Reading :: A History of Marxist Psychology

A History of Marxist Psychology: The Golden Age of Soviet Science
Edited by Anton Yasnitsky

Anton Yasnitsky has edited yet another collection on Soviet-era psychology. Unlike his previous offerings, this one is not specifically Vygotsky-centered, nor is it as aggressively revisionist—although you'll still find challenges to received wisdom. Instead, these chapters tend to wander more widely, examining the  works by Leontiev and Rubinsten, the history of Soviet psychiatry and pedology, Luria's powerbroking, and the uptake of Soviet psychology in contemporary Brazil. 

Let's start with Radzikhovskii's "Reminiscence about Future Marxist Psychology," in which the author tells the story of how he cam to ghostwrite A.N. Leontiev's introduction to Vygotsky's Collected Works. According to the author, he was working under Davydov at the time, was asked to write the introduction, and was mildly surprised when the introduction was published under Leontiev's name in 1982 (pp.26-27). The explanation he got was that only Leontiev, the most devout student of Vygotsky, could have written this introductory chapter, but he was not feeling well. "I would like to emphatically state here that—as strange as might appear today—at the time it never crossed my mind to blame anyone for anything ... as the whole situation was perceived as absolutely normal by all sides involved, and totally fitting the dominant scientific ethos in Soviet scientific practice at the time" (p.27). In fact, "I was really glad and proud to have received such a flattering and honorable assignment as a junior researcher, whose work turned out good enough to be signed by the name of a Great Man such as Aleksei N. Leontiev" (p.27). Yet he later learned from Zinchenko's retrospective writings that Leontiev had consistently delayed the project, with one roadblock being that the collection could not go out without his introductory chapter, a chapter he consistently delayed writing (p.28)! 

Radzikhovskii offers this anecdote partly to explain the way psychology worked in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and how it developed in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union (p.28). Remarkably, he says, Marxist sources were de rigeur in 1980s psychology and then disappeared almost completely in the 1990s (p.29). This phenomenon, he says, is easily explained: "in the USSR of the 1980s it was plain obvious that psychology was diseased with the same sickness as the rest of Soviet social sciences. The main problem was that social sciences hardly reflected the actual life problems of contemporary social reality and, instead, dealt with abstract schemes and abstract images of idealized people as they 'should be' as opposed to the real people in the concrete settings of the their [sic] socialist social environment in the Soviet Union" (p.29). Thus, during perestroika, the main goal became to make psychology "accountable for and capable of solving the problems of the real individuals ... in their effort to solve their mundane problems" (p.29). However, one one hand, "all Soviet grand psychological theories and lesser-scale projects were invariably referred to as 'Marxist' ones," and on the other, revising these fundamental theories would be understood as subversive, and "thus, the revision of the Marxist fundamentals was not apparently an option. It was way easier—and way more pleasant and self-satisfying to the Soviet scholars in the times of the rapidly disintegrating state and official ideology—to denounce any Marxism altogether. This was triumphantly accomplished roughly by the end of the decade of the 1980s" (p.30). 

Radzikhovskii turns to Leontiev's troubled relationship to Vygotsky's legacy, noting that Leontiev's notion of psychological activity is based on the Marxist socioeconomic notion of labor (p.48). "From this standpoint, a description of psychological processes as those involved in activity means, therefore, to deprive psychology of its genuinely psychological meaning and to establish a very different field of knowledge that might be referred to as 'praxeology' or the 'science of activity'. When I first expressed this idea in Russian more than 30 years ago (Radzikhovskii, 1988) I could have hardly anticipated how true it would eventually turn out at the end of the second decade of the 21st century" —and here, he cites my own chapter reviewing activity theory's march from psychology to de facto sociology (p.48). 

Reviewing Bozhovich's criticism of Leontiev, he affirms that "First, Leontiev's writings abound with quasi-Marxist abstract speculations, 'the arguments of istmat [historical materialism]', instead of systematic psychological theoretical work," and second, "Leontiev's excessive istmat speculations, in her [Bozhovich's] view, reflected the fundamental deficiency of well-developed distinct methodology of scientific research and the studies of 'psychological activity' conducted on its basis" (p.49). 

In the second chapter, "Sergei Rubinstein as the Founder of Soviet Marxist Psychology," Anton Yasnitsky strongly argues that "Sergei Rubsinstein (1889-1960) was definitely and undeniably the founder of Soviet Marxist psychology" (p.58). That is, "the unified project of the Soviet Marxist psychology emerged in Rubinstein's works and was forever strongly associated with his name and contribution"—yet "this gigantic figure and the creator of Soviet psychological Marxism is virtually unknown in the West to this very day," with few of his works translated into English and a few more into German (p.59). Yasnitsky begins to rectify this situation with this chapter, which overviews Rubinstein's life and scholarly works.

Gregory Dufaud's chapter overviews the overlooked history of psychiatry in the USSR, while Andy Byford does the same with the occupation of pedology. In the latter chapter, Byford discusses how the entirety of pedology's leadership was accused of deviation, halting the mobilization of pedological research and making it an occupation rather than a science from 1931-on (p.117). By 1935, a number of politically sensitive incidents led to commissions, leading to the infamous 1936 decree—in which the role of pedology was demonized, but the individuals themselves were simply reassigned (p.123). 

Gisele Toassa and coauthors address the history of psychology and Marxism in 1970s Brazil, discussing how liberation theology led to Freire's contributions, which in turn led to liberation psychology (p.134). By 1975, copies of Vygotsky's works made their way from Italy, followed closely by Bakhtin's (p.135). 

In the chapter "Alexander Luria: Marxist Psychologist and Transnational Scientific Broker," Alexandre Metraux provides a personal account of how he interacted with Luria and saw Luria interacting with other scientific elite—and in doing so, I think, answers Yasnitsky's question of why the Vygotsky school is so much more well known than Rubinstein. Among other things, Metraux traces the origins of Luria's autobiography and notes some of the details that Luria fudged. He also discusses how Luria aggressively promoted Vygotsky's work, partly because he genuinely wanted to honor Vygotsky, but also "in order to consolidate his own approach (and that of those of his colleagues who referred to Vygotsky without being among the very close followers) against other, competing approaches of Soviet psychologists" (p.171). That is, "Luria also used the 'posthumous Vygotsky' as a significant instrument in his own interest," just as (in Luria's telling) Vygotsky used his circle as instruments (p.171). In one example, Luria translated his and Leontiev's preface to Vygotsky's book in German so that East German readers—who generally could not read Russian, yet felt the strong impact of Soviet approaches to psychology—would see Vygotsky as "the most significant and still highly relevant figure of Soviet psychology or even as the leading Marxist psychologist of the USSR" (p.172). Through such efforts of Vygotsky promotion in the West, Luria and Leontiev could advocate for their own research agenda as well as a way to defend against Pavlovians at home (p.173). 

Sometimes this elevation of Vygotsky "looks like having bordered on obsession," as when Luria agreed to write an autobiographical chapter, then tried to include a biography of Vygotsky in it (p.174). Interestingly, Luria's autobiography The Making of Mind was composed in English, growing from an interview he gave to a director of scientific films (p.176). Mike Cole wrote the epilogue to that autobiography, which noted the difficulties Luria faced in the 1930s-1950s. Obviously the Soviet copyright agency did not approve of the epilogue, although it approved of the core manuscript, and it asked Zinchenko to intercede (p.184). 

There are other chapters, well worth reading as well, but I'll stop here. This volume does a nice job of selecting many authors who actually lived these events and are able to draw on deep experience to discuss them. If you're interested in Soviet psychology, activity theory, Vygotsky, Luria, or just how ideas are picked up and travel, definitely take a look.

