Re: [xmca] Taking culture into account/Doing harm?

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

On Jul 26, 2012, at 10:57 AM, White, Phillip wrote:

> so, yes, Huw, i'd say that "colonization in this context was of an enforced mediation", buttressed with the assumption that modern is superior, and clearly it can unwittingly play out in the uses of CHAT epistemologies.

Hi Phillip,

I can't resist joining in your conversation, albeit briefly for the moment (errands to run!). You're talking about topics that interest me greatly: cultural differences in epistemology, and technology; questions of education for indigenous cultures. At this point just let me mention briefly something I've brought up on xmca before: that Marx, towards the end of his life, was keeping 'ethnographic notebooks' that contained his reflections on reading ethnographies of indigenous peoples, including those in the US at the time. He seemed to be considering the possibility that there is *not* a single trajectory to history; that various routes are possible, and that some indigenous groups had established a (largely) socialist kind of organization without any of the infrastructure that standard Marxist theory insists is necessary.

I do think (and I have argued in print) that LSV took from Marx and Hegel a specific view of history that led him into difficulties in seeing that indigenous people are not psychologically primitive. The question would then be what would be a more adequate view of history, and what would a CHAT psychology based on it look like?

Martin
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