tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-332733152024-03-07T15:05:55.799-06:00SpinuzziReviewing books since 2003.Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comBlogger2124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-70840591160839899992024-01-15T12:28:00.002-06:002024-01-15T12:28:23.288-06:00Reading :: How I Became the Kind of Writer I Became<p><a href="https://wac.colostate.edu/books/lwr/autoethnography/"><b><i>How I Became the Kind of Writer I Became: An Experiment in Autoethnography</i></b></a></p><p><a href="https://wac.colostate.edu/books/lwr/autoethnography/"><b>By Charles Bazerman</b></a></p><p>Charles Bazerman has been a pivotal figure in writing studies for decades: as an author of textbooks, as a methodologist, as a genre scholar, as a foremost thinker on how to understand writing as developing as a cultural practice. Most recently, he has investigated the lifelong development of writing. In this book, which is the first book in the Lifespan Writing Research book series, Bazerman examines his own lifelong trajectory as a writer, and calls for further work in this area. </p><p>The book is a true autoethnography in the sense that Bazerman doesn’t offer a sanitized set of reflections. Rather, he goes back through his extensive personal archives of school-age writing assignments and scholarly drafts to examine how his writing techniques, themes, and concerns changed over time. That is, although reflective, the account is also based in archival evidence.</p><p>So how does this book fare? As a reader, I was divided. </p><p>The fact that Bazerman is a central figure in our field (and one whom I personally admire) makes the book interesting to me. We get to see how he took his journey toward writing studies and the choices he made along the way, and he is unflinching in discussing his limitations and mistakes as a writer throughout his life. As he says on p.117, “Writing, of course, is fraught with anxiety, and also open to digression, distraction, or even avoidance,” and Bazerman talks openly about these anxieties and how he has dealt with them throughout his life. This sentiment is apparently common among writers (as I discovered some years ago in a workgroup session Chuck led, in which participating writing researchers arrayed around a table told their literacy narratives, which all seemed centered around anxiety). Nevertheless, Bazerman discusses how these anxieties propelled his development as he shifted from an early interest in physics to literary studies to more pragmatic writing instruction as an inner-city high school teacher. At the same time, a strong allegiance to social justice shaped his path, as did a consistent curiosity and drive to improve himself. </p><p>Bazerman was, of course, raised in the 1960s, and some of the things he describes doing just don’t compute for my Gen X mind. Time and again he describes taking on a job (in the Peace Corps, as a camp counselor, as part of a team developing pedagogical materials) only to decide a couple of weeks later that it wasn’t for him, quitting the job and moving to another pursuit. (In a parallel theme, he also repeatedly “became persona non grata for advocating unpopular programs” (p.221)). He also describes what I can only characterize as “Forrest Gump” moments in which he has brushes with significant history: rooming with a student who would eventually become an architect of the Gulf War, writing early scripts for a TV program that eventually aired as Sesame Street (the scripts were not filmed), and taking a road trip to San Francisco “just in time to see the moon landing televised on the ceiling of the Fillmore West during a Joe Cocker and Country Joe and the Fish concert” (p.116). Counterbalancing this freedom was the ever-present threat of the draft, which pushed Bazerman to continue his college studies and then his graduate studies. </p><p>As we get to Ch.18, Bazerman begins discussing his scholarly work, including his fateful meeting with Carolyn Miller that got him thinking about genre (p.143). This concept dovetailed with his earlier reading on social perspectives and prepared him for later becoming aware of Yrjo Engestrom’s work at a 1992 conference (p.144, footnote 7). In Ch.19, he discusses becoming interested in the sociology of science, and how (in another Forrest Gump moment) a faculty colleague “suggested that I contact Robert Merton, the founder of the field, who was just a subway ride uptown at Columbia University” (p.151). Through that encounter, Bazerman began sitting in on Merton’s graduate seminars, honing his critique and approach to science studies, and laying the foundation for his book Shaping Written Knowledge. Meanwhile, he also participated in an NEH summer seminar at Carnegie-Mellon led by Richard Young, where he was introduced to the classical rhetorical tradition (which he found useful but limited, p.160). He reached an inflection point, one that the field of writing studies itself was approaching: “I recognized that writing studies would benefit from a sociologically oriented research program to supplement the on-going cognitive psychological research program of process studies. I also started to gain the sociological and historical tools to understand how I could support the substantive research along with institutional presence and legitimacy of writing studies” (p.162). </p><p>This inflection point, of course, drew him to the works of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and their more recent synthesis in Engestrom. “Over the next few years, I drew on David Russell’s formulations of activity systems (Russell, 1994), and I collaborated with him on a couple of collections that encouraged work in a similar vein (Russell & Bazerman, 1997i; Bazerman & Russell, 2003g)” (pp.199-200; see also pp.212-213; n.b., David R. Russell was my dissertation director). </p><p>As readers will intuit, I found this later part of the book far more interesting than the earlier parts. Although Bazerman’s focus is on how writing changes over the lifespan, I realized that my focus was more on understanding the background of his scholarly works and, through them, that background’s impact on our field. And I think this is the underlying tension in the book: Without the unique positioning of the author as a foremost scholar of writing studies, the early part of the book is hard to find interesting. That is, it probably can’t serve as a model for more general lifespan writing research — if it were a lesser light, would we be interested in their reflections on their grade-school essays? </p><p>In any case, if you are interested in lifespan writing research, in the development of writing studies, or in the background of Bazerman’s impressive scholarship, I highly recommend this book.</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-90314521897872861362023-11-28T13:20:00.003-06:002023-11-28T13:20:45.751-06:00Reading :: Visible Language <p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-7e51f1f7-7fff-4dd4-27ec-756158a284a2" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visible-Language-Inventions-Institute-Publications/dp/1885923767/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5U8E4D052I1I&keywords=woods+visible+language&qid=1701196103&sprefix=woods+visible+language%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visible-Language-Inventions-Institute-Publications/dp/1885923767/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5U8E4D052I1I&keywords=woods+visible+language&qid=1701196103&sprefix=woods+visible+language%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Edited by Christopher Woods</span></a></p><p><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I ran into this book a while back and was intrigued: Although I’m hardly an archaeologist, I’m interested in the invention and development of writing, and this collection covers cuneiform, ancient Egyptian writing, early alphabetic writing, and early writing systems in China and Mesoamerica. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Woods’ introduction, he argues that to our knowledge, writing was invented ex nihilo only four times: in Sumer, ancient Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica (p.15). (Previous scholars have assumed that writing traveled from Sumer to Egypt, but new discoveries have pushed back the date of Egyptian writing; p.16.) He adds: “Broadly defined, writing represents speech. One must be able to recover the spoken word, unambiguously, from a system of visible marks in order for those marks to be considered writing. … Those systems that meet this criterion, and so represent true writing, are labeled </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">glottographic</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, while systems of communication that represent ideas only,without that essential bond to speech and so do not meet our definition of writing — for example,musical and mathematical notation, international road signs and the like — are labeled </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">semasiographic</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> (Sampson 1985, pp. 29–30)” (p.18). And “What systems of communication that eventually develop into full-fledged writing do have, as opposed to their semasiographic counterparts and progenitors, is the germ of phoneticism — the rebus principal is integrated into these systems. That is, the existence of homonyms in the language is exploited in that the sound of one word, most often one with a referent that can be easily drawn, is used to write another word that is pronounced identically or similarly” (p.20). </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Ch.2, “The Earliest Mesopotamian Writing,” Woods overviews the origins of Mesopotamian writing, which “may very well represent the world’s first writing system” (p.33). Intriguingly, he reports on Mesopotamian legends about the origins of written language (pp.34-35). When discussing precursors to writing, Woods describes the discovery of clay “envelopes” or hollow clay balls containing tokens, with the impressions of those tokens on the exterior of the envelopes. He notes that “The idea that these envelopes represented precursors to writing was first suggested by the French archaeologist Pierre Amiet in the 1960s” (p.46). Where Amiet thought that these token impressions </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">inspired</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> cuneiform, Schmandt-Besserat argued that they </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">directly became</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> cuneiform: “In Schmandt-Besserat’s view, both the numerical and logographic signs of cuneiform evolved directly out of the earlier token system. This theory is based on the visual similarities between the elements of the token and writing systems” (p.47). But Woods says that “many of her identification linking complex tokens to cuneiform signs are sim-ply not plausible” and “the distribution of tokens, if we accept Schmandt-Besserat’s identifications, is at odds with our understanding of early Mesopotamian economy and society” (p.48). </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Ch.3, “Adaptation of Cuneiform to Write Akkadian,” Andrea Seri examines how the Sumerian cuneiform system was adopted by Akkadian neighbors. The two languages are quite different structurally, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">whereas the Sumerian verbal root was monosyllabic and could not be internally altered, Akkadian needed an essentially phonetic syllabic system in order to convey the semantically important structural characteristics of the language.The transition from logograms to syllabograms,therefore, played an important role in the adaptation of cuneiform to write Akkadian (pp.89-90)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Ch.5, “The Conception and Development of the Egyptian Writing System,” Elise V. MacArthur reviews writing precursors: rock drawings, pot marks, pottery, seals, tomb tags, incised pottery, and funerary stelae (p.116). And in Ch.6, “The Earliest Egyptian Writing,” Andréas Stauder addresses the question of why Sumerians and Egyptians appear to have invented writing almost simultaneously: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The close proximity in time and the relative proximity in space of the southern Mesopotamian and Egyptian inventions of writing remains remarkable, but is explained by taking into account the broader context. The development of the earliest Egyptian writing is contemporaneous with, and di-rectly related to, the emergence of regional political entities and associated elites. This in turn is part of a set of complexly interrelated phenomena that simultaneously affected various parts of the ancientNear East in the later fourth millennium, partly in relation to the development of, and attempts to control, supra-regional trade networks. In the con-text of major political and social changes affecting both southern Mesopotamia and Upper Egypt, the roughly simultaneous emergence of writing in the two regions is no coincidence. (p.142)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Skipping ahead, in Ch.12, “The Invention and Development of the Alphabet,” Joseph Lam notes that</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The functional advantage of the alphabet over other writing systems lies in its economy. In contrast to logographic systems, in which a given symbol denotes a word, or to syllabic writing, in which sign represents a full syllable of sound, alphabetic writing is characterized by the graphic representation of phonemes, that is, the shortest contrastive units of sound in a language (consonants or vowels), thereby greatly decreasing the number of signs. (p.189)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Ch.14, “The Beginnings of Writing in China,” Edward L. Shaughnessy points out that although many Chinese characters would be recognized as pictographic 3000 years ago, currently “99 percent or more of current Chinese characters … depict primarily the sound of the word” (p.215). He overviews what we know about the development of this writing system. Similarly, in Ch.15, “The Development of Maya Writing,” Joel W. Palka overviews Mesoamerican script history.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Overall, I found this book to be fascinating, although (paradoxically) I also ended up skimming a lot. On one hand, I learned a lot about writing systems around the world, including how they originated and changed over time. On the other hand, this book requires some antecedent knowledge and I didn’t always have it. Still, if you’re interested in writing as an ingenious, inventive set of human practices, definitely pick this book up. </span></p><p><br /><br /></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-88622361636479003932023-11-06T09:41:00.004-06:002023-11-06T09:41:28.530-06:00(Three new articles on qualitative case study research methodology for investigating workplaces)<p> For the last several years, I’ve been working on questions of qualitative research methodology. How do we research workplaces? How do we bound or delimit them so that we collect the right data and don’t collect superfluous data? Since work overlaps with lots of other things in our lives — for instance, we might be texting with our loved ones during business hours, and our bosses during family time — how do we separate out what is relevant? Since we pick up literate practices during different parts of our lives, how do we trace the impacts of these literate practices and when are practices from one part of our lives (ex: how to make a to-do list) incompatible with our work? Where and when can we be considered to be working?</p><p><br /></p><p>Such questions are even harder to answer than they seem, especially since digital communication and devices have made it easier, cheaper, and faster to communicate than ever before. That means more working during “non-work” hours, at “non-work” places, and more interference across work projects (say, getting a Teams message about Project 1 when you’re working on Project 2). It also means the reverse: your family might text you at work and expect you to answer. Boundaries become more porous. New work configurations become more possible.</p><p>These issues have been part of my focus ever since 2000, when I began the research project that turned into my 2008 book, <i>Network</i> (2008). But they kicked into high gear as I began looking at projectified work in the series of case studies that led to my 2015 book, <i>All Edge</i>, and later when I started researching early-stage technology startups. </p><p>This year, I’ve published three papers looking at different aspects of qualitative research methodology, all of which examine the question of bounding the case at different angles.</p><p><b>Spinuzzi, C. (2023). Mapping representations in qualitative case studies: Can we adapt Boisot’s I-Space model? Journal of Workplace Learning 35(6), pp. 562-583. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-01-2023-0013</b>.</p><p>In this article, I critically examined Max Boisot’s I-Space model, which provides three-axis representations of “knowledge assets” used by a population. Could it provide appropriate visualizations for qualitative research into workplaces? I-Space maps information in three dimensions (abstraction, codification and diffusion). I conclude that I-Space is not directly adoptable for case study methodology due to three fundamental disjunctures: in theory, methodology and unit of analysis. However, it can be adapted for qualitative research by substituting analogues for abstraction, codification and diffusion.</p><p>Here, I want to highlight the unit of analysis part of the article. The I-Space model assumes that knowledge assets are used by a “population.” But populations overlap; population is not enough to define who does and does not fit into a workplace study. After all, everyone in a given workplace is also involved elsewhere, and workplaces increasingly include those who are involved temporarily or tangentially. If population isn’t enough to define a workplace, how do we define it?