Reading :: Designs for the Pluriverse

Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds
By Arturo Escobar

I saw this book cited in Huatong Sun's Global Social Media Design earlier this year and decided to pick it up. According to the back cover, the book "presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth"; it promises an "autonomous design" that is oriented to "collaborative and place-making approaches" rather than the demands of capitalism.

The book, as Escobar claims on p.1, seeks to contribute to the redefinition of design from a politico-ontological standpoint. It offers: 

1. "an outline for a cultural studies approach to design" (p.3)
2. "an ontological reading of the cultural background from which design emerges" (p.3)
3. a deep exploration of these propositions, examining "cultural and ecological transition narratives and discourses" (p.4) and concluding with potential frameworks for "an ontological reframing of design" (p.5)

Escobar begins with a Zapatista slogan, which translates as "We want a world where many worlds fit" (p.16)—i.e., a pluriverse. He argues that 

1. "The contemporary crisis is the result of deeply entrenched ways of being, knowing, and doing," so we must understand design historically and culturally (p.19);
2. "Today the most appropriate mode of access to the question concerning design is ontological," so we must understand the dualist ontology of capitalism (pp.19-20);
3. We're seeing "ecological and social devastation," so we must think about "significant cultural transitions" (p.20); and
4. This book specifically seeks to make "a Latin American contribution to the transnational conversation of design," one that "stems from contemporary Latin American epistemic and political experiences and struggles" (p.20).

Yet, he adds, the book belongs "to a long set of conversations in both Western philosophy and sociopolitical spaces in the West and beyond" (p.20)—an important qualification, as we'll see below.

In Part I, Escobar discusses an ontological approach to design. He argues that modern design has contributed to unsustainability and the elimination of futures, but perhaps non-dualist design practices could yield futuring strategies (p.52). To investigate, he draws from design anthropology, ethnography-as-design, and the anthropology of design—and he proposes a fourth alternative, that of "reorienting design on the basis of anthropological concerns" (p.54). To explore the latter, he turns to political ecology, discussing the ontological turn, which is defined by "a host of factors that deeply shape what we come to know as reality but that social theory has rarely tackled—factors like objects and things, nonhumans, matter and materiality ... emotions, spirituality, feelings, and so forth," factors that represent "the attempt to break away from the normative divides, central to the modern regime of truth, between subject and object, mind and body, reason and emotion, living and inanimate, human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic, and so forth" (p.63). He calls these perspectives "postdualism," and argues that in them we see "the return of the repressed side of the dualisms—the forceful emergence of the subordinated and often feminized and racialized side of all of the above binaries" (p.64). 

"The most important targets of a postdualist PE [political ecology] re the divide between nature and culture, on the one hand, and the idea that there is a single nature (or world) to which there correspond many cultures, on the other," he argues, citing scholars such as Ingold, Haraway, Law, and Latour (p.64). He goes on to explore the literature of feminist political ecology and political ontology. Specifically, he discusses the sociology of absences, in which "what doesn't exist is actively produced as nonexistent or as a noncredible alternative to what exists" (p.68). Thus, he says, we must step away from the limits inherent in the "mono-ontological or intra-European origin of such theories" (p.68), instead understanding the world in terms of "relational ontologies" with "complex weavings" based in a "rhizome-like logic" that "reveals an altogether different way of being and becoming in territory and place" (p.70). To be honest, I became a bit frustrated at this point in the book, since the discussion is based primarily in European and American authors (Ingold, Haraway, Law, Latour), the logic is described with the familiar term rhizome (cf. Deleuze and Guattari), and the author turns to handwaving phrases ("complex weavings") rather than more concrete argument. Latour and Woolgar's Laboratory Life was published in 1979; Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus was published in 1980; Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto was published in 1985. Why aren't we farther along here? Perhaps Escobar is attempting to describe these insights to a design audience that hasn't heard of them, but if so, I would like to see more precise phrases than "complex weavings" and a better transition from these Western authors to non-Western and specifically South American insights. However, to his credit, he does soon get to South American insights, specifically via Maturana and Vela, who discuss cognition as enaction (p.82). 

Later, Escobar argues that the problem isn't that dualities exist—it is that coloniality features the categorization and hierarchical classification of differences (p.94). He argues that "there is no modernity anywhere without this coloniality" (p.94). 

With this foundation in place, Escobar turns to the question of what a new design should look like, drawing on Winograd and Flores (pp.109-110). Long story short, it is ontologically oriented and aimed at sustainability. Sustainable design "requires fundamental changes in values and novel socioeconomic and institutional arrangements"; it "highlights interconnectedness and envisions the decoupling of well-being from growth or consumption, and the cultivation of new values (e.g., solidarity, ethics, community, meaning)" (p.142). Later in the book, he lays out the presumptions of autonomous design, which read like participatory design:

1. "Every community practices the design of itself"
2. "Every design activity must start with the strong presupposition that people are practitioners of their own knowledge"
3. "What the community designs, in the first instance, is an inquiring or learning system about itself"
4. "Every design process involves a statement of problems and possibilities that enables the designer and the group to generate agreements about objectives and to decide among alternate courses of action"
5. "This exercise can take the form of building a model of the system that generates the problem of communal concern" (pp.184-185)

He lists more features of autonomous design on pp.188-189, summarized in Figure 6.2 as related to Earth, Territories, Ancestrality, Un/Sustainability/Sustainment, Futurality, and Autonomy (p.189). Realizing this vision means "that all transition thinking needs to develop this attunement to the Earth. In the end, it seems to me that a plural sense of civilizational transitions that contemplates—each vision in its own way—the Liberation of Mother Earth as a fundamental transition design principle is the most viable historical project that humanity can undertake at present" (p.204). Earlier, Escobar described the idea that we live in a single underlying world as "imperialistic" (p.86), but when rallying the entire globe to undertake a project, it's useful to have a single underlying principle ("the Liberation of Mother Earth," a notion in which Escobar has packed a lot of ideas about an underlying shared reality). 

As you can tell, I'm not convinced by this argument, which seems to me to be seeking to replace one fundamental understanding with another, largely on the backs of 40-year-old ideas developed by Western philosophers. Sure, we could change the world as long as most of us decide to believe and act differently—to replace a shared set of assumptions about a shared world with a different set of assumptions about the same world. (That's what Lenin thought would happen in 1917.) But there's no roadmap from A to B. There's not even a roadmap to addressing the obvious scaling issues in the numbered list above, the list that looks so similar to the principles of participatory design, which itself has been around for 35 years and which has also not scaled due to the labor-intensiveness of achieving sustained buy-in from community members. I'd be more interested if Escobar, like participatory designers, had applied principles in a concrete way to specific cases in order to illustrate how at least part of the world could change with this new vision. That is, Escobar needs a UTOPIA project in which to prove these ideas—and it would help if he read beyond Winograd and Flores to the broader CSCW and PD literature. 

I've been a little hard on this book because I think it overpromises. However, it's still a useful book for thinking about how different ontologies might contribute to design. In particular, it functions well as a set of literature reviews that bridge design with object-oriented ontology (OOO) concerns. For that reason, I still recommend the book (with caution) to people who are interested in pluralist design approaches. 

Reading :: The Wretched of the Earth

The Wretched of the Earth
By Frantz Fanon

This 1961 classic of decolonialist literature has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre -- which we'll skip.

