Re: [xmca] Aristotle's PRACTICAL philosophy as providing historical perspective

[christine schweighart <schweighartgate@hotmail.com>]

Dear Michael,
 
The video was made by the Information Systems group at the LSE, this perspective draws a lot of interesting work together.  When you note that 
'Where
Lewin, Dewey, Mead and even Friere all agree I think is that we create the
things that we use in the moment based on our relationships with each other. '

 I would add that there is a natural planet we live in relation to, historically consciousness of this seems veiled by a 'reflexive self-interest' perspective within the 'relational net' you refer to.  My question would not stop at 
  Does CHAT take a view antithetical to this whole systems of relationships idea?

But ask 'how we can create developmental influences to learn how to regulate practices which affect and change conditions of our natural ecosystems?'

Because I'm interested in environmental education.
 Christine
 





Subject: FW: Subject: Re: [xmca] Aristotle's PRACTICAL philosophy as providing historical perspective From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 17:06:51 +0100
From: C.Schweighart@warwick.ac.uk
To: schweighartgate@hotmail.com








Message body








 Christine Schweighart









-----Original Message-----

From: Schweighart, Christine

Sent: Sat 14/05/2011 15:23

To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

Subject: Subject: Re: [xmca] Aristotle's PRACTICAL philosophy as providing historical perspective 



Dear Jay , Larry Mary and others,

Picking up the SI discussion again, in AR and particularly  in one part of that movement ‘systems thinking & AR’ ( participative – but not to be equated with PAR),  the division of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ arose in the late 70’s.  As with any dichotomies, there are limits to new insights to be gained by it –  further enrichment and development needs something  moving beyond this categorization and relation.  One of the most significant limitations in this instance has been the proliferation of ‘methods’ and also  discourse around principles of enquiry couched in key methodologies.

Here I would agree with Mary that

‘there really is no clear method, because it is a set of epistemological/ontological assumptions’



A priori – but retrospectively in evaluation (a research contribution)– something has been done and in that ‘method’ needs to be recovered to understand the relations between conditions and whatever is achieved ‘done’ – to begin to examine any learning arising from development in thinking.

But  I disagree with this part:

‘If you are going to use it as an approach one has to draw from the wealth of research methods that exist in the social sciences. The trick is to match these methods with the CHAT assumptions’

For two reasons, firstly it is methodology  and principles (with which to develop and study methods) which ‘agree’ with philosophical theoretical assumptions ( and this is where Larry’s questions about phronesis are very interesting), not methods ( as procedural in nature). This interest in ‘methods’ has led to reams of discussion about the distinctions made in ‘method’ often made with no concrete evaluation of  what Jay calls for here:

’ We need particularist research that adds to our capacity to help out in the next particular case.’



Chaiklin’s paper is also motivated by an interest in  how to frame ‘improvement to practice’. In contrasting whether this is helped by orienting to discover ’general laws’ ( which sits alongside the ‘concepts’ assumptions), whether this is useful or not is a methodological question, but it is not falling into the trap of contrasting the detail of methods per se. In this I don’t see Denise’s interpretation of Mike’s communication in the same way, that methods have a single function fixed. A tool box metaphor might be useful- but any craftsman has great flexibility in appropriating any tools, ‘craft’ is working upon always unique particulars. ( and screwdrivers are particularly useful for  leverage etc -very many things not imagined a priori before a presenting situation that do not involve screws!)

‘These methods are like a tool box one does not make use of a hammer when a screw driver is needed and sometimes it is even finer as one type of a hammer does not suffice for all situations. Or for that matter use a saxophone to play the oboe partition in "Vivaldi's 5 concerti per oboe". The various methods have been carefully designed in relation to the theory and are not

"decorations on a Christmas tree". All together this makes up the

methodology which is at the level of the activity.’



Methods do not make up ‘methodology’ in this sense.



My second disagreement with prioritizing drawing upon ‘wealth of methods’ from the social sciences – the first was that they have become unhelpfully abstracted – is that an important source of ‘method knowledge’ is in the experience and dispositions of those sensitized to their local situation, the need for improvement or transformation of that particular ‘society’. Drawing upon this is part of what is created in a study ( and hence my earlier citing of the Lyotard quote).



I came to think Jay’s question in an ‘interpretive’ workshop I attended some years ago, which became swamped with discussion of distinctions being made by ethnographers, and I had this growing feeling that there really would be more perspicacity if research was discussed and revealed through the evocation of themes through particular studies. Losing the particular or regarding particulars as insignificant in relation to ‘general laws’, or ‘general purposes of method’ is to miss the origin of any generalization. 



I don’t think researchers are very good at that- I don’t think that there is a well understood sense of capacity-building that Jay refers to ( more often blind spots appear , often by discussing research only in the terminologies of ‘method’ camps). In this I think the position pointed to in the Special Issue introduction, about praxis turning upon ‘methodology’ makes sense, this does not necessarily mean that there is no attention to sharing principles of process in evaluation. Maybe this place-marks Larry’s insights which also look to overcome ‘‘predjudice against predjudice’ [which] captures the

value of embracing uncertainty and inquiry as a *disposition* that can be

developed which embraces historical consciousness.’

 A disposition to help out in the next particular case.





I am not familiar with Anna Stetsenko’s work or Michelle Fine – so thanks for sharing this. I was prompted by the earlier observation

“ When the child begins to think about "nuclear families" in the abstract, there is a LOSS and not just a GAIN; the families of the child's friends disappear form the circle of operations and are replaced by nameless faceless hordes of families down through history.”



to question  articulating principles of Davydov’s ‘cell’ abstraction – his argument is that these depend upon empirical experience and recurrences in experience are the origin to begin from ( not the social sciences literature) .



It seems that some dialogue of  dissolution of ‘prejudice’  happens in  perspective taking ( I’m thinking of Galina Zuckerman’s work where co-operation with peers   was seen as a necessary condition for development of reflective abilities). Surfacing an awareness of perspectives – or ‘prejudices’, in situ – and seemingly phronetic, would be the object of participative research, whose dynamic cannot be prejudged either by researcher-initiator or participant initiators, since grounds  (  past experiential life-histories) are not –or are no longer-immediately apparent.





 Christine Schweighart








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