</p><p><b>Spinuzzi, C. (2023). What Is a Workplace? Principles for Bounding Case Studies of Genres, Processes, Objects, and Organizations. Written Communication, 40(4), 1027–1069. https://doi.org/10.1177/07410883231185875</b></p><p>The question of defining the workplace amounts to how we define the boundaries of a case study — the unit of analysis for a given workplace. Traditionally, workplaces have been bounded by the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how? Or: organizational boundaries, location, time, processes, and work objects/outcomes. Since the Industrial Revolution, corporate work has been organized so that these questions all lead to the same conclusion: a location where work takes place during specific times, by specific people defined by an organizational boundary, using specific genres and processes in service of specific objectives. But that corporate arrangement has been fraying for a while, partly due to new information and communication technologies, and it frayed a lot more during COVID, when a substantial part of the workforce began working from home. In this article, I look at the history of this corporate arrangement and how case study methodology has free-ridden on it. Now that it is faltering, we have to rethink our workplace case study boundaries — including the principle I have been using for a long time, the activity system, which is indexed to a cyclically transformed work object(ive). The article concludes with a discussion of how to select appropriate case boundaries.</p><p><b>Guile, D., & Spinuzzi, C. (2023). “Fractional” Vocational Working and Learning in Project Teams: “Project Assemblage” as a Unit of Analysis? Vocations and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-023-09330-1</b></p><p>Although this article was the latest to be published, David Guile and I have been working on it for a long while. We have separately been examining workplace learning in projectified work — work that is bound by a project objective rather than by departments or teams — and we’ve bumped up against the limits of the unit of analysis I mentioned above, the activity system, which (we argue) tends to assume an enduring institutional arrangement. The activity system is tremendously useful for exploring such institutional arrangements, but in the cases we have been examining (specifically early-stage tech startups and client-facing interprofessional project teams), it doesn’t capture the learning we see happening across projects. To capture these fractional (intermittent, discontinuous and concurrent) working and learning dynamics associated with projectification, we propose a unit of analysis anchored in the concept of project assemblage, based on ideas from actor-network theory, cultural-historical activity theory, and cultural sociology. Through this unit of analysis, researchers can examine how unstable project teams learn to use different forms of specialist activity to enact objects, objects that may not cohere, even though team members may treat them as unified and coherent. </p><p>I hope these articles are all useful for researchers who, like me, are fascinated by the dynamics of workplaces! </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-64288020106335008632023-10-29T13:04:00.004-05:002023-10-29T13:04:35.955-05:00Reading :: The Evolution of Agency<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Agency-Behavioral-Organization-Lizards/dp/0262047004/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XNW6IGP9242X&keywords=the+evolution+of+agency+tomasello&qid=1698596627&sprefix=tomasello+the+evolu%2Caps%2C375&sr=8-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Evolution of Agency</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Agency-Behavioral-Organization-Lizards/dp/0262047004/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XNW6IGP9242X&keywords=the+evolution+of+agency+tomasello&qid=1698596627&sprefix=tomasello+the+evolu%2Caps%2C375&sr=8-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">By Michael Tomasello</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I have reviewed a couple of other Tomasello books on this blog: </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2021/05/reading-cultural-origins-of-human.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2021/05/reading-becoming-human.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Becoming Human</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. Tomasello, who is professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke as well as emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has drawn on neo-Vygotskian theory to discuss the evolution of human cognition in those past books. In this one, he tackles a related issue: The evolution of agency.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Agency</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> is a term that is often used in the social sciences and humanities, but not as often defined. In Chapter 1, Tomasello defines it: “Agency is thus not about the many and varied things that organisms do … but rather about </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">how</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> they do them. Individuals acting as agents direct and control their own actions, whatever those actions may be specifically” (p.2). Agentive beings are distinguished “by a special type of behavioral organization [which is] feedback control organization in which the individual directs its behavior toward goals … controlling or even self-regulating the process through informed decision-making and behavioral self-monitoring” (p.2). Indeed, “the concept of agency … represents the dividing line between biological and psychological approaches to behavior” since biology explains some complex processes, while psychology explains others. Tomasello’s goal in this book “is to reconstruct the evolutionary pathway to human psychological agency” (p.9), and he identifies four types of agency in human ancestors:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48.0px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Goal-directed agency in ancient vertebrates”</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Intentional agency in ancient mammals”</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Rational agency in ancient great apes”</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Socially normative agency in ancient human beings” (p.10)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">(I mentioned earlier that Tomasello had drawn on neo-Vygotskian thought in his previous books. Vygotsky, of course, was very interested in self-control via psychological mediation, in which the individual learned and applied their culture’s tools. Tomasello doesn’t talk about that directly, but the links are there to be made.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 2, Tomasello provides a feedback control model of agency. He argues that an agent</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48.0px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Directs or plans actions toward goals, attending to situations</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Controls or executively self-regulates its actions via informed decisions in an unfolding situation (p.11)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Since ancient vertebrates, mammals, etc. are not on offer, Tomasello uses the methods of comparative biology (examining fossils to understand physiology and evolutionary trajectories) to find extant organisms to use as models (p.13). These extant organisms are lizards, squirrels, chimpanzees, and (of course) humans (p.24).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Moving on, he discusses the feedback control mechanism of behavior, which “comprises a hierarchy of systems, each with three central components: (i) a reference value or goal, (ii) a sensing device or perception, and (iii) a device for comparing perception and goal so as to make and execute a behavioral decision” (p.19). He asserts that this really is the only possible model “for generating flexibly intelligent, agentive behavior” (p.19). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Tomasello also argues that “changes in the agentive organization of action lead to changes in the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">types</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> of things the agent may experience. … Therefore a further dimension of agency … [is] the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">experiential niche</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> of the organism” (p.22). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 3, he discusses ancient vertebrates as goal-directed agents. At this level, the organism acts flexibly toward a goal even in novel contexts (p.27). For an agentive organization, the individual’s goals and actions determine their experimental niche, guided by attention (i.e., goal-directed perception) (p.36). Objects are not relevant to that attention, but situations are (p.36). Meanwhile, goals are “perceptually imagined situations” (p.38). And effective actions can play a causal role in the process of evolutionary change (p.41). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 4, he discusses ancient mammals as intentional agents. At this level, “mammals direct their actions toward goals just flexibly but intentionally, as they cognitively stimulate possible action plans toward their goal before actually acting. And they control their behavior not just by making go-no-go decisions but also by making either-or behavioral choices as they evaluate the possible plans’ likely outcomes and control behavioral execution as it unfolds” (p.43). This new mode – “intentional agency” – emerges from “more flexible emotions and motivations that can be overridden as needed” (p.43). Early mammals have three new capabilities:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48.0px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">New ways to motivate action: more flexible motivations and emotions (p.45)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Cognitive capabilities for social competition, allowing them to plan and then act (p.46) </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">New ontogenetic pattern, allowing more learning (p.46), including instrumental learning in which they can understand how actions causally affect outcomes (p.47).</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Here, we get executive functions and executive decision-making (p.51). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 5, he discusses ancient apes as rational agents. Apes operate logically and reflectively, understanding </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">why</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> things happen; they to some degree understand causality and intentionality (p.67). Due to social competition, apes forage in small bands, producing social organization (p.70). They use cognitive simulations; their causal orientation means they can use tools; their intentional orientation means they engage in intentional communication and social learning (p.71). All of this yields rational agency (p.71). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 6, we get to ancient humans as socially normative agents. Here, we get joint agency in collaboration, such as coordinating during a hunt to produce a collaborative benefit. This joint agency means that they develop interdependence – something that involves choosing partners based on competence and collaborative motivation (p.93). Such humans had to </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48.0px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Form a joint goal</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> (p.95) by forming joint agency, pursuing a joint goal, and using joint attention and cooperative communication (p.96)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Coordinate roles</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> by learning each others’ roles (p.97) and using their collaborative motivations to make inferences (p.99).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Collaboratively self-regulate the collaboration</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> via partner control (making the partner behave better, p.99). That is, they became normative: through protests, the joint agency regulates itself (p.100). </span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Tomasello asserts that when we talk about feeling responsibility, deserving something, excusing our behavior, apologizing for behavior, or feeling guilt, we are discussing “shared normative standards by which ‘we’ evaluate and self-regulate ‘your’ and ‘my’ actions as coequal partners” (p.104). He adds that great apes don’t do these things because they have not evolved to cooperate in joint agency.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">He adds that this behavior began in paired collaborations, then scaled up to larger social groups about 150,000 years ago, eventually yielding different cultural groups oriented to scaled-up collective intentionality (p.105). Groups fractionate at about 150 (he name-checks Dunbar’s number here, p.105), yielding tribal societies (p.106). We get in-groups and out-groups (p.108), with homophily as the psychological basis of human culture (p.109) and a new basis of cultural common ground that allows collaboration among those who don’t previously know each other (p.110). This cultural common ground is “recursive mind-reading” in that in-group members conform to conventional practices (p.110). We get specialized division of labor tied to commonly understood special rights and responsibilities (p.111).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In Chapter 7, Tomasello presents several conclusions:</span></p><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48.0px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“The ‘backbone’ of behavioral agency is feedback control organization.” (p.122)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“The ecological challenges leading to the evolution of behavioral agency all involve one or another form of unpredictability in the environment.” (p.123) </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Despite the plethora of specific behavioral and psychological adaptations across species, only a few basic types of psychological Bauplans exist for the agentive organization of behavior.” (p.124; see the summary table, p.127)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“The evolutionary emergence of new forms of behavioral organization involves both ‘hierarchical modularity’ and ‘trickle-down selection’” (p.128)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“Changes in the agentive organization of a species’ behavior and psychology lead to changes in the types of experience it is capable of having (its experiential niche)” (p.130)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“The decision-making agent is necessary, and it is not a homunculus, at least not in a bad way” (p.132)</span></p></li></ol><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Quite a book! It’s based on an extraordinarily broad base of knowledge, and it covers a broad sweep of time and behavior. I’m neither an evolutionary biologist nor a psychologist, so I’m not confident in my ability to evaluate it, but it does read compellingly and pull a complex discussion into a clearly related framework. For me, it also provides another angle for thinking about the social and cultural psychology that I do know, particularly Vygotskian and activity theory approaches. If you’re interested in agency in any form, definitely pick up this book.</span></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-62059937735656234882023-10-01T13:32:00.005-05:002023-10-01T13:32:51.932-05:00Reading :: Dance of the Dialectic<p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dialectic-STEPS-MARXS-METHOD/dp/0252071182/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DP15PEO9HC4W&keywords=dance+of+the+dialectic&qid=1696177223&sprefix=dance+of+the+dial%2Caps%2C535&sr=8-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method</span></a><span style="color: #1155cc;"><i><u><br /></u></i></span></b><b style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">By Bertell Ollman</b></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d0440e5f-7fff-ccba-ad1c-32baa1093c9d"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This spring, I was Zooming with several colleagues. One of them mentioned this book, and another recommended it as well. “It’s so good,” Colleague 1 remarked. “Soooo good,” Colleague 2 affirmed.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I ordered the book immediately, because I really needed an explainer on dialectics. I mean, yes, I have </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/search?q=dialectic" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">read a lot about dialectics</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, and I’ve </span><a href="https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/human/chapter10.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">recently tried my hand at differentiating among different applications of dialectics</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, but the term’s used in at least two senses, with considerable slippage among them. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">On one hand, dialectic is sometimes understood as the now common-sensical notion that:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Things change over time and relative to each other; change is the only constant.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Elements in a given system mutually adjust. In a relatively stable system, elements are held in tension and constantly work out these tensions. The result might be a new equilibrium, but not a permanently stable system, as new tensions develop.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Systems sometimes reach tipping points, points at which small differences add up and precipitate larger systemic change.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Dialectic is thus a description of how elements, and more importantly the relations among elements, change in a system.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This understanding of dialectic yields an open field of possibilities</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. Here, systemic constraints are hard to predict, confounding the older and simpler idea of stability and clear monocausal relations. To provide one example, evolutionary theory challenged the older understanding of fixed species reproducing, instead arguing that species evolve to address changes in the environment, and in evolving, they change the environment for other species around them. Evolution isn’t a fixed linear path (contra how it is often depicted in science fiction) but rather a dispersion of various mutations, some of which might succeed in the changed environment. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">On the other hand, dialectic is sometimes – especially in Engels, Lenin, and Stalin – understood in a much more closed way:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">The essential logic of nature, one that underlies all processes, and ultimately teleological (</span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/03/reading-dialectics-of-nature-second.