Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995
From: Stanton Wortham (swortham@abacus.bates.edu)
Subject: Review of Wertsch et al
Sociocultural agency: an unfinished project
A Review of: Wertsch, J., Tulviste, P., & Hagstrom, F.
(1993). A sociocultural approach to agency.
In E. Forman, N. Minick, & C. Stone,
Contexts for learning (pp.336-356). New York: Oxford.
This is an ambitious chapter. It aims to use insights from the sociocultural tradition to reframe three venerable questions in the human sciences: (1) can we causally explain human action with reference to agents, and if so what is the nature of these agents? (2) can we give an integrated account of the micro-social and the macro-social? (3) can intelligence be recast as heterogeneous and not unified?
The authors do not claim to answer these questions definitively, but they do sketch sociocultural approaches to each. Their intuitions are appealing. Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom suggest that we should not ground explanations of action in isolated individuals, but instead in the indissoluble unit of persons and their sociocultural situations. They suggest that we must expand our accounts of socioculturally mediated action to include the role of macrosocial factors in both intermental and intramental functioning. And they suggest that a sociocultural, macrosocially-sensitive account requires a heterogeneous, domain- specific account of intelligence.
The authors begin with a question: "who is it who carries out mental processes" (p.339)? Western psychologists traditionally posit an individual agent, separated from social and historical context. Against this view, the authors make two arguments. First, "socially distributed cognition" cannot be explained solely with reference to individual agents. Second, thought is so bound up with mediators from outside the skin that we cannot isolate a pre-social agent that drives intramental processes.
As an alternative construct, Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom suggest "mediated agency" to explain the origin and structure of mental processes. This construct acknowledges the essential interrelation of sociocultural and intrapsychological factors in cognition. Accounts of mediated agency do not take refuge in decontextualized mental states, but instead explore the multi- layered reality of thought. After sketching this alternative, the authors claim that it should be expanded in two directions. First, we must recognize that mediational means (cognitive tools) carry influences from the larger society, and thus we need macrosocial factors in our psychological explanations. Second, our sociocultural accounts of intelligence should acknowledge the domain specificity of human mental functioning. This domain specificity fits neatly with a sociocultural account, as the intermental and macrosocial precursors of individual thought are themselves heterogeneous.
The authors should be commended for tackling such crucial issues as agency, the macro-micro link, and the heterogeneity of intelligence. I also sympathize with their larger project: to recast such issues, using a more sociocentric account of thought and action. In my view, however, two things must be done for this project to bear fruit. First, each of these large issues requires much more extended treatment, to work through the implications of a sociocultural reframing. Second, the authors need to push the more radical implications of their perspective harder than they do. I will illustrate these two points with reference to the sociocultural reframing of agency.
Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom give a plausible account of how "the nature of individuals' mental functioning can be understood only by beginning with a consideration of the social system in which it exists" (p.340). Note, however, that this is much weaker than the claim that all agency is essentially social. A defender of individual agency could grant any amount of social mediational means, but still claim that the causal origin of an action lies in the individual's intention to perform the act. The same could be said for distributed cognition. Perhaps the cognitive processes are stretched over many people, but the causal origin of the act might well still lie in an individual's intention.
The construct "agency" is meant to explain what caused an act. If we trace the causal chain behind an action, what entity initiates that chain? What explains my smashing the piggy-bank with the hammer? It's true that the hammer is a social tool, but wasn't my intention the ultimate cause? To give a sociocentric answer to the question of agency, we will have to move beyond mechanisms, to an essentially collective account of causes.
There are alternative non-individualist accounts of agency. For behaviorists, the ultimate causes of human action lie in the environment, not in the individual. Sociological determinism casts macrosocial forces as the causes of individuals' actions. I am relatively sure that Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom do not want to follow either the behaviorists or social determinists. They want an account that genuinely bridges the inter- and intramental. I worry, however, that their use of "internalization" to connect the individual and the social locks them into dualism, and thus blocks an adequate reconstrual of the agency problem. My own predilections tend toward a more radical attempt to overcome the dualism inherent in both individualist and determinist accounts. Whether it involves internalization or not, however, we should follow Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom in working on a sociocultural alternative to individual intentions.
Stanton Wortham, Bates College
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: Stanton Wortham (swortham@abacus.bates.edu)
Subject: Agency
I'd like to clarify my comments on agency, which appeared in the review of Wertsch et al. By arguing that the authors' claims about thought were "weaker" than an overarching sociocentric view of agency, I did not mean to criticize their arguments as weak. What I meant was that discussions of agency _specifically in the context of discussing what "agent" drives thought processes_ are more circumscribed than discussions of agency in general.
One way into the agency problem is the one Wertsch et al take: to examine what entity lies "behind" thought processes. But the more general problem is the question of causes -- the question of what entity lies behind human action in general. So my intent was not to impugn the argument as weak, but instead to urge the authors to expand their sociocentric account to the more general problem of agency.