On the first page, Fanon tells us: "decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.  ... decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain 'species' of men by another 'species' of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and absolute substitution" (p.35). He argues that decolonization is "a historical process," "the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantification which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies" (p.36). In this situation, it is "the settler who has brought the native into existence and who perpetuates his existence" (p.36). He adds: "In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem" (p.40) -- that is, the Marxist claim that everything comes back to economics is inadequate, since colonialism sets the terms for economics. This is more than a slight stretching! And thus "Everything up to and including the very nature of pre-capitalist society, so well explained by Marx, must here be thought out again" (p.40).

He argues that decolonization is ascendant for various reasons. The colonial powers want to avoid the violence of revolution (p.70) and the infiltration of Communists (p.74), and decolonialization allows the US to escape the bad press and Soviet propaganda about colonialism (p.79). The West has tried to slow and manage decolonization, but it cannot stop it. 

Furthermore, "colonialism, as we have seen, is in fact the organization of a Manichean world, a world divided up into compartments" (p.84). And he argues that former colonies should not be swept up in the Manichean Great Power competition between the US and USSR: "The underdeveloped countries, which have used the fierce competition which exists between the two systems in order to assure the triumph of their struggle for national liberation, should however refuse to become a factor in that competition" (pp.98-99). Rather, "The country finds itself in the hands of new managers; but the fact is that everything needs to be reformed and everything thought out anew" (p.100).

Like Cesaire, he argues, "what is fascism if not colonialism when rooted in a traditionally colonialist country?" (p.90). And "Not long ago Nazism transformed the whole of Europe into a veritable colony. The governments of the various European nations called for reparations and demanded the restitution in kind and money of the wealth which had been stolen from them: cultural treasures, pictures, sculptures, and stained glass have been given back to their owners" (p.101). Thus: "In the same way we may say that the imperialist states would make a great mistake and commit an unspeakable injustice if they contented themselves with withdrawing from our soil the military cohorts, and the administrative and managerial services whose function it was to discover the wealth of the country, to extract it and to send it off to the mother countries" (p.102). He calls for "a double realization: the realization by the colonized peoples that it is their due, and the realization by the capitalist powers that in fact they must pay. For if, through lack of intelligence (we won't speak of lack of gratitude) the capitalist countries refuse to pay, then the relentless dialectic of their own system will smother them" (p.103). That is, without reparations, capital can't find a safe outlet and is blocked and frozen in Europe, leading to catastrophe in the long run (p.104). The former colonies will no longer buy things from Europe, and thus the capitalists will struggle against their own governments and monopolies will eventually realize they must give aid (p.105). He urges the West to stop the Cold War and give aid to underdeveloped regions, for the fate of the world depends on it (p.105).

(Here, as in Freire, the author invokes dialectic as an analogue for justice.)

Fanon turns to the question of the relationship between a nationalist party and the masses. He first notes that the idea of political party has been developed for highly industrialized societies, then imported into colonized areas (p.108), and that the analogue does not work so well: "in the colonial territories the proletariat is the nucleus of the colonized population which has been most pampered by the colonial regime" (p.108) -- i.e., the proletariat are the bourgeoisie (p.109). He goes on to discuss the difficulties in developing a revolution in a colonized area, then looks forward to the future decolonized society:

In a veritable collective ecstasy, families which have always been traditional enemies decide to rub out old scores and to forgive and forget. There are numerous reconciliations. Long-buried but unforgettable hatreds are brought to light once more, so that they may more surely be rooted out. The taking on of nationhood involves a growth of awareness. The national unity is first the unity of a group, the disappearance of old quarrels and the final liquidation of unspoken grievances. (p.132)

and 

The settler is not simply the man who must be killed. Many members of the mass of colonialists reveal themselves to be much, much nearer to the national struggle than certain sons of the nation. The barriers of blood and race-prejudice are broken down on both sides. (p.146)

This is optimism on the level of the Leninist notion of the withering away of the state! 

We see the continuing influence of Marxism-Leninism in the rest of the dialogue. For instance, the rich are predators -- and subhuman:

The more the people understand, the more watchful they become, and the more they come to realize that finally everything depends on them and their salvation lies in their own cohesion, in the true understanding of their interests, and in knowing who their enemies are. The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh-eating animals, jackals, and vultures which wallow in the people's blood. (p.191)

And labor (as opposed to slavery) gives us dignity: 

the idea of work is not as simple as all that, that slavery is opposed to work, and that work presupposes liberty, responsibility, and consciousness. (p.191)

In a later chapter, Fanon turns to actual cases of mental disorders to discuss how colonialism affects the colonized. 

He concludes by calling the former colonies to make their own way independent of their former colonizers:

So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe?

That same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind. (p.312)

And "It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man" (p.315).

All in all, the book reminds me of Lenin. The analysis is unrelenting and unflinching. But that analysis gives way to a vision of the future that is overoptimistic and perhaps oversimplified. Just as Lenin saw the state withering away once the oppressions of capitalism had ceased, Fanon saw the decolonized coming together in a common purpose once the oppressions of colonialism had ceased. But perhaps that optimistic, clearly delineated vision is what one needs in order to move confidently into an uncertain future. In any case, it's well worth a read, both for the analysis and for the proposed vision. 

Reading :: Discourse on Colonialism

Discourse on Colonialism
By Aime Cesaire

This book was first published in 1950. According to Robin D.G. Kelley, who wrote the introduction, it was part of a wave of postwar anticolonial literature (p.8). Cesaire was born in Martinique in 1913, went to study in Paris in 1931, and began his awakening there. He and his wife returned to Fort-de-France in 1939, shortly before France fell and Vichy rule began. Thousands of French sailors arrived on the island, shattering his illusion of colorblind French brotherhood and radicalizing Cesaire. Cesaire went on to develop his anticolonialist views, including his view that fascism is just colonialism turned on Westerners (p.19). Kelley notes that Cesaire closes his 1950 book with the "shocking" assertion that the Soviet Union was a template for a better society (p.23); Cesaire would go on to reject Stalinism in 1956 (p.25), and even in the 1950 book he advocated for an "unmaterialist" (p.24) set of new spiritual values (p.25). 

Kelley emphasizes that in this book, Cesaire argues that "colonial domination required a whole way of thinking, a discourse in which everything that is advanced, good, and civilized is defined and measured in European terms" (p.27). And Kelley adds that "In the end, Discourse was never intended to be a road map or a blueprint for revolution. It is poetry and therefore revolt. It is an act of insurrection, drawn from Cesaire's own miraculous weapons" (p.28).

Now to the book itself. Cesaire indicts Europe on the first page:

The fact is that the so-called European civilization -- "Western" civilization -- as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of "reason" or before the bar of "conscience"; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive. (p.31)

and

the chief culprit in this domain is Christian pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity = civilization, paganism savagery, from which there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences. (p.33)

Cesaire allows that "is a good thing to place different civilizations in contact with each other; that it is an excellent thing to blend different worlds" (p.33) -- but colonization has not done this (pp.33-34). Instead, colonization places an infinite gap between civilizations (p.34), and in doing so, decivilizes the colonizer (p.35), making Europe savage (p.36) and leading to Hitler: Hitler demonstrates that capitalist society can't establish the concept of rights of all men or individual ethics (p.37). In fact,

that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization -- and therefore force -- is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment. (p.39)

Indeed, in treating others like an animal, the colonizer transforms himself into one -- the boomerang effect of colonization (p.41). He adds: "colonization = "thingification" (p.42). And he vaunts the old societies that colonization replaced: "They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few" and "They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist" (p.44). 

