Reading :: Luria's Legacy in the 21st Century

Luria's Legacy in the 21st Century
Edited by Anne-Lise Christensen, Elkhonon Goldberg, and Dmitri Bougakov

A.R. Luria, one of Lev Vygotsky's closest collaborators, went on to have an illustrious career in neuropsychology (among other specializations he pursued). In this edited collection, neuropsychologists discuss his continuing impact on their work. I'm certainly no neuropsychologist, but this collection helped me to contextualize Luria's contributions. Below, I'll hit some of the highlights.

In Goldberg and Bougakov's chapter, they note that Luria's neuropsychology was an accident of ideology:

It is not widely known that Luria's becoming a neuropsychologist is more bittersweet serendipity than early career planning. Had Luria lived in a country where career choices were less dictated by the ruling party line and more open to personal preference, he would have probably continued pursuing his earlier interests in cultural psychology. ... However, cultural psychology fell out of favor with the Soviet state and, in order to pursue a viable scientific career, Luria was forced to adapt to the increasingly oppressive circumstances. (p.21)

(This is an abbreviated version of the story Cole tells in his afterword to Luria's biography.)

Luria, however, was still influenced by cultural psychology, as Cagigas and Bilder explain in their chapter:

Leontiev, Luria's contemporary and a member of the original "troika," together with Vygotsky and Luria, also developed a theoretical framework that he christened activity theory, which was inclusive of the many layers that influence human activities (Cole and Engestrom 1993; Engestrom 1996). To date, however, this branch of thought has enjoyed little dialogue with the neurosciences but almost certainly influenced Luria's pioneering ideas. In short, Luria and the other two founding members of the cultural-historical school of thought attempted to create a metatheory that could guide research and help resolve what they called the "crisis in psychology" (Leontiev and Luria, 2005) namely the integration of the two psychologies originally proposed by Wundt: experimental psychology and Volkerpsychologie (Cole 1996; Cole, Levitin, and Luria 2006). (pp.26-27)

It's useful to see this side of the story—and, after reading so many books focused on the story of activity theory, to see Vygotsky demoted as just another member of the "troika" rather than described as its leader. AT is here described (of course) as a metatheory, and the crisis in psychology is sourced by a Leontiev and Luria publication rather than Vygotsky's unpublished manuscript by this name.

Luria's work in neuropsychology went on to examine the different subsystems of the brain. This question is endlessly fascinating, but it's not directly applicable to my work, so I won't go into it here. Instead, I'll plan to hunt down some of the citations to Luria and Leontiev that are offered in these two chapters.

Should you read this book? If you have an interest in Luria's legacy, and in neuropsychology in particular, sure. If your interest is more generally in activity theory, you can safely skip it.

(Hardcovers and paperbacks)

If you've been to my Amazon.com author page lately, you may have noticed some changes with my first two books.

Tracing Genres through Organizations (MIT Press, 2003) is no longer available in hardcover—it's out of print. However, it's still available in the Kindle version. And if you want it in paperback, it's now available, both at Amazon and at the MIT Press site.

Network (Cambridge University Press, 2008) is available from Amazon in all three formats. I'm very excited that it's now available in paperback, which is much less expensive than hardback.

I haven't seen the paperback version of either book yet. If you buy one of these in paperback, let me know what you think!

Reading :: The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation

The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation
By Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky never published this manuscript, which fortunately is free to us, courtesy of Marxists.org. Supposedly Leontiev kept a copy and had his graduate students read it.

In Chapter 1, Vygotsky identifies a "crisis" in psychology: although people recognize the need for a psychology, and although various psychological disciplines have developed approaches, "Further advance along a straight line, the simple continuation of the same work, the gradual accumulation of material, are proving fruitless or even impossible. In order to go further we must choose a path." Specifically:

Out of such a methodological crisis, from the conscious need for guidance in different disciplines, from the necessity – on a certain level of knowledge – to critically coordinate heterogeneous data, to order uncoordinated laws into a system, to interpret and verify the results, to cleanse the methods and basic concepts, to create the fundamental principles, in a word, to pull the beginnings and ends of our knowledge together, out of all this, a general science is born.

But where is the methodological starting point? We can't start with pathology, Vygotsky says, because it leads us to look for the extreme, not the normal. We can't start with zoopsychology (e.g., behaviorism or reflexology) because, contrary, "always the highest forms [are] the key to the lower ones" (and here he cites Marx).

And yet, he says, we need a unified methodological basis for psychology. In this book,

We wish to obtain a clear idea of the essence of individual and social psychology as two aspects of a single science, and of their historical fate, not through abstract considerations, but by means of an analysis of scientific reality. From this we will deduce, as a politician does from the analysis of events, the rules for action and the organisation of scientific research. The methodological investigation utilises the historical examination of the concrete forms of the sciences and the theoretical analysis of these forms in order to obtain generalised, verified principles that are suitable for guidance. This is, in our opinion, the core of this general psychology whose concept we will attempt to clarify in this chapter.