I agree with Jesper Dopping that casting the problem as one of "agency" tends to favor an individualistic solution. The traditional way of asking the question is: when we trace back the chain of causes behind a human action, where does the initial cause lie? This predisposes us to a Cartesian solution, where we end up with an individual "agent" -- a sort of homunculus. Wertsch et al are right that psychologists often uncritically adopt this sort of account in grounding their explanations of thought.
But I still think that we lack a worked out alternative. I agree with Wertsch et al that a more sociocentric account is appealing. But what exactly would it look like? Should we give up looking for "causes" in human action (is the notion of causality part of the problem)? Or can we find causes that fit a sociocentric view, without falling into social determinism?
Dualism seems to leave us with an either-or choice: either the causes are individual, or social/material (ie, external), or there is some sort of non-synthetic combination. My worry about internalization was that the concept locks us into this unappealing choice. Perhaps we could get beyond this, to a new way of casting the problem. But I make no claim to have such an account myself, and I think it will require more work.
Stanton Wortham
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: Alfred Lang (lang@psy.unibe.ch)
Subject: Re: Review of Wertsch et al (Agency and social & cultural order)
Agency -- indeed, a most interesting question. I think the crucial point is what we can mean by "agency" and how it comes to be what we conceive it to. Is it to be understood, and in what respect, as more or other than a version of the so much abused notion of "subject"? What kind of "causation" can be attributed to agents? How re they "caused" themselves? Unfortunately, at this time I cannot discuss details, because I haven't yet seen the chapter.
Alfred Lang
Psychology, Univ. of Bern,
Unitobler, Muesmattstr.
45, CH-3000 Bern 9
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin@oise.on.ca)
Subject: Re: Review of Wertsch et al (Agency and social & cultural order)
Hi fellow xmca-ers,
This is an interesting topic, and one that I've been wrestling with... so would really like to hear more from you from different perspectives...
I happened to come across this from reading Lave last night...
"... human agency is constitutive of, and at the same time constituted
by, the social and cultural order..."
I suspect Giddens' structuration theory would have something to do with it? This may also involve the many different positions and versions or interpretations of "social constructionism" which is by no means a well-defined perspective...
Just throwing out some ideas!
Yours,
Angel M.Y. Lin
Doctoral Candidate
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 95
From: Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN@mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Subject: Agency
It seems possible that neither causality nor dualism are the central issue. In any interactional model one must suppose that agency is for the most part a retrospective account of trajectory, itself a recursive interplay between the developing organism (with it's own increasingly individuated requirements) and the (also developing) ecosocial systems which nourish, constrain, and inform it. Is there ever a point where we can say the individual has complete control or a point where we can say it has none? I think not but, depending upon the question one is pursuing, it might make sense to model it as such (even if the assumption is rather unrealistic) or similarly to develop models in which the individual need be given no special status at all; e.g., from certain biological perspectives at least, the individual is "simply" another self-organizing ecological system composed of trillions of similarly self-organizing systems (cells) and googols of interconnections (many of which intersect larger scale networks). The same could also be said about social systems I suspect but which is "inside" which, the individual or society, may be a distinction not worth making.
I recall that one of my first questions concerning the sociocultural reframing of agency was, "doesn't the causal explanation of an act also require an explanation of how the actor(s) came to be present in the setting wherein that act made sense? Can we really bypass teleonomy?" Ignoring for the moment the fact that our very language frame induces us to acknowledge individuals (even as we may seek to re-parse them) it seems essential to describe the mechanism(s) by which an activity setting comes to be in the first place, how that comes to have meaning. By the same token, even as we may acknowledge that activities can precede the presence of any particular individual, so also can individuals precede activities; i.e., there certainly was a time when most of the activities we currently value were constituted differently or did not even exist. Perhaps part of the problem is in the way the social is usually conceived, as something "larger" than the individual. Maybe, as with the concept of ecosystem, society is not always usefully thought of in scalar terms. In that respect, as well as others, embodiment might be a better term than internalization (it would certainly be more biologically realistic I think).
Just a thought,
Rolfe Windward
GSE&IS
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: BPenuel@aol.com
Subject: agency
A couple of comments to add to the discussion.
I think a valuable way to understand Wertsch's approach to agency, particularly the need for an _account_ of agency, can be found in Kenneth Burke's notions of purpose and agent. (1989, _On Symbols and Society_, U of Chicago).
To Burke, what distinguishes "symbolic action" from "nonsymbolic motion" or human action from animals' and objects is this notion of purpose. Purpose does not determine action, but is a part of a "pentad" of terms that characterize human action--along with scene, agency (means), agent (or doer), and act. Purposes, moreover, like Michael Glassman suggests, can be attributed to entities or organisms in activity far from the individual. Moreover, the "scene-purpose ratio" in Burke's terms could heavily favor the scene.
