Yes, true.
Does Bauman's "liquid" work better? Liquids can be active, can
dissolve, can take shapes (like the mercurial Terminator of Terminator
3, a battle between different forms of modernity, to be sure).
Here is one last challenge to the notion of projects in second
modernity as described by Ulrich Beck (which is here being described
by Bauman):
"Perhaps if individual powers,
however feeble and impotent when single, are condensed into a
collective stand and action, things will be done j ointly which no
man or woman could dream of doing alone ? Perhaps . . . The snag
is, though, that such convergence and condensation of individual
grievances into shared interests and then into a joint action is a
daunting task, since the most common troubles of individuals-byfate
are these days non-additive. They are not amenable to 'summing
up' into a 'common cause' They may be put beside each
other, but they will not congeal. One may say that they are shaped
from the beginning in such a way as to lack the interfaces allowing
them to dovetail with other people's troubles."
Bauman and Beck's bugbear is individualization in modernity - the
difficulty that individuals have of being able to see themselves as
holding together as anything other than an individual (a different
type of liquidity, namely of grains of sand seems more apt than a
simple "liquid"). On this account, individuals tend to see shared
interests in terms of tools for how to endure their own individual
suffering (e.g., others have done it, what can I learn from them?),
rather than as a means for taking action.
Any thoughts on whether and/or how to address this?
-greg
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
I don't know that "fluid" is the right word to describe the
dynamic and unstable world we live in. "Fluid" to me summons up a
mass of passive material being swished around by outside forces.
But yes, it is the projects which are rapidly unfolding, realising
ever new identities and collaborating with each other in ever
newer projects in unpredictable ways.
Andy
Greg Thompson wrote:
So then it is the "projects" that are fluid?
i.e., they seep into different configurations of persons and
swish around in our social worlds?
-greg
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:52 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
As long ago as 1848 Marx said "all that is solid melts into
air",
and I do think this is the number one problem of our day. But
actually I think it misses the point to ask if "it will be even
harder today to try to find bonds that 'interlock individual
choices in collective projects and actions.'" The
destruction of
the fabric of social life by neoliberalism *is* a problem,
but the
point is that projects *are* that fabric.
It is not a quesiton of "political actions of human
collectivities" but rather that instead of "collectivities"
which
are pre-formed groups of people which then decide to do
actions,
but on the contrary groups and the bonds which tie them are the
*product of projects*. The fabric itself is projects.
"Project" is
the unit of analysis, not an abstraction formed by adding
aims and
actions to groups.
Andy
Greg Thompson wrote:
Andy (and others interested in projects/systems of
activity/living artifacts/etc.),
And I think Zygmunt Bauman (in Liquid Modernity), when
speaking of melting in late modernity of previously solid
social forms of life, puts a particularly sharp point on my
question (and yours?):
"The solids whose turn has come to be thrown into the
melting
pot and which are in the process of being melted at the
present time, the time of
fluid modernity, are the bonds which interlock individual
choices in collective projects and actions - the
patterns of
communication and co-ordination between individually
conducted
life policies on the one hand and political actions of
human
collectivities on the other." (p. 6).
This suggests that it will be even harder today to try
to find
bonds that "interlock individual choices in collective
projects and actions." This takes it a step farther
back from
the projects to: How can we re-form these bonds?
Or maybe we need a new way of conceiving of the project
and of
"projects" altogether? Fluid and ephemeral projects
that flow
about, mix with, seep into, and spread out?
How to do this?
-greg
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 6:08 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
Yes, Greg, the notion of Recognition demonstrated in
Hegel's
Philosophy of Right I fully embrace, particularly
because it is
realised through a concept of mediation, rather than
as an
alternative to mediation, as it is found in some modern
writing.
And yes, I see this idea as to be realised through
the idea
of the
formation of collaborative projects, rather than
"groups" and
associations.
Andy
Greg Thompson wrote:
As for the centrifugal forces that hold these
entities
together (whether
you call them "systems of activity" or
"projects"), I
want to
humbly add
the importance of the Hegelian notion of
"recognition." It
seems to me that
one of the critical functions of these entities
is to
provide
recognition
for individuals - to consummate them (to use
Bakhtin's
language). With the
liquidity of identity that Ivan speaks of in
modernity,
it is
these
entities that provide for the moments of recognition
that hold
together our
own selves as identities that can act
agentively. And
this is
important.