 This problem is crucial, since facts are collected and interpreted differently via different methodologies. Worse:

At present psychoanalysis, behaviourism, and subjective psychology are already operating not only with different concepts, but with different facts as well. Facts such as the Oedipus complex, indisputable and real for psychoanalysts, simply do not exist for other psychologists; for many it is wildest phantasy.

Thus "the fundamental concept, the primary abstraction, so to speak, that lies at the basis of a science, determines not only the content, but also predetermines the character of the unity of the different disciplines, and through this, the way to explain the facts, i.e., the main explanatory principle of the science."

Yet different branches of psychology, he notes, have been fighting for supremacy, and this has caused problems.

In Ch.3, Vygotsky notes these problems:

It can be said of any important discovery in any area, when it transcends the boundaries of that particular realm, that it has the tendency to turn into an explanatory principle for all psychological phenomena and lead psychology beyond its proper boundaries into broader realms of knowledge. In the last several decades this tendency has manifested itself with such amazing strictness and consistency, with such regular uniformity in the most diverse areas, that it becomes absolutely possible to predict the course of development of this or that concept, discovery, or idea. At the same time this regular repetition in the development of widely varying ideas evidently – and with a clarity that is seldom observed by the historian of science and methodologist – points to an objective necessity underlying the development of the science, to a necessity which we may observe when we approach the facts of science from an equally scientific point of view. It points to the possibility of a scientific methodology built on a historical foundation.

That is, some branch of psychology attempts to become ascendant in this way:

1. It is applied successfully to a specific problem: "In the beginning there is some factual discovery of more or less great significance which reforms the ordinary conception of the whole area of phenomena to which it refers, and even transcends the boundaries of the given group of phenomena within which it was first observed and formulated."
2. Due to its success, it is applied to adjacent areas: "The idea is stretched out, so to speak, to material that is broader than what it originally covered. The idea itself (or its application) is changed in the process, it becomes formulated in a more abstract way."
3. Eventually, it takes over as the default explanatory framework: "the idea controls more or less the whole discipline in which it originally arose. It has partly changed the structure and size of the discipline and has itself been to some extent changed by them. It has become separated from the facts that engendered it, exists in the form of a more or less abstractly formulated principle, and becomes involved in the struggle between disciplines for supremacy."
4. It keeps expanding beyond its disciplinary bounds, separating from the facts that engendered it, eventually being "formulated as a universal principle or even as a whole world view."
5. It bursts like a soap bubble: "it enters a stage of struggle and negation which it now meets from all sides," and at this point its limitations become apparent and it shrinks to the appropriate size—or disappears.

In Chapter 4, Vygotsky gives us several examples: "psychoanalysis, reflexology, Gestalt psychology, and personalism." For each,

The extension of the concept grows and reaches for infinity and according to the well-known logical law, its content falls just as impetuously to zero. Each of these four ideas is extremely rich, full of meaning and sense, full of value and fruitful in its own place. But elevated to the rank of universal laws they are worthy of each other, they are absolutely equal to each other, like round and empty zeros. Stern's personality is a complex of reflexes according to Bekhterev, a Gestalt according to Wertheimer, sexuality according to Freud.

Yes, Vygotsky, yes. But here Vygotsky holds out hope for a truly universal principle:

Doesn't this tendency of each new idea in psychology to turn into a universal law show that psychology really should rest upon universal laws, that all these ideas wait for a master-idea which comes and puts each different, particular idea in its place and indicates its importance? The regularity of the path covered with amazing constancy by the most diverse ideas testifies, of course, to the fact that this path is predetermined by the objective need for an explanatory principle and it is precisely because such a principle is needed and not available that various special principles occupy its place. Psychology, realising that it is a matter of life or death to find a general explanatory principle, grabs for any idea, albeit an unreliable one.

And here I found myself saying: No, Vygotsky, no! But this is ultimately Vygotsky's goal: to develop a universal methodological principle for psychology, one that can unify it. It's a modernist goal for Vygotsky's modernist psychology.

In Ch.5, Vygotsky freely quotes Engels to substantiate his point that abstractions can and should be based on actual relations—and that dialectics is the way to do so.

Engels [1925/1978, p. 514] has pointed out many times that for dialectical logic the methodology of science is a reflection of the methodology of reality. He says that 

The classification of sciences of which each analyzes a different form of movement, or a number of movements that are connected and merge into each other, is at the same time a classification, an ordering according to the inherent order of these forms of movement themselves and in this resides their importance. 