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Engels</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Since it’s teleological, dialectic is a process that inevitably leads to specific outcomes, especially communism (</span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/06/reading-dialectical-and-historical.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Stalin</span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Dialectic is thus a prescription or prediction, telling us how a system – specifically an economic system – will change as it resolves its tensions.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This understanding of dialectic yields a closed field of possibilities</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. It lays out imperatives. For Stalin, it justified extending the dictatorship of the proletariat from a short transitional period to an “</span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/06/reading-foundations-of-leninism.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">entire historical era</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">There’s (ahem) a tension between these two senses. Marxists have emphasized the former, but have tried legitimizing the latter. This is true of Marx, but especially Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">How does this relate to Ollmann’s book? On page 1, he argues that “Marxism … offers us a tale of two cities: one that claims to have freedom but doesn’t, and another that possesses bountiful freedom for all, but few know where it is or how to get it. The first city is called ‘capitalism’ … The other city is called ‘communism.’” (p.1).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">For those who might object that </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/04/reading-history-of-gulag.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">communist regimes have so far not really been associated with freedom for all</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, Olmann hastily adds:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This city [communism] can’t be found on a map, because until now it only exists in the shadows of the first city. … The capitalists have managed to keep communism a well-guarded secret by using their power over the mike [microphone] … to ensure that no one learns that communism is really about freedom, while endlessly repeating the cannard [sic] that something called ‘communism’ was already tried in a few underdeveloped countries and that it didn’t work. (p.1; cf. p.155 for an explicit denial of “what happened in the Soviet Union and China”)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In other words: if you say that communism hasn’t worked, Olmann says that’s because it has never actually been tried. Just as Christ’s Second Coming us always on the horizon, or </span><a href="https://www.instructables.com/Bacon-Dippin-Dots-Ice-Cream-of-the-Future/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dippin’ Dots is always characterized as the ice cream of the future</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, communism hasn’t come into its own yet, but it is an inevitability – according to this line of thought.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Olmann adds that Marx’s focus isn’t capitalism or communism, but rather their internal relations, and “how communism evolves as a still-unrealized potential within capitalism and the history of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">this</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> evolution, stretching from earliest times to a future that is still far in front of us” (pp.1-2). That is, Marx’s focus is dialectic, which, when he applied it to capitalism, allowed him to contemplate how this capitalist system could (would) eventually evolve into communism.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Here on p.2, I had an epiphany due to my recent readings. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The first is Latour’s </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2007/01/reading-aramis-or-love-of-technology_09.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Aramis</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, which I grow to appreciate more each time I read it. In </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Aramis</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, Latour investigates the failure of a cutting-edge autonomous train system in France, and he discovers that the system failed in part because its stakeholders each had a different, ideal notion of the train system. None of them were willing to compromise on this system, and their desires were incompatible, so the system could not come into being. They all loved the idea of Aramis, but only if it fit their ideal versions – and thus they loved it to death. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The second is Boltanski and Chiapello’s </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2018/04/reading-new-spirit-of-capitalism.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The New Spirit of Capitalism</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. I’ll just quote from my review of that book:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0c0600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Boltanski and Chiapello agree with Weber's basic thesis but argue that capitalism continues to reinvent itself. They argue that the "spirit of capitalism" is the "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0c0600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">ideology that justifies engagement in capitalism</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0c0600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">" (p.8) and that this ideology has periodically had to change in order to address and incorporate critiques (p.19). In fact, the authors identify three "spirits" of capitalism at different periods—familial, bureaucratic, and globalized—each of which were in tune with their time periods (p.19). The third spirit, which is what we are living through today (or at least were in 1999), must restore meaning to the accumulation process, combined with social justice (p.19).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0c0600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">More broadly, they say, critiques function as a motor for capitalism, which must align with other values to survive. Capitalism relies on its enemies' critiques to identify moral supports, which it then incorporates (p.27). (For a quick example, think in terms of social entrepreneurship.) In rhetorical terms, capitalism concedes critiques and adjusts its argument to address them. Paradoxically, this means that capitalism is the most fragile when it is triumphant (p.27)—when it doesn't have a critique to incorporate.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">To put it back into Latourean terms, capitalists generally haven’t loved capitalism to death: they haven’t insisted on it being pure, perfect, or ideal. They have kept evolving it, reinventing it, by incorporating critiques. You might be able to find some capitalist idealists who will conclude that real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet, but they are considered marginal. People criticize systems as not being purely capitalist (ex: welfare! Social security!) but no one makes excuses by saying capitalism has never been tried. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Putting these two texts together gives us a new insight into Ollman’s two cities. Perhaps, as Boltanski and Chiapello suggest, capitalism succeeds because it incorporates critiques. And perhaps communism remains understood as some future accomplishment because the previous attempts at communism have not incorporated critiques; instead, they are dismissed as </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">not really communism</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> because they do not meet the ideal that communists have in mind. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But without trying versions and incorporating critiques, how could communism emerge? So here we are, 175 years after the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Communist Manifesto</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> was published, with a string of communist efforts that real people fought and died over, all of which have been denied because they turned out not to be perfect. Real communism has never been tried! But the price of success is a string of previous failures, and denying those failures makes success impossible. Communism is meant to somehow spring inevitably from the failures of capitalism, rather than emerging from trial and error, adaptation and maladaptation – that is, from dialectic in the first sense (description). The only way to get to this inevitable, ideal version of capitalism is dialectic in the second sense (prescription, prediction). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">As we get into Ch.2, Olmann adds (?) that dialectics is not “a formula that enables us to prove or predict anything; nor is it the motor force of history,” but “Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings into focus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world” (p.12). That is, he specifies the first meaning of dialectics above (description). He says,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dialectics restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the common-sense notion of “thing” (as something that has a history and has external connections with other things) with notions of “process” (which contains its history and possible futures) and “relation” (which contains a part of its ties with other relations). … it is a matter of where and how one draws boundaries and establishes units (the dialectical term is ‘abstracts’) in which to think about the world. (p.14)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Olmann says that dialectical relations include</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">identity/difference</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">interpenetration of opposites</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">quantity/quality</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">contradiction (p.15)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Of these, contradiction is the most important, since it focuses on the incompatible development of different elements within the same relation (p.17). Here, Olmann swerves back to the second meaning of dialectics above (prediction): “Capitalism’s fate, in other words, is sealed by its own problems, problems that are internal manifestations of what it is and how it works and are often parts of the very achievements of capitalism, worsening as the achievements grow and spread” (p.18). In contrast to (unnamed) nondialectical thinkers, who only think in terms of serial causality, dialecticians can (like Marx) understand how mutual dependence among elements will unfold: “for Marx … tracing how capitalist connections unfold is also a way of discovering the main causes of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">coming</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> disruption and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">coming</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> conflict” (p.18). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">(Olmann continues to dance across this line – for instance, later he claims that capitalism “was not only a possible development out of class society, but it was made likely by the character of the latter, by the very dynamics inherent in the division of labor once it got underway” (p.98, in which I would characterize as the first meaning of dialectics). And later still, he claims that Marx’s historical examinations aren’t teleological – Marx simply looks at today’s conditions and then asks: what past conditions led here (p.118)? Yet Marx looks at the capitalism of his day and concludes that “capitalism cannot go on much longer” (p.123)). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Olmann makes a few concessions here:</span></p><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Dialectical thinkers may play down details in the process of generalizing.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Dialectical thinkers sometimes move too quickly “to push the germ of an idea to its finished form.”</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Dialectical thinkers sometimes “overestimate the speed of change.” (p.19)</span></p></li></ol><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Moving on. In Chapter 3, Olmann turns to social relations. Rather than examining “facets” of a single thing, dialectics focus on relations or interdependencies (p.25). In Chapter 4, he turns to internal relations, where he argues that in discussing interrelations, we are describing the system in which things exist (p.41). And in Chapter 5, he discusses abstraction, which Marx uses in four distinct ways:</span></p><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">The mental act of subdividing the world (p.61)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">The result of this process (parts) (p.62)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“A suborder of particularly ill-fitting mental constructs” (p.62)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">“A particular organization of elements in the real world – having to do with the functioning of capitalism – that provides the objective underpinnings for most of the ideological abstractions mentioned above” (p.62)</span></p></li></ol><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Olmann sounds a theme here that shows up elsewhere in the book – the theme that critics just haven’t put the time into really understanding Marx (see also p.109). He acknowledges that Marx uses terms with considerable slippage (like “abstraction”) and switches between levels of analysis without much signaling, and consequently non-Marxists have trouble reading Marx properly (p.94). Similarly, he explains Engels’ reductive presentation of dialectics in his </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/03/reading-dialectics-of-nature-second.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dialectics of Nature</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">by claiming that Engels is writing about dialectics at a broad level, Marx at a human level (p.97). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Moving on, we get to Chapter 9, “Why Dialectics? Why Now?” And here we return to the theme of impending communism that was begun in Chapter 1. Olmann acknowledges the collapse of the USSR, but warns (like Marx) that capitalism can’t go on much longer (pp.158-159) and assures us that communism still lays concealed inside capitalism (p.159). Capitalism is “becoming impossible,” creating the conditions for communism (p.159). And here we begin to see the real differences between this dialectics, the second sense of dialectics, and Latour’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Aramis</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and Boltanski & Chiapello. For dialectics, the conditions create an inevitable progression: the principle of quantitative change yielding qualitative change means that the system will collapse into a new equilibrium rather than being negotiated and evolving in unpredictable ways. </span><a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/PHP.2.10-11" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Every knee will bend, every tongue will confess</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Having stepped into the second meaning of dialectics, Ohlmann must end by hopping back into the first meaning, conceding that “the projections of the future obtained through the use of the method outlined here are only highly probable” and noting that Marx himself conceded that an unlikely alternative outcome would be “barbarism” (p.168). (Surely many, many other possibilities exist in a highly complex system, but most of that complexity can be waved away through Abstraction.) Olmann finally provides us with a figure of dance steps that he terms the “dance of the dialectic”: </span></p><ol style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Analyze</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Historicize</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Visionize</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: decimal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">And organize! (p.169)</span></p></li></ol><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But as implied in this review, the dance of the dialectic seems to also include two other steps interspersed throughout the dance: first a leap to Describe, then gathering strength for the powerful leap to Predict, followed by a hasty conciliatory hop back to Describe, and repeat as opportune.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I’ll stop here. The remaining chapters are useful, but not (in my judgment) core to the book, and this review is long enough.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">So what did I think of the book? Although I think readers can recognize my frustration with dialectics, this book was indeed “soooo good,” as my colleague promised, because it helped me to think through dialectics as a method, and specifically this duality between description and prescription – admittedly, probably too simple a characterization, but it was enough to help me understand what has always put me off about dialectics. If you’re similarly struggling with what is meant by this method, or how to apply it, or how to better understand the works of Soviet psychologists (as I am), definitely pick it up.