In Philosophy of Right, Hegel introduces the
idea and
importance of
"corporations." These serve important functions of
providing
recognition (a
give and take between individual and group), but
also
practical matters
like distribution of resources and the
development of
individual's
abilities. Isn't this quite similar to what is
behind the
ideas being
discussed here? Andy?
Here is a quote from Hegel's Lectures on
Philosophy of
Right
that speaks to
the obligations of wealthy in a "corporation"
(really
more of
a "trade
union" or something like that, but def. not the
"corporation"
that we speak
of today):
“But in the corporation the individual has his true
consciousness and here
he has a genuine noble opportunity to acquire
honor. In the
corporation the
corruption of wealth is set aside…. In the
corporation
wealth
is no longer
an end in itself. He has duties in this circle….
Here he
becomes something
through the way he applies his wealth for the
sake of his
cooperative
association.”
H has much more to say about the importance of
recognition for
the poor as
well due to their obligations to the corporation
(whether or
not this is
built into the collaboration between TCLC and
UCSD is a
difficult thing to
address. I think the families at TCLC have
obligations
to TCLC
but their
obligations and gift-giving to UCSD are not
clear - this
despite Mike's
insistence upon them to the UCSD audience! The
apparent
(to most)
one-sidedness of this kind of gift-giving
creates a one
sided
moment of
recognition where UCSD always has the upper hand
(see
M. Mauss
on "no free
gifts").
All of this speaks to an important issue in the
U.S.,
namely
the Grand
Canyon that exists between rich and poor. The
critical
question in the U.S.
is: where will such "corporations" come from?
Where can the
rich and poor
cooperatively come together in a land that is
literally
structured by
income - where how much you make determines
where you live?
Communities
here are de facto segregated by income. (yes,
there are
some
exceptions to
this rule).
I think the TCLC partnership provides a means
for this
kind of
(temporary)
creation of community (corporation) that crosses
income
lines.
Unfortunately, most of what makes up the
"corporation",
i.e., the
undergrads, is rather fleeting. Twice a week for 10
weeks in
and out. And
folks at LCHC are clearly concerned about the
value of this
for the TCLC
kids. It is sometimes hard not to think that the
undergrads
get more out of
those 10 weeks than the TCLC kids do. But, even
if this
is the
case, it is
eye opening for those often privileged
undergrads. And
it is
hard to
imagine anywhere in the U.S. where the building of
cross-income
corporations is being done any better (Occupy Wall
Street has
very mixed
results in this regard, For a critique of the
middle-class
white elitism of
OWS, see: http://www.voxunion.com/?p=4592).
-greg
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Ivan Rosero
<irosero@ucsd.edu <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>>
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu> <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>>>> wrote:
I can see the reason for the
excitement, and as
I've come
of age at LCHC
over the last few years, it is this issue
--what to
call,
how to frame
analytically and explore methodologically,
and what
theoretical
characterization to give these "meso
zones"-- that has
been the most
salient issue for me.
If it is true that identity is liquid, and
we move from
one identity
instantiation to another, then there must be
accompanying
socio-material
formations within which such identities can
be had
while being
simultaneously porous and loose enough to allow
relatively
unproblematic
entry/exit. No doubt that there are
longer-lived
structuring structures
within which, and relative to which, these
meso-scale
formations come to
life, but those are not the proximal site of
interest
here. Further, those
meso-scale formations that result from
purposeful (and
vulnerable) coming
together without any guarantee of anything,
are special
indeed.
I fear the abstract here, but I will say at
least that
these things, for
me, are a kind of prolepsis engine,
formations through
which different
possibilities of how future arrangements
might be
organized are tried out
in vivo, with all the complexities of the
real thing
because, well, they
are the real thing!
The lack of clear-cut language is not
surprising,
because
at the moment the
pull inward that participants undergo around
these
collaborative
partnerships, in my experience, surfaces as
an ethical
aesthetic which does
not yet enjoy the clarity of a full blown
political
program of action.
There might even be more than a little fatigue
with the
latter, and more
of a desire to explore different ways of
being together
that do not require
(and may die as soon as these are reached) clear
categories and conceptual
pronouncements.
ivan
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
Eugene Matusov has
an article in Outlines on
the topic
of the
sustainability of these projects:
http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.**
dk/index.php/outlines/article/**view/2662<
http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/article/view/2662>where
he says: "The success of our after-school
partnership
between a
community center
and our university's School of
Education does not
necessarily require ... a common vision
between
partners or even
compatible
visions." I would
welcome comments on this view.
Also, what is the story with the Laboratory
School at
UCLA?
