Andy, your article on Vygotsky's unit of analysis [the general in the
particular] contrasted with the particular [in its ideographic
concreteness] is an excellent source, However, the Wikipedia article
captures the multiple transformations and expansion AS a
cultural-historical perspective that was intriguing.
larry
On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:30 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
Andy,
As I read through this article on THE system concept [or system
concepts?] I was reflecting on the process of the *development* of
a concept, using the term *system* as an example of this
developmental process through time. The transformation and
expansion of the concept since 1945 has been breathtaking and the
way it has risen to the concrete is phenomenal.
Is there a similar article which *defines* the concept of *unit of
analysis* and the expansion of this concept through time?
This approach used in the Wikipedia article seems to be an
effective strategy for *grasping* a concept [such as *system*
or *unit of analysis*]
Thanks Andy for this Wikipedia source.
larry
On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 11:20 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Antti, here is a link to th eWikipedia on "System concept"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
Why do Activity Theorists in Engstrom's current of thinking
mix up the idea of a system concept with a unit of analysis?
Andy
Antti Rajala wrote:
Greg,
You asked:
”My question is getting at where we locate "agency". In
individuals alone?
Or as possibly being distributed among multiple people and
perhaps in
amanner that isn't recognizable to the individual. But
maybe there is
aconcept for that that is different from "double stimulation.”
I think that double stimulation can be analyzed not only
at the individual
level but at the collective level as well. Actually, the
study of Engeström
and Sannino (2013) that I referred to in my earlier email
gives a nice
example. The study also involves in some respects a
similar situation as
the one that you described having taken place with the
workers in Malaysia.
According to my reading, the study describes a change
laboratory
intervention taking place in a university library. The
library as invited
researchers to help them find new forms of work with
research groups. A
first stimulus emerges in the course of the change
laboratory intervention,
as a member of one of the research groups that the
university library is
delivering services says that they can find these services
in the internet
without the help of the library. Thus a problem emerges
for the librarians
to collectively produce a service that would be genuinely
helpful for the
research groups.
In solving this problem, they organize their collective
action with the
help of a second stimulus, namely the concept of
knotworking (Engeström,
Engeström & Vähäaho, 1999) that the researchers have
introduced in the
beginning of the change laboratory. In particular, a new
working group, a
knot, is formed that starts to work with the emergent
problem of inventing
a useful service.
What is in my opinion very innovative, Engeström and
Sannino also provide
an example of this second stimulus, the concept of
knotworking, becoming an
initial theoretical generalization that is reworked and
enriched through a
process of ascending from abstract to concrete as the
intervention evolves.
Specifically, in the end of the intervention, the concept
of knotworking
gives rise to many concrete, practical applications of the
librarians' work
at multiple levels of hierarchy.
As for the unit of analysis, I think that the unit of
analysis in the study
is the intersection of several activity systems, the
university libarary
and the research groups, In terms of agency, one can maybe
talk about
shared transformative agency in which the subject is not
an individual but
a collective. (More about shared transformative agency,
see Virkkunen’s
paper in http://www.activites.org/v3n1/v3n1.book.pdf#page=43)
Best wishes, Antti
On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 6:57 PM, <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
<mailto:ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>> wrote:
forgot to send this to XMCA
-----Forwarded by ERIC RAMBERG/spps on 06/06/2013
10:56AM -----
To: ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
From: ERIC RAMBERG/spps
Date: 06/06/2013 09:05AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
True true, the history of philosophy does lead there
Andy. But that leads
to my trepidations regarding ideology lacking in practice.
What substance within conscious formation is measurable?
I believe that answer has yet to be found
perhaps?
eric
-----xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> wrote: -----
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
From: Andy Blunden
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: 06/05/2013 08:42PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
Eric,
By posiing the problem as that of the Kantian dilemma,
of unifying two
disparate abstractions, you determine the answer as
from the history of
philosophy and the answer is Hegel's answer: "a
formation of
consciousness" or Gestalt des Bewusstsein.
Andy
ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <mailto:ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
wrote:
I believe that this discussion needs to involve
"unit of analysis" for
what it is that provides the mediational method.
What unit of study can properly encapsulate that
which is being observed?
Activity? Concept? Word? Mirror Neuron?
