Reading :: Culture and Inference

Culture and Inference: A Trobriand Case Study
By Edwin Hutchins

"This book is an attempt to make culture the object rather than the instrument of analysis" (p.128). This sentence, at the very end of Hutchins' 1980 book, sums up his project. As he explains, "More of our knowledge of the world than we probably realize is arrived at through inference" (p.119), and much of that inference runs through our cultural understanding. 

Hutchins is interested here in cognition in field settings. The examples are taken from his naturalistic observation in the Trobriand Islands, specifically legal disputes over land. Although he observed and analyzed several such disputes, for illustration purposes, he zeroes in on one specific dispute and examines the arguments and evidence used by each claimant as well as how these were received by the court. The Trobriand land tenure system is complex, so Hutchins has to cover quite a bit of ground to get here. But it's well worth getting through because it gives us a better job of how inference works.

I'll quickly note that Hutchins cites Luria's Uzbek expedition in Chapter 1 (pp.8-9), focusing on how Luria presented syllogisms.

The book is brief, but probably merits more than this short review. If you're interested in cross-cultural cognition research, definitely pick it up!

Reading :: Sorting Things Out

Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences
By Geoffrey C. Barker and Susan Leigh Star

I was surprised to discover that although I once referenced this book on my blog, I never reviewed it. It came out in 2000 and I started reviewing books in 2003, so I must have originally read it shortly after it came out.

The book is (obviously) about classification: What it is, why we do it, what's involved. It begins with a definition of classification: "a spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal segmentation of the world" (p.10, their emphasis). In a classification system,

1. "There are consistent, unique classificatory principles in operation"
2. "The categories are mutually exclusive"
3. "The system is complete" (pp.10-11)

Yet "no real-world classification system that we have looked at meets these simple requirements" (p.11). They pragmatically broaden the definition to things that are treated like classification systems — of which there are many — and they examine these as a central part of modern life. 

One interesting note toward the end of Chapter 1 is that actor-network theory drew attention to the importance of the development of standards, but not to classification systems. If we follow the actors, we don't get to see what was excluded (p.48). Specifically, the authors later argue, that includes infrastructure (p.266).

In subsequent chapters, the authors explore classification through various cases, including tuberculosis, race classifications in South Africa, and nursing. Through this work, they develop claims about classification, but also infrastructure. It's a densely argued book to which this short review can't do justice.

Should you pick it up? Yes -- if you're interested in classification, infrastructure, or just how the modern world works, it's important and compelling reading. 

Reading :: Vygotsky and Literacy Research

Vygotsky and Literacy Research
By Peter Smagorinsky

Here, Peter Smagorinsky thinks through the question of literacy, applying Vygotsky's understanding of human development as culturally mediated. It's a solid book. But before we get into it, I do want to highlight a gripe, one that is not really about Smagorinsky per se.

Early on, Smagorinsky highlights the problems of interpreting Vygotsky when one does not speak Russian. Like me, Smagorinsky only speaks English, and he is very aware of the limitations. In fact, he ramps these up a bit, noting that Michael Cole, "who has spoken Russian for many decades, who lived in the Soviet Union during his internship with A.R. Luria, who..." -- and I'll spare you the lengthy list of qualifications -- that Michael Cole now insists on coauthoring papers with a native Russian speaker so he can better understand the "relevant context" of Vygotsky's words. 

To which I say: put down the hair shirt. I mean, Cole has now spoken Russian for longer than Vygotsky did. (Vygotsky died at 38.) Additionally, Cole certainly is more fluent in English than Vygotsky or Luria were, but this did not stop Vygotsky or Luria from reading, quoting, or criticizing scholars writing in English (and French, and German). Vygotsky never considered finding a native English writing partner to help him understand the writings of American behaviorists. Beyond that, Luria even taught himself  basic Uzbek before his Uzbek expedition — and he used Russian translators to conduct his studies there. 

Yes, I can certainly understand wanting to be careful about the cultural-historical context in archival studies. But I am also highly skeptical of gatekeeping tendencies in CHAT circles, tendencies that seem at odds with the scholarly standards of the Vygotsky Circle itself. After all, the Vygotsky Circle's texts are inevitably going to be taken up and transformed as they are applied to different sociocultural milieu -- or as Smagorinsky might put it, "reading is a constructive act done in conjunction with mediating texts and the social-cultural-historical context in which reading takes place" (p.127). 

Rant over, and back to the book. 

