Transcript Slide 1

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Sass (1992, p. 10) explores “one of the great ironies of modern thought: the
madness of schizophrenia -- so often imagined as being antithetical to the
modern malaise, even as offering a potential escape from its dilemmas of
hyperconsciousness and self-control -- may, in fact be an extreme
manifestation of what is in essence a very similar condition.”
What evidence there is suggests that schizophrenic illness did not even
appear, at least in any significant quantity, before the end of the 18th or
beginning of the nineteenth...Catatonia was not described until after 1850.
Even more telling is the absence or extreme rarity of descriptions of clear
instances of individual cases of schizophrenia, at least of the chronic, autistic
form, in either medical books or general literature prior to the 19th century.
The first clinical descriptions are those of Haslam and Pinel in 1809; the first
literary descriptions that definitely qualify are those of the main characters in
George Buccaneer’s story “Lenz” and Honore de Balzac’s “Louis Lambert,”
both written in the 1830s. Despite the striking clinical picture that
schizophrenia presents (at least in its acute and florid forms), one can find no
account of it in these or any earlier works. (ibid, pp. 364-365). Even Eugen
Bleuler, who coined the term schizophrenia in 1908, described a “specific type
of alteration of thinking, feeling, and relation to the external world which
appears nowhere else in this particular fashion” (ibid., p. 14).
“It is not because one is ill that one is alienated, but insofar as one is alienated
that one ill” (Foucault, 1987, p. xxvi).
Psychology as A Cultural System
Family
Political
Economy
Education
Cultural
System
Psychological
Phenomenon/Behavior
Bilingualism as A Concrete Cultural
Factor
Family
language
Govt.
recognition
Kui +
Oriya
Medium of
instruction in
school
Social
status of
languages
Work rules &
opportunities
Text
books
Family
Family
language
language
Medium of
instruction in
school
Govt.
recognition
Hindi +
English
Work rules &
opportunities
Social
status of
languages
Text
books
Mindy: When I was in day camp we made these candles.
Mrs. Jones: You made them?
M: And I tried it with different colors, with both of them but one just came out; this
one just came out blue, and I donÕt know what this color is.
T : ThatÕs neat-o. T ell the kids how you do it from the very start . P retend we donÕt
know a thing about candles. OK, What did you do first? What did you use? Flour?
M: Um,, hereÕs some hot wax, some real hot wax that you just take a string and tie a
know in it and dip the string in the um wax.
T : What makes it have a shape?
M: Um, you just shape it.
T : Oh, you shaped it with your hand, mmm.
M: But you have, first you have to stick it into the wax and then water, and then keep
doing that until it gets to the size you want it.
T : OK. Who knows what the string is for?
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Deena: Um, I went to the beach Sunday and to MacDonalds, and to the park,
and I got this for my birthday. My mother bought it for me, and um I had um two
dollars for my birthday and I put it in here,
and I went t o where my friend named Gigi
I went over to my grandmotherÕs house with her and um she was on my back
and I and we was walkin around, by my house
and um she was heavy.
She was in the sixth or seventh grade.
Mrs. Jones: OK IÕmgoing to st op you. I want to t alk about things that are really really
very important. ThatÕs important to you but tell us things that are sort of different. Can
you do that? And tell us what beach you went to.
Social Agency
Cultural
System
Deena
Teacher
Cultural
System
Objective & Subjective Consciousness
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Hegel called this "the cunning of reason" in his Philosophy of History (1956, p. 33).
He said, "in a simple act, something farther may be implicated than lies in the
intention and consciousness of the agent" (ibid, p. 28). "Those manifestations of
vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their
own purposes, are, at the same time, the means and instruments of a higher and
broader purpose of which they know nothing" (ibid., p. 25).
Leontiev touched on this as a problem of consciousness in class society. “A
consequence of the `alienation’ of human life that has occurred is the emergent
disparity between the objective result of man’s activity on the one hand, and its
motive on the other. In other words, the objective content of the activity is
becoming discrepant with its subjective content…That imparts special
psychological features to his consciousness.” (Leontiev, 1981, p. 252).
Leontiev goes on to say that this alienation between objective and subjective
consciousness is the concrete historical form that meaning and sense take.
Vygotsky defined meaning as objective social meaning while sense is a personal
accent that is different from meaning (see Levitin, 1982, p. 81).
Bhaskar (1989, p. 35) “people in their conscious activity unconsciously reproduce
(and occasionally transform) the structures governing their substantive activities of
production. Thus, people do not marry to reproduce the nuclear family or work to
sustain the capitalist economy. Yet it is nevertheless the unintended consequence
(and inexorable result) of, as it is also a necessary condition for, their activity…The
problem of how people reproduce any particular society belongs to a linking
science of ‘socio-psychology.’”
• Potter (2003, pp. 78-79) “Discourse work is not
designed to answer questions of the kind, `What
is the influence of X on Y’ (of social class on
education success, and so on). Discourse work
typically asks questions of the form, `How is X
done?’ How does a speaker use an identity
ascription [intelligent, prejudiced, irrational] to
disqualify a rival’s version of events…How are
notions of remembering and forgetting used to
manage blame in political hearings?”