Can it be said more clearly? In classifying the sciences we establish the hierarchy of reality itself

In Chapter 7, Vygotsky discusses the issue of one school taking on ideas from another. Whether one school "annexes" ideas from the other or whether they become "allied," this process is fraught with difficulties because the ideas have developed within different systems under different premises. Re the latter, it's not hard to read between the lines and see a critique of the young Luria here:

This method is usually applied in the merger of Marxism and Freudian theory. In so doing the author uses a method that by analogy with geometry might be called the method of the logical superposition of concepts. The system of Marxism is defined as being monistic, materialistic, dialectic etc. Then the monism, materialism etc. of Freud’s system is established; the superimposed concepts coincide and the systems are declared to have fused. Very flagrant, sharp contradictions which strike the eye are removed in a very elementary way: they are simply excluded from the system, are declared to be exaggerations, etc. 

And if you didn't see it coming, a few paragraphs later, Vygotsky explicitly makes the case with a cite to Luria's 1925 paper! He goes on to say that such alliances fundamentally disrespect the intended allies—Luria, he says, in trying to reconcile the two systems, is essentially telling Freud that Freud is materialist and monist. He concludes: "By no means do I want to say that everything in psychoanalysis contradicts Marxism. I only want to say that I am in principle not dealing with this question at all. I am only pointing out how we should (methodologically) and should not (uncritically) fuse two systems of ideas."

In Chapter 8, this line of thought reaches its conclusion with this intriguing analogy:

As to the methodological spine that is supporting them there are two scientific systems. Methodology is always like the backbone, the skeleton in the animal’s organism. Very primitive animals, like the snail and the tortoise, carry their skeleton on the outside and they can, like an oyster, be separated from their skeleton. What is left is a poorly differentiated fleshy part. Higher animals carry their skeleton inside and make it into the internal support, the bone of each of their movements. In psychology as well we must distinguish lower and higher types of methodological organization. 

This is the best refutation of the sham empiricism of the natural sciences. It turns out that nothing can be transposed from one theory to another. It would seem that a fact is always a fact. Despite the different points of departure and the different aims one and the same object (a child) and one and the same method (objective observation) should make it possible to transpose the facts of psychology to reflexology. The difference would only be in the interpretation of the same facts. In the end the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus rested upon the same facts as well. [But] It turns out that facts obtained by means of different principles of knowledge are different facts.

In Ch.9, Vygotsky notes that Chelpanov ridicules psychologists from rival schools who rename the phenomena they study.

Chelpanov is tempted to reduce the whole reform carried out by behaviorism to a play of words. He assumes that in Watson’s writings the word “sensation” or “idea” is replaced by the word “reaction.” In order to show the reader the difference between ordinary psychology and the psychology of the behaviorist, Chelpanov (1925) gives examples of the new way of expressing things: 

"In ordinary psychology it is said: ‘When someone’s optical nerve is stimulated by a mixture of complementary light waves, he will become conscious of the white color.’ According to Watson in this case we must say: ‘He reacts to it as if it were a white color.’" 

The triumphant conclusion of the author is that the matter is not changed by the words used.

But, Vygotsky says, this is the view of someone who is uncritical: "Who has no view of his own about the phenomena and accepts indifferently both Spinoza, Husserl, Marx, and Plato, for such a person a fundamental change of words is an empty pretension." In contrast, Vygotsky says, "We can say in advance that the word that refers to a fact at the same time provides a philosophy of that fact, its theory, its system."

And here he connects the discussion of terminology back to the question of methodology in the previous chapter:

We have seen everywhere that the word, like the sun in a drop of water, fully reflects the processes and tendencies in the development of a science. A certain fundamental unity of knowledge in science comes to light which goes from the highest principles to the selection of a word. What guarantees this unity of the whole scientific system? The fundamental methodological skeleton. The investigator, insofar as he is not a technician, a registrar, an executor, is always a philosopher who during the investigation and description is thinking about the phenomena, and his way of thinking is revealed in the words he uses.

In Chapter 10, Vygotsky summarizes:

From the fragmentary analyses of the separate elements of a science we have learned to view it as a complex whole which develops dynamically and lawfully. In which stage of development is our science at this moment, what is the meaning and nature of the crisis it experiences and what will be its outcome? Let us proceed to the answer to these questions. When one is somewhat acquainted with the methodology (and history) of the sciences, science loses its image of a dead, finished, immobile whole consisting of ready-made statements and becomes a living system which constantly develops and moves forward, and which consists of proven facts, laws, suppositions, structures, and conclusions which are continually being supplemented, criticized, verified, partially rejected, interpreted and organized anew, etc. Science commences to be understood dialectically in its movement, i.e., from the perspective of its dynamics, growth, development, evolution. It is from this point of view that we must evaluate and interpret each stage of development. 

