Re: [xmca] Re: Luria - New Vodka Old Bottle PDF

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

Mike,
Much appreciate your reply. I had just finished your article that you
pointed us to, so it was very timely.
Yet I'm still wondering about what you think of the possibilities for
either an Experimental Anthropology or for an Ethnographic Psychology?
In my grad department, we had a group of clinical psych folks who called
their group "Clinical Ethnography", but that's still something different
from a mainstream psych department saying that ethnography is an important
part of psych.
And even harder to imagine is a mainstream Anthropology department that
would allow the term "experimental" within 100 feet of their buildings
(clove cigarette smokers are okay closer in, but not psychologists!).
Will these fields alway sit at the fringes, periodically being re-zoned as
either barely inside or just outside as these disciplinary boundaries
expand and contract?
-greg
p.s. if anyone has a pdf of An Unorthodox Ethnography, I'd be much
appreciative.



On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 9:17 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am returning to Greg's original message to provide a little background
> that may be relevant to the discussion. With reference to my use of Nadel
> and the idea that I was Professor of Experimental Anthropology and
> Ethnographic Psychology, see
>
>
> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/People/MCole/Zone%20of%20Proximal%20Development0001.pdf
>
> I was able to create that title for myself because I was part of an
> extraordinary interdisciplinary group
> at UC Irvine in the late 1960's before I went to Rockefeller University,
> where I was allowed to retain
> the same title in a "group" of "behavioral scientists".
>
> The second chapter of The Cultural Context of Learning and Thinking (gay,
> glick, and sharp coauthors)
> was entitled something like "An unorthodox ethnography" ( I do not have a
> copy to hand, but that was
> the idea. It was unorthodox (read amateurish) in many ways, one of which
> was to try to follow through
> on the following idea, which we formulated on the basis of common sense,
> but which Leontiev crowned
> as follows:
>
> In studying the development of the child psyche, we must therefore start by
> analyzing the child's activity, as this activity is built up in the
> concrete conditions of its life..(1981, p. 395).
>
> My Soviet colleagues thought I was nuts, by the way. A desecration of the
> important ideas of LS
> Vygotsky about the Zone of Proximal Development. I am certain they are
> correct, but I like some of the ideas anyway.
>
> :-)
> mike
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Greg Thompson
> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > 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
> >
> >
>
>


-- 
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