Re: [xmca] RE: CHAT/SCT - A voice from the past

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I think this mode of discourse in this medium is probably counter-productive
Eugene. Lets stick to the question of understanding the configuration of
ideas characterized as CHAT and SCT; are they two terms for the same
configuration of ideas or does their institutionalization reflect
significant disagreements?
You and I can arrange to chat about it in another medium.
mike


On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu> wrote:

> Dear Mike and everybody–
>
>
>
> Sorry, Mike, for answering your questions with my questions. They are my
> answers because I’m not sure I understand your questions. I do not know
> where you are coming with them, honestly. That is why I asked. But let me
> try to deal with your questions directly, even though I do not understand
> them:
>
>
>
> How should I proceed to find out??
>
>
>
> About what? Why do many fields and, thus, publishers prefer SCT rather than
> CHAT terminology? In my view and very short answer, because not everything
> of worth studying is activity or can be viewed as activity, for starter.
>
>
>
> Where are all the L2 people here to help
> us out here?
>
>
>
> I’m here but apparently not very helpful ;-) – it is often the case, by the
> way, that help from others comes not in a form you expect. At least, it is
> in my experience.
>
>
>
> Other than publishers in applied linguistics preferring SCT,
> what's in those names that makes people get irritated with each other?
>
>
>
> Nothing personal. Often, for example, it is not people of an information
> processing approach who irritate me but their approach. At least I try to
> refocus my personal irritation on their approach.
>
>
>
> Who are the bad people?
>
>
>
> Hmm, let me think: Hitler, Stalin, Tse Dung, Lenin, Trotsky?…. – I’m
> joking, of course.
>
>
>
> What are the special virtues of the good people?
>
> Helping people? – I’m joking, again, Mike, sorry.
>
>
>
> But I do not know what you are asking here. Are these rhetorical questions?
> What are real questions of yours?
>
>
>
> I think I can be more helpful if I ask you questions or you redefine your
> questions for me, please.
>
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> Eugene
>
>
>
> *From:* mike cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, November 25, 2010 3:26 PM
> *To:* Lisa Yamagata-Lynch
> *Cc:* ematusov@UDel.Edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; Luis Moll
> *Subject:* Re: [xmca] RE: CHAT/SCT - A voice from the past
>
>
>
> All excellent questions. I wonder what others think. I have already had a
> long turn!
> Besides it will take me a while to come up with as many questions to ask
> Eugene as he has asked
> of me, answering questions with questions being a long and honorable shared
> tradition!
> mike
>
> Lisa, more briefly in answer to your questions about how things looked like
> to me in 1992 (thanks Eugene, I find keeping track of the last century
> difficult, even its latter half): Answers intersperse in BRIEF caps.
>
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Lisa Yamagata-Lynch <lisayl@niu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Eugene,
>
> You have articulated several issues I have been wondering and not had been
> able to put them to words yet myself. My main questions to everyone are:
>
> 1. Is there a problem that there are differences between CHAT and SCT?
>
> No! Is there a problem that I am different from my brother?
>
> 2. Is one believed to be more legitimate than the other?
>
> DEPENDS UPON WHO YOU ASK. MY OWN VIEW IS NO
>
> If yes who for what reasons? n/a
> 3. Do the two views need to come to an agreement to engage in more
> collaborative scholarly exchange, if so why?
>
> YES because they provide complimentary tools for analysing a reality that
> overwhelms and defies understanding that is of common concern.
>
> my two kopeks.
> mike
>
>
> Seems to me like CHAT and SCT developed in very isolated locations with
> similar core ideas, but among very different people, culture, and history.
> It is understandable that there would be differences. Is our current
> question asking whether we can embrace those similarities and differences?
>
> --
> Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch
> Associate Professor
> ETRA Department IT Program Coordinator
> http://www.niu.edu/~lynch/ <http://www.niu.edu/%7Elynch/>
>
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Mike and everybody-
>
>
>
> Here is my two cents on this interesting topic besides minor correction
> that
> the Sociocultural conference in Madrid was I think in 1992, not in 1994 (I
> think):
>
>
>
> 1)      You seem suggest that the differences between CHAT and SCT as they
> have emerged in the "West" (i.e., outside of former Soviet Union) have been
> historically rooted in the Soviet debates. Am I right in understanding of
> your point? If so, I'm not sure that it is true or fully true. I want to
> hear more from you about your reasoning connecting these two debates.
>
> 2)      I think in your original message, you were alluding that, at least,
> in part the disagreements among the Soviet scholars were caused by their
> political squabbles within the "Stalinist science" (the term that was
> coined
> by Krementsov, I think) or in the "post-Stalinist science". In any case,
> what makes you think that way? Also, do you think that there was any
> "substance" in these debates or not? For example, you wrote, "At the same
>
> time, they criticized Leont'ev for placing too much emphasis on activity as
> external conditions, likening him to a behaviorist (Abulkhanova-Slavskaya,
>
> 1980)." It can be a fluke, but I have noticed that some former behaviorists
> became Vygotskians. Mike, can you, yourself, be an example of this pattern?
> If my observation is correct, it can suggest some interesting affinity
> between behaviorism and Vygotskian family of approaches (e.g., both are
> functional approaches).
>
> 3)      I have noticed, and I can be wrong, that you want to diminish
> differences in Vygotskian family of approaches rather than explore possible
> differences and differentiations among them. For me, even this posting goes