So how is the current crisis in psychology interpreted? Some, like Chelpanov, deny its existence. Others interpret it "subjectively," believing their school is correct and others are simply wrong. Vygotsky warns that psychology will either coalesce around a future unified system or splinter due to mutually exclusive principles of knowledge. He adds something interesting here:

But before we turn to this point we must first quit radically with the misunderstanding that psychology is following the path biology already took and in the end will simply be attached to it as its part. To think about it in this way is to fail to see that sociology edged its way between the biology of man and animals and tore psychology into two parts.

In Chapter 11, Vygotsky adds that psychology cannot be empirical because "empiricism formulates its tasks in such a way as to reveal their impossibility. Indeed, on the basis of empiricism, i.e., completely discarding basic premises, no scientific knowledge whatever is logically and historically possible." This is Chelpanov's dilemma: He "wants psychology to be a natural science about (1) phenomena which are completely different from physical phenomena, and (2) which are conceived in a way that is completely different from the way the objects of the natural sciences are investigated."

In Chapter 12, Vygotsky declares that "the main driving force of the crisis in its final phase is the development of applied psychology as a whole" (his emphasis). He adds: "One can say about applied psychology what can be said about philosophy which was rejected by empirical psychology: 'the stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner.'" He argues that "the struggle between the two psychologies does not coincide with the struggle between the many conceptions and psychological schools, but stands behind them and determines them" (again, his emphasis).

And he concludes the chapter:

Many psychologists have viewed the introduction of the experiment as a fundamental reform of psychology and have even equated experimental and scientific psychology. They predicted that the future would belong solely to experimental psychology and have viewed this epithet as a most important methodological principle. But in psychology the experiment remained on the level of a technical device, it was not utilised in a fundamental way and it led, in the case of Ach for instance, to its own negation. Nowadays many psychologists see a way out in methodology, in the correct formation of principles. They expect salvation from the other end. But their work is fruitless as well. Only a fundamental rejection of the blind empiricism which is trailing behind immediate introspectional experience and which is internally split into two parts; only the emancipation from introspection, its exclusion just like the exclusion of the eye in physics; only a rupture and the selection of a single psychology will provide the way out of the crisis. The dialectic unity of methodology and practice, applied to psychology from two sides, is the fate and destiny of one of the psychologies. A complete severance from practice and the contemplation of ideal essences is the destiny and fate of the other. A complete rupture and separation is their common destiny and fate. This rupture began, continues, and will be completed along the lines of practice. (His emphasis)

In Ch.13, Vygotsky grounds his proposed psychology in dialectical materialism—but not by simply applying terms to the new domain:

Engels’ formula – not to foist the dialectical principles on nature, but to find them in it – is changed into its opposite here. The principles of dialectics are introduced into psychology from outside. The way of Marxists should be different. The direct application of the theory of dialectical materialism to the problems of natural science and in particular to the group of biological sciences or psychology is impossible, just as it is impossible to apply it directly to history and sociology. In Russia it is thought that the problem of “psychology and Marxism” can be reduced to creating a psychology which is up to Marxism, but in reality it is far more complex. Like history, sociology is in need of the intermediate special theory of historical materialism which explains the concrete meaning, for the given group of phenomena, of the abstract laws of dialectical materialism. In exactly the same way we are in need of an as yet undeveloped but inevitable theory of biological materialism and psychological materialism as an intermediate science which explains the concrete application of the abstract theses of dialectical materialism to the given field of phenomena. 

Dialectics covers nature, thinking, history – it is the most general, maximally universal science. The theory of the psychological materialism or dialectics of psychology is what I call general psychology. 

In order to create such intermediate theories – methodologies, general sciences – we must reveal the essence of the given area of phenomena, the laws of their change, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their causality, we must create categories and concepts appropriate to it, in short, we must create our own Das Kapital.  (his emphasis)

And that is the really interesting thing about the book, and perhaps why it lay in Leontiev's desk drawer rather than being published. Vygotsky wanted a revolutionary change in the conception and methodology of psychology, one that was as fundamental as Marx's Das Kapital—one that was not dialectical in the forced, artificial way that Kornilov's "materialist" psychology was, nor an internally contradictory mishmash in the way of Luria's early flirtation with Freudianism, but rather, one that was materialist at the roots and that could seamlessly grow into its connections with dialectical materialism, the logic of nature.

I have been reluctant to believe that Vygotsky took Engels that seriously, but based on this argument, I think he really did. Nevertheless, Vygotsky was a more systematic thinker, one who saw the need for a genuine, organically developed methodology for psychology.

If you're interested in Vygotsky, psychology, or methodology, of course you should read this (free) book.

Reading :: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course

History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course
By Joseph Stalin

I finished this book in March. It was on a flight back from Europe. There I was, flying somewhere over the Atlantic, reading Stalin on my Kindle app on my tablet while listening to J-Pop. Welcome to 2016.

