.
So the union rep negotiated a different solution - train everyone. Train the office workers to throw out trash using the bags and the orange stickers. And the janitors to only throw out bags with orange stickers on them. The janitor got her job back and life went back to normal.
I saw this kind of thing at Boeing all the time, and so has everyone else. The archtypal problem is that objects of work (trash in this case, could be diamond rings or apples) need some kind of "signage" as they move along from hand to hand and process to process. When the signage system breaks down, objects get mixed up and trouble ensues. We even do this to ourselves. Part of anybody's day is keeping track of what is what and paying the prices when we get objects mixed up. This needs to be fairly highly conventionalized and clearcut when passing work objects (including bundled up trash) from one worker to another to minimize constant confusion. What is nice about Helena's example is it is easy to visualize the work process, how a lot of people are involved in it, and the various motives. It is a good model.
In this particular story, the place where conflicting motives became most manifested, as Helena reports, was in the supervisor, who went from first favoring firing the janitor to supporting the training solution instead. At the same time, the janitorial company management shifted positions. At first they just wanted to trash the janitor and sweep the whole thing under the rug, probably their usual solution. The union rep was able to explain to them how it was in their best interest to change their position and go this second route. For one thing, the union had an airtight case should the issue go to mediation - the problem was clearly the inconsistent use of the orange stickers, and not worker negligence. And for another, the janitorial company needed to keep this from happening again, and firing just one worker obviously wasn't a reliable solution.
As for the way the janitorial workers through their union rep pushed back against the office workers and their management, I have seen that kind of push and pull get very, very complicated in an airplane parts manufacturing situation, where labeling everything is crucial and can be very complex - thick documents that get read, stamped, corrected etc. follow along with many parts. But at the heart of every exchange from one worker to the next is the equivalent of an orange label - or no orange label.
This janitor story had a "happy" ending - everything went back to "normal". But what about the unhappy endings? What if the union had stepped aside, or didn't exist, and the janitor had been fired? What could activity theory describe about the resulting psychologies in that situation - conflicting motives, subjective processes, etc.? How about all the unhappy stories in families, in school life? To what extent can CHAT become a go-to methodology for analyzing the unresolved? The conflicting motives that do not end with everything "as it should be?"
In the first story about the forklift drivers, what if that third employee, the "troublemaker" encouraging in effect a collective slowdown to counteract a company speedup, was fired? Or the young worker, a woman, was the one who got hurt due to inexperience, and some of the older, male workers were glad to see her laid off because they didn't like seeing their jobs being "taken away" by women?
Questions like these require us to get **more** concrete that even just telling specific stories and depicting selected dialogues wherein social contradictions and conflicting activity motives manifest themselves. These are but roads toward a higher level of scientific inquiry. We must dig more and more deeply into the social realities, the root social contradictions in a given activity, or more precisely, complex of activities - into the complex ways they "reflect" or manifest themselves in the concrete and often contradictory actions and psychologies of people - and seek the kinds of **concrete generalizations** needed to reveal these material, social and psychological realities at **all** levels.