Oh my what a great temptest LSV did let out of the
teapot
eric
-----xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> wrote: -----
To: "xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
From: Achilles Delari Junior
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: 06/05/2013 07:04AM
Subject: RE: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
Sure, Greg,
Well, seems to me that "draw analogies between
different domains of
their worlds" is closer to "meaning construction"
than to choice a
"stimulus medium" to help memory tasks, for
instance. The "double
stimulation" is fine because introduces a kind of
mediation between a
stimulus and our response to the stimulus. But,
following Vygotsky's
formulations at that time this new series of
"stimulus" (a nude, a
word, etc) act also as a stimulus, a conditioned
one. If you change
you paradigm to the proposition that all sign
implies any kind of
"generalization process" (meaning) that differs in
their structure and
has a genetic construction (see the studies about
concepts, for
instance), a sign could not be only a second
series of stimuli ruled
by the same laws that a conditional reflex... As
in "Instrumental
method": S-------X-------R. Where the relation
S---------R is a direct
stimulus response relationship, but when you
introduce a second series
of stimulus "X" (double stimulation) you have an
indirect stimulus
response relationship, but the relation between S
and X, and X and R
remain a conditioned reflex relationship... "Draw
analogies between
different domains of our worlds" seem to mean that
we are in transit
between different words of signification, and
culture is a human
production that involves the "generalization" from
a world to another,
broader, maybe not exactly more precise, but
"broader", in my opinion.
I don't know...
"In natural memory a direct associative
(conditional reflex)
connection A?B is established between two stimuli
A and B. In
artificial, mnemotechnic memory of the same
impression, by means of a
psychological tool X (a knot in a handkerchief, a
mnemonic scheme)
instead of the direct connection A?B two new ones
are established: A?X
and X?B Just like the connection A?B each of them
is a natural
conditional reflex process, determined, by the
properties of the brain
tissue. What is new, artificial, and instrumental
is the fact of the
replacement of one connection A?B by two
connections: A?X and X?B They
lead to the same result, but by a different path.
What is new is the
artificial direction which the instrument gives to
the natural process
of establishing a conditional connection, i.e.,
the active utilization
of the natural properties of brain tissue."
Vygotsky "The Instumental
Method" (this is 1930)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/instrumental.htm
But already in 1928:
"Let us now compare the natural and cultural
mnemonics of a child. The
relation between the two forms can be graphically
expressed by means
of a triangle: in case of natural memorization a
direct associative or
conditional reflexive connection is set up between
two points, A and
B. In case of mnemotechnical memorization,
utilizing some sign,
instead of one associative connection AB, the
others are set up AX and
BX, which bring us to the same result, but in a
roundabout way. Each
of these connections AX and BX is the same kind of
conditional-reflexive process of connection as
AB." Vygotsky (1928)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1929/cultural_development.htm
See: "AX and BX is the same kind of
conditional-reflexive process of
connection as AB." --> The same kind... This
paradigm will not be the
same in 1933-34...
"(Introduction: the importance of the sign; its
social meaning). In
older works we ignored that the sign has meaning.
< But there is “a
time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together”
(Ecclesiastes). > We proceeded from the principle
of the constancy of
meaning, we discounted meaning. But the problem of
meaning was already
present in the older investigations. Whereas
before our task was to
demonstrate what “the knot” and logical memory
have in common, now our
task is to demonstrate the difference that exists
between them.From
our works it follows that the sign changes the
interfunctional
relationships." (Vygotsky, 1933-34)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/problem-consciousness.htm
And now?
Thank you.
Achilles.
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 18:31:23 -0600
Subject: Re: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
<mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Achilles,
Sounded interesting, but I'm not sure I
followed you completely. You
say
that Strathern's quote seems like it has a
broader application that
"double
stimulation", but I could use some help with
the rest of your message.
If you have a few minutes, maybe you could try
rephrasing?
-greg
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Achilles
Delari Junior <
achilles_delari@hotmail.com
<mailto:achilles_delari@hotmail.com>> wrote:
In my undertanding, this is very broader
and more powerful than
double
stimulation... Double stimulation could be
overcoming with another
way for
think signs than "medium stimulus" - See
"The problem of
consciousness"
(1933-34), for instance. The more
important will be not the
similarity
between a nude and a word, but their
difference, "before was
forgotten that
sign had a meaning" and "now" the meaning
must be take in account.
Double
stimulation, in my understanding, do not
resists to this new point
of view.
Achilles.
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 06:19:04 -0600
From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
<mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>;
lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>;
antti.rajala@helsinki.fi
<mailto:antti.rajala@helsinki.fi>
CC:
Subject: [xmca] Double Stimulation?
I wonder if this quote by Marilyn
Strathern can be productively
connected
(not necessarily geneaologically, but
ideologically) to the
notion of
"double stimulation" (which I am just
now trying to figure out):
"Culture consists in the way people
draw analogies between
different
domains of their worlds" (1992: 47).
-greg
--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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