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div></span>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-31964096930758001122023-09-26T13:45:00.002-05:002023-09-26T13:45:13.663-05:0020 years of Tracing Genres through Organizations<p>Just a quick note that my first book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tracing-Genres-through-Organizations-Sociocultural/dp/0262194910/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WGYIYMXVI6Z9&keywords=spinuzzi+tracing+genres&qid=1695753411&sprefix=spinuzzi+tracing+genres%2Caps%2C92&sr=8-1">Tracing Genres through Organizations</a></i> (MIT Press), was published 20 years ago today. </p><p>I honestly can't believe it's been 20 years -- it feels like maybe 10. <i>TGTO</i> was in turn based on my 1999 dissertation, directed by the amazing David R. Russell, whose gentle prodding and extensive readings pushed me to think through what I was seeing. Through that project, and other research I was doing at the time, I developed a consistent admiration for my participants: I could see how people developed their own workarounds and practices to address their own consistent practices. As I learned how to model these practices, I was able to see how these workarounds sometimes revolutionized people's activities, often without them realizing it. That admiration for people's problem-solving abilities still animates my studies and teaching. </p><p>I'm forever grateful to everyone who helped make this book a reality: first and foremost my participants, who generously hosted me; David Russell and the rest of the dissertation committee, who guided me; faculty at Texas Tech and the University of Texas, who were willing to discuss it with me; and the editors of the Acting with Technology series at MIT Press, who were willing to give this book a shot. </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-1817667435664174582023-08-30T08:56:00.003-05:002023-08-30T08:56:25.423-05:00Reading :: Entrepreneurship in the Wild<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-Wild-Startup-Field-Guide/dp/0262542579/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1UALSLF6LLH7&keywords=entrepreneurship+in+the+wild&qid=1693403697&sprefix=entrepreneurship+in+the+wild%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1"><b><i>Entrepreneurship in the Wild</i></b></a></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-Wild-Startup-Field-Guide/dp/0262542579/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1UALSLF6LLH7&keywords=entrepreneurship+in+the+wild&qid=1693403697&sprefix=entrepreneurship+in+the+wild%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1"><b>By Felipe G. Massa</b></a></p><p>I’m always on the lookout for a textbook that suits my upper-division class, Writing for Entrepreneurs. So when I saw this book, I went ahead and ordered it. I’m glad I did. Although it doesn’t quite hit the target for that class, it’s a good explanation of how to move from an idea to launching a startup. </p><p>The book draws from Lean Startup methodology, Design Thinking techniques, the Jobs to be Done framework, Moore’s positioning statement, personas, customer journeys, and other familiar bits and pieces that have been adopted by entrepreneurs. And, importantly, it provides worksheets and guided exercises so that readers — whether students or budding entrepreneurs — can follow along, building their own entrepreneurial ideas step by step.</p><p>The process starts with generating ideas, and progresses from there. The chapters are:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Ideas with legs</li><li>Finding your first customer</li><li>Validating the opportunity</li><li>Designing customer journeys</li><li>Modeling your business</li><li>Positioning your solution</li><li>Validating your solution</li><li>Projecting financials</li><li>Pitching your startup</li><li>Launching your startup</li></ol><p></p><p>And the book demystifies financials, which are a weak point for me.</p><p>So the book has a lot going for it. However, I’m not sold on it for my specific class, for the following reasons:</p><p>There’s no overarching concept. Like most entrepreneurship books, it doesn’t offer a unified framework so much as a grab bag of different bits-and-pieces solutions (listed above). These components are all useful, but they are also disjointed: they don’t have an overarching theory or theme that pulls them together. I don’t think this is a problem with the book so much as it is a symptom of entrepreneurship as a practice. These components work in practice, but I want them to work together, fitting into an overall thesis / argument / concept. </p><p>It’s about entrepreneurship, not entrepreneurship communication. The book focuses on the broader process of entrepreneurship, while my class is really more focused on entrepreneurship communication. So, for my purposes, it doesn’t focus enough on developing the value proposition as a claim or using a minimal viable product (MVP) to communicate with potential customers about expectations. </p><p>It’s about success, not failure. Entrepreneurship is inherently risky, and even when the entrepreneur does everything right, they might fail for reasons beyond their control. I discuss failure a lot in my Writing for Entrepreneurs course, but it’s not discussed here. </p><p>It presents entrepreneurship as linear, not iterative. Related to the above, entrepreneurship is about finding a viable pathway to sustainable success, and that pathway rarely follows a straight line. I wanted the book to cover iterating, pivoting, and questing more than it did.</p><p>It’s anchored in business cases, not in empirical research. Look, business books usually draw on business cases, and these are usually retrospective stories told by successful founders. These can be very useful, but they tend to skew our ideas because we end up hearing edited stories from winners about how they won. These retrospective stories leave out a lot, and winners often overestimate how much they had to do with the win. To learn about entrepreneurship, we need to hear more about losing and how to handle it, and we need a more systematic account of what entrepreneurs do. </p><p><br /></p><p>But keep in mind that I’m providing a wish list for the book I want, not the book that entrepreneurs necessarily need or the one that this author wanted to write. Although I stand by all of the above, at the end of the day, this is a good solid book for entrepreneurs, one that gives them vital tools and maps out a journey for them. If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, but don’t know where to start, this is a really good place.</p><p><br /></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-91367520941617978322023-08-02T09:57:00.002-05:002023-08-02T09:57:16.445-05:00Reading :: The Social System<p> <a href="https://amzn.to/43SLuxO" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Social System</span></a></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-568346cf-7fff-9894-a394-5ec9592a7f62"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://amzn.to/43SLuxO" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">By Talcott Parsons</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The link goes to Amazon as usual, but I got this book as a PDF. It’s a classic sociological text, copyright 1951 (my version is the 1964 paperback), and does a lot to lay out the basic idea of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">solidarity</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> that does so much work in sociology. I’m sure all of the sociologists out there are wondering why it took me so long to get to it – but I was trained in rhetoric and professional communication, and am consequently forever playing catch-up in sociology, anthropology, psychology, management, and the other disciplines and fields from which I draw. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Still, I found much of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Social System</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> to be strangely familiar. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Parsons attempts to describe a scheme for analyzing “the structure and process of social systems” (p.vii), building on Pareto’s orientation toward social systems, but using a structural-functional level of analysis. He uses an “action frame of reference,” examining the orientation of actors (biological organisms) to a situation, including other actors. This frame of reference is thus relational, and the approach analyzes the structure and processes of systems built up by the relations of such units (p.9). He is not interested in internal structure so much as the bearing on the relational system (p.9). A “situation” is oriented toward some sort of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">object</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">:</span></p><br /><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">social objects</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> include actors: alter, ego, collectivity</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">physical objects</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> are empirical, do not respond to ego, and can be means or conditions</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">cultural objects</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;"> are symbolic elements, including ideas, beliefs, expressive symbols, and value actions (p.4)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Here, “‘Action’ is a process in the actor-situation system which has motivational significance to the individual actor, or, in the case of a collectivity, its component individuals” (p.4). It is only treated in the analysis when it’s considered motivationally relevant (p.4). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Actions take place in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">social system</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, which involves</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">plural individual actors</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">interacting with each other</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">in a situation with a physical/environmental aspect</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">who are motivated to optimize gratification</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">whose relations are mediated by a system of culturally structured and shared symbols (p.5)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">At this point, I thought, “this sounds a lot like Engestromian activity theory.” The insistence on concrete (material) analysis, the term </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">object</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and object orientation, the systemic analysis within a specific frame of reference, the attention to actors, motivation, and mediation — the components are in many ways parallel. Bear in mind that while activity theory was a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">psychological</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> framework in Russia, when Engestrom and others in the West took it up, they began to emphasize </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">sociological</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> elements: Leontiev’s notion of activity was formalized into the activity system, investigations began to expand beyond individuals or dyads, etc. In applying activity theory to political economy, Engestrom ended up applying a lot of social concepts to AT. I wouldn’t be surprised if Parsons’ foundational work in sociology influenced some of the social concepts, although he only mentions Parsons twice in Learning by Expanding (among a pantheon of classical sociologists such as Weber, Lukacs, Adorno, Mead, Durkheim, and Marx). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Whether or not Parsons laid down the tracks for Engestromian AT, it seems to do a lot of the same work — but unlike AT, Parsons is (a) interested in power and (b) uninterested in boiling everything down to economic relations. Social systems are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">an</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> aspect of “a completely concrete system of social action” (p.6), but they share the stage with two other aspects, personality systems (of individual actors) and cultural systems (built into their actions) (p.6). Parson sees an actor's need-disposition system as itself having two aspects:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Gratificational aspect</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">: what the actor gets out of interaction with world (content)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Orientational aspect</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">: how the actor’s relation to the object world is organized (patterns) (p.7)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The system’s “Orientation to the situation is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">structured</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, that is, with reference to its developmental patterns” (p.8). Again sounding like an activity theorist, Parsons adds, “The goal-directedness of action is … a fundamental property of all action-systems” (p.8). And sounding like Vygotsky, he says, we must distinguish this orientation from stimulus-response, which “does not make the orientation to the future development of the situation explicit” (p.8). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">A bit farther down, Parsons discusses value-orientation, which involves</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">cognitive standards</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">appreciative standards</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">moral standards (p.13)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">And he sees moral standards as most directly important to the sociologist (p.14).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">On p.15, he addresses culture, which he says is </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">transmitted</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">learned</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">shared</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">And thus is both product and determinant (p.15). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Regarding the relationship between culture and social system, he says:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The crucial point for the present is that the "learning" and the "living" of a system of cultural patterns by the actors in a social system, cannot be understood without the analysis of motivation in relation to concrete situations, not only on the level of personality theory, but on the level of the mechanisms of the social system. (p.17)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">He defines </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">personality</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> as “the relational system of a living organism interacting with a situation” (p.17) and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">society</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> as an empirically self-subsistent social system that persists long-term from within its own resources (p.19). Any system that doesn’t meet the definition of society is considered a “partial” social system (p.19). He declares his primary concern as categorizing the structure of social systems, modes of structural differentiation, and ranges of variability with reference to each structural category between systems (p.21). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In a social system, he says, the most elementary unit is the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">act</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> (p.25), but a better higher-order unit is the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">status-role</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">; the system is a network of relationships among actors involved in the interactive process (p.25). A bit later, he adds: “A concrete action system is an integrated structure of action elements in relation to a situation. This means essentially integration of motivational and cultural or symbolic elements,brought together in a certain kind of ordered system” (p.36). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">“An </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">institution</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> will be said to be a complex of institutionalized role integrates which is of strategic structural significance in the social system in question. The institution should be considered to bea higher order unit of social structure than the role, and indeed it is made up of a plurality of interdependent role-patterns or components of them. … An institution in this sense should be clearly distinguished from a collectivity. A collectivity is a system of concretely interactive specific roles.” (p.39).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">As you can tell, this first chapter is all about definitions and relations. It’s not easy to follow because the systemic analysis Parsons is proposing is fairly intricate. (Again I’m reminded of AT – one complaint about AT is that it has so many components and is hard to get into.) Parsons eventually provides us with an outline of his main categories (pp.57-58) — which is considerate, but not as considerate as it would have been if he had presented this at the very beginning!</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Let’s pause here to sum up what we have so far. </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Parsons' action theory is in many ways parallel to Engestromian activity theory (at least to my mind).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">But it is more focused on the individual personality and on how people construct each others' roles.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Since Parsons’ approach rejects a managerial view, conflicts are seen as more neutral and not necessarily something to resolve.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">It also has more focus on personality as a unique refractor (Vygotsky might discuss this in terms of perezhivanie), vs personality emerging from activity.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Parsons’ system makes a place for individual gratification — much more so than Vygotsky and Leontiev did, perhaps since they sought a normative vision in harmony with the New Soviet Man and emerging Soviet society. For Vygotsky and Leontiev, individual gratification is at most a developmental step toward the proper orientation (ex: a schoolchild motivated by a good grade).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">On the other hand, Parsons’ system is not primarily concerned with learning and development, as Vygotsky and Leontiev were. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Parsons offers a systems view, but these systems are not self-contained. They are at different levels of scale and fundamentally interconnected.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Engestromian AT probably didn't lift and impose Parsons on Leontiev -- but if it had, it would look pretty similar to the way it does.