Re: [xmca] the spirt and value(s) of CHAT research

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

I wanted to highlight a key point from the Bird-David article [on page S80]
which is a commentary by Alf Hornberg  responding to the Bird-David
article. Alf Hornberg wrote,

"If the presence or absence of 'relatedness' is a general existential
problem, Bird-David has adressed nothing less than the problem of modernity
itself. Yet there are few indications that the argument belongs within a
wider TRADITION than a rather parochial anthropological concern with
animism.  There is no mention for instance, of Weber's 'disenchantment',
Merleau-Ponty's 'being-in-the-world' or Buber's I-Thou relationship. These
are connections which deserve to be elaborated. It is curious how the
phenomenological jargon on 'being-in-the-world' has infiltrated ecological
anthropology [see also Ingold, 1996] without any mention of the sources of
these concepts [see Gouch, 1998]"

I don't share the notion that Bird-David is parochial, but I do see
Bird-David's theme of looking to ethnographic data, and Continental
Philosophy's theme of looking back at our own historical origins as asking
similar questions concerning the same general existential problem of how we
are connected to the world and earth.  There are multiple
disciplinary discourses responding to the existential themes of our
relatedness in the world. These shared questions are a response to a shared
sense of how WE are searching and re-searching for ways to orient to our
shared sense of world.

Larry

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Ivan, Phillip, et al.,
>
> Perhaps helpful?
>
> Martin
>
>
>
> On Jul 26, 2012, at 12:02 PM, Ivan Rosero wrote:
>
> > Seems the other thread arrived here, and now needs its own heading.  This
> > is especially directed to any among you who find it
> difficult-to-impossible
> > to articulate what the "science" of CHAT might be absent specific
> > questions, intentions, and projects.  I know we've got our "Romantic
> > Science", but that's a luxury of the inner speech of this community.
> > Outside the fuzzy embrace of our shared discourse --like, e.g., in
> > applying for grants and begging for jobs-- we're asked to "design",
> > "implement", "deliver", "measure", "account", and "asses".  I share
> Andy's
> > distaste for critiques of current Vygotsky-inspired research that rely on
> > totalizations that few of us, if any, make.  Instead, as the other post
> > helps us to understand, we're riddled with misgivings about the value(s)
> of
> > our research, rather than comfortably confident in the "results" we
> arrive
> > at.  At least this is true for me (apologies if I've offended anyone so
> > far).
> >
> > Our starting point is socially formed, culturally-constituted,
> > multi-historically dependent consciousness.  To me, there is no "prying"
> > this open (that's scientistic talk).  Many of our forefathers (or perhaps
> > this is just an effect of translation into English) unfortunately speak
> of
> > "penetrating" this amalgam (where one might stand to carry out this
> > tactical maneuver eludes me).  I think we have no choice but to "enter
> and
> > dwell" into this view of human consciousness, slowly and with an animist
> > spirit, but not from outside --rather moving from one inside to another
> > inside in the very same process of working/walking with others.  To do
> > what?  To create the value(s) of research --because these don't exist
> > beforehand (that's a luxury of established scientism).
> >
> > So I'll end with a worry I've had for a while.  Along with romantic
> > science, I think many of us harbor a, perhaps implicit, notion of
> "romantic
> > research".  Is the latter really viable in the bean-counting milieu of
> what
> > dominant academia understands as "scientific" research?
> >
> > Ivan
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
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>
>
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