Of course, it's not entirely accurate to say that Stalin "authored" this book, although he oversaw it and his name is on it. Stalin commissioned the book, wrote the chapter on dialectical materialism, and oversaw the rest. Published in 1938, this book was made mandatory reading in all schools and universities in the USSR.

One might think that this piece of propaganda would be more exciting. To be sure, the authors did try to introduce a plot, but that plot is one of good (the Bolsheviks) vs. evil (global capitalism in many guises, including those of seemingly dedicated Communists who turn out to be in pay of their capitalist taskmasters). The plot spans the 55 years from 1883, the creation of the Social-Democratic Labor Party in Russia, to the time of publication (1938).

But the plot does not serve anyone well. If it is taken at face value, the Bolsheviks—including Lenin and Stalin—seem like complete chumps, ignorant of the obvious machinations of Trotsky and his henchmen. If it is not taken at face value, the Party seems frequently disunified.

I'll just note some interesting points:

As early as p.7, Stalin is blaming the "rich" kulaks for the misery of the rural poor.

By p.11, Stalin is touting the dictatorship of the proletariat as the discovery of Marx and Engels.

On p.15, he contrasts Marx and Engels' "scientific" understanding of history with that of the Narodniks, who "neither knew nor understood the laws of the economic and political development of society."

On p.48, Stalin notes that the "Economists" argued that "a Socialist ideology could arise from the spontaneous movement of the working class"—but Lenin showed that "the Socialist ideology arises not from the spontaneous movement, but from science." One can be forgiven for being confused by the narrative: is socialism an inevitable development governed by the laws of history and economics, or is it dependent on human agency and intervention? Compare also p.248, in which the shift from capitalism to socialism to communism was again portrayed as historically inevitable.

On p.60, Stalin explains and justifies the separation of the Party from all workers: the Party is the vanguard, tasked with leading the people, although it comes from the people and puts their interests first. As he argues on p.62, the people can only thrive if they are "welded" together in one unified purpose. This leads to his claim on pp.63-64 that "the Party must be organized on the principle of centralism" in which "the minority must submit to the majority, the various organizations must submit to the centre." In fact, on p.188, Stalin argues that "The Party strengthens itself by purging its ranks of opportunistic elements" (his emphasis).

On p.137, Stalin begins his discussion of dialectical and historical materialism, supposedly the one part that Stalin wrote himself. It was also published separately; see my review of it.

On p.163, Stalin reviews Marx and Engels' claims about the five main types of relations of production: primitive communal, slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist.

Interestingly, on pp.224-225, Stalin chronicles Lenin's claims that Socialism could be victorious in separate countries—it did not have to take place simultaneously in all "civilized" countries. This "new" theory, Stalin says, was grounded in Lenin's 1905 pamphlet. (Compare this claim with a contemporaneous account of the Bolsheviks' belief in the latter during the Bolshevik Revolution.)

On p.357, the authors claim that Trotskyism was defeated in part because of the "masterly exposition" of "Comrade Stalin's theoretical work, Foundations of Leninism"; notice that here and in some other places, Stalin is discussed in third person, perhaps to avoid giving the impression that he was bragging.

On p.367, the authors note that the formation of the USSR was not a final victory; communism would still be in danger until the capitalist "encirclement" was destroyed. Thus the people of the USSR were vitally concerned with proletarian revolution in those countries.

On pp.475-476, Stalin "explains" that Marxist ideology is not dogmatic, it's an evolving science. This walkback from previous discussion (e.g., p.15) is a tell—Stalin eventually "explains" why the USSR structured its dictatorship of the proletariat as a republic of Soviets rather than as a political organization such as the Paris Commune (which was what Marx had suggested).

The above notes are more fragmentary than my normal review, but I wanted to identify some of the more interesting parts of this generally dull book. These parts tend to involve justifying the Bolsheviks' actions as being in accordance with the "science" of Marx and Engels. Stalin was essentially trying to write a Bible, from the simplified good-vs-evil narrative to the complicated theology.

If you're interested in Soviet history—and you have the stomach for propaganda—check it out.

Reading :: Alexander Romanovich Luria: A Scientific Biography

Alexander Romanovich Luria: A Scientific Biography (Plenum Series in Russian Neuropsychology)
By Evgenia D. Homskaya

I've mentioned A.R. Luria many times on this blog. But, in part due to remarks Chuck Bazerman made at CCCC last month, I decided to read more about Luria. Fortunately, UT's library has this biography—which currently retails on Amazon for $199.

The biography was written by Evgenia D. Homskaya (Moscow State University), who defended her own thesis under Luria in 1957 and went on to a prestigious career in her own right. Perhaps in consequence, this biography (first published in Russian in 1992) is not critical of Luria—although it is critical of the ideological hurdles he faced.