</span></p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Let’s stop here, with the end of a very long Chapter 2. The book has 12 chapters, but they mainly fill in the details of the outline on pp.57-58. Parsons covers topics such as solidarity, cooperation, types of institutions, types of actor-units (he gets positively Aristotelian here in terms of his elaborate taxonomy), equilibrium and deviance in social systems (cf. AT’s contradictions), and role conflicts. It’s all well worth reading, but honestly quite overwhelming. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Should you pick up this book? </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’re a sociologist, you probably already have a good grasp of the concepts and arguments, and undoubtedly plenty of commentary and critique of it, but it’s always a good idea to look at the source material.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’re an activity theorist, particularly in the Engestromian mold, you should definitely skim it at least and see both the parallels and the distinctions.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’re neither a sociologist nor an activity theorist, but are interested in conducting qualitative research (case studies, ethnographies, other field studies), yes, look at Parsons’ careful accounting for different material factors.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Me, I plan to review this book at least a few more times. This first time, I focused on the parallels with AT. Next time, I may focus on critiques of what seems like an overly articulated and perhaps brittle system. Parsons’ heavy reliance on taxonomies, tables, and especially 4-fields yields an overly dichotomized structure throughout, and I’ll need some time to get my head around the implications. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></p><br /><br /><br /></span>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-82464437627540587152023-06-15T13:04:00.002-05:002023-06-15T13:05:01.057-05:00Reading :: Control through Communication<p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Control-through-Communication-American-Management/dp/0801846137/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1E9H9PDE7Z6LR&keywords=yates+control+through+communication&qid=1686851167&sprefix=yates+control+through+communication%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-1"><i>Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management</i><br />By JoAnne Yates</a></b> </p><p>I read this 1989 book in grad school and still go back to it sometimes. Recently I returned to it again on advice of an anonymous reviewer of a manuscript I had submitted. It's an excellent book and well worth reading, and I'll only touch the surface of it in this brief review.</p><p>In a nutshell, Yates examines the revolution in managerial communications between 1850-1920, examining primarily the archives of the Illinois Central Railroad, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and DuPont. </p><p>The book falls into two parts.</p><p>In the first part (Ch.1-3), Yates takes a broad view of the era, examining the rise and development of managerial methods and the need for internal communications (Ch.1), the emerging communication technologies that enabled a rise in internal communication (Ch.2), and the explosion of internal communication genres (Ch.3). Importantly, these innovations (technologies, genres) did not stay inside corporations, but made their way to other parts of our lives.</p><p>In the second part (Ch.4-8), Yates conducts closer analyses of the three organizations whose archives she studied. These chapters provide necessary detail, but frankly did not hold my attention as well.</p><p>In my first read-through in graduate school, I was mainly focused on Chapters 2-3. (For what it's worth, I think this book exerted a stronger influence on my grad school office mate Mark Zachry, who went on to write his dissertation based on the archives of a meatpacking company.) Reading through it again, I focused on those same chapters again, this time with a couple of decades of theory and research to help me understand them. Predictably, I now see new connections: to genre assemblages, to cultural heritage as represented in genres, to Latour's archival research. </p><p>The book is still about 1850-1920, but as we undergo new changes in how we communicate at work, it seems more relevant than ever. I can imagine it being a blueprint for some doctoral student, writing in 2035, examining the profound shifts we have undergone from the introduction of the IBM PC in 1980 to the present. </p><p>If you're interested in workplace communication, and especially in how technologies and genres change how we understand our work and ourselves, definitely pick this book up.</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-91682874790239521512023-06-15T12:44:00.002-05:002023-06-15T12:44:48.594-05:00Reading :: Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research<p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Organizational-Communication-Research-Management/dp/0761965874/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WBQD2UFGUM6B&keywords=boje+narrative+methods&qid=1686848787&sprefix=boje+narrative+methods%2Caps%2C115&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc"><i>Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research</i><br />By David M. Boje</a></b></p><p>I've been meaning to read this book for a while, but finally scheduled time for it when some collaborators and I began analyzing stories from a community research project. Fortunately, the book is slim (137pp without the bibliography and notes) and pretty direct.</p><p>Boje's focus here is on laying out different traditions for analyzing stories and narrative. The two are different:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Narrative requires plot, as well as coherence. To narrative theory, story is folksy, without emplotment, a simple telling of chronology. I propose 'antenarrative.' Antenarrative is the fragmented, non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted and pre-narrative speculation, a bet. (p.1). </p></blockquote><p>He connects antenarrative to the crisis of postmodernism and outlines ways to analyze antenarratives (as opposed to narrative in the classic sense): "eight antenarrative analysis options that can deal with the prevalence of fragmented and polyphonic storytelling in complex organizations and to provide teaching examples of these methods that are applicable to organization studies" (p.1). These options are treated in separate chapters:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Deconstruction analysis</li><li>Grand narrative analysis</li><li>Microstoria analysis</li><li>Story network analysis</li><li>Intertextuality analysis</li><li>Causality analysis </li><li>Plot analysis</li><li>Theme analysis</li></ul><div>Before getting into these options, Boje establishes five dimensions of antenarrative:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Pre-plot</i>: Antenarrative precedes emplotment (p.3)</li><li><i>Ambiguity</i>: "Antenarrative is constituted out of the flow of living experience" and is thus speculative, oriented toward meaning-making (p.3)</li><li><i>Flow as sensemaking</i>: Antenarrative is "a sensemaking to lived experience" (p.4)</li><li><i>Fragmentary</i>: It precedes closure and thus involves multiple interpretations (p.4)</li><li><i>Collective before consensual</i>: "It is before the plots have been agreed to" (p.4)</li></ul><div>In the subsequent chapters, Boje examines each of the eight options, which are grounded in different sets of literature and different research traditions. He gives considerable attention to each. In this review, I won't: I'll skip to two that I think are most relevant for my work.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>One is <i>causality analysis</i> (Ch.6), in which antenarratives advance tentative causal links. Boje quotes Nietzsche's question of whether causes lead to effects or whether effects lead to a search for causes. In antenarratives, people nominate causes for the effects they see around them. Examples include origin stories and stories of praise or blame. To explore these, Boje catalogs different processes:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>identifying temporal language in antenarratives</li><li>the relation between microstories and macrostories</li><li>tracing intertextual linkages of assertions across stories</li><li>developing a narrative mapping of causal assertions (p.102)</li></ul><div>The second chapter I focus on is the one on <i>thematic analysis</i> (Ch.8), which (Boje notes) is not strictly associated with stories (p.122). In fact, whereas "taxonomy cells in narrative theory are little theme cages to entrap stories," Boje emphasizes how antenarratives move in between and outside taxonomic classification (p.122). In an antenarrative approach, then, Boje exhorts us to ask: </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>What gets left out of themes?</li><li>What goes on between the cells of themes? (p.125)</li></ul>I found this book helpful in terms of thinking through how to analyze antenarratives (perhaps not narratives, although that is what the title implies). Chapter 6 was especially helpful along these lines, cataloging different approaches to causality analysis and providing methodological cites so we can study them further. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, I was not a fan of the prose, which is a little too pomo for me. That is, sometimes things that I think are fairly banal and unsurprising (e.g., people try to make sense through stories, those stories aren't necessarily internally coherent and are usually not coherent with others', a lot of causal links are post-hoc rationalizations) are presented as being shockingly revealed, often through highly figurative language. That figurative language could, in many places, be replaced by simple illustrations from concrete studies. In fact, doing so would have really helped me to understand how to apply these techniques in my own work -- techniques that seem to get lost in the shuffle sometimes.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Despite this drawback, I found the book helpful both in its advice and its bibliography. If you do qualitative research and have been thinking about analyzing narratives or antenarratives, definitely take a look.</div><p></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-24587248534458325762023-06-05T08:51:00.001-05:002023-06-05T08:51:43.751-05:00(20 years of blogging)<p>Today marks my <b>20th year</b> of blogging. </p><p>I really can't believe it: It seems like just a few years ago that I started this blog. But then again, "blog" seems so 2000s, doesn't it? Throughout the years, I have thought about moving this blog to Facebook (when I was on it), to Medium (when that platform was hot), and to other platforms that had more traction and active development. But I've held steady here at Blogger, and it's nice to have accumulated a huge archive of book reviews on one platform.</p><p>That's always been the raison d'etre of this blog: to capture my insights from the books I read. As a new assistant professor in 1999, I found that I would read a book, be excited about its insights, return the book to the library -- and a few months later, I couldn't remember the insights, or I would remember them but not where they came from. This was no way to live. So I started keeping notes on my readings, and in 2003, I began posting them to the blog. </p><p>My <a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2007/01/reading-pandora-hope.html">very first review</a> was mainly written as I was waiting in line for tickets to <i>The Matrix: Reloaded </i>at the Alamo Drafthouse. That movie was a real disappointment, but the blog wasn't. After compiling a few reviews, I found that I could</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>capture insights adequately</li><li>search the blog for insights ("Where did Latour say X? Who talks about topic Y?")</li><li>capture quotes that I know I want to use in papers, so I don't have to retype them</li><li>capture thoughts that I might use in literature reviews later (I regularly copy-paste from my blog to my lit reviews)</li><li>share book summaries with students and colleagues so that they can quickly decide whether to read the book or not</li></ul><div>The blog, in other words, has really supercharged my writing and scholarship by allowing me to capture my efforts. But I can also see my growth as a scholar as I read across these reviews. Every once in a while, I review a book a second or third time, highlighting different insights -- and sometimes reviewing a book more fairly than the first time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently it's been helpful to others as well. One friend of my wife's reported that she was trying to get her head around Bakhtin, googled his books, and found my blog. "Clay Spinuzzi saved my life!" she said in what I'm pretty sure is an exaggeration. Similarly, some of our HDO students read Deleuze & Guatarri in another class, looked for an explainer, and found my review. I didn't anticipate the blog working in that way, but I'm glad it does.</div><div><br /></div><div>One downside is that I am always behind on blogging. I'm about six books behind right now, mainly because I have been having to prioritize other writing commitments. But those books are sitting on a specific shelf at home, so I won't forget them, and I promise I'll get to them. Soon.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, I am thankful for the decision that I made 20 years ago. I plan to retire around 2035, so hopefully we'll make it to a 30th-year anniversary too.</div><div><br /></div><p></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-67543565433875339622023-05-07T16:31:00.002-05:002023-05-07T16:31:42.355-05:00Reading :: The Pitch Deck Book<a href="https://amzn.to/44B5SW0"><strong><em>The Pitch Deck Book</em><br />By Tim Cooley</strong></a>
<p>
</p><div>I saw this book on Amazon and it was inexpensive enough that I went ahead and grabbed the Kindle version. I'm glad I did, even though I don't think I will end up reading it over and over. </div><div><br /></div><div>Cooley nails the point of the pitch deck, which is not to sell, but to start a conversation. So what is the best way to start a conversation? Cooley goes over various lengths of arguments: an elevator pitch, a one-pager (sort of like a resume for your startup), a one-paragraph, a one-liner, and of course the standard pitch deck.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most of the book focuses on the pitch deck, examining its anatomy and common mistakes that people make when putting them together. He contextualizes these within pre-pitch and post-pitch activities as well. At the end of the book, he shows us several slide decks with speaker notes -- and his own commentary on what does and doesn't work for each slide. </div><div><br /></div><div>The book sometimes tends to fragmentary advice rather than a strong overview. But since the book is also pretty short, this approach works well enough. It really feels as if an experienced pitcher is taking us through the dos and don'ts. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you're interested in developing a pitch for a startup, I'd definitely take a look at this book. </div>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-54690381127653848482023-05-07T16:16:00.003-05:002023-05-07T16:16:56.078-05:00Reading :: Mapping Experiences<a href="https://amzn.to/42eW7eo"><strong><em>Mapping Experiences</em><br />By Jim Kalbach</strong></a>
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</p><p>This short review is for the first edition of this O'Reilly book, which a colleague recommended to me. It's focused on how people map value in organizations and markets. Think in terms of Design Thinking's customer journey maps -- which are referenced several times -- as well as business model canvases and strategy maps. If you've been intrigued by Design Thinking or other workshop approaches that help groups of people visualize an experience, this book is definitely worth picking up.</p><p>I confess that is not the value I was hoping to take away from the book. Instead, I was thinking more generally about different types of visualizations and how they help us to explore different aspects. And although Kalbach does touch on this question -- he mentions that visualizations fall into four buckets, chronological, hierarchical, spatial, and network -- his main focus is on the specific question of value. As he mentions, these diagrams really aren't the objective. The objective is to engage others in conversations.</p><p>Still, it's a well-developed book, nicely illustrated, with a lot of thought put into how these visualizations are presented and used. If you're interested in mapping value in organizations, or even just interested in how visualizations work, definitely pick it up.</p><p></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-80108452811623046942023-04-05T11:35:00.002-05:002023-04-05T11:35:06.738-05:00Reading :: Culture and Inference<a href="https://amzn.to/40INqsd"><strong><cite>Culture and Inference: A Trobriand Case Study</cite><br />By Edwin Hutchins</strong></a>
<p>"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. </p><p>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.</p><p>I'll quickly note that Hutchins cites Luria's Uzbek expedition in Chapter 1 (pp.8-9), focusing on how Luria presented syllogisms.</p><p>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!</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-33389743060922531952023-04-05T10:06:00.003-05:002023-04-05T10:06:28.012-05:00Reading :: Sorting Things Out<a href="https://amzn.to/3GjbDNq"><strong><cite>Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences</cite><br />By Geoffrey C. Barker and Susan Leigh Star</strong></a>
<p>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.</p><p>The book is (obviously) about classification: What it is, why we do it, what's involved. It begins with a definition of classification: "<i>a spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal segmentation of the world</i>" (p.10, their emphasis). In a classification system,</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>"<i>There are consistent, unique classificatory principles in operation</i>"</li><li>"<i>The categories are mutually exclusive</i>"</li><li>"<i>The system is complete</i>" (pp.10-11)</li></ol><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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).</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><p></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-45718206824025367072023-04-05T09:50:00.004-05:002023-04-05T09:50:27.198-05:00Reading :: Vygotsky and Literacy Research<a href="https://amzn.to/40ZWTek"><strong><em>Vygotsky and Literacy Research</em><br />By Peter Smagorinsky</strong></a>