Andy
Andy Blunden wrote:
By
"crisis," Ivan, I had in mind just the
kind of
situation you describe
in southern San Diego.
As I reported to Mike at the time,
when I read
"Cultural Psychology" a
few years ago, I got really excited,
not so
much
because of the specific
teaching and learning methods that were
going to
be used, but rather
that -
like the climax
of a detective novel - Mike had
identified the culprit,
the
research
problem that lay at the heart of
problems
of poverty and
illiteracy in developed countries -
/how is it
possible to sustain a
project/? what characterises a
/sustainable
project/? This revelation
was
crucial in my
coming to the conclusion that the
molar unit of analysis
for
CHAT had to be
the /collaborative project/,
athe
conclusion which I
drew in
my book
published earlier this year, "An
Interdisciplinary Theory of
Activity."
This did not mean of course that I
had the
answer
- Heavens! a concrete
answer to teh question of what
sustains a
collaborative project is the
answer to all the problems of
modernity. It
is a
clear definition, in my
view, of the problem, the "germ
cell" for an
understanding of modern
social
life. It is
what really needs to be studied.
"Collaborative project" is not just
a special
topic or one choice for
making interventions, because (1)
"Project," in my
view, is a much
better
way of
concieving of the unit of social
life than
"system of activity."
In
particular, the
relation between the so-called
object and "system." For
a
project, the
aim is not something separate
which
gets added to the
system
of activity,
but is /immanent in the project
itself/. It is emergent.
It is
"realised." (2)
"Collaboration" is the
fundamental, normative
relationship
between people
of modern life. So it is an
adequate definition of what
we
need to be
studying when we do research
into human
life. We need to
understand collaboration. But fairly
few CHAT
researchers (let alone
anyone
else) make this
explicit and upfront.
Collaboration is only possible if
there is a project to collaborate on
and all
projects are collaborative.
Concepts originate as the immanent
realised
aims
of projects. So
collaborative projects form the
units of our
psychic life just as they
are
the units of
our social life. So as a unit of
/analysis/, collaborative
projects reflect collaborative
projects as the
*real* unit of social
life.
So you can
understand how excited I was to read
your article in /Theory
&
Psychology/!
Andy
Ivan Rosero wrote:
Well, bankruptcies can still make more
than a
few very rich, so the
"we"
and "our"
in this building of habitable
imaginaries presupposes a prior
set
of other imaginaries through to come
together
anew, and perhaps
differently, even if we think we
know each
other --or, in other words,
to
give each
other space to be other
things, to
be strangers in creative
ways
in order to have any hope of
reinventing and
in*forming what we do in
such
a way to make it more hospitable.
As it happens, one tendril that
continues to
pass through Town and
Country,
but is now much more active
elsewhere in
southeast San Diego, is a
strong
connection
to the food system change
movement,
which another graduate
student at LCHC is exploring
after having
dwelt for a while at T&C.
Here
is one of
its core members, Diane Moss
(quoted in
http://www.voiceofsandiego.**org/people/q_and_a/article_**
cde3547e-f6b1-11e0-bfba-**001cc4c03286.html<
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/people/q_and_a/article_cde3547e-f6b1-11e0-bfba-001cc4c03286.html
)
who we know personally,
answering a few
questions in a way that
concretizes
the shape of a few new
imaginaries that we
here at LCHC have been drawn
into:
*What happened when you came
back from that
workshop in 2008?*
I started seeing empty lots and
seeing they
could be used for other
purposes. I saw that we probably
had the
ability to grow our own food.
I bet on any block in
southeastern San
Diego,
somebody's growing
something
in their backyard: collard
greens, corn. We
started looking at how we
could
take that talent and start having
conversations about collective
growing
or
community gardens. Even though we
didn't use
the term "food desert" at
that
time, we talked about why we didn't
have the
same markets everyone else
has.
*Why didn't you like "food desert"?*
I thought desert meant nothing —
that
you had
nothing to build on. I
said,
well, we've got people who grow
things.
We're
not starting from
scratch.
But I
embraced it when I became
familiar with
another definition: that
there are more fast food outlets
than fresh
food outlets.
*You hadn't thought about access to
good food
in this community as a
problem before 2008?*
Southeastern San Diego always gets
tagged as a
community with lots of
problems. So here was another
negative tag
people put on this
community.
I
saw that we didn't have the
resources we
needed, but I didn't think of
it
in terms of
a food desert.
*What have been the biggest
challenges to
getting people involved?*
People say yes, we should have
gardens. But
it's difficult for people
to
change
their habits.