Burke's notion of agent in the pentad is really as a doer of action--in the sense of "who is doing the speaking/acting/remembering?" Again, agents can be an individual or several. There can be several agencies. I think Burke leaves out the notion of cause here in defining agents, only to say that "this notion of agent has to be in the picture of action" just like purpose.
Wertsch's thinking as I understand it is closer to Burke's in this regard than I think Stanton's review suggests. I do think Stanton is right, however, in pointing out that the notion of agency is less than radically sociocentric, and I think Francoise's points about the importance of "uniqueness" are relevant here. To Wertsch, there is a unique moment in human action that is not captured by a totally sociocentric determinism.
Bill Penuel
PreventionInventions
139 Holly Forest
Nashville, TN 37221
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995
From: Graham Nuthall (GNuthall@educ.canterbury.ac.nz)
Subject: Agency
Re:Agency discussion
I am currently working on self-talk among students in elementary school
classrooms. We have extensive recordings made from individual broadcast
microphones worn by 10-11 year old students during the course of their days
in school. From the audio recordings and accompanying viderecordings it
seems that children drift in and out of self-talk and social talk as they
go about their activities. There are, of course, apparent startings and
endings to the sequences of comments, commentaries, self-instructions,
chatter, and so on, but on the whole the sequences are fluid. Topics are
interwoven with each other. This suggests a transactional relationship
between the social and the individual, between talking to self and to an
outer audience, a kind of feed-back loop, in which neither the individual
or the social is the beginning or the end.
This assumes, I think, that both the individual and the social are
continuous processes, constantly interacting with each other. This
continuous flow is interrupted from time to time with pauses, silences, but
not beginnings and endings. That at least is the impression I get from
studying this kind of data. Does that help suggest an alternative view of
agency?
Cheers, Graham
Graham Nuthall
Education Department
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin@oise.on.ca)
Subject: Re: Agency
Hi Graham,
I found something similar in my Cantonese schoolboys' data in Hong Kong classrooms, too...
I first interpreted their utterances as self-talk... because it seems that they didn't care whether anyone heard them or not... and there was no follow-up responses to their utterances (which are very interesting Cantonese-English verbal play, e.g., word puns)... but then my supervisor argued that it might not be that straightforward... i.e., private self-talk only...
For one thing he argued that I (the analyst) do not have access to others' minds; nor do I have warrants to make my claim that this is definitely "private self-talk"; second, he argued that this might be a realm of resistance (meaning making fun of the official lesson material), one between the public and the private in the classroom... i.e., "semi-publicly"...
He threw out these ideas to stimulate me to deepen my analysis... I think it poses an interesting methodological and interpretive problem... well, any ideas from you?
Angel
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Extract (re: citations)
Hi everyone, Since there is interest in some of the past discussions on the x-lists regarding citations, posts and the referencing of such material, the following is an extract from chapter 7 in my book. Please do not cite until printed!
Francoise
Referencing on-line knowledge:
Discussions on the x-lists once cycled in considerable
detail over the issue of referencing on-line communication
with concerns cycling over two issues: how and whether
to cite such sources of information. Among the
hesitations voiced over the issue of whether to cite such
sources, the following concerns were voiced: the
potentially inhibitive impact of quoting messages on the
spontaneity of discursive activity on the lists; the right
to refuse being cited under certain conditions such as the
existence of a better printed source of reference; and the
apparent contradiction of attributing authorship in the
joint social construction of activity, from a
socio-cultural perspective. These concerns were
nonetheless voiced with concensual awareness of the public
nature of on-line communication and that of the
impossibility to really control the fate of electronic
text. With one dissenting voice where concern for the
overtones of elitist protectionism accompanying the above
hesitations was expressed.
Each of these concerns and issues are voiced in the
following posts:
The potentially inhibitive impact of quoting messages:
" [...] What concerns me enough to raise it with the list is
whether the practice of quoting our messages here, particularly in
print in formal scholarly publications, might not have an
inhibiting effect on the free-wheeling nature of our exchanges,
which I value highly.
This new medium inherits some of its properties from the genres of casual, if serious, academic conversation and others from the genres of written scholarly discourse. But those two activity types have very different functions, norms, and criteria of valuation in our community. Conversational discourse has a degree of ephemerality that frees us to venture, to risk, to explore ideas, and leaves us free to change or evolve our views in the dynamics of dialogue. What we say at any particular moment may not be long-considered and a settled, committed view or claim.
When we write for publication, we have, usually, had long prior
consideration, many relevant conversations, and ample opportunity
to revise our views toward some temporarily stable or satisfying
position. Those who read us do so assuming we have done this.