Although the biography addresses Luria's childhood, youth, and some of his personal life, for the most part it really is a "scientific biography," focusing on his accomplishments in each decade. (Each chapter addresses a decade of his work—"The Twenties"; "The Thirties"—except for the first and last chapter.) Much of the material is familiar from other sources, such as Luria's job offer from Kornilov in 1921 (p.15) and his first meeting with Vygotsky in 1924 (p.19).

Looking back at the end of the Soviet Union, the author is able to criticize the "morbid atmosphere" of 1930s Russia (p.25), which (for instance) endangered Luria during his Uzbek expedition. In a footnote, the author notes Luria's "notoriously famous telegram to Vygotsky" in which he declared that "'Uzbeks don't have any illusions'" (p.26). The author adds: "The telegram was interpreted by the officials in the political sense, which eventually led to a moratorium on the continuation of research in Central Asia" (p.26). The author doesn't thoroughly explore the implications of this lesson for Luria, who changed his field and his vocabulary several times to avoid further conflicts with the ideological constraints of the Soviet Union.

The expedition "failed" in the sense that a resolution condemned the research, along with Vygotsky and Luria's cultural-historical theory (p.30). Worse:

With the political atmosphere in the country becoming more and more suppressive, Luria was forced to react to the resolution by leaving the institute and arresting his psychological-ethnographic activity. Shortly after that, the situation was aggravated by a mournfully famous decree on pedology, accusing all psychologists and teachers who followed this direction incompetent and racist and prohibiting the application of tests for psychological research on children. ... Vygotsky and his followers were drowned in interdictions and false accusations that affected Luria and his work in particular. (p.30)

Luria moved to Kharkov in 1932 (p.30), conducting research with "patients with localized brain damage" and studying medicine (p.31). But "collaboration with the leader of the Psychoneurological Academy turned out to be unsuccessful," so he moved back to Moscow in 1934; Vygotsky died the same year (p.31).

Luria began studying twins at the Medico-Genetic Institute, leaving to become a full-time medical student in December 1936; in January 1937, the head of the Institute and colleagues were arrested and their research was declared illegal (p.31)—just another one of Luria's many lucky escapes.

Chapter 4 covers the Forties, in which Luria worked on rehabilitating Soviet soldiers who had sustained brain injuries during WWII. Chapter 5 moves on the Fifties, in which Luria worked on defectology—and had yet another lucky escape. A "colloquium devoted to the problems of the physiological theory of I.P. Pavlov" involved "the reconstruction of the biological sciences in accordance with Pavlovian teaching and against any other trends of thought and cosmopolitanism" (i.e., "a feature of capitalist ideology that neglected national traditions, culture, and patriotism, and advertized the purposes of universal totalitarianism" (p.41). Physiologist A.G. Ivanov-Smolensky arranged this session, in which non-Pavlovian approaches were declared harmful. The author notes that this event paralleled Lisenko's 1948 declaration that genetics was a bourgeois pseudoscience (p.41). Ivanov-Smolensky's mechanistic "motoric method" became ascendant, and Luria "was blamed as a representative of an anti-Pavlovian direction in psychology" (p.42). His lab at Burdenko was closed (p.42), and he went to the Institute of Defectology (p.43). In 1952-53, the "Case of the Doctors" "accused doctors of Jewish nationality"; as an ethnically Jewish doctor, Luria was in danger. But this process was interrupted in 1953 by Stalin's death—another lucky escape for Luria (p.43). He rose to VP of Scientific Research at the Institute of Defectology (p.43) and in 1956, publishes a book whose implications successfully challenged the 1936 Pedology Decree (p.44).

Chapter 6 covers the Sixties. At the end of the 1950s, Luria was able to return to the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery (p.53), where he focused on the question of memory (p.61). In the 1970s, Luria was able to revive cultural-historical theory, including having a monograph and his Uzbek expedition published (p.76). He argued that cognitive processes were determined by both the individual's experience and the common experience of mankind via language (p.76).

Ultimately, the author argues, Luria "collided" with authoritarian ideology in the 1930s and at the end of the 1950s (p.111). The author chronicles Luria's successful attempts to minimize the impacts of these collisions—he avoided the Gulag and worked up to his death—but I'd like to see more discussion of the forms that these attempts took. As Cole argues, Luria's maneuvers involved maintaining a relatively coherent research program while using the language of whichever approach was ascendant at the time, as well as escaping into adjacent fields (neurology, medico-genetic studies, brain trauma, defectology, aphasia) when necessary. These sudden changes and switchbacks meant that Luria was able to accomplish many things in many adjacent fields, but I wonder what his accomplishments would have looked like had he not been forced to maneuver around the vagaries of Soviet ideology.