Europe is not the only problem: "the barbarism of Western Europe has reached an incredibly high level, being only surpassed -- far surpassed, it is true -- by the barbarism of the United States" (p.47). For better models, we have to look elsewhere:

It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

For some examples showing that this is possible, we can look to the Soviet Union. (p.52)

In the next chapter, he discusses the issue of personal vs. systemic oppression:

And do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally -- that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul -- they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism. (p.55)

He concludes that Europe, if it is not careful, will perish from the void it has created around itself (p.75). And 

the salvation of Europe is not a matter of a revolution in methods. It is a matter of the Revolution -- the one which, until such time as there is a classless society, will substitute for the narrow tyranny of a dehumanized bourgeoisie the preponderance of the only class that still has a universal mission, because it suffers in its flesh from all the wrongs of history, from all the universal wrongs: the proletariat. (p.78)

That is, he returns to Marxism-Leninism as a possible template for a post-colonialist Europe that can deliver on its promises. 

As Kelley mentions in the Introduction, Cesaire had been a leader in the Communist party of Martinique since 1945, so by 1950 he was fairly committed. Furthermore, with fascism defeated, the world had become bipolar, with the US leading the a coalition of capitalist democracies and the USSR leading a coalition of communist and socialist republics. Which path would history take? But by 1956 it had become clear that Stalinism could not deliver on all of its promises: Stalin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1953, and Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" was delivered in 1956, but more broadly, it became clear that the US and USSR were fighting proxy battles on others' soil (e.g., the Korean War of 1950-1953). The USSR could not deliver on the promises that had made it so attractive to audiences such as Cesaire (although those promises continued to inspire people through the 1980s). 

Nevertheless, as Kelley argues, Cesaire's remarks about the USSR are not central to his discourse -- without them, the piece still stands as an indictment against European colonialism. For that reason, this short book is definitely worth a read.  

Reading :: Genre Studies around the Globe

Genre Studies around the Globe: Beyond the Three Traditions
Edited by Natasha Artemeva and Aviva Freedman

This edited collection, as promised, draws from scholars across the globe to examine multiple traditions of genre theory and research. North American genre scholars will recognize authors such as Swales, Bhatia, Martin, Bazerman, Miller, Bawarshi, Giltrow, Rose, Tardy, Johns, Devitt, and Freadman, but we also see plenty of others across the 18 chapters. 

Since the collection largely features senior scholars, we see a lot of summing up in these chapters. For instance, Bazerman's chapter features a retrospective in which he discusses his journey to understanding and developing genre theory, while Miller's critically examines a metaphor (evolution) that has guided some genre theory. We also see a lot of overviews and histories of genre approaches. I think these contributions are important and could position the book well for, say, a class on genre theory. On the other hand, the strength is also a weakness: like most collections, this one had a hard time pulling together a unified theme and the overview-ishness of most chapters means that they sum up rather than offering new developments. Still, a worthwhile volume. If you're interested in genre theory, certainly pick it up.

Reading :: The Origin of Language

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
By Merritt Ruhlen

I found this 1994 book fascinating, but not entirely for its subject matter. Merritt Ruhlen studied with the late Joseph Greenberg, who advanced the controversial idea that all extant languages can be traced to a single language. Ruhlen took up that standard, but by his account, "these proposals do not enjoy wide acceptance within the linguistic establishment, where, in fact, they are almost universally condemned as 'futile,' 'subversive,' or worse" (p.125). Aggrieved, Ruhlen concludes that the linguistic establishment is wrong and their reasoning faulty, and he brings his case to us, the public. 

To make the case, he provides us with carefully curated tables that allow us to compare words in different languages. Through this approach, he walks us first through comparing European languages (Ch.1) while providing the basics on how languages change; then through language families, specifically in Asia and (native) Americas (Ch.2); then the idea of families of families of languages (Ch.3), noting that linguists do not believe that families of languages are related to each other—and congratulating us on seeing through "one of the great hoaxes of twentieth-century science" (p.66). In Ch.4, he examines Native American language families, concluding that these belong to different families-of-families common with the rest of the world, and in Ch.5, he argues that the evidence suggests "a single origin for all extant human languages" (p.104). Ch.6 reviews the conflict he and Greenberg have with the linguistic establishment, which contends that languages change too much for comparison to be useful past about 6000 years (cf. p.76). He points to relatively new evidence that the three North American language families correspond to genetics and to teeth (p.166), arguing that all three lines of evidence point to three distinct waves of immigration that made up what we call Native Americans. 

So what do we, the public, think of this line of argument? Despite Ruhlen's attempt to teach me the basics of linguistic comparisons, I am not confident in my newfound ability to compare languages and language families. This controversy is relatively easy to explain, but I — and, I think, most of the rest of the public — are not equipped to judge it on its merits or on the evidence that Ruhlen provides. I'm also not convinced by Ruhlen's explanation for why the linguistic establishment is unpersuaded—my suspicion is that if I were to talk to members of this establishment in 1994, they would have plenty of other reasons that Ruhlen did not discuss. A quick scan of his Wikipedia page suggests that this intuition is correct.

All this doesn't mean that I am taking sides! I am just intrigued by the idea of bringing a bitter disagreement from your specialty to the court of public opinion, a court that has neither the training nor the investment to make a ruling. It's a proposition that is doomed to fail, but maybe that's why I enjoyed reading it.

Reading :: Awful Archives

Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Evidence
By Jenny Edbauer

What could be more timely than a book on how conspiracy theorists argue? In this highly readable book, Jenny Edbauer recounts her time in the archives of conspiracy theorists as well as her interviews with them, examining how they make claims, cite evidence, and respond to others' arguments. In examining conspiracy theories about ESP experiments, the hollow Earth, the Stargate project, the Holocaust, 9/11, the Apollo moon landing, President Obama's birthplace, and Pizzagate, Edbauer examines evidence not as a foundational material on which to build arguments, but in terms of acts, processes, and registers. 

Based on these investigations, she urges us to think of evidence as "composed of actions that build and move in many different registers, both material and affective. They are structures in motion" (Kindle loc 3635). Evidentiary structures and processes, she argues, are "embedded within larger public scenes" (ibid.). In her final chapter, she suggests that the method of debunking conspiracy theories offered by "debate culture" -- that of providing evidence and demonstrating its solidity -- is not effective, since debate culture always loses to theater in the eyes of conspiracy theorists (loc. 3635). For an example, she points to Lenny Pozner, whose son was murdered at Sandy Hook. When conspiracy theorists portrayed him as a crisis actor and claimed that his son was either still alive or nonexistent, Pozner initially responded by posting his son's birth certificate and providing other evidence. After years of such attempts, he switched tactics: whenever he saw his son's photo on a conspiracy posting, he reported it as a copyright violation. This tactic -- responding to the structures and processes of social media platforms rather than to a neutral, dispassionate audience that didn't exist -- worked. 

For those of us who are still hopeful about the role of evidence, this book is dispiriting. More to the point, although it helps us to understand this current moment -- in which conspiracy theories are going mainstream, amplified by the President, destroying faith in free and fair elections. Unfortunately, these conspiracy theories have gone so mainstream that the Pozner approach might not be viable: can the structures and processes of social media platforms be gamed when this many people have turned their backs on evidence? 

Should you pick up this book? Definitely.

Reading :: Don't Knock the Hustle

Don't Knock the Hustle: Young Creatives, Tech Ingenuity, and the Making of a New Innovation Economy
By S. Craig Watkins

A fast review today for a fast read. I picked up this book after attending an IC2 meeting with Watkins -- he's currently conducting research on coworking spaces in rural areas. In this book, he lays out his recent research (including research on coworking, but other side hustles) for a general audience. The book is highly readable and takes us on a tour of side gigs and hustles: not just coworking spaces, but also bootstrapping game development, pop music production, schooling, web series, indie movie development, and activism. 