(Lemke, J. April 11th, 1994- xlchc. Quoting xfamily messages)
" [...] Published papers, however, are much more socially-crafted
works, whether
by explicit editorial recommendations or by the author simply
knowing from experience what would be accepted and what
wouldn't.
The rules of the latter game have been established for a much longer time than the former, and by intermixing the two games I think we'll be inviting abuse and scaring off reputable scholars from engaging in sharing their spur-of-the-moment speculations on lists." (Serich, S. April 12th, 1994 -xlchc- Re: Quoting xfamily messages)
The right to refuse permission to be cited:
" [...] There's no solution that satisfies everybody, but the one
that makes the most sense to me is that we should expect (though
obviously we can't enforce) that anyone quoted from a forum like
this should have to right to refuse to be quoted, or to have the
particular passage quoted. I occasionally say things in the heat
of the moment which, on reflection, I not only wouldn't want
quoted, but don't even agree with -- and that I'd _never_
conventionally publish. " (Hunt, R. -April 12th, 1994- xlchc. Re:
Quoting xfamily messages)
" [...] When deciding whether to cite xfamily discourse, my own
criteria would run something like this:
1. Has it been said better or equally well by the same person "in
print" ? If so, give preference to that more accessible and more
enduring source. Check with the author to find out.
2. Does the author now feel s/he was mistaken and would rather not be cited as saying this ? If so, respect her/his preference. Check with the author to find out.
3. If the author is not accessible within a reasonable time-frame, make it clear that the context is a less-than-formal public forum, to protect the author's right to distance her/himself from the statement at a future date.[...] (Serpell, R. April 12th, 1994. xlchc- citation and renegotiability)
"[...] My own feeling is that messages on email are in the public
domain and are therefore quotable. However, I think it is
important:
a. to make clear that the source is email (and therefore not as
"considered" as a regularly published paper), and
b. to ask permission of the author and to accept her/his right to
refuse.[...]" (Wells, G. April 13th, 1994. xlchc -Re: Referencing
e-mail)
A dissenting voice concerned with elitist protectionism as an
exclusionary device (i.e.; backlash):
"[...] I must admit that I have a hard time reading messages with
a *straight* gaze- but the recent postings on quoting LCHC message
bits strikes me as the most odd kind of privileged protectionism--
In my work, I find that my usual experience is that my writing or
expressed ideas (such as they are) typically are plagiarized in
the most obvious and explicit fashion. The next tactic people use
is to use footnoting, rather than an explicit textual citation.
Now, I don't want to sound like a one trick horse here, but I have
chatted about this practice with other minority colleagues, and lo
and behold it is a common complaint. We are not cited enough and
often are ripped off. We don't have access to the *construction*
of knowledge, and so we don't have *ideas* or ownership rights. I
would love to be worried about being cited out of context! Who is
worried about this practice? Who has not so far written a message
about being worried about this? How come *we* always have to bring
up this thorny issue of exclusion and systemic bias. As I write
at the top of all my drafts-- Please cite this work without asking
the author for permission. (Bryson, M. April 12th, 1994. xlchc -
Re: Quoting xfamily messages)
Resolving the apparent contradiction of attributing authorship in
the joint construction of activity, in a socio-cultural
perspective:
"[...] 1. Technical issue: how to honest (i.e., what is a
technique) in acknowledgment and referring to e-mail messages if
an author wants to be honest. (If the author does want to be
honest -- nothing can help:-(
2. Global issue: how (and why) to define personal contribution from collaboration (such as our network discussions). In some degree, this endeavor of tracking personal contributions contradict sociocultural theories of activity that insist that any original contributions are heavily rooted in contributions of other participants (current and former). In this regard, completely honest and exhaustive appreciation of others' ideas is impossible and even dangerous (because it separates people and destroys collaboration and trust -- it happens when people become preoccupied with competition of their contributions :-( -- another depressing reality of our life). However, if, instead of exhaustive search for ownership of ideas, the issue is interpretation of others' ideas to move on, the problem of accurate reference become real and important one.[...] (Matusov, E. April 14th, 1994. xlchc. Re: Xfamily quotation)
"[...] In fact, this form easily allows an interesting variant I
hope we shall see increasingly often: AB, C.; DE, F.; GH, I. &
JK, L. (19xx) Idea / argument / insight / ... gained in
co-operative e-mail exchanges on forum
The uncontrollable nature of electronic text:
In the interim, guidelines have appeared in various
Manuals of Style (e.g.; ) and, in particular, in
the latest (Fourth) 1994 edition of the Publication
Manual of the APA (American Psychological Association). The APA
guidelines for referencing electronic media, suggest that the same
principles for referencing published materials also apply to
electronic media (i.e.; to credit the author and to make such
material available to readers).
