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Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
To clarify my previous question, I was referring to the article that Mike
sent around which mentioned that his post at Rockefeller University was as
a Professor of Experimental Anthropology and Ethnographic Psychology. I
thought these both sounded like fascinating names for academic units and
was wondering about what ever happened to them since I don't recall having
come across either of these juxtapositions of terms.
I should clarify that I ask the question as someone trained in Cultural
Psychology/Psychological Anthropology. And the word on the street is that
the trend in Anthropology over the past 15 years or so seems to have been
towards not re-hiring psych anthro people for positions in Anthro
departments that have been held by psych anthro people. In other words,
psych anthro seems to be losing momentum. (but perhaps this is more
pendulum swinging than it is a slowing of forward motion?).
Along these same lines, anthropologists seems to often have hostility
toward psychologists. I have watched a number of attacks on psychology by
anthropologists. A favorite was a rather eloquent talk given by an anthro
grad student about how the field of psychology assumes an "hypostatized
subject". I happen to agree with her argument, but don't agree with her
takeaway - to banish psychology from the social sciences. I see this kind
of critique as one side of a two-sided stupidity, where each side
criticizes the other side without seeing that the other side has something
that their side lacks. (and American politics is dominated by the same type
of thinking).
I'm a little less familiar with the other side - that of Psychology, but
from what I've seen, the idea of an Ethnographic Psychology would really be
appreciated only by a small number of fringe Psychological researchers.
Just thinking of it would make most psychological researchers run and hide
at the thought of poor internal validity and reliability.
It seems that these academic fields develop a center of gravity that makes
it very difficult for anything not in close orbit to be considered to be
real and worthwhile. And so sure, disciplines have their value as a means
of specialization of methods and such, but what I am objecting to is a
different kind of discipline - the kind that excludes combinations that
appear to core researchers in the field to be unrecognizable.
Mike has two early pieces that speak directly to this problem and, imho,
make these points quite nicely (much better than above). The first is a
chapter titled "Ethnographic Psychology of Cognition - So Far" in George
Spindler's book The Making of Psychological Anthropology. Here is a long
url to the google book (which is worth looking at solely for the picture of
Mike in it circa 1975!):
http://books.google.com/books?id=8NAh8MqAO_8C&pg=PA612&lpg=PA612&dq=rockefeller+university+ethnographic+psychology&source=bl&ots=IUbReJGeiL&sig=fEqik0Wptm0VMu9w0DR6UYm19NU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R8PsUYm2C8mzyAHloIGgBQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rockefeller%20university%20ethnographic%20psychology&f=false
And the second is titled "Toward an Experimental Anthropology of Education":
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3195588?uid=3739928&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102483831431
Sorry for the long urls (haven't figured out tiny url yet). (and
maybe someone else can make the pdf's available? I didn't want to infringe
on copyrights).
So let me re-ask my question a bit more directly:
Mike, what happened to the departments (committees? groups?) that were
called Experimental Anthropology and Ethnographic Psychology?
And maybe they had a less certain existence to begin with; so, in what ways
did they exist in the first place? Were these departments or
sub-departments or committees or working groups? And were they funded?
And what followed from these two pieces you authored? Both pieces suggest
that they are only preliminary, did either of these concepts/fields get
picked up anywhere else? (I assume that they did in other guises, but I
feel that, despite running in the circles where one would expect to find
these combinations, I haven't seen/heard these terms used - but this may be
due to my ignorance...).
Very curious.
-greg
On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 10:18 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> Greg, I think that the answer is that these disciplines exist, but exist
> alongside a myriad of other such specialised disciplines, contributing to
> the fragmented image of the fragmented world we live in, which is presented
> by academia. What Vygotsky and Luria and Leontyev were offering was a
> General Psychology, as a foundation for a general, *interdisciplinary*
> science of human life. Nothing wrong with specialisation of course. Science
> is impossible without it. But Psychology, as the founders of CHAT imagined
> it, was interdisciplinary, I believe, rather than a discipline which
> defended its boundaries against encroachment, and carved out a niche for
> itself.
>
> Andy
>
>
> Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>> What ever happened to Ethnographic Psychology or Experimental
>> Anthropology?
>> In today's intellectual climate in Psychology and Anthropology, they feel
>> like oxymorons, or even impossibilities (and perhaps to some very
>> few, "cutting edge").
>> Seems like we're just going around in circles...
>> -greg
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:34 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Here is a review I wrote some years ago about Luria's Nature of Human
>>> Conflicts. It summarizes and provides illustrations of some of the issues
>>> we have been discussing while introducing others.
>>> Note that a few years ago, the book did appear in Russian based on
>>> reconstruction of the original
>>> manuscript by Victor Belopolsky. It is my impression that the book is
>>> little known or appreciated in Russia but I might be mistaken.
>>> For what its worth
>>> mike
>>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 3:28 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi BJ-- I will get the article reviewing luria referred to in earlier
>>>> message next.
>>>>
>>>> There is an attachment here. Call it, Cole Review of Nature of Human
>>>> Conflicts and put it under the Nature of Human Conflicts on the Luria
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Pubs
>>>
>>>
>>>> page and on the page "about" luria.
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Brittany Loy <brittanyloy0217@pointloma.edu**>
>>>> Date: Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:02 AM
>>>> Subject: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF
>>>> To: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> attached
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
>
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://marxists.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
>
>
>
--
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