After the introduction, Smagorinsky provides a solid chapter (Chapter 2) discussing key Vygotskian terms and constructs. In Chapter 3, he discusses methodology and data from a Vygotskian perspective (and along the way, criticizes Luria's Uzbek expedition as culturally imperialist, p.70). Chapter 4 examines the culture of school and how it shapes literacy, while Chapter 5 discusses background for current literacy studies. 

Chapter 6 then examines reading as a culturally mediated and mediating practice. He reviews terms such as sign, text, intertext, and intercontext here, making the point that reading involves composing (p.127). He also defines text and culture. Chapter 7 reviews writing as tool and sign, Chapter 8 discusses nonverbal tool and sign systems, and Chapter 9 discusses thinking, speech, and verbal data. (Smagorinsky illustrates these later chapters with studies of high school classrooms.) The final chapter, Chapter 10, is a revision of Smagorinsky's superlative paper on the methods section as epicenter of social science research reports.

If you're interested in learning a lot about Vygotsky's terms and concepts from someone who has thought about them deeply, this is the book for you. Smagorinsky is a methodical thinker with an encyclopedic knowledge of Vygotskian thought, and this book is well worth reviewing for that fact alone. 

Reading :: The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking

The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking
By Peeter Tulviste

I've seen this book referenced many times, mainly as a replication of Luria's 1930s study of cognition and literacy. Yes, Tulviste does reproduce that study, but there's much more to this book. It turned out to be thought-provoking along a range of issues.

First, I wanted to note an oddity in this particular book. I often buy books used on Amazon, especially in a case like this, when the book has been circulating for years (this one was published in 1991). This one came to me basically pristine -- except that the cover was glued on upside down. 

But what a small price to pay for this book. Tulviste is mainly interested in the question of studying "the so-called 'higher' mental processes": psychologists studying the "lower" processes through experiments with rats have had great success, but that success does not translate well to "higher" processes because they are less tractable to biological and physiological factors (p.2). To give an example, unlike rats, human beings have three types of memory:

• hereditary
• individual
• cultural (p.3)

and cultural memory, though not "seriously considered by psychologists" (p.3), is closely related to what Tulviste calls higher mental processes. Tulviste appeals to Vygotsky and Luria's cultural-historical school here. He adds that if "substantive differences are found in comparative studies of thinking in people of different cultures and cultural groups, then these indicate the significance of the conditions in the establishment and development of verbal thinking in the individual" (p.5). 

To undertake this project, he presents four long chapters:

1. He considers and compares various "theoretical conceptions of the historical development of thinking" (p.8), including those of Spencer, Levy-Bruhl, Vygotsky, Levi-Strauss, Bruner, and Cole.
2. He examines "certain theoretical problems of the historical development of thinking" (p.8), drawing from Vygotsky and Piaget.
3. He presents an empirical case comparing people who did and did not go to school in Kirghizia, contrasting these results with those produced by Luria, Cole, Scribner, and others.
4. He compares differences in thinking due to features of language vs. features of activity.

The book is rich, and I won't be going through every note I have. Here are some important notes:

In chapter 1, Tulviste summarizes Vygotsky's understanding of higher mental processes (p.28). Vygotsky understood these processes as mediated by signs and determined by social factors, and thus turned to culture as a new explanatory principle (p.28). In higher mental processes, cultural signs/sign systems, like tools, reinforce and transform natural processes. Tulviste claims that higher mental processes are subject only to such a cultural-historical explanation (p.30). He goes on to argue that Vygotsky's ideas about the cultural determination of higher mental processes was defined concretely by Leontiev (p.31). Interestingly, at the end of the 1920s, Vygotsky had planned research on the pedology of national minorities (p.35). 

In chapter 2, Tulviste summarizes Rubinshtein and Leontiev's activity approach, in which psyche is understood as being generated via activity to carry it out (p.69). Thinking along these lines, it seems natural and normal that cross-cultural differences and historical changes in verbal thinking will appear (p.71). Taking Vygotsky's view, the spread of schooling yields the spread of conscious reflection and new thinking operations (p.105). 

In chapter 3, Tulviste turns to cross-cultural studies of literacy, including those of Luria, Cole, Scribner, and himself. He characterizes Luria as wanting to study, not the character of thinking, but the transformation of thinking due to cultural changes (p.114). Tulviste also notes Vygotsky's literacy hypothesis: that in learning to write, we make words the objects of activity and cognition, and thus words become extractable from context and manipulable -- and Tulviste finds this hypothesis inadequate (p.159). 

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book that ranged far wider than the replication study (of which I've said very little here). If you're interested in the relationship between language and cognition, or cross-cultural studies, or verbal thinking, or Vygotskian theory, definitely pick it up.