The authors of the APA Publication
Manual, however, also make clear that no standard for referencing
on-line information have yet emerged, leaving questions such as
the differences between on-line "contribution" and "personal
communication" or "insignificant exchange" un-separated.
Questions that appeared at the forefront of issues in the
conversational extracts cited above; and ones that become
relevant, perhaps, when the community of users comprises
"x-spurts" (setting aside the joking term and the x-spurts' own
belief that "experts" do not exist), many of whom were widely
known (i.e.; cited), both within their respective fields of
knowledge and across disciplinary boundaries. And discarding the
low contribution value (e.g.; $0.02) that many listers affixed to
their posts often as an expression of timidity, modesty and
humility. As one lister pointed out, a "commodization" of ideas
occurs in the academic world which is un-paralleled in worlds of
more modest circumstance, pointing to a set of potentially
underlying commercial interests.
In this study, where citations have been paramount both as
source of information and corroborating evidence, the
guidelines of the welcoming document were used, with a
wonderful un-expected outcome. In the Welcoming Document
to list subscription the protocol was to ask for citation
permission. Following these guidelines, however, the
protocol became an important methodological process,
through which I gained invaluable insight. Soliciting
permission via e-mail enabled me to make contacts with
community members. In turn, these contacts both provided
me with terrific feedback and the triangulation that I
needed for the participant-observations that I was making.
During these side-channeled conversations I also gained
much in terms of understanding participation on the lists.
In general participants were pleased to see their work
cited as a sort of recognition of their participatory
efforts. And when participants made suggestions for
improvement, it was to point out important arguments and
finer points that I had missed. Only one participant
ever refused citation permission and this was on the
grounds that the extract was an insignificant exchange.
Beyond the triangulation of my observations then, entering
this process, also corroborated the epistemological
dimensions of the activity system under investigation-
currently under focus in this chapter.
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
"Wild thought: There is cause only in that which does not work"
To me the problem of attributing a completely sociocentric view
of agency is that one can then no longer account for individuality and
uniqueness. Nature has surely been overdone, but factoring it out somehow
doesn't sound fine to me. Two people in the same situation don't experience
phenomena in the same way. Eugene put it this way "Can two people ever
experience the same sourness of a lemon?" In Vygotsky's terms its is
what appears the second time on the psychological plane that to me contains
"nature" and the individual.
I think that Wertsch et. al's moderate
(in contrast to radical sociocentrism) approach to agency is designed to
shift the emphasis away from the individual (i.e.; to take into account
the idnividual acting with mediational means be they language or tools)
without doing away with the differences between agents (i.e.; what goes
on intrA-mentally).
With all due respect though Stanton as your review really made me think.
Francoise
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995
Angel's question came up just as I was writing something concerning
activity theory, so I thought I might throw it up, because I think
it has some relevance, and see if there is any response (I too have
not read James Wertch's et. al. chapter, which is why I took that
out of the subject line.)
The division of labor, and the resulting increase in the complexity and
assymetry of social relationships causes two things to happen
simaltaneously. Individuals take actions that are more and more
distant (from a psychic perspective) from their original need based
motives. The actions form their own more individualized activities.
It might be possible to think of these individualized activities as
existing within cocentric circles within the larger need based activities
that are now shared by the larger social cooperative. The more
extreme the division of labor, the further the individual activity
is, in concrete terms, from the original need based motive. The tie
between the motive and the product based action (manifested in
goal) is no longer concrete, it is now conceptual.
The second thing that happens is that the social cooperative begins
to realize it has a stake in creating assymetrical relationships in
order to attain more efficient labor. This is an idea that goes
back to Plato and probably before. The cooperative attempts to
maintain some control over the history of the individual in order
to make sure that the individual has a sense of a particular product
that will enable him or her to conceptually relate it back to
the original motive. The best way to do this is to guide an
individual's history in relation to product and instruments.
I see this as being related to agency in two, inter-related ways.
The individual has agency as part of a cooperative (allowing particular
divisions of labor) and as an individual (the fact that the action
only needs a conceptual tie back to the motive "may" give the
individual more freedom in choice of goal. The society has agency
over the individual by controlling the personal sense of products
and instruments that the individual will come into contact with
over their own life history. There is always a dynamic tension
between the two.
Michael Glassman
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995
The discussion of agency has really been interesting. There is however one
thing which keeps puzzling me. The problem starts the wich to keep the
unigueness of the individual in focus, this I think is a legitimate focus,
however, I do not understand why the uniqueness should be explaned or
understood with reference to motives. I know this in a large extend is in
line with Leontjev, psychodynamics and many more.
The problem is, for me to see, that by explaining agency with
reference to motives (whether they are individual, social or merged), I
think we very easy starts explaining the agency with something which is
outside the agency. In my my understanding it very easy becomes an external
conditions which determies agency and force us not to look at the agency,
but at the motives. The same kind of argument could be made if one explains
agency with reference to the social.