> along with this tendency. Am I right about that? If so, can you elaborate
> on
> that? Basically, I want to ask you if you PREFER that there are no
> differences rather than you do simply do not see any differences but would
> be EQUALLY HAPPY if the differences really exist.
>
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> Eugene
>
> ---------------------
>
> Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.
>
> Professor of Education
>
> School of Education
>
> University of Delaware
>
> 16 W Main st.
>
> Newark, DE 19716, USA
>
>
>
> email: ematusov@udel.edu
>
> fax: 1-(302)-831-4110
>
> website: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu <http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/>
>
>
>
> publications: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/vita/publications.htm
>
>
>
> Dialogic Pedagogy Forum: http://diaped.soe.udel.edu
>
> <http://diaped.soe.udel.edu/>
>
>  <https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=8893
> >
>
>
> Description: Journey into dialogic pedagogy Matusov, E. (2009). Journey
> into
> dialogic pedagogy
>
> <https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=8893>
> .
>
>
> Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
>
> ---------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: mike cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 2:37 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
> Cc: Luis Moll; Eugene Matusov
> Subject: CHAT/SCT - A voice from the past
>
>
>
>
> I know some people who care a lot to distinguish CHAT and SCT. I wonder if
> there is any consensus on what the critical differences
> are between them. Here is what I wrote at the Sociocultural Conference in
> Madrid about 1994 where Jim Wertsch, who edited the 1981
> book on Soviet activity theory,  as a major player and lead editor on the
> subsequent volume - socicultural theories of mind.
>
> More than 15 years have passed since this was written. I may have been dead
> wrong then and making the same argument now
> may seem really mistaken. You will see traces of this same discussion in
> various messages being posted around the P&L article.
>
> How should I proceed to find out?? Where are all the L2 people here to help
> us out here? Other than publishers in applied linguistics preferring SCT,
> what's in those names that makes people get irritated with each other? Who
> are the bad people? What are the
> special virtues of the good people?
>
> mike
> ------------------------------
>
> For the past several years I have been striving, with rather limited
> success, to understand the intellectual issues that divide the Vygotskian
> and activity theory approaches, as well as the division between activity
>
> theorists who follow Leont'ev and those who follow Rubinshtein. This task
> is
> complicated because, insofar as I can understand, contemporary followers of
> Leont'ev continue to adhere to the major principles articulated by
> Vygotsky,
> Luria, and Leont'ev in the 1920s and early 1930s, arguing in effect that
> Vygotsky was an activity theorist, although he focused less on issues of
> the
> object-oriented nature of activity than on processes of mediation in his
> own
> work (Engestrorn, 1987; Hyden, 1984). Followers ofRubinshtein, on the other
> hand, deny that Vygotsky was an activity theorist and tax him with
> "signocentricisrn," which in the overheated debates of the last decade of
> Soviet power seemed to
>
> be roughly equivalent to "idealist," a sin at that time (Brushlinsky,
> 1968).
> At the same time, they criticized Leont'ev for placing too much emphasis on
> activity as external conditions, likening him to a behaviorist
> (Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, 1980).
>
> I do not want to minimize the possible scientific benefits to be derived
> from attempting to understand these disagreements more thoroughly, although
> I am not certain how productive such attempts will
>
> be for non-Russian psychologists. From existing historiographical evidence,
> debates among Russian adherents of these various positions appear to have
> been tightly bound up with the wrenching political
>
> upheavals that racked the Soviet Union repeatedly between 1917 and 1991
> (and
> which arc by no means over) (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). What I am
> almost positive of, however, is that it would not be
>
> productive for adherents of the various positions to carry those battles
> into the international sphere except insofar as they have international
> intellectual merit.
>
> What most concerns me is that for whatever combination of reasons, there
> has
> not yet been close cooperation on an international scale among
> psychologists
> who work under the banner of activity theory and those who use some version
> of the concept of sociocultural psychology as
>
> their conceptual icon. At the first Activity Theory Congress in Berlin in
> 1986, there was only one major address that took the work of Vygotsky and
> Luria to be coequally relevant to the proceedings with that
>
> of Leont'ev, and individual talks that proceeded from a more or less
> Vygotskian perspective were relatively rare. At the second Activity Theory
> Congress in 1990, there was a far richer mix of viewpoints, but many of the
> people prominent in organizing the current meeting in Madrid were
> preoccupied with preparatory work for the current meeting and did not
> contribute.
>
> It would be most unfortunate if adherents of the various streams of
> psychological thinking whose history I have sketched were to continue their
> work in isolation from each other. The common intellectual issues facing
> different streams of cultural-historical, sociocultural, activity based
> conceptions of human nature are too difficult to yield to piecemeal
> efforts.
> It is time for those who have come to questions about the
> socio-cultural-historical constitution of human nature to join in a
> cooperative search for their common past and to initiate cooperative
> efforts
> to address the difficult intellectual issues and staggering national and
> international problems facing humanity in the post-Cold War era.
>
>
>
>
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