<p>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.</p><p>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 -- <i>that</i> Michael Cole now insists on coauthoring papers with a native Russian speaker so he can better understand the "relevant context" of Vygotsky's words. </p><p>To which I say: put down the hair shirt. I mean, <i>Cole has now spoken Russian for longer than Vygotsky did.</i> (Vygotsky died at 38.) Additionally, Cole certainly is more fluent in <i>English</i> 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. </p><p>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). </p><p>Rant over, and back to the book. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-73872808585345762022023-04-05T09:11:00.002-05:002023-04-05T09:11:30.445-05:00Reading :: The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking<a href="https://amzn.to/3KfzU8g"><strong><em>The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking</em><br />By Peeter Tulviste</strong></a>
<p>I've seen this book referenced many times, mainly as a replication of <a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/02/reading-cognitive-development.html">Luria's 1930s study of cognition and literacy</a>. 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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>hereditary</li><li>individual</li><li>cultural (p.3)</li></ul><div>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). </div><div><br /></div><div>To undertake this project, he presents four long chapters:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>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.</li><li>He examines "certain theoretical problems of the historical development of thinking" (p.8), drawing from Vygotsky and Piaget.</li><li>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.</li><li>He compares differences in thinking due to features of language vs. features of activity.</li></ol><div>The book is rich, and I won't be going through every note I have. Here are some important notes:</div></div><div><br /></div><div>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). </div><div><br /></div><div>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). </div><div><br /></div><div>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 <i>character</i> of thinking, but the <i>transformation</i> 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). </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><p></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-12567551343594950522023-02-23T12:13:00.002-06:002023-02-23T12:13:42.547-06:00Reading :: Psychologies in Revolution<p><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Psychologies-Revolution-Alexander-Historical-Perspective-ebook/dp/B0841DW73W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=45LVSTTRHASF&keywords=proctor+psychologies+in+revolution&qid=1677175962&sprefix=proctor+psychologies+in+revolution%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1">Psychologies in Revolution: Alexander Luria’s ‘Romantic Science’ and Soviet Social History</a></span></i></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Psychologies-Revolution-Alexander-Historical-Perspective-ebook/dp/B0841DW73W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=45LVSTTRHASF&keywords=proctor+psychologies+in+revolution&qid=1677175962&sprefix=proctor+psychologies+in+revolution%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1">By Hannah Proctor</a></b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I continue to be fascinated by histories of Soviet psychology, specifically the cultural-historical school. So when I ran across this book, I had to read it. Although Luria is best known internationally as a pioneer of neuroscience, Proctor primarily reviews Luria’s early work (1920s-1940s) and his later accounts of it (most of his books on this work were not published until well after Stalin’s death in 1953). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Specifically, Proctor rereads Luria’s accounts in historical context, looking for places where his research participants’ utterances overflow or cut against Luria’s explanations. She organizes the text by presenting different figures in Luria’s studies, each of which gets a chapter: </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The criminal (covered in </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2016/07/reading-nature-of-human-conflicts.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Nature of Human Conflicts</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “primitive” (illiterates in Central Asia, covered in </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2015/02/reading-cognitive-development.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The child (covered in </span><a href="http://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2016/05/reading-speech-and-development-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The aphasic (covered in </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2016/04/reading-man-with-shattered-world.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Man with a Shattered World</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The synaesthete (covered in </span><a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2016/04/reading-mind-of-mnemonist.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proctor argues that </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Somewhat confusingly Luria’s research was animated by two distinct and indeed contradictory understandings of history: on the one hand, he treated individual human development as a recapitulation of civilisational development (the ontogenetic maturation from childhood to adulthood was treated as a counterpart to a phylogenetic progression from primitivism to civilisation), while on the other hand he emphasised the contingent impact of specific cultural and political experiences on individuals. (p.10) </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the pages of Luria's books attest to continued incongruities between the psychic territories he attempted to navigate and the maps he employed; incongruities that ultimately, I argue, led him to develop a new mode of scientific writing that found a different way of describing the diverse psychic terrains he encountered. (p.12)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This new mode was Luria’s so-called “romantic science,” a qualitative case study that drew heavily on literary conventions:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was only in these case histories that Luria developed a form of scientific writing capable of fully attending to the utterances and experiences of the people he dedicated his career to observing, understanding and treating. Unlike the majority of his publications, these works are written in a detailed and empathetic style alert to the particularities of the conditions of the people they describe rather than seeking to relate those people’s consciousness to some abstract normative ideal. (pp.22-23)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Luria’s two famous romantic science case studies are </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Man with a Shattered World</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mind of a Mnemonist</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luria’s path was made difficult because of his (Vygotskian) quest for what Proctor calls an “advanced” human subject, whom readers of this blog will recognize as the New Soviet Man, standing at the peak of Vygotsky’s peak psychology:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luria’s research was premised on normative assumptions about individual human development. He argued that the ‘advanced’ human subject was the result of various developmental trajectories: the biological evolu-tion of the species from animal to human, the cultural development of societies from ‘primitivism’ to ‘civilisation’ and the maturation of the(‘healthy’) individual from baby to adult. An interest in tracing the progression from ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ forms of thought united Luria’s seem-ingly diverse strands of work. At the apex of his mountain of development stood the ‘civilised’ or ‘cultured’ [kul’turnye], educated and healthy adult. Luria, however, had little to say directly about this ‘advanced’ figure. He could only discern its outline, as though it stood on a high mountain silhouetted in front of the glaring sun. Instead, he looked at the base in order to explain the route to the peaks. (p.8)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With this introduction, Proctor goes into the chapters centered around the different figures. All are fascinating, but let’s zero in on Luria’s expeditions to Central Asia in 1931-1932. I’ve discussed these on my blog. Luria and Vygotsky hoped to demonstrate that through literacy, people develop psychological tools or mediators that in turn provide them with capabilities including abstract thinking. In his expeditions, Luria found differences in how illiterate, semi-literate, and literate Uzbeks reasoned about categories and even whether they saw optical illusions. Yet some of these results were disputed by Kurt Koffka, the Gestaltist psychologist who accompanied the 1932 expedition, and the expedition itself was condemned by the Party for supposedly denigrating the mental capacity of Uzbeks. Luria put the research away, only to publish it 40 years later as </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proctor is fascinated by how the direct quotes from the Uzbek subjects contradict Luria’s interpretations and suggest different meanings, as well as Luria’s apparent ignorance of the political pressures that might affect the Uzbeks’ answers. She expresses these as paradoxes and ironies:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Paradoxically, however, Luria conceived of the imposition of a particular mode of life and thought as a form of liberation. For Luria, the transition to abstract thinking did not represent a process of assimilation but of emancipation.” (p.74)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Ironically, the lack of illusions that Luria identified in Uzbek people was precisely what he hoped could be overcome through the transition to the socialism [sic]. For Luria, illusion, fantasy and imagination were all crucial components of ‘advanced’ thinking.” (p.79)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luria was hampered, as Proctor sees it (and I agree), by a teleological understanding of history, which he also applied to individuals:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A loosely Marxist conception of history as advancing teleologically through a series of economic stages was combined with the Leninist conviction that such development could be artificially accelerated, conforming to what Francine Hirsch describes as ‘state-sponsored evolutionism’” (p.82)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Luria followed the Communist Party line, conceiving of his work in explicitly anti-imperialist terms and insisted that psychological propensities were not biologically determined. Luria’s rejection of biological essentialism was, however, coupled with a continued emphasis on cultural superiority framed in terms of historical development: a hierarchical framework that undermined his professed egalitarianism. Despite defining itself as anti-imperialist, his progressive framework for understanding Uzbek society bore comparison to the frameworks employed by Western anthropologists, whose work he drew on heavily. Luria frequently drew parallels between Uzbekistan and other supposedly ‘backward’ places, including other regions of the USSR as well as communities in Africa. For all his self-proclaimed attentiveness to cultural specificity, his emphasis on the interchangeability of ‘backward’ places understood cultural difference in terms of temporal development.” (pp.83-84)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And perhaps most importantly:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Despite insisting that no way of seeing is ‘a natural and inevitable achievement of the human mind’, Luria’s understanding of difference distributed humanity across one developmental slope and was thus implicitly value laden. … Luria placed Uzbek people, culturally if not biologically, lower on the rungs of a single developmental ladder.” (p.85.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proctor provides some historical context about how Stalinism dealt with the cultural diversity of the USSR: it embraced ethnic dress and superficial customs while leading diverse ethnic groups to a substantively homogeneous Communist future. “Luria’s contradictory depiction of Central Asia, which simultaneously celebrated tradition and progress, was in keeping with this state discourse” (p.88).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, she notes how Luria seems oblivious to the implied power differences. In addition to the fact that the expedition traveled with security services, Luria “wilfully overlooked the historical situation of the encounter where any translation from Uzbek into Russian implied a power relation” (p.91). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later, Proctor adds: “Stalin depicted the fight between old and new ways of life, tradition and modernity, capitalism and communism, by imagining the latter as a vulnerable newly born baby. Luria’s experiments in Central Asia celebrated the birth of the new but bore witness to the tenacity of the old (and it was for this reason that his work was eventually denounced).” (p.116). She adds:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as was evident in his experiments in Central Asia, a contradiction existed between Luria’s discussions of abstraction as a cognitive capacity, on the one hand, and as a research methodology, on the other. For Luria not only advocated abstraction as a mode of thought but simultaneously insisted that a properly Marxist approach to psychology should treat cognition as time bound and historical. (p.251)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the context of the Central Asian expeditions, Luria’s declared sensitivity to cultural particularity was complicated by his continued imposition of pre-existing normative frameworks onto the Uzbek people he encountered, muffling the specificities of their utterances. Classical scientific abstraction returned through the back door. (p.251)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proctor does similar close readings with the other figures. Toward the end of the book, she argues that Luria was stymied by the abstract, clinical style of writing he used to recount his research as well as the impulse to provide dialectical syntheses. But in later life, his two “romantic science” books moved from synthesis to a recognition of fragmentation (p.227). “The majority of Luria’s publications described people in relation to abstract ideals, whereas his ‘romantic’ works sought to understand the people they described on their own terms” (p.228).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I personally found this book very rewarding, both for its deep connections among historical events and for its thoughts on how Luria’s “romantic science” represented a more capacious genre (based on Soviet realism) that could better address the ambivalences in his data. If you’re interested at all in Soviet psychology and specifically the cultural-historical school, definitely pick up this book. </span></p><br />Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-91687050947337069242023-02-22T09:30:00.003-06:002023-02-22T09:30:43.192-06:00Reading :: Fundable Knowledge<p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fundable-Knowledge-Marketing-Technology-Rhetoric/dp/0805821236/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Z5CG8OH3UNDM&keywords=van+nostrand+fundable+knowledge&qid=1677077366&sprefix=van+nostrand+fundable+knowledge%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-1"><i>Fundable Knowledge: The Marketing of Defense Technology</i></a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fundable-Knowledge-Marketing-Technology-Rhetoric/dp/0805821236/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Z5CG8OH3UNDM&keywords=van+nostrand+fundable+knowledge&qid=1677077366&sprefix=van+nostrand+fundable+knowledge%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-1">By A.D. Van Nostrand</a></b></p><p>This book came out in 1997, when I was in graduate school, and I remember my officemate (the remarkable Mark Zachry) recommending it to me. Mark’s advice is always good, but I was deep into reading other things at that point, so I put it off. Now, over 25 years later, I finally got to it.</p><p>The book is part of the Rhetoric, Knowledge, and Society series edited by Charles Bazerman. It’s the second in the series, right after Dorothy Winsor’s <i>Writing Like an Engineer</i> (Dorothy was our professor at Iowa State). Small world, right? Unfortunately I never met Van Nostrand, who seems like he was a very smart guy who knew his way around the defense industry. But maybe it’s best that I waited a while before reading this book — I think I appreciate it more from where I am now, after having studied lots of industries and especially technology commercialization.</p><p>Van Nostrand brings a genre perspective to the defense procurement industry, discussing how the industry works, how it documents and argues, and what makes knowledge fundable. “Fundable knowledge is generated by a large social system that functions by impersonal directives,” he explains (pp.1-2). It is a commodity, specifically a futures commodity, since it is sold before it is produced (p.2). The acquisitions system is composed of several overlapping domains (p.10).