For those reasons I have increasingly come to think about motives or
intention as something which emerges and develops trough the activity. The
person might tell a story about his or her motives or intentions, but in
some sense it seems like an account which is produced after the activity and
not something which starts the activity. An intersting example is for
instance the classroom talk, where it is my experience that when you ask
people why they said something, they very often are unable to answer and
thinks it is a funny question to ask. The uttereance was more part of an
ongoing activity in the classroom and not clearly motivated.
Jesper Dôpping
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 95
Gordon, Eugene, Stanton, and Bill's comments have helped me think through a
part of the issue but, perhaps because the question is so ultimately self-
referential (in the sense of a system analyzing itself), I'm not sure it
can ever be closed. As a thought experiment, I tried to imagine being a
researcher in a community whose conception of reality was regulated by a
radically socio-centric worldview and frankly could not figure out a way to
even recognize individual difference in the first place, much less ask the
question. About all I could conclude was that it would certainly simplify
social research and create some interesting theories of homeostasis (try to
imagine change if a given stimulus received identical responses from the
entire population). I've had similar problems with thought experiments in
which monism was the world view (I couldn't figure out how people talked to
each other or how they came to even believe in each other's existence).
Those were oversimplified "experiments" modeling the logical extremes of the
requisite views but I've found that a useful exercise from time to time. I
think I've come to believe that any specific epistemology when taken to its
logical conclusions will either contradict itself, propagate category
errors, or become completely absurd. Makes a fellow a believer in
panclectics (possibly under the aegis of a realist metaphysic _a la_ C.S.
Peirce).
In this world though, there seems to be nearly as much variance in the human
population as there is in the situations in which members of that
population act so the question of how all that gets made sense of and
regulated is what we seem to be stuck with. I think in that respect I rather
like Stanton's second alternative with perhaps two interrelated
qualifications: (a) a phenomenon as robust as the agent or "self" would
ultimately need to be accounted for in any social theory that purported to
be complete and, (b) the continua of that phenomenon would need to be
described; e.g., perhaps some agents are groups or institutions, others
individuals, some might be far more "intense" than others (I'm thinking of
John-Steiner's _Notebooks of the Mind_) and thus agency would not merely be
a retrospective, it would be a "place" recognized before it even existed.
This has given me food for thought -- many thanks.
Rolfe Windward
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995
I think Stanton makes a critical and important point in saying that the 3rd
position: the dialectical position may not be satisfying if "dialectical"
is simply a vague gloss of "going to and from"... It seems that the first 2
positions posit the existence of 1 entity, while the 3rd one posits 2,
but with a complex relationship between the 2--there are still 2
different things nonethelesss.
It is difficult to go beyond this 1-thing or 2-thing ontology... as it is
part of a long Western philosophical tradition, also one that is deeply
engrained in our ordinary language.
... well, but the individual is always and already social... even before
she/he is born! individual or social; determinism or free will... wow!
can someone offer any alternative way of thinking beyond these polarized
dimensions?
Angel
Eugene's contrast of Mead's radical sociocentric view to Wertsch, Tulviste,
and Hagstrom's "socio-individual" view
as he calls it I think is instructive. Mead's views, moreover, are quite
different from say, Bakhtin's, whom Wertsch et al.
draw upon for their account of mediated agency.
To Mead, "the gesture" and "significant symbol" are received as "the same" by
every one in a given community. According to
Mead (1934), a symbol "tend[s] to call out in the individual a group of
reactions such as it calls out in the other" (p.71). To Mead, language is a
"stimulus" rather than a medium of existence, and words and gestures, since
they are radically social, call out the same response in others as they do
the speaker.
By contrast, Bakhtin (1981, 1986) emphasized that all communication is a
dialogic encounter, that what was stable or "centripetal" about words is
always counterbalanced by what is "centrifugal", tending toward polyphony,
carnival, the unique. Bakhtin would be in almost direct opposition to
Mead's view that the "same" word would affect all members of a community the
same way. Indeed, for Bakhtin, the "same" word is never the "same" across
contexts, persons, genres, and activities.
In this connection, it is not the _individual speaker_ that is unique for
Bakhtin or for Wertsch et al., but the _utterance_. Every action has a
unique moment, in their view. The issue of individuals being unique is not
addressed directly through their work; rather each action is thought to
involve a "unique use" of cultural tools, a unique use that changes or alters
the history and therefore meaning of those cultural tools in the process.
Bill Penuel
References:
(1986). _Speech genres and other late essays_. Austin:
U of Texas P.
Mead, G.H. (1934). _Mind, self, society_. Chicago: U of Chicago
Press.
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995
I can discern at least three approaches in the various messages on agency.
The issue, as I understand it, was to examine whether our rediscovered
emphasis on sociocultural context requires a new account of agency.