Whereas many research studies focus specifically on the gig economy and its precarity, Watkins' studies connect that economy deeply and appropriately to generation (millennials) and diversity. The book is a fast read, overviewing stories from many different sectors and drawing them together to provide broad insights about the hustle. If you're interested in how the innovation economy is being lived out, definitely pick up this book. Personally, I'm planning to pick up the research articles on which the book was based. 

(I'm still reading)

 I haven't reviewed a book here since October. That doesn't mean I stopped reading -- I've just been cannibalizing my blogging time in order to write on my many projects. But with winter break here, I'll try to catch up on the books I've read recently -- at least 13! 

Reading :: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Pedagogy of the Oppressed
By Paulo Freire

The link goes to a version of this famous book on Amazon, but (full disclosure) I downloaded a PDF of it recently. I read it late this summer, just before Matusov's Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy, which (you may recall) excoriated Freire for his later work in supporting totalitarian regimes. 

This isn't the first time I've read this book, of course. In fact, I read it as a PhD student in the mid 1990s in a class on radical pedagogy. Back then, I didn't approve of the book, but had a hard time articulating it. A quarter century later, I can articulate my problems with it, although I can also see past those problems to understand its contributions.

So let's talk about those contributions first. Freire is best known for two specific contributions to education theory. First is his critique of the "banking model of education," mainly in Chapter 2. In this model, 

Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into 'containers,' into 'receptacles' to be 'filled' by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education ... (pp.71-72) 

Freire roundly criticizes this model, which is both enslaving and incorrect. Learning just does not happen in this way, as any educational psychologist can tell you. But the banking model, he says, mirrors oppressive society as a whole -- implying a monopoly on truth, reinforcing an understanding of active leadership and passive followers (p.73). That is, the banking model becomes a model of citizenship; "the 'humanism' of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human" (p.74). In dicohotomizing everything (p.80), he argues, the banking model removes the students' (and citizens') ability to know.

Second is his argument that education should be a dialogue. As he says early in the book, "The correct method [of education] lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight for their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientizacao" (p.67). This dialogue should not be a manipulation by teachers (revolutionary leadership) of the students—it must express the consciousness of the students themselves (p.69); in Bakhtin's sense, it can't be authoritative discourse, it must be internally persuasive. In dialogic education, in contrast to the banking model, "no one teachers another, nor is anyone self-taught (p.80). 

Now, let's talk about the issues I have with Freire. Freire was a central figure in inspiring liberation theology, a synthesis of Christian theology and socioeconomic analyses. Specifically, Freire (like many in the mid-20th century) based his socioeconomic analysis on the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin (MELS) analysis that posed the most direct challenge to capitalism in the mid-20th century. The fingerprints of both MELS and Christianity are all over the place in this book. The problem, of course, is that neither really coexists with dialogue in the sense that Freire tries to encourage—both identify an absolute truth and a teleology in which all will eventually know the truth as the come to a day of reckoning (and here I am specifically referring to the Stalinist viewpoint). Both subscribe to a Manichean view in which good and evil (or oppressed and oppressors) exist and struggle until a day in which good wins and evil is abolished. 

So how do you square dialogic pedagogy with an absolute truth? Simple: You argue that if people are allowed to conduct dialogue, they will eventually come to the Truth. And this is essentially what Freire argues. The oppressed themselves, he says, will liberate both themselves and (eventually) their oppressors (p.44) from this dialectical contradiction between opposing social forces (p.46). As they discover that they are oppressed, the students discover the dialectical relationship they have with the oppressor, without which the oppressor cannot exist (p.49). This concrete contradiction is objectively verifiable and must be transformed to liberate both parties from the contradiction (p.50). This liberatory pedagogy cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors themselves—it must spring from the oppressed, leading to a "process of permanent liberation" for all (p.54); "As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors' power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression" (p.56). This dialectic yields "the appearance of the new man: neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man in the process of liberation" (p.56, my emphasis; notice that the Soviets and the New Testament both refer to the idea of a new man: see Ephesians 4:17-24). 

Shuttling between a Christian and a MELS vocabulary, Freire continues: "Conversion of the people requires a profound rebirth. ... Only through comradeship with the oppressed can the converts understand their characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in diverse moments reflect the structure of domination" (p.61). Diverse social ills are laid at the feet of the oppressor-oppressed dialectic: When the oppressed man beats his children or drinks too much, it's because of the oppressor (p.65). "It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves" (p.65). And that realization cannot be bestowed, it cannot be propagandized, it can only be realized through dialogue (p.67), which must express the consciousness of the students themselves (p.69). 

Later, Freire argues that this dialogue leads to unity: "This affirmation [that oppressors and oppressed transform each other] might appear to imply division, dichotomy, rupture of the revolutionary forces; in fact, it signifies exactly the opposite: their communion" (p.129). And a few pages later: "Unity and organization can enable [the oppressed] to change their weakness into a transforming force with which they can re-create the world and make it more human" (p.145). These terms—communion, unity, organization—suggest what Freire has explicitly told us elsewhere: When he says dialogue, he's talking about dialectic, leading to a more densely woven unity. Give people the room to talk and they will listen to something similar to what evangelicals characterize as the "still small voice"—they will come to the same truth.

We can see why Matusov was initially enchanted by this idea, but we can also see how Freire eventually became involved in developing propagandic programs for totalitarian regimes. If Truth exists and you expect people to find it, what happens if they don't? You have to give them hints. And if they don't take your hints—if their dialogue doesn't lead to your conclusions? Clearly they have not listened to the "still small voice" or they have consciously decided to side with the oppressor. Evangelicals understand this willful disobedience as taking sides against God, leading to Hell; Stalin characterized it as counterrevolutionary activity, leading to the Gulag. Freire, for his part, doesn't even seem to entertain the possibility that dialogue would lead to somewhere other than his conclusions! 

I've been a bit harsh in this review, and I expect my view is colored by my recent research in Soviet history as well as my evangelical upbringing. Certainly you should read this classic text as well and draw your own conclusions. In Bakhtin's terms, I invite you to enter this dialogue and see if it is internally persuasive for you. 

Reading :: Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy

Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy

By Eugene Matusov

For research purposes, I'm not especially interested in pedagogy. But I am interested in dialogism, and Matusov has been considering dialogism from the cultural-historical perspective for a long time—specifically its relationship with Hegelian and Marxist dialectics. So I picked up this book and was not disappointed. Although it is rough around the edges in places (it could have used a bit more editing), the book considers dialogism from a really useful angle. 

The resulting review will be a bit self-serving, focusing more on my concerns than Matusov's. If your concerns are closer to his (that is, if you're focused on pedagogy), I encourage you to pick up the book yourself. It should be well worth it! But given my more selfish aims, I'll mainly focus on the relationship between dialogicality and monologicality, terms that are based in Bakhtin.

Matusov gets at this relationship in Ch.2, where he reviews Socratic dialogic pedagogy. He notes that many commentators have focused on the dialectical aspects of these dialogues, and agrees that "Socratic dialogic pedagogy involves a focus on questioning contradictions" in others' thinking — but this is dialectic in the Socratic sense, not in the Hegelian or Marxist sense, which "involves analysis of mutually constituting oppositions" (p.19). Rather, "Socratic dialogic pedagogy is based on internally persuasive discourse and involves transformation of the student's subjectivity or the student's 'ideological becoming'" (p.19; the internal quotes refer to Bakhtin). He argues that Socrates was pedagogically a "radical constructivist," although epistemologically he was a "radical anti-constructivist" (p.21). Matusov conducts a content analysis of the Meno to demonstrate.