</p><p>To better understand fundable knowledge, Van Nostrand draws on Steven Kline’s summary of four uses of the term <i>technology</i>:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>“<i>artifacts</i>: aspirins, bombs, telephones, airplanes”</li><li>a “<i>system of producing artifacts</i>, some combination of resources and methods, such as an assembly line or a set of laboratory procedures”</li><li>“the <i>skills or techniques implicit in the production system</i>; a certain manufacturer, for example, is said to have the technology to produce a given artifact”</li><li>“<i>a whole social system, or collection of systems, for using an artifact</i>. If the artifact is an airplane, for example, the technology of its use includes laws and regulations, airports and schedules, insurance, contracts, fuel supply, training, even frequent flyer bonuses” (pp.30-31)</li></ul><div>This is a very useful taxonomy, and crisply rearticulates what people in studies of science and technology (SST) are trying to say when, for instance, discussing infrastructure (Star and Ruhleder) or the unclear bounds of a technology (de Laet and Mol). </div><div><br /></div><div>He defines knowledge this way: “Knowledge is information to which a certain value has been added in order to serve some given purpose, some need to know” (p.33). And “producing knowledge is essentially a process of interpreting information, thereby adding value to it” (p.34). Later in the book, he goes farther, stating that “buying and selling knowledge produces knowledge” (p.58). And “knowledge exchange is a communicative act wherein a sender’s stock of knowledge actually <i>increases</i> through the act of communicating it” (p.62). I am not enthusiastic about characterizing knowledge as “stocks,” but I appreciate the idea that knowledge is constructed in practice. (<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/00346543071001133?casa_token=OQL_5_J2byAAAAAA:SlhtILcRMQ40AoXqUiGhBW-4CXOZgP5vIECdb9c2DnPBSqdqwstzw44hSnKuodtrGMT7izhDay1l0A">Peter Smagorinsky has a good relevant article</a> on the idea that we understand a text by recomposing it.) </div><div><br /></div><div>In the second chapter, Van Nostrand turns to the question of markets. He notes that “The price of goods is also the consequence of a peculiar culture within the defense acquisition system. This culture tends to favor initially low cost estimates followed by cost overruns after production is underway. Moreover, price is always subject to a federal cost-accounting procedure that distributes fixed costs evenly over short production runs, which accounts for those infamous $200 screwdrivers and $800 coffee pots” (p.66). Van Nostrand also summarizes the differences between the terms “action” and “activity” in the defense program: an action is “a certain type of transaction, one that results in a contract or a grant, or in the modification of either instrument,” while an activity “is an organization” (p.70). We find other specific quirks in defense procurement language, but as he reminds us, “language belongs to the people who use it” (p.70).</div><div><br /></div><div>Skipping forward, in Chapter 9 he lightly analyzes Defense Science and Technology (DST) as an activity system (p.141), and he brings in Swalesian genre theory to map 8 transactional genres (p.148) and document cycles (p.150). Based on this work, he analyzes the cyclical flows of knowledge in the procurement industry, based on the cyclical stabilization and destabilization of knowledge (pp.190-191). </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, he concludes, “to market a product is to provide an organizational context for selling it” (p.214).</div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, I found this book to be really useful. I must confess that it is not that engaging a read. But Van Nostrand opens the door to understanding technology commercialization in general and defense procurement in particular, and he lucidly builds the blocks of his argument. I’m sure I’ll return to it as I continue to think through both technology commercialization and knowledge. If you’re interested in these topics from a rhetoric and writing angle, definitely pick up this book.</div><p></p><p><br /></p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-45788279457405196812023-02-15T09:56:00.001-06:002023-02-15T09:56:06.112-06:00Reading :: The Soul of a New Machine<p><i><b><a href="https://a.co/d/a6AvLUR">The Soul of a New Machine</a></b></i></p><p><b><a href="https://a.co/d/a6AvLUR">By Tracy Kidder</a></b></p><p>Just a quick acknowledgement that I finally read this book, which is frequently used to illustrate Latour’s points in <i>Science in Action</i>. Since Latour used it, I was expecting an ethnography, but instead it’s an engaging, fast-paced account of how a team of engineers at Data General designed a superminicomputer (the Eclipse MV/8000) and brought it to market in a remarkably short amount of time. </p><p>This 1981 book is a terrific read, introducing us to different people and different phases of the project, helping us to understand what drives them and how their organization has been set up, and also showing how Data General exploited the spirit and curiosity of these young engineers (mostly early 20s). At one point, an salaried engineer working 80 hours a week discovers the pay stub of a contractor in the wastebasket — and realizes that this hourly contractor, working overtime, is making twice as much as the engineer. After some thought, the engineer and his manager decide to burn the pay stub so that the other engineers won’t see it.</p><p>Kidder plays up the Machiavellian machinations of the group’s manager, and I can see how this figure caught Latour’s imagination at that point in his career. But I was also intrigued by the accounts of debugging, which brought back my memories as a computer science student in 1988-1991 (a few years after the events in the book). Although I didn’t work on hardware, I certainly spent many late night sessions, or all nighters, poring over code, tracking down bugs, and figuring out how to do things that (I imagined) no one else had done in quite the same way. So I identified with the engineers and their motivations, even as I wanted to tell them to hold out for better compensation and to work fewer hours. </p><p>The book is definitely a product of its time, and some of the reported statements that seemed colorful or interesting to Kidder ring as blatantly racist and sexist today. For instance, at one point, an engineer walks through a computer expo with Kidder, pointing out how the IBM booth had “just the right number” of women and Blacks. (In contrast, the Data General team had just one woman, and although Kidder doesn’t mention race, he is quick to mention which engineers are Jewish.) So sometimes the book makes uneasy reading. But still fascinating reading. If you want to get a sense of what drove the incredible leaps in computer technology in the late 1970s and early 1980s, definitely pick up this gripping book. </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-71830477745575601102023-02-15T09:32:00.001-06:002023-02-15T09:32:15.172-06:00Reading :: Perezhivanie, Emotions, and Subjectivity<p><b><a href="https://a.co/d/2bs6VU9"><i>Perezhivanie, Emotions, and Subjectivity: Advancing Vygotsky’s Legacy</i></a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://a.co/d/2bs6VU9">Ed. by Marilyn Fleer, Fernando Gozalez Rey, and Nikolai Veresov</a></b></p><p>Lev Vygotsky has been incredibly influential in educational psychology and beyond, primarily through the works of his instrumentalist period (e.g., <i>Mind in Society</i>) and those that at least gesture toward the thoughts of his holistic period (e.g., <i>Thought and Language</i>). Both deal primarily with cognition. But Vygotsky was also interested in the question of personality. His works on personality were much thinner, but he saw it as a critical part of an overall psychology. In this context, he used the terms <i>perezhivanie</i> (singular) and <i>perezhivaniya</i> (plural) to refer to units of the formation of personality. Vygotsky either used the term of referred to it in writings as early as “Concrete Human Psychology” (1929) and as late as a 1935 lecture on pedology. In these instances, <i>perezhivanie</i> relates to how individuals’ personalities develop as they process emotions about experiences they undergo. But as Peter Smagorinsky argues elsewhere, <i>perezhivanie</i> “remains more of a tantalizing notion than a concept with a clear meaning” (2011).</p><p>In this collection, Fleer, Gonzalez Rey, and Veresov aim to clarify and develop the concept. The book starts with a lengthy introduction by the editors, followed by four parts: Perezhivanie (focusing on the concept), Emotions, Subjectivity, and New Challenges and Perspectives. </p><p>Of these, I found the opening chapter and the first part the most useful, since they develop the concept more fully. </p><p>The introduction, “Perezhivanie, Emotions, and Subjectivity: Setting the Stage” (Fleer, Gonzalez Rey, and Veresov) reviews past use of the term, then theorizes it: “Rather than examining emotions, perezhivanie and subjectivity as the result of internalised operations, this chapter puts forth the view that these concepts must be understood as a generative system inseparable from the individual. … It is through understanding the human psyche as the unity of social, personal, and environmental characteristics, that it becomes possible to advance on the essence of the three concepts that are the focus of this book, and thus to generate new understandings of what might constitute a contemporary reading of perezhivanie, emotions and subjectivity” (p.1). Later in the chapter, they state that “perezhivanie is a tool (concept) for analysing the influence of the sociocultural environment, <i>not on the individual</i> per se, but <i>on the process</i> of development of the individual” (p.10). Whereas social determinism might assume that the environment directly determines the child, this approach understands the environment as influencing the individual’s development — a dialectical process in which the individual becomes a unique subject. The authors link this process to Vygotsky’s discussion of the social situation of development (p.10). “Perezhivanie is a unit of analysis of a social situation of development,” they argue, a unity that cannot be divided into social and individual parts (p.11). They also use the analogy of the individual as a prism that refracts (not reflects) the environment (p.11). (Recall that Vygotsky’s late work was attacked by Stalinists in part because it did not hew closely enough to Lenin’s reflection theory.) </p><p>In Part I, chapters review perezhivanie from various angles. Mok overviews interpretations of perezhivanie, including from activity theory. Veresov distinguishes between perezhivanie as an empirical phenomenon and a concept, in the process digging deeply into the works of Vygotsky. Hammer extends this theoretical perspective to the domain of early childhood educational settings. </p><p>In Part II, “Emotions,” authors get into actual studies that mobilize the concept of perezhivanie. Fleer examines “how everyday interactions in a preschool environment can contribute to the emotional development of young preschool children,” specifically “when engaged in self-directed activities where teachers and other children spontaneously respond to the dramatic moments found in everyday play practices” (p.85). March and Fleer theorize emotional regulation as “the dynamic interplay of interpsychological and intrapsychological functioning during moments of emotional expression” and draw from “the findings of a close study of the conditions for supporting one child’s emotional regulation” (p.105). Chen also examines emotional regulation, this time in “everyday family life” (p.129). Fleer and Gonzalez Rey examine “two case examples, where a medical model is used to explain children’s behaviours, resulting in a deficit view of the children” and provide an alternate reading grounded in perezhivanie (p.145).</p><p>In Part III, “Subjectivity,” authors provide a mix of theory pieces and studies. Gonzalez Rey “outlines a general picture of the phenomenon of subjectivity in Soviet psychology” by examining an eclectic set of writings, then proposes understanding “subjectivity as a system that permits to understand how the historical experiences and the simultaneous contexts of the individual current’s [sic] life experiences appear together in new units of subjectivity, defined by the author as the intertwined movements between subjective configurations and subjective senses” (p.173). He contrasts this understanding with that of dialogical psychologists such as Matusov (p.186-on). Gonzalez Rey and Martinez discuss the epistemological and methodological challenges posed by perezhivanie and sense, challenges that were not met when these concepts were “not in focus during Soviet times,” and proposes “the Qualitative Epistemology on which the basis of a constructive interpretive methodology is developed as a path for the study of subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint,” using a case study to illustrate (p.195). Gonzalez Rey, Martinez, Rossato, and Goulart use two case studies to explore understanding processes and subjective units as “new qualitative subjective productions” rather than reflections (p.217). </p><p>In Part IV, “New Challenges and Perspectives,” the authors think about the future development of perezhivanie. Fleer, Gonzalez-Rey, and Veresov write the sole chapter of this part (the final chapter). Here, they “theorise the relations between the concepts introduced, building new theoretical insights, but also explicitly introducing methodological challenges yet to be faced by the cultural-historical community as they engage in research which draws upon these concepts” (p.247).</p><p>In all, the collection has more coherence and consistency than most collections I’ve read. That’s probably due to the fact that the editors have a hand in nearly all of the chapters. At the same time, that coherence means that the book is more narrowly focused than it might have been otherwise. For instance, as someone who uses activity theory and Vygotskian concepts to investigate groups and organizations, I wanted to see how perezhivanie might be used to understand group experiences of adults within these systems —- but in their case studies and illustrations, the authors focus almost exclusively on the development of individual children ass they go through social experiences. </p><p>Still, this collection was critical to my understanding of the concept of perezhivanie. I’m not convinced that Vygotsky left us enough to reconstruct his theory of perezhivanie per se, and I’m also not convinced that he even had an articulated theory, but the authors have provided a coherent, credible picture of what a reasonable Vygotskian theory of perezhivanie would look like. If you want to understand this concept, if you would like a solid platform on which to build your own thoughts or studies of perezhivanie, this book is a must-have.</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-86712815273433105102023-01-24T11:07:00.002-06:002023-01-24T11:07:13.040-06:00Reading :: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems<p><i><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-Ecosystems-Transformations-International-Entrepreneurship-ebook/dp/B077GCW7RM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YOH4PFIIX0QA&keywords=O%27connor+entrepreneurial+ecosystems&qid=1674578442&sprefix=o%27connor+entrepreneurial+ecosystems%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1">Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Place-Based Transformations and Transitions</a></b></i></p><p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-Ecosystems-Transformations-International-Entrepreneurship-ebook/dp/B077GCW7RM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YOH4PFIIX0QA&keywords=O%27connor+entrepreneurial+ecosystems&qid=1674578442&sprefix=o%27connor+entrepreneurial+ecosystems%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1">Ed. By Allan O’Connor, Erik Steam, Fiona Sussan, and David B. Audretsch</a></b></p><p>I read this collection a very long time ago, probably in mid to late 2022, but it got buried in all of the other stuff I was trying to do at the time. That’s too bad because this edited collection gave me a lot of insight into entrepreneurial ecosystems and the research surrounding them.</p><p>What’s an entrepreneurial ecosystem? In the chapter “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: The Foundations of Place-Based Renewal,” the editors explain: “In abstract terms, central to the definition of entrepreneurial ecosystems are (entrepreneurial) agency and (human made) context (I.e., the ecosystem), especially the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction (I.e. rules of the game, institutions) that shape the presence and form of important entrepreneurial ecosystem elements such as capital, labour and knowledge” (p.3). They understand the ecosystem as undergoing transformations and transitions (p.3), and thus they say understanding entrepreneurial ecosystems requires systems thinking (p.4). They add, “entrepreneurial ecosystems are an inherently geographic perspective” because they “focus on the cultures, institutions, and networks that build up within a region over time rather than the emergence of order within global markets” (p.5). In this perspective, the focus is the entrepreneur, not the firm (p.5); the entrepreneur is considered a central player or leader in creating and maintaining the entrepreneurial system (p.8). The authors overview differences between entrepreneurial ecosystems and the related concepts of innovation ecosystems and innovation systems (industrial districts, clusters, triple helixes) (p.8). </p><p>The other contributions to the book flesh out this vision. For instance, in “Deconstructing the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept,” Daniel et al. review contributions to the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept, including business networks and systems thinking, and overview other concepts related to strategic innovation. In “Institutional dynamism in entrepreneurial ecosystems,” Fuentelsaz et al. incorporate institutional theory and business life cycle theory into the analysis of ecosystems. And in “Measuring entrepreneurial ecosystems,” Stam takes a systems view, reviewing the systemic conditions that are at the heart of such an ecosystem (p.175) and identifying some possible measures for those conditions (table 1, p.179). </p><p>I found this collection to be a good introduction to the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems, although not entirely accessible for someone (like me) who is not steeped in the economics and business literature. If you’re looking for an introduction to EE concepts, it’s a good place to start.