1. We might acknowledge the importance of sociocultural context, but still
want to preserve an individual agent -- as the locus of unique experience
and the driving force behind action.
2. We might bracket the question of whether agents really exist, and study
how the (indisputably common and powerful) idea of individual agency
affects our ideas and practices. Someone pursuing this approach could
either be after a radically non-individualist account, or could be
sympathetic to a more traditional notion of agency.
3. We could develop a "dialectic" or "transactional" account of the
relation between individual and society, such that neither can be reduced
to the other. I am not exactly clear what this would look like.
Sometimes "dialectic" is used to mean simply that we include both factors
in our explanations (ie, going back and forth from one to the other). This
would seem less than satisfying, because if we're going to acknowledge an
individual in the traditional sense (at some point in the process), why not
just go with option #1 above? At other times, "dialectic" is used in a
more Hegelian sense, to imply that somehow the two initial poles are
"synthesized," and a new unit is created. But for this to work, we need
to specify what is lacking in both the thesis (individual agency) and the
antithesis (social determinism), and how the new synthesis incorporates
the strengths of both while leaving behind (at least some of) their
weaknesses. It was this sort of synthesis that I thought Wertsch et al
were after in their chapter -- and which I was hoping could be worked out
more fully.
Stanton Wortham
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995
Hello everybody--
Here I want to throw a bunch of quotes that, in my view are relevant to Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom's (1993) paper discussed currently on xmca and see how they interact with each other.
Lynn Nelson (1993, Epistemological communities. In L. Alcoff & E. Potter (Eds.), Feminist epistemologies. New York: Routledge.) wrote,
"In suggesting that it is communities that construct and acquire knowledge, I do not mean (or 'merely' mean) that what comes to be recognized or 'certified' as knowledge is the result of collaboration between, consensus achieved by, political struggles e
ngaged in, negotiations undertaken among, or other activities engaged in by individuals who, *as individuals, know* in some logically or empirically 'prior' sense?.. The change I am proposing involves what we should construe as the "agents" of these activities.
I think that Lynn Nelson's conceptualizing is what Stanton Wortham and Bill Penuel meant by their wording of "radically sociocentric." Nelson's radical viewpoint on agency (and knowledge, and meaning) reminds me George Mead's writing on social act and g
esture. However, I am not sure that Nelson would fully agree with Mead's microanalysis of communication about details of how meaning is created.
George Mead (1977, On social psychology. A. Strauss (Ed.). London, UK: The University of Chicago Press) wrote,
"Meaning arises and lies within the field of the relation between the gesture of a given human organism and the subsequent behavior of this organism [i.e., social act - EM] as indicated to another human organism by that gesture. ..? the nature of meaning
is intimately associated with the social process as it thus appears -- that meaning involves this threefold relation among phases of the social act as the context in which it arises and develops: this relation of the gesture of one organism to the adjust.
It seems to me that both Nelson and Mead would probably reject the units of analysis proposed by Vygotsky ("word"), Bakhtin ("utterance"), and Wertsch ("mediated action") as being too individualistic. Of course, it does not mean that Vygotsky, Bakhtin,
or Wertsch are purely individualistic theoreticians but they seemed to recognize the individual agency while Nelson and Mead seemed to reject it. If I'm correct in my interpretation, according to Nelson and Mead, whatever an individual does (e.g., "word)
Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom's (1993) "response" to Nelson and Mead's radical rejection of the individual agency is quite intriguing and interesting. It definitely continues the Vygotsky-Bakhtin-Wertsch tradition of navigating between (or away?) purely
individualistic and purely communitarian positions on agency. It suggests that the individual agency (i.e., individual responsibility for actions) is shaped by the continuum of community generated problems and mediational pathways of solutions.
Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom (1993, A sociocultural approach to agency. In E. Forman, N. Minick & C. Stone (Eds.), Education and mind: The integration of institutional, social, and developmental processes. Oxford University Press. New York, NY.) wrote,
"?.. the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding agency is an individual or individuals functioning together with mediational means. In this view the individual(s) involved certainly continues to bear the major responsibility for initiating and carrying out an action, but the possibilities for formulating certain problems, let alone the possibilities for following certain paths of action are shaped by the mediational means employed. The resulting picture is one in which the irreducible unit of a [missing text in e-mail].
I think that the three approaches to the problem of agency -- purely individualistic, purely communitarian, and socio-individual, -- with rich variations inside of each approach, provide the direction and context of the ongoing discussions on agency (being continued by Rolfe Windward, Gordon Wells, and others on the net).
Eugene Matusov
P.S. Folks, I have just switched to the Microsoft Exchange e-mail software with Windows 95. Does it cause any trouble to read my messages?