*How do you change habits?*
It takes time. Neighbors talking to
neighbors.
People taking a chance
to
do
something different.
-------
LCHC has been fortunate beyond any
expectation
to have entered into
this
new
collaboration and the mesh of actors it
pulls together.
Ivan
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 11:54
AM, Larry
Purss
<lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>>
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>>>>
wrote:
My response to this thread is an
extension
of the notion of
"ambivalence"
at the heart and soul of all
social
imaginaries.
It was mentioned that the
motivating force
to "keep going" without
clarity
of intention or goals is the
"felt
sense"
of social BANKRUPTCY
[economic
metaphor] in the current social
imaginary.
Zygmunt Bauman uses the
very
extreme
metaphor of "waste" in his 2004
book to stir the ambivalence
at
the
center of our current social
imaginary.
Ingold's article I recently
posted
captured the 12 century social
imaginary
where walking, texts,
architecture, discourse, and
contemplation
were all manifestations of
a
single
ontology. All these objects
expressed a social imaginary
that
did
not
have some of the object
"representing"
the "underlying" social
imaginary but rather were
ALL immanebt
manifestations of the SAME
social
imaginary.
Modernity [the tension between
enlightenment and romanitic
hermeneutical
ideas/ideals] also may have an
encompassing social
imaginary that has
a
fundamental rupture [ambivalence]
in the
notion of "representation" as
expressing some "underlying"
reality
[realization] when in
actuality the
modern
walks, texts, architecture,
discourses and
contemplations are
expressions of a monolithic
social
imaginary.
Bauman's analysis of
modernity [he
is an
"exile" from the holocaust]
has
situated ambivalence at the heart
of ALL
social imaginaries when
realized
express "order" or
"structure" which
requires LIMITING formations.
This is
the core idea of sociology.
Baumans
emancipatory vision for
sociological
imagination [in which he
generates
multiple metaphors] is to
explicate
the
ambivalence at the heart of
modernity
leading to social bankruptcy. It
is
the reality of this
ambivalence in our
current modern social imaginary
where Bauman locates hope
and the
possibility for emancipation
from
the
"waste
lands".
Bauman purposely is
exploring the
power of
the metaphor of "waste" to
grasp
the desolation of our current
arrangements. For Bauman the
metaphor of
"waste" as the by-product of our
"productions" in our "garden
contexts"
[another metaphor which the Nazi's
used to
create a social imaginary
where
Jews were "weeds" in the
garden] is
grasping the fundamental
ambivalence
at the heart of our social
bankruptcy.
For Bauman and many others
who are
searching for a new
orientation in
our
globalized planetary social
imaginary the
metaphor of "the suffering
stranger" travelling in the
waste
lands is
the moral calling
requiring a
response as a growing
"response-ability"
as a "skill" developing
within
a
"new commons".
We need new "practises" and
new "texts"
and also new discourses and
new
forms
of contemplation. However, I'm
wondering how central to
transcending
our current social
imaginary, which
is now
a wasteland, are new forms
of
architecture which express the
yearning to
respond to the suffering
stranger.
In summary, the larger
contexts being
explored may be
cultural-semiotic
imaginaries that must become realized
within a new commons which must
be
in*formed to "hold" the suffering
stranger
in our midst [difference
and
alterity and weeds and waste as the
ambivalence at the heart of the
modern
vision of the garden]
Accountability, measurement,
statistics,
as our current social
imaginary of
cultural and social "order"
at its
heart
has the cavity of the
suffering
stranger that is now calling for a
response and a new cultural and
social
order in a new commons which
must be
in*formed as our
response-ability
to
the call of the other.
Bauman's notion of "waste"
and "waste
lands" as by-products of our
globalized social imaginary
calls
for an
alternative social imaginary
that
exists in the ambivalence at the
heart of
our current world order.
Larry
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 9:57
AM, Ivan
Rosero <irosero@ucsd.edu
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>>
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>>>>
wrote:
Arturo, two things coincide for
me in
reading your email: 1) I've
been
working for the last 4 years in the
same collaboration that
Lecusay,Downing-Wilson,Cole have
written about, and 2) I
too share
the
following concern:
----
CHAT keeps operating
with a process
and methodological
ontology whereby the
individual and
the social are
inseparable but
does not provide a clear cut
language
of description of how the
social
structure shapes activity or,
to put
it in Seeger's terms,
how power
shapes discourse (and
consciousness
and identy).