(Free article: "Toward a Typology of Activities")

My article "Toward a Typology of Activities: Understanding Internal Contradictions in Multiperspectival Activities" was recently named 2016 Best Article on Philosophy or Theory of Technical or Scientific Communication. That's the old news.

The new news: To celebrate, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication has made it a free download for the next six months.

Grab it!

Reading: Contemporary Field Research

Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings
By Robert M. Emerson

Just a quick review of this book, which is an older edition. The editor presents a series of classic readings on fieldwork, grouped in these sections:

• "Ethnography and understanding members' worlds"
• "Theory and evidence in field research"
• "Relational and personal processes in fieldwork"
• "Ethical and political issues in field research"

The authors are the usual suspects. The first chapter is that same piece by Geertz that you have undoubtedly read; Kathy Charmaz, Michael Bloor, Rosalie Wax, and John Van Maanen also make appearances. But the book deftly puts their pieces into dialogue, thanks especially to the editor's introductions to each section. The result is a valuable set of meditations on different aspects of fieldwork. 

Although my review of this book is pretty thin, if you are interested in the details and complications of fieldwork, check it out. 

Reading :: The Mind of a Mnemonist

The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory
By A.R. Luria

As mentioned in the previous review, A.R. Luria began publishing quite a bit after Stalin's death. Beyond his scholarly work, he also wrote two popular books that became internationally known: The Man with a Shattered World and this one, The Mind of a Mnemonist.

A mnemonist, of course, is someone who remembers things—and the subject of this book becomes well known as a performer who is asked to memorize tables of numbers, details, and nonsense syllables. But we meet him when he is a humble journalist whose editor sends him to see Vygotsky and Luria. The editor noticed that this journalist would never write down the details of his assignments, but always seemed to remember them. And the journalist was puzzled that this should be so remarkable.

Luria recounts testing the man's memory with tables of numbers, growing more astonished as he repeated the numbers back effortlessly—not just right to left, but also left to right, down to up, and diagonally. What's even more remarkable is that decades later the man could call back the same tables from those initial tests; his memories did not seem to decay.

What made this man's memory so different? Based on extended testing and interviews, Luria surmises that it's partly due to the man's pronounced synesthesia and partly to the fact that he processes memories as detailed visual images. He also developed techniques that leveraged these unique natural abilities.

But, Luria adds, this ability also shaped the man's life and personality. He was "disheveled," often "disorganized," and had trouble relating to other people.

Like The Man with a Shattered World, this book provides a sympathetic portrait of an extraordinary person and allows us to better understand the individual as a developed personality. It's a fun, fast read that will make you think differently about memory and thought.

Reading: The Man with a Shattered World

The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound
By A.R. Luria

A.R. Luria led an interesting life: he was an early member of the Vygotsky Circle, conducted an early cross-cultural psychology study, invented an early version of the lie detector, and became a leader in neuropsychology. Like many in psychology, he published relatively little during the Stalin years, then became prolific once Stalin died. Among his works is this one, written for an international lay audience.

I won't go deeply into this story, which is of a Russian army officer who sustained a gunshot to his head while fighting the Nazis. The resulting wound to the posterior parieto-occipital regions of the brain meant that he had extreme trouble combining his sensory impressions into a coherent whole: "He is aware of his own body and senses both his arms and his legs, though he cannot tell his right from his left" (p.31). He loses the ability to read, to write, to locate parts of his own body, to recognize his own hometown.

Much of the book details his struggle to rehabilitate—in his own words. One day, the officer discovered that if he looked away from the paper and just attempted to write a word—rather than spell it out—he often could. As Luria says, "For adults, writing is an automatic skill, a series of built-in movements which I call 'kinetic melodies'"—that is, operations in the parlance of activity theory (p.72). The officer still had those "kinetic melodies" and could invoke them. And over the rest of his life, the officer wrote over a thousand pages: rarely more than a page a day, and in a script that he himself was almost unable to read.

Luria expresses admiration for this officer and his attempts at self-rehabilitiation, which paid off enough for him to tell his story. But he also uses the case to lucidly explain the effects of such a brain injury. If you're interested in neuropsychology, or if you're just interested in how complex our perception is and how easily it can be shattered, take a look.

Reading :: Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child

Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child
By L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria

I first picked this book up at Iowa State as a graduate student, but I quickly put it down: although I had been fascinated by Vygotsky's other books, this book's focus on apes did not appeal to me much. But twenty years makes a big difference: now, with a better grounding in the work of the Vygotsky Circle, I see great value in the book.

To be sure, that value overlaps with those of Vygotsky's and Luria's other writings. But in some ways, this book is more clearly written and more concisely argued than those more widely-read sources. In fact, the book's structure helps us to better understand the essential Vygotskian argument that human cognition is essentially social; it explains the cultural-historical approach in terms of a progression. At the same time, for 21st-century readers, this claimed progression has blind spots that suggest an important critique of Vygotskian thought.