</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-78614682753153405032023-01-18T10:53:00.003-06:002023-01-18T10:53:43.968-06:00Reading :: A Dialectical Pedagogy of Revolt<p><b><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Pedagogy-Revolt-Vygotsky-Revolution/dp/9004262652/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LL6R4X3L2FMR&keywords=De+smet+a+dialectical+pedagogy+of+revolt&qid=1674052676&sprefix=de+smet+a+dialectical+pedagogy+of+revolt%2Caps%2C298&sr=8-1">A Dialectical Pedagogy of Revolt: Gramsci, Vygotsky, and the Egyptian Revolution</a></i></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Pedagogy-Revolt-Vygotsky-Revolution/dp/9004262652/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LL6R4X3L2FMR&keywords=De+smet+a+dialectical+pedagogy+of+revolt&qid=1674052676&sprefix=de+smet+a+dialectical+pedagogy+of+revolt%2Caps%2C298&sr=8-1">By Brecht de Smet</a></b></p><p>In this book, de Smet uses Gramsci’s political theory and Vygotsky’s cultural psychology to analyze the 2011 Egyptian revolution. </p><p>De Smet’s thesis is that we should see social movements as developmental, as forms of human activity and as sites of learning (p.5). He argues that to understand mass agency of an emancipatory movement, we must understand how that movement is constructed as an actor (p.26). And that in turn requires challenging the lines that have been drawn between individual and collective forms of subjectivity: between mind and body, between subject (“the agent of cognition”) and object (“the external world of things”) (pp.28-29). In Chapter 2, de Smet brings us through the thought of Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Voloshinov, Gramsci, Ilyenkov, and Vygotsky, arguing that the individual subject is also an <i>effect</i> of collective subjects (p.34). The conclusion is that “the dichotomy between the individual and the collective has been revealed as an opposition between modes of subjectness, which share the same substance: human activity” (p.37).</p><p>This line of thought brings us to the concept of the subject (Ch.3), which de Smet traces through Goethe,, Hegel, and Marx and on to figures in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Specifically, he argues that in an uprising (such as the Egyptian uprising under consideration), activities are determined and rendered meaningful via continual reference to the collective (p.39). That is, “a subject is not an undifferentiated thing, but an ensemble of different parts that function as a whole” — various individuals “were determined and rendered meaningful not by their own, particular position, but by their continuous reference to the whole, I.e., the people” (p.39). De Smet also stipulates that “a subject is something that emerges, grows, develops, and dies” and “an understanding of the formation and development of a subject such as the people requires a degree of abstraction that should not lapse into simplistic reductions or empty generalizations” (p.39 — he gives the example of statistical analyses of demographics). </p><p>In Chapter 4, he turns to CHAT, noting that Vygotsky studied “the behavior and consciousness of the <i>individual</i> subject,” approached as a gestalt (p.48) — but this gestalt was rooted in Goethe, Hegel, and Marx, and thus “the complex behavior and consciousness of the individual subject could not be grasped directly as a totality — the unfolding of its understanding had to be mediated by an archetype” (p.49). He quotes Vygotsky, who argues that the unit of analysis must reflect the basic characteristics of the whole (p.49 — but see <a href="http://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2022/07/reading-developmental-psychology-in.html">Valsiner’s claim that Vygotsky misinterpreted Brasov in making this argument</a>). </p><p>De Smet’s argument here creates problems in the analysis. We can stipulate with Vygotsky that an individual is always already social, and thus individual qualities will reflect (and constitute) cultural ones. But that does not mean that cultural and individual qualities are identical — otherwise individuals would be identical as well. Vygotsky actually discusses this question in a very underdeveloped way under the heading of <i>perezhivanie</i>, noting in one example how three brothers might develop differently based on the same issue. Thus, to explore cultural qualities through individual ones, we need a mechanism for ungrinding the hamburger: to reconstruct common cultural qualities from the individual’s qualities, or (to approach the question another way) to understand how individuals’ interactions continuously construct the cultural gestalt. This issue will become important in Ch.6.</p><p>Here, de Smet draws on <a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2016/08/reading-interdisciplinary-theory-of.html">Blunden’s work on the unit of analysis</a>, arguing that the collaborative project is a collective subject (p.55). He concludes that “human subjects are nothing more than collaborative projects engaged in a developmental process, and emancipatory movements are but the politicized form of this ontology” (p.57).</p><p>In Chapter 5, “Class as Subject,” de Smet turns to the titular subject, arguing that “the main challenge for human emancipation is class society and its contemporary form of the capital relation and its state” (p.75). </p><p>In Chapter 6, “The Modern Prince,” he examines the strike as a germ-cell. He appeals to Vygotsky, who examined children’s initial concept formation, and “transpose[s it] to the domain of proletarian sociogenesis” to argue that “at first, proletarian workplace subjectivities are subsumed under other subjectivities and only acquire some stability in the shared space of the labor process” (p.76). This move is warranted by de Smet’s argument in Ch.4 that since the individual is always already social, we can understand the social through the individual — we can, for instance, apply an individual child’s process of concept formation to an entire class of adults (the proletariat), according to de Smet. In recognizing that thought begins as intermental, we can apply children’s states of learning to social collectives — according to de Smet. Readers, I am very skeptical of this claim, which goes beyond analogy (such as the body politic as a Leviathan), instead actually attributing individual learning mechanisms to a social collective. It’s underexplored, it’s assumed rather than proven, and it skips across obvious differences between individual children and collectives of adults. De Smet continues this tack later in the chapter, discussing Vygotsky’s work on complexes: “Transposed to the domain of proletarian sociogenesis, this development needs a new organizational form to structurally connect and unite the various committees” — a trade union (p.80). He similarly “translates” Vygotsky’s insight that two lines of development can mature independently, then influence each other to yield a new line of development, applying this insight “to the domain of proletarian sociogenesis,” asserting that “the challenge for proletarian class formation is to combine and unite the economic and political lines of development” (p.84).</p><p>This “translation” (again, not an analogy) is fraught with problems in my view. That’s not just because of <i>perezhivanie</i>, but also because children’s development is not solely social. For instance, children demonstrably develop different capacities as the prefrontal cortex matures. Drawing a direct line (not a mere analogy) between a child’s development and the development of a collective subject seems hasty and requires much more thought, but by Chapter 6 (“Revolution”) the two are treated as equivalent. Here, revolution is not considered the object of the activity, but rather the activity itself, which produces a new collective subject: the people (p.105). By Chapter 22, de Smet is mobilizing the Zone of Proximal Development for describing the developmental trajectory of this collective subject (p.293). Note that Vygotsky used the ZPD to describe how a less developed individual (such as a child) can accomplish things beyond their capabilities with the help of a more developed individual (such as a teacher). But here on p.293, no more-developed subject is mentioned.</p><p>So I had concerns about this theoretical equivalence. But I also had concerns about the methodology, which is scattered across the book rather than being laid out in one place. De Smet interviewed many people involved in the uprising, but does not discuss basics of interview research such as triangulation, nor does he do much to explore differences in how these participants saw the uprising. Rather, he mainly focuses on agreement, since these participants function as avatars for the collective subject. We don’t get a good sense of how he selected participants, how or whether he looked for disagreements, how he compared their statements at the time of the interview with documents at other periods, or other measures we might expect from qualitative research. We don’t know how many people he interviewed or how many of these are represented in the quotes and characterizations throughout (or if he covered these basics, I can’t find them). Because these basics aren’t covered, we don’t have a good idea of whether de Smet’s conclusions come from his data — or whether the data were selected to illustrate his conclusions.</p><p>In sum, I wanted to like this book, but ultimately I was suspicious of both the theoretical work and the empirical work. If you’re looking for a book that ties CHAT to political consciousness and revolt, pick it up, but use caution. </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-25652443214017673792023-01-15T11:05:00.004-06:002023-01-15T11:05:28.994-06:00(10th anniversary of Topsight)<p> I can't believe it's been 10 years since I <a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2013/01/topsight-go-buy-my-book.html">published</a> my methodology book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Topsight-2-0-Diagnosing-Information-Organizations/dp/1981360743/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=spinuzzi+topsight&qid=1673801376&sr=8-2">Topsight: A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing Information Flow in Organizations</a></i>. (The link now goes to the revised edition, print version. There's also a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Topsight-2-0-Diagnosing-Information-Organizations-ebook/dp/B07BGHCSFP?ref_=ast_sto_dp">Kindle version</a>.)</p><p><i>Topsight</i> was a labor of love for me. I had been teaching methodology courses since 2000, and by 2012, I had developed a set of resources and examples for my undergraduate students. These resources structured the process of conducting case studies in organizations so that students could see texts being taken up, used, and coordinated in action. They could then model these interactions in various ways. Over and over, I got to talk with students about the sometimes mundane, sometimes bizarre sites they investigated, and how to turn these observations into positive, beneficial ideas for change. </p><p>By early 2011, I decided to write an accessible methodology textbook along these lines. But -- since I had already published two books with academic presses -- I decided to try self-publishing this one as an experiment. </p><p>I published <a href="https://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/search/label/topsight">a set of blog posts</a> about this process, which was pretty interesting in itself. And on January 15, 2013, I pulled the trigger. The book was live. </p><p>What I expected and hoped was that the book would make this process clear and simple, encourage students and practitioners, and empower people to understand what texts do in organizations and how to improve those ecologies of texts. But I didn't expect people to begin citing this book in their methods sections. And they have -- as of today, Google Scholar says that <i>Topsight</i> has been cited 79 times. </p><p>Since publishing <i>Topsight</i>, I've used it in undergraduate and graduate classes as well as professional workshops. But I have also seen it pop up on other professors' syllabi at both grad and undergrad levels. And I always feel blessed when it does. Case study research can be really scary and intimidating at first, but when you have a good method to follow (and improvise over, and improve on), it can be really exhilarating. And helpful to the people participating in your research as well. </p><p>If you haven't checked out <i>Topsight</i>, it's only $7.99 on Kindle, or free with Kindle Unlimited. And if you have, I hope you have found it useful! </p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-20123857653673848532023-01-07T15:35:00.004-06:002023-01-07T15:35:40.568-06:00Reading :: Adapting Values<p><b><a href="https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/value/"><i>Adapting VALUEs: Tracing the Life of a Rubric through Institutional Ethnography<br /></i>By Jennifer Grouling</a></b></p><p>In this book, which is available as a free PDF at the WAC Clearinghouse, Grouling conducts an institutional ethnography to examine how two universities separately adapted Valid Assessment for Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) rubrics. These rubrics, designed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), were meant to provide a national assessment tool. Grouling is interested in how the rubrics are taken up locally at each institution, compromised and negotiated in actual practice, and thus create and reflect the social practices at these two different institutions (p.3).</p><p>The two institutions are quite different. "Oak University" is a small liberal arts university in a college town, with historical ivy-covered buildings. Its writing committee is chaired by a history professor. "St. Rita's College" is even smaller, an open-access school that serves factory workers and their children in the local community. It's housed in an old BP office building, and its writing program admin is a creative writer. Both WPAs have been tasked with assessment, and both turned to VALUE as a nationally recognized standard on which to base that assessment. </p><p>With these two cases established, in Chapter 2, Grouling reviews the history of writing assessment, asking why rubrics are popular in assessment circles now. She reviews the racialized history of standardization in US education, the emergence of testing, and the development of rubrics in writing assessment. In the 1980s and 1990s, she notes, in composition terms such as "outcomes," "competencies," and "standards" became conflated in practice. With this background in place, she discusses the history of the specific rubrics under discussion, the VALUE rubrics.</p><p>In Chapter 3, Grouling turns to institutional ethnography, specifically rooted in scholars such as Dorothy Smith. In Chapter 4, she leverages this vocabulary to term the VALUE rubrics as "boss texts," which "function as a part of the institutional circuit of accountability within higher education" (p.57). Using the orientation of institutional ethnography, she analyzes a representative rubric, examines who has funded VALUE, and looks at how WPAs at the two universities used VALUE to establish legitimacy for themselves. </p><p>Chapter 5 looks further into local adoption by examining to what extent each university could adapt the rubrics for their own use. Here, Grouling gets elbow-deep into the challenges that each university — and each WPA — face and how the rubrics had to be adapted to address those specifics. Those challenges include not just student preparation and institutional workings, but also quotidian power struggles and differences in how stakeholders understand education. "The AAC&U and higher education, in general, is not often aware of institutional circumstances like the ones these faculty engaged with on a daily basis," she observes (p.97). </p><p>In Chapter 6, Grouling moves from the committee to the classroom, examining how rubrics (not the VALUE rubrics, which are only for assessment, but rather grading rubrics) were used in classrooms. Although she finds little direct connection between assessment and grading rubrics, she does note that the two sets of rubrics both function as "boss texts" (p.102). Interested in how rubrics get picked up and reused in different contexts, she uses rhetorical genre theory to analyze this translation movement. Specifically, she examines where faculty found their rubrics: from books, from peer professors, from departmental leadership, and nominally — but not in observed practice, she points out — from collaborative departmental workshops (p.115). </p><p>In Chapter 7, Grouling explores individualism, racism, and the ecology of the writing rubric. She does this in part by comparing demographics of the two universities (Oak is majority White, St. Rita's is not), by comparing statements of her interlocutors, and by examining deficit assumptions and acculturationist assumptions as they play out in the rubrics themselves. For instance, although the VALUE rubrics are intended by the AAC&U to provide an asset-based model, these rubrics were adapted to the dominant deficit assumptions at St. Rita's. She takes a deep dive into stories that some of her interlocutors told about themselves and their approach to education, noting how those stories also reflected deficit assumptions and reflected committee tensions and power dynamics. </p><p>In Chapter 8, the conclusion, Grouling concludes that rubrics "are boss texts that are inextricable from systems of power" (p.155). She resists providing a heroic or satisfying close to the narrative, but does encourage us to continue interrogating our own institutions and the roles of rubrics and other boss texts within them.</p><p>What did I think of the book? Although assessment and rubrics are not the most exciting things in the world, they are very important for higher education, and they hold out the promise of more standard, more fair ways to understand how educational institutions serve their students. Grouling's institutional ethnography underlines how difficult it is to deliver on such a promise. I can imagine productively using excerpts of this book alongside other resources when talking about assessment and grading rubrics—in discussions of assessment as well as in pedagogical discussions. </p><p>At the same time, I didn't find many surprises here. Yes, assessment standards promise to do specific things across institutions, and yes, they fall short on these impossible promises because they are locally implemented. Yes, they get implemented by individuals with their own biases, ways of seeing things, constraints, and power dynamics. Yes, those individuals are often unaware of how systematic racism underpins their own assumptions about education. Education is a much messier and more conflicted enterprise than people like to think, just like so many other pursuits. </p><p>But perhaps I am a little blase due to my long-term readings and recent writings, as well as my participation as what I guess could be called a WPA since 2016. It's worthwhile pointing out these dynamics and exploring them in an academic environment, and Grouling does this ably. If you're involved in writing assessment at any level, definitely pick it up.</p>Clay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.com0