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995
At the risk of revisiting the "goals" discussion of last year, I should
like to query a point made by Jesper and repeated, with approval, by
Eugene, who wrote:
I think that there is an oversimplification here. First, it is certainly
the case that goals change as an action proceeds and new goals emerge.
In this sense, a description of the goal of an action that corresponds to
the sequence of operations jointly and negotiatedly deployed is probably
more accurately specified, post hoc, from the perspective granted by the
outcome, than from the perspective of any participant as the action gets
going. So I agree in recognizing "motives or intention as something which
emerges and develops through the activity."
However, this does not mean that participants never embark on action with
an object in view. Nor does it mean that there are no situations in
which one can say why one made a particular contribution to an ongoing
discourse. I agree that, in most cases, the choice of words and even
the "point" of the contribution is formed in detail in the act of
speaking/writing, but that does not mean that one does not have a
strategic goal in view in contributing as one does at a particular point,
in order to try to develop the discussion in a partcular direction. Surely
this is what we each do when we contribute to this discussion.
Jesper cites the example of a classroom. Once a discussion is in
progress, most participants will contribute in relation to their
assessment of "where we are at this point" and will not consciously be
thinking of either a superordinate goal, or of the particular words and
syntactic structures they use in uttering. In that sense, the utterance
seems to fit Leont'ev's criteria for an operation. However, if
participants aren't at some level, and with some degree of jointness,
operating in terms of the "same" goal, the discussion will not be very
coherent or progressive.
To create such joint activity settings is one of the teacher's major
responsibilities and, as a teacher, many of my contributions to the
discussion will have the fairly deliberate purpose of optimizing these
conditions at each point. At the same time, I have more specific purposes
that are related to the advertised topic of the course and the session
within it. Thus, I know in general terms what my motive is in embarking
on a course with a group of students, and one of my action goals will be
to communicate it and try to develop it as a shared motive for our work
together, as we address the advertised topic.
In "planning" for individual class meetings, too, I have goals which I
try to make fairly explicit - and negotiable. So, for tomorrow morning's
class, for example, I could describe both motive and goal with some
specificity in advance of the actual meeting. And, unless something
totally unexected hapens, I shall, at various points in the meeting,
"delberately" make contributions that I judge, in the circumstances at
the time, will realize those prior goals in the light of those that have
emerged and are emerging in our jointly constructed discourse.
I can't imagine what "instructional conversation" (Tharp and Gallimore)
is about if the teacher doesn't engage in this form of goal-directed
strategic action. But maybe others see things differently?
Gordon Wells,
"[...] I THINK WE SHOULD EXPECT THAT ANYONE QUOTED FROM A FORUM
SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT OF REFUSAL (WHICH MEANS THAT ETIQUETTE WOULD
HAVE IT THAT WE SHOULD ASK PERMISSION TO QUOTE BEFORE QUOTING)
BUT I ALSO THINK WE OUGHT TO ACCEPT THAT WHILE THIS WRITING IS
RELATIVELY SPONTANEOUS IT IS IN THE "PUBLIC DOMAIN" AND THEREFORE
WE DON'T HAVE MUCH CONTROL OVER IT'S FATE AS RUSS COMMENTED.
(Newman, J. April 12th, 1994, xlchc. Re: Quoting xfamily messages)
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Quote
said Jacques Lacan in "The four fundamental concepts of Psyho-analysis" (p.17)
From: HDCS6@jetson.uh.edu
Subject: Re: (Agency and social and cultural order
University of Houston
From: Jesper Doepping (jesper@axp.psl.ku.dk)
Subject: Motives and agency
Psychological Laboratory
Univ. of Copenhagen
Njalsgade 88
2300 Kbh. S.
Denmark
From: Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN@mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Subject: Agency
GSE&IS
From: Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin@oise.on.ca)
Subject: Re: 3 approaches to the notion of agency
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995
From: BPenuel@AOL.COM
Subject: agency, Mead, Bakhtin
PreventionInventions
139 Holly Forest
Nashville, TN 37221
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). _The dialogic imagination_. Austin: U of
Texas P.
From: Stanton Wortham (swortham@abacus.bates.edu)
Subject: Agency dialectics
From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@cats.ucsc.edu)
Subject: 3 approaches to the notion of agency
UC Santa Cruz
From: Gordon Wells (gwells@oise.on.ca)
Subject: RE: Agency and Motive/Goal
Agency & motive. I agree with Jesper who wrote,
" For those reasons I have increasingly come to think about motives or
intention as something which emerges and develops trough the activity.
The person might tell a story about his or her motives or intentions,
but in some sense it seems like an account which is produced after the
activity and not something which starts the activity. An interesting
example is for instance the classroom talk, where it is my experience
that when you ask people why they said something, they very often are
unable to answer and thinks it is a funny question to ask. The utterance
was more part of an ongoing activity in the classroom and not clearly
motivated."
OISE, Toronto