Sociohistorical Definitions of Culture
• Vygotsky “social environment is class-based in its very structure.”
• "We must be profoundly historical and must always present man's
behavior in relation to the class situation at the given moment."
• “Class membership defines man’s psychology and man’s behavior” (1997a,
pp. 211-212).
• “Every epoch has its own form of education" because educational activity
has always corresponded to "those particular economic and social
structures of society that defined the whole history of the epoch" (ibid.,
pp. 55, 56).
• In contrast to animal groups where behavior is directly determined by
instincts of feeding, protection, aggression, and reproduction, “in
mankind, these instincts led to the formation and appearance of economic
activity, which underlies all of historical development” (ibid, p. 211).
Abstract Definitions of Culture
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Kroeber & Kluckhohn’s (1952) “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and
implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, continuing
the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in
artifacts.”
Lompscher’s (2006, p. 36) definition from the perspective of cultural-historical
activity theory. “People as societal beings exist as they themselves create the
re-create the conditions of their own life…Activity is the fundamental,
specifically human form of relationships between human beings and the
world, the content of which is the goal-oriented modification and
transformation of the world on the basis of culture as it is appropriated and
further developed by people…”
“Activity is a unity of subject-object (person-world) and subject-subject
relations…Activity is characterized by transformation, cognition,
communication, value orientation, and development.”
“Activity has a macrostructure consisting of subjects interacting with objects
(and each other), executing certain actions and operations under concrete
conditions, using certain means in order to put into practice their goals and
satisfy their needs and motives…”
N. Chomsky, Reflections on Language, 1975
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As Harry Bracken has emphasized, “The empiricist/rational debates of the 17th century and of
today are debates between different value systems or ideologies. Hence the heat which
characterizes these discussions.” (p. 127).
The doctrine that the human mind is initially unstructured and plastic and that human nature
is entirely a social product has often been associated with progressive and even revolutionary
social thinking…But a deeper look will show that the concept of the ‘empty organism’, plastic
and unstructured, apart from being false, also serves naturally as the support for the most
reactionary social doctrines. If people are malleable and plastic beings with no essential
psychological nature, then why should they not be controlled and coerced by those who
claim authority…?
The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product
of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the
powerful.
It is reasonable to suppose that just as intrinsic structures of mind underlie the development
of cognitive structures, so a ‘species character’ provides the framework for the growth of
moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and even participation in a free and just
community.
The conclusion that human needs and capacities will find their fullest expression in a society
of free and creative producers, working in a system of free association…draws from the
empiricist commitment to progress and enlightenment, [but] I think it finds deeper roots in
rationalist efforts to establish a theory of human freedom. (pp. 131-134).
Treichler, et al. (1984, pp. 83-84)
power is negotiated within the context of
face-to-face interaction…Power becomes the
negotiated product of a mutually constituted
and mutually administered interaction system.
• "It is the forum aspect of a culture [in which meanings are negotiated and
re-negotiated] that gives its participants a role in constantly making and
remaking the culture -- their active role as participants rather than as
performing spectators who play out canonical roles according to rule when
the appropriate cues occur" (Bruner, 1982, p. 839)
• “The prime source for the root models of scientific explanations in the
domain of social phenomena is the conversation” (Harre, 2009, p. 140).
“Structural concepts in human sciences are heuristic models only—there
are no structures” (p. 138).
• “Human beings can come to realise that they are people and so active
agents trying to realise their projects with others. As such they can come
to realise that the constraints that society seems to place upon their
pursuit of worth are grammatical, in the sense that Ludwig Wittgenstein
gave to that term. The story-lines and conventions in accordance with
which people live could be different and new grammars can be created
and adopted. All we have to do is to show people that they are trapped in
the silken but fragile shrouds of a pattern of discourse conventions.” (p.
142).
• “Where is the place for political action, activities which are aimed at such
social goods as the emancipation of some category of persons, the relief
of the tyranny of bureaucracies, and so on? If social life is constituted
grammatically then it must be transformed grammatically…Should anyone
want to make changes in a form of life, the focus of their efforts must be
on rendering implicit grammars explicit” (p. 140).
• Gergen & Gergen (2002, p. 51) There is no particular
configuration of words or phrases that is uniquely matched
to what it is we call either the world "out there" or "in
here." We may wish to agree that "something exists," but
whatever "is" makes no demands on the configuration of
phonemes or phrases used by humans in communicating
about it. Thus, we remove the privilege of any person or
group to claim superior knowledge of what there is. With
respect to truth (a match of word and world) or reason (the
arrangement of words themselves), no science, religion,
philosophy, political party or other group can claim ultimate
superiority. More positively, the world does not control
what we make of it.
Leontiev, A.N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. New York:
Prentice Hall.
• the individual does not simply “stand” before
a certain “window” displaying meanings
among which he has but to make a choice,
that these meanings - representations,
concepts, ideas - do not passively wait for his
choice but energetically dig themselves into
his connections with people forming the circle
of his real contacts.
Abstract & Concrete Levels
Abstract
Level
Concrete
Level
Schooling
Schooling
School
system 1
School
system 2
School
System 3