In Ch.4, Matusov turns to Paulo Freire's dialogic pedagogy—a pedagogy with which Matusov was initially infatuated, but later connected with totalitarianism. Matusov really lets Freire have it: He charges that "Freire personally participated in two totalitarian communist regimes in Africa: in Guinea-Bissau and in Sao Tome and Principe in the mid 1970s ... For some strange reason, neither he nor his dialogic critical pedagogy for liberation registered the totalitarian oppression happening in those African countries as recorded by human rights organizations at that time that Freire worked there. ... Freire's own texts about his work ... suggest ... that he and his dialogic critical pedagogy willingly and, arguably, uncritically, participated in the political propaganda campaigns of these totalitarian communist regimes" (p.74). Matusov has the receipts and displays them throughout the chapter.

I've heard that a cynic is a disappointed idealist, and Matusov appears to be a cynic when it comes to Freire: he was initially taken by Freire's dialogic pedagogy, but realized that "Freire did not develop a pedagogical argument for the need of dialogue in education" (p.79). "According to Freire, the regime of dialogue requires love and the equality of free people searching for truth. Truth emerges as a consensus among free participants in a dialogue, 'dialogical people,' that is tested by their actions. Dialogical people cannot impose truth on each other neither by epistemological authority ... nor by force ... but only through critical dialogue tested by the participants' actions" (p.81). So, for Freire, "Dialogue as a meaning making process is also a process of humanizing the world and, thus, themselves" (p.81). 

Matusov takes issue with this characterization: "Like many scholars rooted in Hegel and Marx, Freire seemed to prioritize consensus over disagreement in a dialogue. ... In dialogue, people become complete. It is 'bigger' than its participants are. ... One can speak monologically on behalf of the Dialogue" (p.82). Matusov points to a footnote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (p.74) in which Freire approvingly quotes Chairman Mao as saying "we must teach the masses clearly what we have received from them confusedly"; Matusov comments: "This totalitarian circular reasoning claims a communist monopoly on truth" and adds, "Freire did not recognize this monologic trick but instead enthusiastically but, uncritically, accepted Mao Tse-Tung's propaganda statement" (p.82). 

Matusov later argues that "Freire's version of dialogic pedagogy can be characterized as cultural-dialogical because he believed that knowledge emerged dialogically but exists in culture (e.g., artifacts and historically established consensuses). Thus, Freire's approach can be characterized still as instrumental, Freire's own insistence to the contrary" (p.92). 

This brings us back to Matusov's case against Freire in Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tome. Ruthlessly, Matusov argues that the texts that Freire prepared for teachers in these countries were "classical totalitarian texts" (p.98, his emphasis), all bearing "the same birthmarks of totalitarianism," "including cult of personality" (p.98), "authoritarian argumentation," "propaganda of the official Party line," "full loyalty and conformity to the regime," "lack or suppression of critical stand toward the regime" (p.99), "disregard to human suffering from the hands of 'liberators,'" "circular reasoning of self-righteousness," and "totalitarian ideology" (p.100; he supplies examples for all of these claims). Matusov notes that Freire wrote all of these texts from outside the regimes, so they cannot be explained by fear or material gain; "Freire's production of totalitarian texts was obviously intrinsic" (p.100). After examining one text closely, he adds: "Notice please that all statements in Freire's curriculum texts are given in a form of commands" (p.102—so much for internally persuasive dialogue). Matusov closes the chapter with an unequivocal condemnation of "totalitarian socialist regimes" and "a high majority of the radical left [which] has remained silent" rather than criticizing such regimes (p.105). (Matusov is not positioning himself as a member of the right here; he espouses social justice as well as conventional left positions, both here and throughout the book.) Ultimately, he concludes, Freire's liberation pedagogy was "too monologic" both in concept and in practice, prioritizing Freire's idea of social justice over "searching for truth" (p.109).

In Ch.5, Matusov returns to more pleasant topics, specifically Bakhtin on polysemy, dialogue, and monologue. He argues that there are three "vistas" on dialogue and monologue in Bakhtin: oppositional, complementary, and excesses. 

• Oppositional relations between the two are best known to educators, but focusing just on oppositional relations inevitably leads to monologue! (p.112)
• Complementary relations lead us to the concept of "voice," which Matusov argues is an alternative to Western "identity." "Any voice is characterized by a certain degree and quality of dialogicality and monologicality reflecting both centrifugal and centripetal forces of human consciousness and human community" (p.112).
• Excesses in both monologism and dialogism are "associated with stable breakdowns in a community that are often politically grounded in social classes" (p.112).

Examining a classroom incident, Matusov argues that "meaning is never generated but emerges on boundaries" (p.120). Furthermore, "In excessive dialogism, a unified, solidified, respected, pacified world is impossible because there is no a [sic] community that backs up the individual" (p.133). Matusov notes that one of Bakhtin's examples of excessive monologism is schooling (p.139), and he adds that "excessive monologism accepts only one consciousness — the consciousness of an authority or a tradition" (p.140). In dialogism, "truth is not the product of this dialogic process, but it is the process itself" (p.141). 

Skipping way ahead, in Ch.12, Matusov considers dialogue and activity—specifically activity as articulated in activity theory. He argues that "there seems to be some kind of tension between the notions of learning and dialogue, on the one hand, and the notion of activity, on the other." He argues that "activity is responsible for the monologicity aspect of discourse" because "joint collective activity is about accomplishing something" and 

the subject of such an activity is a unified, shared, common understanding — one consciousness, as Bakhtin would say. A joint activity becomes problematic when shared understanding is not achieved, partially achieved, or achieved about wrong things. Although heteroglossia can be viewed as a productive force in the activity at its initial and intermediary stages, at the final phase, it has to be eliminated. From this point of view, activity is essentially anti-dialogue (anti-heteroglossic). However, as Bakhtin showed, this unifying, centripetal force is an important aspect of any discourse defining one's voice, the recognized unity of consciousness. The problem starts when the other complementary and necessary aspect of discourse—namely dialogicity—is either ignored or attempted to actively exclude from the analysis (and design) or eliminate from the discourse, when a voice becomes the voice. In the latter case, there becomes a tendency to establish a regime of excessive monologism. (p.383)

Matusov outlines three principles of the activity approach:

1. Activity is defined by mediation;
2. Human social and psychological phenomena is [sic] shaped by the humans' participation in the activities, practices, and institutions; and 
3. Activities transform and develop through dialectical contradictions. (p.383)

Getting personal, Matusov discusses studying psychology in the 1970s and 1980s from Davydov and colleagues and being attracted by the activity approach (p.384). But this attraction was disrupted as he read Bakhtin and realized that "Bakhtin saw Hegelian dialectics as some kind of deception" (p.385). Recalling a seminar that he arranged as a young scholar, Matusov quotes Soviet philosopher Anatoly Arsen'ev as saying that "Bakhtin realized on the ethical grounds that Hegel and the activity approach in its logical conclusion lead [sic] to totalitarianism and genocide of any dissent" (p.385). Matusov was shocked, but "Later, I realized that the activity approach focuses on the monologicality aspect of discourse and indeed if it is pushed too far leads to excessive monologism as it happened with Marxism" (p.385). Yet

Monologicity has to be appreciated and recognized as an important and necessary aspect of discourse. For example, although Bakhtin criticized dialectics in many of his writings, he also acknowledged that dialectics can produce "a higher level dialogue," "dialectics was born of dialogue so as to return again to dialogue at a much higher level (a dialogue of personalities) (Bakhtin et al., 1986, p.162). Activity approach has to be complemented by focus on dialogicity (Engestrom et al., 1999). (p.385)

He argues:

The activity approach has rarely considered these types of byproduct-oriented activity processes. I propose, at risk of being severely criticized by my colleagues, that activity approach mostly focus [sic] on re-productive activities, in which the issue of "how" (to achieve something known) is more important to participants than "why" and "what" (they try to do what they do). In contrast, creatively productive activities develop a new product. (p.386)

Later, he states: "Dialogic opposition involves an irresolvable confrontation of person-ideas" (p.403)—and it is this irresolvability that distinguishes it from dialectic (my observation, not Matusov's). He concludes the chapter by approving of Engestrom's (1999) "call for focusing Activity Theory on dialogic aspects of activity" and arguing for viewing teaching as a special activity (p.414).

