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[xmca] comtext



Mikr, I think it isd no so much that teh word "context" is polysemic (though thank you for pointing that out!) but rather that the context itsdelf is polysemic. In fact "poly" understates the case. It is a totality. Whenever we go to descrobed the contaxt we take it to be an activity setting or a frame, or a discourse, or a strategic situation, or figures world or whatever, and every on of these approaches to interpretaiton offers its own shade to the rich texture woven together in context.

But in the actiivty approach to understanding an action, we have two questions provided by the "context" - what is the activity providing teh more remote motivation for the action, and what are teh conditions in which teh action may be realised - i.e. what tools and symbols are ready at hand to afford the action.

Manfred's article that we discussed explained this very well think. It is the psychologivally relevant meaning which has to be extracted form the polysemic context.

Andy

mike cole wrote:
That is an interesting observation, Larry.

Wertsch and Zinchenko have used "mediation action in context" as a central
concept in "socio-cultural studies." Engestrom declares that the activity
is the context.

Just leaving it at action-in-context sure does provide a lot of options for
the analytic work of specifying what the referent of the term, context, is.
And since context is
a notoriously polysemic notion, it also allows for lots of people to
talk/write right past each other without noticing there is fairy dust in
the air. The same is true
of course, of people who write about activity but neglect to specify the
object(ive) and often other aspects such as the division of labor of the
activity they claim to be studying.

That three sequence attribution of change in LSV's ideas appears to be
becoming canonical.

mike


On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:47 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

Mike, thanks for this website.
I read through the keynote speakers themes and I noticed the concept
*activity* was not highlighted but the concept *action* was noted.
I am re-reading Jussi's article on the pluralism of vygotsky's
interpretations.
It explores a behavioral, then an instrumental gestalt mediational
epistemology and suggests a third epistemological break  [as semiotic sign
mediation]. May be relevant to our current discussion.
This notion of 3 epistemological breaks, with the shift from signs being
instrumental tools for *self* mastery to a semiotic mediational model is
made an explicit distinction in Jussi's work.
larry



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