- Steve On Jan 6, 2009, at 9:38 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
Perhaps because all of this is so ABSTRACT. Why not look at concrete people doing concrete things---even mathematicians do concrete things, use a pen and doodle or chalk to write on the board. Get some tape and talk about it, make sense of it, rather than talk about words, because this just goes round and round and round, I am getting dizzy from all of these words. Inherent in words is that they mark of the other, they dichotomize, unless you do what you have in Bakhtin or CA, where you cannot reduce to the individual thing /person, and you get dialogue, you get inherent linkages.Michael On 6-Jan-09, at 8:49 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:But Michael, as I understand it, Martin is asking us is there any meaning to words like "reflection" and "interiorisation" if we are to avoid "dichotomizing"?Andy Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:HI All,I don't think that we should continue with dichotomizing the internal external. There are some others later ----I think I saw some stuff in JREEP but don't remember if it was Mikhailov-----You cannot separate inside from outside, and when you follow communication, there is always inside and outside. People don't orient to inside and outside, they are orienting and arranging worlds, and consciousness is a refracted/refracting parallel to the material world. Jean Lave is showing us, as Chuck Goodwin, and all my work also, that people are acting in settings, and it makes very little sense to use the model of the little homunculus whispering into our ears what we should be doing. Acting always is IN the world and FOR the world. So Bakhtin has a better way of talking about the issue when he says that the word is always bestraddling speaker and listeners, and to me, this is an inherent orientation to and for the world, and this means, that cognition never is solely on some inside, but, as action, always bestraddling both. No doubt, there is grey matter and it gets us to operate, but whatever there is matters little to the person, who, as Bakhtin says, is in the world as a person. In all of this talk about the inside, I am missing the person in body and flesh, with emotions, with pain and elation, real people. Let's get real people back into our analyses, not idealized shells of people.Michael On 6-Jan-09, at 5:07 PM, Martin Packer wrote:OK, to keep the ball rolling, what are we to make of the discussion aroundpage 310 of "interiorization," which Leontiev defines as "the gradual conversion of external actions into internal, mental ones"?On page 284 Leontiev has just praised Rubinstein for proposing that mind is*in* activity. Now he says that mental activity is the *product* of'external' activity, and furthermore that mental activity is 'internal'activity. This sounds very dualistic to me. And here are my notes on page 311:"But this is circular reasoning. Interiorisation is necessary, ANL tells us,because accumulated human knowledge comes to the child as something'external.' These 'objects, verbal concepts, knowledge' have an 'immediatephysical aspect' that is 'not yet refracted through the prism of thegeneralized experience of social practice.' But what happened to ANL's recognition that the child acts on objects always with adult guidance, so that the *immediate* contact *is* refracted through this prism (though I'dlike to avoid the refraction/reflection metaphors)."And even if ANL were correct, why is any of this an explanation of why interiorization is necessary? If (past) human activity is 'embodied' in objects, that doesn't mean that I need mental actions to act with them. On the contrary, the whole notion of 'embodiedness' began as an *alternative*to idealist psychology. "And 'reflection in the child's head [p. 311]'?!" Someone give me a monist gloss of all this, please! Martin On 1/5/09 6:46 PM, "Haydi Zulfei" <haydizulfei@yahoo.com> wrote:Martin, Just one quote : [[Mind arises at a certain stage of the evolution of life not by chance out of necessity.i.e. naturally . But in what does the necessity of its origin consist? Clearly, if mind is not simply a purely subjective phenomenon, and not just an 'epiphenomenon' of objective processes, [but a property that has real importance in life] , the necessity of its origin is governed by the evolution of life itself . More complex conditions of life require an organism to have the capacity, to reflect objective reality in the form of the simplest sensa- tions. The psyche is not simply 'added' to the vital functions of organisms, but arises in the course of their development and provides the basis for a qualitatively new, higher form of life-life linked with mind, with a capacity to reflect real- ity. This implies that in order to disclose the transition from living matter that still has no psyche to living matter that has one, we have to proceed not from internal subjective states by themselves, separated from the subject's vital activity, or from behaviour taken in isolation from mind, or merely as that through which mental states and processes are studied, but from the real unity of the subject's mind and activity, and to study their internal reciprocal connections and transformations.]]Here we read there was a time when the organism faced *undifferentiated* flat environmet ; in his A,C,P , Leontiev also alludes to the idea of environment once having been *objectless* for the organism , then at a higher stage havingfaced *object-based differentiated* environment .If I'm right in my reading , first the rustling in the environment triggers the frog to be led then to the food direct (insect) . This is when Leontiev says need is not sufficient clue to activity ; it must hit an object . The other problem with your *dualism* vs *monism* is explained as follows : Leontiev says at one time in evolution , it's not been the case that the organism has been able to see the thing once ; the image of that thing twice . He has seen just one . Here we face the idea of the extension of matter . In his book Lenin says quite clearly extension , time , place , causality are intrinsic to the Matter . Monism says the superhuman existence is the extension of **matter** . These are not two but one and and the same thing . Decartes , Hume , you well know had a different problem in view . They believed in so-called one SOULED-body . Soul having been incarnated , as Andy says , in the Air and detachable capable of leading independent life This is Dualism . But when you believe in *Mind* being just a *property* of matter , then philosophical dualism is eliminated . And here is again where I could say when you initiate with *culture* as one agental transformative , we object as you placing yourselves just midway ignoring *continuity* disconnecting culturefrom its whereabout/origin . Best Haydi --- On Mon, 1/5/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote: From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 2:51 PM'Sad' because my sense is that if one wants to avoid dualism - crucialfor Vygotsky - Lenin's writing about 'reflection' isn't the way to go. I don'tknow the details well, but from what I have read Lenin assumed a simple dualism in which mental representations 'reflect' the real world. The'image' may be reversed, but still it is in a realm quite different from the real. (Bakhurst discusses Lenin's philosophy in *Consciousness and Revolution* if I remember correctly.)I recently read through *Problems of the Development of Mind*, which Michael and Andy generously made available (it fell down my chimney early one morning) and was disappointed to discover how little Leontiev seems to have avoided dualistic ways of thinking/writing. Here too the relation of psycheto world is expressed in terms of 'reflection,' for example: "The transition to existence in the conditions of a complex environment formed as things is therefore expressed in or- ganisms' adaptation to it taking on a qualitatively new form associated with reflection of the properties of a material, objective reality of things" (44)The sense of reflection is not very clear in this excerpt, but the term is used repeatedly in ways that generally suggest Leontiev sees the psyche forming subjective representations of an objective reality. Perhaps this canbe saved by drawing on Marx's use of 'widerspiegeln,' which as Michaelpoints out avoids the connotations of mirroring. But at least it invites readings of CHAT which don't challenge the dualism in contemporary westernsocial science.By the way, although the repeated presentations of the same notions in Leontiev's book made me suspicious along the way, it wasn't until theveryend that I discovered (from an endnote) that it is a compilation of articles from very different dates. I'd recommend reading it in chronological order to get a clearer sense of how his ideas developed. For instance, I need togo back to see how his relative emphasis shifted between the child'sencounter with objects, and adult guidance of this encounter. At times thelatter is not mentioned, at others it is added on ("by the way..."), and attimes it is highlighted. But since the chapters are out of order, I don'tyet have a clear sense of the chronology of these shifts. Martin On 1/4/09 11:50 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:The idea that always occurs to me about reflections is that in mirrors,leftand right are reversed. Sad? Or a reason to pause to think? QuienSabe?mike On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>wrote:Why sad? Martin Packer wrote:I know, but it would be sadto discover that Vygotsky was drawing soheavily from Lenin. On1/4/09 9:42 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:I might sayas an aside, that "reflection" whatever it is inRussian, has a strongplace in Russian Marxism. This isbecause Lenin made such a powerfulattack on hisphilosophical enemies in "Materialism andEmpirio-Criticism"written in 1908. Ilyenkov still defends this books inthemid-1970s, though almost all non-Russian Marxists would say thatit is a terrible book and was written before Lenin hadstudied Hegel, etc.In M&EC Lenin makes reflection a centralcategory, a universal property ofmatter, etc., and bitterlyattacks the use of semiotics of anykind.I have an ambiguous attitude to M&EC myself. Apart from"sins of omission" perhaps, Lenin is right, but did hereally have toshout it that loud? Well, in the historicalcontext of the wake of thedefeat of the 1905 Revolution,probably he did. Did all Russian Marxistsfor the next 100years have to follow his lead? Probably not. Inote that in Dot Robbins' book on Vygotsky and Leontyev'sSemiotics etc.,Dot defends the notion of reflection. Thesituation, as I see it, is that"reflection" has a strongadvantage and an equally strong disadvantage inconveying amaterialist conception of sensuous