There is more, much more, to this 428-page book. But I'll leave it there. Overall, I found this book to be very helpful, especially as I consider the relationship between dialectics and dialogics in activity theory. If you're interested in that—or if you're interested in the actual subject of the book, dialogical pedagogy (!)— check it out.

Reading :: Global Social Media Design

Global Social Media Design
By Huatong Sun

This isn't the first time I have read this book—I blurbed it!—but I picked it up a second time recently as I was working through a problem in my current manuscript, and was struck again by how insightful and timely it is. Here, Sun extends the CLUE framework from her first book into the CLUE2 framework, focusing on culturally localized user experience and empowerment. How can we better understand designed interfaces as they are deployed, received, and used across cultures? 

Specifically, she examines the design of social media across different cultures (including the US, Germany, China, Japan, South Korea), combining macro-level literature review and historical analysis of interfaces with micro-level case studies of users. To interpret these case studies, she draws on practice theory, dialogism, and postcolonial and decolonialist theory as they have been deployed in rhetoric, professional communication, CSCW, HCI, anthropology, and many other fields and disciplines. 

Along the way, Sun provides a wide-ranging review of applicable thought and lots of measured discussion of her own theoretical and methodological journey. For instance, in Ch.2, she notes that cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) seems instrumental because it lacks a political edge (p.50) and broadens her scope to practice theory and dialogism. In Ch.3, she focuses on difference in cross-cultural design, specifically "the differences that emerge from various categorical classifications such as ethnicity, race, age, class, religion, gender, sexuality, and ability" manifesting as "ways of life" (pp.56-57). She asks four questions: 

First, how does difference come into being? Second, what is the nature of difference ontologically? Third, how should we treat the difference methodologically and practically? Fourth, as designers, how can we turn differences into design resources? And how should we design with, across, and for cultural differences? (pp.57-58)

She methodically works through these questions, drawing on a broad set of literature to provide a coherent framework that underpins the case chapters.

The case chapters start with Ch.4, examining Facebook Japan—a story of initial traction followed by Facebook slumping against localized competitors such as LINE. As she notes, "the Facebook Japan case is one of the many examples that static meanings out of context are often transferred through cross-cultural design, neglecting local cultural preferences and use habits" (p.97). Specifically, FB Japan promoted "a hegemonic Eurocentric worldview (i.e., a Western model of networked sociality) and such a static meaning is complicated by the ideology of postcolonial conditions" (p.97). For instance, FB Japan followed American ideas of networked sociality by insisting on "a real name" (p.90), while "Japanese users like to keep a high level of anonymity for their profiles" in keeping with the Japanese values of "group consensus and harmony—affiliation" (p.91). To examine this conflict, Sun discusses affordances—not as static properties, but as "dialogic discursive relations" (p.103).

This framing brings us to the second case in Ch.5: Weibo of China. Weibo is a microblogging platform that was once described as the "Twitter of China" (p.137). But in its uptakes—that is, in taking up the genre of microblogging and accumulating localized practices—Weibo applied hybridization and reinvention strategies "to make contingent alliances and highlight the connections necessary to acquire agency for culturally sustaining designs" (p.137). As Sun argues, hybridization ("the cultural logic of globalization (Kraidy, 2005)" p.138) connects "concrete local experiences" with "general and abstract global processes," p.138). "It is through hybridization that heterogeneous elements and processes are linked from structures of hierarchy and networks," she adds, likening it to splicing (p.138). Reinvention involves "copycats" duplicating features (for instance, after Yik Yak became popular with US high school students, Jodel was released and became popular in some European markets; p.141). But reinvention involves uptake: "An uptake is formed through a process of hybridization as a form of localized reinvention" (p.142). In Weibo's case, 

local variations—uptakes—form an open, globally networked assemblage with dialogic relations flowing through the elements: Local uptakes share similar technological affordances and generic features; the technological affordances evolve all the time to account for the ongoing structuration; and a successful use for a particular task in one locale—the successful response to one situation—is expected to be reproduced in another locale (e.g., embedding rich-media content in the timeline of a microblogging service). Furthermore, an assemblage does not necessarily have a hierarchical structure or a center as a system, owing to the complex interactions between entities and their constant movement and flows in the contemporary condition. Therefore, a globally diffusing technology such as Twitter could be regarded as both the core technology, for those inspired by it, and an uptake, for those it was inspired by, in a global context. (p.143)

 In Ch.6, Sun examines a "war of social messaging platforms," including WeChat (China), LINE (Japan), and KakaoTalk (South Korea)—all messaging systems that resided on her friend's phone (p.147). She adds WhatsApp (USA) and applies "a relational view of design to explore how the material and the discursive are fused to articulate for culturally sustaining value propositions and global modalities" (p.148). To examine these, she oscillates between macro-level data such as number of users over time (p.150) and micro-level case studies of specific users in Japan, South Korea, China, the United States, and Germany (p.157). Using genre, she analyzes how discursive affordances are articulated as culturally sustaining value propositions (p.158), examining them in terms of design, innovation, and cultural consumption. Among other things, she notes that global mobilities—one example is that of a Hong Kong student studying in the US—shape "people's use of social messaging apps" and demonstrate "how hybrid and global a participant's experience was" (p.178). 

Based on these cases, Sun argues in Ch.7 that we turn the notion of a "design crossroads" into a "design square" with global interconnectedness (pp.190-191; she connects this notion to the 2 or "squared" in CLUE2). That is, she argues for a relational view of design that puts social practice at the center (p.192). 

In my blurb on the back of this book, I enthuse: "The design insights are eye-opening—and deeply needed as we design information and interactions for a global world." Still true! I'll come back to this book over and over—for my current manuscript, for thinking about genre and dialogism in the design space, for cites to sources on decolonialist design approaches, and for teaching my graduate and undergraduate students. 

Should you pick up a copy? Of course! Especially if you are involved in the social media or information design space. 

Reading :: Down to Earth

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
By Bruno Latour

Latour published two books in English in 2018, both focused on the question of climate. This one is the thinner, and I think it’s also more oriented to casual readers. It aims to answer the question: How did we get to this point, at which ecological degradation is increasingly obvious, yet steadfastly denied? Latour argues -- and here I consult the summary on the back of the book -- that powerful people have concluded that our ecology is really threatened and that they can survive only by abandoning the dream of a common future with others. Exploding inequalities, massive deregulation, and globalization are the result. As an antidote, Latour argues that we must reposition politics to lead us not toward the global or the national, but toward the Earth.  