----
As the authors have
described, the
community setting in
which this
latest
of LCHC's projects has
unfolded
does
not permit even the
relatively
loose
structures that were the
hallmarks of
previous 5D projects
--this is
where
the ad-hoc stumbling upon
interesting
things to do together is
such
an
important component of the dual
sense
of "appropriation". In the
social
space that has been
created between
LCHC and Town and
Country there
exists
(as I have experienced it over the
last four years) an enduring
liminality
that refuses to come to closure
--neither LCHC participants,
including
grad
students, staff, and undergraduate
students, nor T&C
participants
have
arrived at any definite
position vis a
vis what we are doing
together.
The
kids get older, new ones
arrive, some
teens have left, club
and group
structures change,
entire families
move out. UCSD's side
of the
story
is
more predictable in the
institutional
sense of allowing
year-on-year
planning of classes and
recruitment of
students, as well as, of
course,
the
staying power of UCSD as a much
longer
running process than the
collaboration itself.
But this can
only explain the brute
sense of
our
continued presence, one which
would be
impossible to impose in any
case,
so
that we still have to try and
explain
the delicate sense of our
continued
presence --what is
happening in the
space of this
cross-cultural/cross-**institutional
intersection that keeps
pulling
together
(in a delicate way) such a
heterogenous amalgam of
participants --a
constant churn of
undergraduate
buddies, a more stable
set of grad
students, a constant,
but slowly
changing, stream of
kids, Ms. V.,
and
the
few community parents that
regularly
lend a hand?
You and Andy have said that
there must
be some kind of crisis, and
this
may
be so, but if this is what is
allowing
the participants to come
together
anew, it is not the kind
of crisis
that can be compared to,
say,
Occupy
Wall Street, or Greece, or the Arab
Spring. It might be
that I lack
the
requisite social
imagination,
but the
way I see it, what is
special
about
this collaboration is
that it holds
together without
disclosing to
its
participants directly how this is
happening. We have been
at it for
four
years, and it isn't
obvious to
me why,
as a T&C elder says, we
"keep
on
keeping on". This is
especially true
in light of severe, and
recurrent,
frustrations on every
side. For
example, in the absence
of UCSD
students,
homework does not get done
nearly as
regularly as when they
are there
--this creates a huge
problem
for Ms.
V, who must still try to
satisfy
this
community need in our absence.
Sometimes we at LCHC find
ourselves
at
odds
with local customs and
decisions, to
which we nevertheless
submit in
order
to keep on keeping on. But
where are
we keeping on to?
(Especially
without access to clear-cut
language
with which to explain any of
this!)
So, these kinds of
open-ended
interactional spaces elicit
from their
participants a degree of
patience that
is rarely seen anywhere
--more
or
less equally distributed!
Southeast
San Diego, where T&C is
located,
is
not unique in all the
ways that its
inhabitants are
systematically
marginalized, and it is
a fact that
local community
organizers (I've
been
at some of their
meetings) look on
UCSD and charitable
institutions
with
very suspicious eyes.
In the
face of
these realities, mutual
appropriation
is one factor, but not a wholly
explanatory one for the
loose
holding-together that is
going
on here.
Whatever the answers
are, it is
impossible for me to
conceive of a
satisfying explanation that
does not
include
affective-imaginative
dimensions. The way I
see it, the
mystery here is not how
power/structure
shapes discourse/activity, it
is why
this collaboration holds
in the
face
of what would normally be
insurmountable
difficulties. Good
will and
patience all around? Maybe,
but this
only pushes the question
deeper
into
the affective-imaginative life
of this
collaboration.
Ivan
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 6:26
PM, Andy
Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>>
wrote:
Continuing my sharing of the
current edition of
Theory &
Psyhology,
attached are scans
of Deborah
Downing-Wilson, Robert
Lecusay and
Mike
Cole's paper (which I have
been so
excited about) and
the first 16
pages
of
Yrjo Engestrom's paper (I have
omitted the case study)
which is a
concise
synopsis of his current views on
activity and concepts.
Andy
Andy Blunden wrote:
That's a very interesting
series of
points, Arturo!
Could I just ask
you to
elaborate a
little on
what you
meant by
"the
unconscious in sign-making"
and "the problem of
fetishism
of the
sign."
I guess that you are right that in
almost any social
context (the US
included I suspect),
the kind
of project that
Mike writes
about can
only be
implemented by surruptitiously
moving the goal
posts set
by the
recognised
authorities, by a kind of
subversion, making
use of
openings
created
by
manifest social crisis.