perception. On oneside it emphasises the objectivity of theimage-making - there is nothingin the mirror, or if thereis, it is an imperfectionit which distorts theimage. On theother side, mirror-imaging is an entirely passive process,aproperty of even non-living matter. Personally, I think"reflection" belongs to Feuerbachianmaterialism, not Marxism, but inhistorical context, theposition of many Russians who use the concept,isunderstandable. That's how I see it anyway,AndyEd Wall wrote:Martin It appears theroot is more or lessотрaжáть(отрaзить)and, at least according to my dictionary, has thesense of reflectingor having an effect. However, my qualifications aredated.Ed On Jan 4, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Martin Packerwrote:At the end of last year several of us were trying to figureout whether'reflection' is a good term to translate the wayVygotskyand leontievwrote about 'mental' activity. Michael Roth pointedout that the German wordthat Marx used was Widerspiegeln ratherthan Reflektion (see below). I don'tthink anyone identified the Russianword that was used. I still haven'tfound time to trace the word inVygotsky's texts, English and Russian.But an article by CharlesTolman suggests that the Russian term was'otrazhenie.' Onlinetranslators don't like this word: can any Russianspeakers suggest howit might be translated?Reflection (German: Widerspiegelung;Russian: otrazhenie)Tolman, C.W. (1988). The basic vocabulary ofActivity Theory. ActivityTheory, 1, 14-20.MartinOn 10/25/08 12:40 PM, "Wolff-Michael Roth"<mroth@uvic.ca>wrote:Hi Martin,Marx does indeed use the term"widerspiegeln" in the sentence youcite. Das GehirnderPrivatproduzenten spiegelt diesen doppeltengesellschaftlichenCharakter ihrer Privatarbeiten nur wider in denFormen, welche impraktischen Verkehr, im Produktenaustausch erscheinen- dengesellschaftlich nützlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeitenalso inder Form, daß das Arbeitsprodukt nützlich sein muß,und zwarfürandre - den gesellschaftlichen Charakter derGleichheit derverschiedenartigenArbeiten in der Form des gemeinsamenWertcharaktersdieser materiell verschiednen Dinge, derArbeitsprodukte.But the Duden, the reference work ofGerman language says that thereare 2 different senses. One isreflection as in a mirror, the otherone that something brings toexpression. In this context, I do notsee Marx draw on the mirroridea.For those who have trouble, perhaps the analogy withmathematicalfunctions. In German, what a mathematical functiondoesis"abbilden," which is, provide a projectionof, or reflection,orwhatever. You have the word Bild, image, picture inthe verb.Butwhen you look at functions, only y = f(x) = x, or -xgives youwhatyou would get in the mirror analogy. You get verydifferentthingswhen you use different functions, log functions, etc.Thentherelationship between the points on a line no longer isthe sameinthe "image", that is, the target domain. We sometimessee the word "refraction" in the works of Russianpsychologists, whichmay be better than reflection. It allows you tothink of looking at theworld through a kaleidoscope, and you get allsorts of things, none ofwhich look like "the real thing."MichaelOn 25-Oct-08, at 9:01 AM,Martin Packer wrote:Michael, Here's one examplefrom Marx, and several from Leontiev, if we canget into theRussian too."The twofold social character of the labour oftheindividual appearsto him, when *reflected* in his brain, onlyunder those forms which areimpressed upon that labour in every-daypractice by the exchange ofproducts." Marx, Capital, Chapter 1,section 4." Activity is a non-additive unit of thecorporeal,material life ofthe material subject. In the narrower sense,i.e., on the psychologicalplane, it is a unit of life, mediatedby mental *reflection*, by an *image,*whose real function is toorientate the subject in the objective world."Leontiev,Activity & Consciousness." The circular nature of the processeseffecting the interaction ofthe organism with the environmenthas been generally acknowledged. Butthe main thing is not thiscircular structure as such, but the fact that the*reflection* of the objective world is not directly generated by thementalexternal influences themselves, but by the processes through which thesubject comes into practical contact with the objective world, andwhichtherefore necessarily obey its independent properties,connections,and relations." ibid " Thus,individual consciousness as a specifically human form of thesubjective*reflection* of objective reality may be understood onlyproduct of those relations and mediacies that arise in the course ofas thetheestablishment and development of society." ibidMartin_______________________________________________ xmcamailing listxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________xmca mailinglistxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________xmca mailing listxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________xmca mailing listxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________xmca mailing listxmca@weber.ucsd.eduhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>+61 39380 9435 Skype andy.blunden Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden: http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blundenHegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden: http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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