Latour connects these three phenomena -- deregulation, increasing inequity, and climate change denial -- and argues that “the elites have been so thoroughly convinced that there will be no future life for everyone that they have decided to get rid of all the burdens of solidarity as fast as possible -- hence deregulation; they have decided that a sort of guilded fortress is to be built for those (a small percentage) who would be able to make it through -- hence the explosion of inequalities; and they have decided that, to conceal the crass selfishness of such a flight out of the shared world, they would have to reject absolutely the threat at the origin of this headlong flight -- hence the denial of climate change” (pp.18-19). He acknowledges that this looks “too much like a conspiracy theory” (p.21), yet can be documented.

In any case, he argues that “the issue of climate-change denial organizes all politics at the present time” (p.24) and adds that “It is not a matter of learning how to repair cognitive deficiencies, but rather of how to live in the same world … Here we find the habitual vice of epistemology, which consists in attributing to intellectual deficits something that is quite simply a deficit in shared practice” (p.25). 

To sketch out this controversy, he uses a simplified diagram similar to those he’s used elsewhere, arguing that we are dealing with “attractors”: the local opposed to the global, and at right angles to that axis, the out-of-this-world attractor of Trumpism (rejecting the world, returning to an imagined past) opposed to the terrestrial (i.e., “down to Earth”). Each attractor makes it appear as if time is flowing in its direction. 

Latour sees Europe as having started the trend of ecological degradation and, more generally, the orientation toward the global (p.102), yet it also has the ability to lead de-globalization -- since the US obviously won’t.

What to make of all this? Many commentators have argued that Latour oscillates between two irreconcilable positions: crude Machiavellianism, in which a few powerful interests pull the strings, and radical symmetry, in which every actant in the network has agency. I’ve largely dismissed this claim of irreconcilability, arguing that for Latour, a more sophisticated Machiavellianism applies for every actor. But here, Latour seems to be confirming his critics. Our poor reaction to climate change is due to a conspiracy of the elites (crude Machiavellianism) -- and at the same time our reckoning is coming because the terrestrial is also an actor (radical symmetry). This is a great story, since it allows us to place the blame on a few people we don’t much like anyway, rather than acknowledging our own roles -- our “shared practice” -- in practices that are leading to our mutual detriment. It’s much easier to revile than to repent!

But ultimately, I was underwhelmed by this analysis. It’s too neat, too simple, and too dependent on the abstract actors that Latour used in We Have Never been Modern. I don’t see it moving the ball on climate change discourse or even the analysis of it. For that reason, unless you’re a Latour completist, I think you could skip this book and instead read Facing Gaia, the more scholarly one that he put out at the same time -- the book that I will review next.

(Reading roundup: Mutizwa Mukute and colleagues)

I haven't reviewed a set of articles for a while, but recently I've been reading some work that applies and extends cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to explore and facilitate community action in southern Africa. This work has been promoted by Yrjo Engestrom and Annalisa Sannino, and it's noteworthy in part because it applies the Change Labs methodology to community action contexts.

The articles I've read include:

Colvin, J., & Mukute, M. (2018). Governance in Ethiopia: Impact evaluation of the African Climate Change and Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) project. https://doi.org/10.21201/2017.1756

Lotz-Sisitka, H., Ali, M. B., Mphepo, G., Chaves, M., Macintyre, T., Pesanayi, T., … McGarry, D. (2016). Co-designing research on transgressive learning in times of climate change. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 20, 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.04.004

Lotz-Sisitka, H., Mukute, M., Chikunda, C., Baloi, A., & Pesanayi, T. (2017). Transgressing the norm: Transformative agency in community-based learning for sustainability in southern African contexts. International Review of Education, 63(6), 897–914. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-017-9689-3Mudokwani, K., & Mukute, M. (2019). Exploring group solidarity for insights into qualities of T-learning. Sustainability (Switzerland), 11(23). https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236825

Mukute, M. (2016). Dialectical critical realism and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT): Exploring and expanding learning processes in sustainable agriculture workplace contexts. In L. Price & H. Lotz-Sisitka (Eds.), Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change. New York: Routledge.

Mukute, M., & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (2012). Working with cultural-historical activity theory and critical realism to investigate and expand farmer learning in Southern Africa. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(4), 342–367. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2012.656173

Mukute, M., Mudokwani, K., McAllister, G., & Nyikahadzoi, K. (2018). Exploring the Potential of Developmental Work Research and Change Laboratory to Support Sustainability Transformations: A Case Study of Organic Agriculture in Zimbabwe. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 25(3), 229–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2018.1451542

CHAT isn't a stranger to facilitating community action—see for instance the work that Bodker did with unions in the UTOPIA project—but here, Mukute and colleagues apply it across geographically different communities and to issues of decolonization. Because of the wider scope, Engestrom and Sannino cite this work to illustrate a new iteration of CHAT (Yamazumi, n.d.; Engestrom & Sannino 2016). Mukute and colleagues at Rhodes University have examined cases such as “(1) sustainable agriculture in Lesotho; (2) seed saving and rainwater harvesting in Zimbabwe; (3) community-based irrigation scheme management in Mozambique; and (4) biodiversity conservation co-management in South Africa” (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2017, p.897; cf. Lotz-Sisitka, Pesanayi et al. 2016; Mudokwani & Mukute 2019; Mukute 2016; Mukute & Lotz-Sisitka 2012; Mukute et al. 2018). In these related studies, the authors examine how “expansive learning might also facilitate instances of transgressing norms – viewed here as embedded practices which need to be reframed and changed in order for sustainability to emerge” (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2017, p.898). 

Mukute et al. (2018) specifically examine organic agriculture in South Africa. They state that activity theory points to “the limitations of current problem-solving approaches that have been developed in and tend to serve a capitalist-based approach, which commodifies knowledge, natural resources, and life forms.” (p.244). In their interventionist research with “eight interacting district organic farmer associations” across Zimbabwe (p.233), they conducted four Change Laboratory sessions. The first session, involving 99 organic farmers and 10 extension workers, was conducted over eight days and focused on identifying challenges and generating mirror data for the later sessions. The second through fourth sessions involved 39 farmers and seven content specialists, and focused on analyzing mirror data and then modeling and refining solutions (p.235). The fourth section in particular involved three groups presenting solutions to each other and critiquing these solutions (p.236). Through these discussions, the interventionist researchers identified how “that the matters were not only interconnected but also stratified”:

For example, climate change causes water shortages through droughts and longer midseason dry spells, and water shortages undermine food production, which results in food insecurity and poverty. Research participants’ analyses of the matters of concern using problem tree analysis suggested that the nexus issues such as food insecurity, water, and climate change had multidirectional causal relationships. For example, poverty and food insecurity make farmers vulnerable to climate change, and climate change weakens farmers’ abilities to produce food and get out of poverty. (p.237)

Through this Change Laboratories approach, Mukute et al. argue, the participants were able to participate in transgressive learning, which challenges “unjust and unsustainable norms and practices that have become normalised” (p.229). In transgressive learning,

transformations to sustainability may involve transgression of unjust and unsustainable norms. Such transgression and associated transgressive learning are interested in protecting and caring for the earth and life in and on it. ... Such learning can be supported through the CHAT-informed expansive learning process using the CL method. However, the current CHAT conceptualisation of goods and services that are produced, exchanged, and distributed seems to exclude common good and ecological services that are important in transformations to sustainability. (p.245)

It's fascinating work. If you're interested in CHAT and its development, and/or how to apply CHAT at broader scope, and/or how CHAT can work with decolonization projects, definitely check it out.