As I'm sure you know, I
am in
agreement with your
critique
of the
failure
to satisfactorily "marry"
psychological
concepts with
sociological
concepts, in CHAT or
anywhere
else for that
matter. But
doesn't the
kind of
project Mike is talking about,
where goals are
immanent in the
project
itself, and the project is
thoroughly and
explicitly
collaborative,
go
some
way to addressing this problem?
Andy
Arturo Escandon
wrote:
Just wanted to
point out
that there
are places
where you cannot
even
think of implementing a
simple plain
standard
design
experiment,
let
alone an ad-hoc
intervention
because
educational
settings and
institutions are
thought
to be mere
knowledge
reproduction-distribution
centers.
Research
is the
job of the
Ministry
of Education. "Joint activity"?
What
on Earth is that in
Japan except
the illusion of freedom
framed under
top-down
cosmological
structure.
I am afraid that
most of
the cases
depicted
in the
journal are a
reproduction
of the
cultural
conditions
existing in few
settings,
in
few communities, in a
handful of
countries. Am I
able to
implement
an
intervention
or mutual
appropriation in the
Japanese
educational
context? No.
Am I
able to
do it in "local
communities", yes, but
under
considerable restrictions.
However, I
am guessing that the most
effective
interventions in
local
communities
spring
from social
crisis, not from
planned
activity,
that is, some
sort of
punctuated
equilibrium in
which the
community
changes
or perish.
I am very
curious about
(1) how the
structural
constraints and
affordances of
organisations
themselves
shape those
mutual
appropriations and
how we
can account for
them; (2)
how the
mediating
means
themselves are
unequally
distributed
(knowledge
differential):
in order to bridge the
differences
established by
the lack of a
common
repertoire of meanings you have to
engage in meaning
making, creating
in fact a new
differential; (3) the
unconscious in
sign-making or
using activity.
Educational
activity
brings
consciousness at the
expense of
bringing
unconsciousness as
well. I
have not read a
single
decisive work
addressing
the problem of
fetishism
of the sign, on
which a
theory of the
uncosciousness could be
integrated into
CHAT,
except for works
that deal
with the
problem of
"the
ideal".
Seeger asks
the right
questions
but I believe
there is
much more
out
there about ways of
marriaging
psychology and
sociology to
give a
better
account of
agency.
At the end,
the issues
raised by Sawyer
are
still relevant:
CHAT keeps
operating with a
process and
methodological
ontology whereby the individual and
the social are
inseparable but
does not provide a
clear
cut language of
description
of how the
social
structure shapes activity or,
to put
it in Seeger's terms,
how power
shapes discourse (and
consciousness and
identy).
Best
Arturo
On 10
November 2011
23:41,
Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>>
wrote:
The current
edition of
Theory &
Psychology
looks very
special. I
admit I
have at this stage only
actually
read the article by
Mike Cole,
Robert
Lecusay and Deborah Downing-Wilson,
but it is a special issue on
CHAT
and
interventionist
methodology, with
articles
by a
number
of people
from
Yrjo
Engestrom's
CRADLE and
also Falk
Seeger, who
is guest
editing the
Special
Issue of
MCA on
Emotions.
Mike's
article
elaborates on
what the
participants call a
"mutual
appropriation"
approach to
developing
theory and
practice.
Instead
of
implementing a project design
and then
modifying it in the light of
the
reseacher's experience, the
researchers go in to a
local community
with
very
open ended
ideas about
how and what
they want
to
achieve, and
engage
with
their
community
partner,
learn
about
their (the
partner's)
project,
offer
assistance and
resources and share
knowledge and
objectives and
....
mutually
appropriate.
The article
describes
the
results of a
specific
project which is an exemplar of
"mutual appropriation"
which has
grown
out
of the 5thD
after-school
programs
which
LCHC began in
the 1980s.
The
article is
actually
very
moving.
I
personally think
that this
kind
of
work is
tackling the
main
problem in
front
of us
cultural-historical
cultural
psychology
people
today.
If you
don't
subscribe to
Theory
&
Psychology, I don't
know how you
can get
to read the
paper. Maybe
someone
has a
solution
there.
But it is a
must read.
I will
read the
remaining
articles in the special issue, but
this is a real high.
Andy
--
------------------------------****----------------------------**--**------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA:
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<http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1>
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------------------------------****----------------------------**--**
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*Andy Blunden*
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http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1>
<
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http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
Home Page:
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--
------------------------------**------------------------------**
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Home Page:
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-- Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
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*Andy Blunden*
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--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
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Department of Communication
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*Andy Blunden*
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