First, the progression. The book consists of a thin author's introduction and three thick chapters:

• Chapter 1: Behavior of the Anthropoid Ape
• Chapter 2: Primitive and His Behavior
• Chapter 3: The Child and Its Behavior

The first two chapters are based respectively on the works of the primatologist Kohler and the "ethnic psychology" of Levy-Bruhl and others. The third is based on the authors' own work.

As the authors state in the introduction,

All three essays are united by one idea, that is, the idea of development. Their aim is to schematically present the path of psychological evolution from the ape to the cultural man. (p.36, their emphasis)

Each essay deals with

only one dominating feature or aspect of behavior, namely the one that, like a compass arrow, points from a certain starting point to a new direction and path in the development of behavior. Our task was to portray three main lines in the development of behavior—evolutionary, historical, and ontogenetic—and to show that the behavior of cultural man is the product of the three lines of development and may be understood and explained only by analyzing the three different paths that make up the history of human behavior. (p.36, their emphasis)

The authors argue that behavioral development was initially evolutionary—in the sense of the physical evolution of an organism—but when anthropoid apes invented tools, they took a new path, "creating thereby the main psychological prerequisite of historical development of behavior" (p.37, their emphasis). This historical development was labor, which involved "the development of human speech and other psychological signs used by primitive man to gain control over behavior" (p.37, my bold emphasis). And in child development, they saw a third line of development: "the cultural development of behavior based on the acquisition of skills and modes of cultural behavior and thinking" (p.37). "Thus we have concentrated on the turning points, the critical stages in the development of behavior," the authors add: first tools, then "labor and the use of psychological signs," then the child's cultural-psychological development as opposed to natural development (p.37). Each "process of development dialectically prepares for the next one, transforming and changing into a new type of development" (p.38).

Readers will note that the account of labor is linked to Engels' account of evolution in Dialectics of Nature, which later became the cornerstone of Leontyev's activity theory. This account became an article of faith in the USSR. But Vygotsky and Luria handle this basic account with perhaps more nuance than Engels does.

In Chapter 1, the authors review Kohler's work in detail, then interpret it from the view of Marx and Engels. First, they claim that although apes can use tools, they have not yet developed labor: "Use of tools in the absence of labor is what draws the behavior of man and ape closer and at the same time separates them" (p.74; as a side note, compare Gen. 3:17-19, which also portrays labor as a uniquely human pursuit, but with a more negative valence). The authors, as good Marxists, argue that "quantitative differences may transform into qualitative ones," and tools thus change the very nature of man—although they don't do this for apes or other animals (p.74).  Here, the authors cite Engels' account of human development through labor, adding that labor is an "adaption to nature, foreign to apes" (p.75).

Apes use tools to manipulate conditions, the authors say, but man uses signs to control his own behavior—and "this constitutes the essence of the cultural development of man's behavior" (p.77).

This brings us to the second chapter, in which the authors draw on what we might consider sketchy anthropology to argue that (a) current "primitive" people can serve as a proxy for the people in our past development and (b) these "primitives" are at a lower level of development (p.82). They appeal to the aforementioned work by Levy-Bruhl for these points. But they also treat "primitives" more sympathetically than one might expect, understanding these people as fully equal agents, but whose cultural tools have not provided the structure to perform certain actions. Specifically, the authors claim that nonliterate peoples tend to develop better eidetic memory (e.g., p.99), while literate peoples tend to rely more heavily on artificial signs to do this work and thus allow their eidetic abilities to atrophy (p.101). They argue that in the absence of artificial signs, nonliterate peoples' "language loads thought down with endless details and particulars and does not process the data of experiences"; the examples from Wertheimer and Thurnwald (p.111) sound quite similar to those Luria later reported from his Uzbekistan trip. Some of the later work in this chapter deals with the development of word usage in associations and complexes, similar to the discussion in Vygotsky's Thought and Language.

As interesting is the discussion of numeric operations: the authors claim (sensibly, I think) that "our system of calculation counts for us" (p.130)—that is, our cultural tools provide a system that changes the task and shares the load, an idea that has been developed considerably. Similarly, the authors quote Bucher's description of Borneo digging sticks, which are composed of a big stick (for digging) and a little stick (which clicks with each stroke): the authors say, "This sound, being something like a work cry or a command, has the purpose of rhythmically organizing work" (p.138).

And this brings us to the third chapter and the authors' own work. The authors revisit Engels' story of evolution through labor (p.170), then move to the question of memory—mediated and unmediated. In their experiments, children past a certain age were first tested in terms of natural memory, then given mediators and tested again. They tended to do better in mediated tasks, not because their natural memory improved, but because they could substitute the mediator for their own memory (p.180). "Developing culturally, a child gains the opportunity to create himself those stimuli that in the future will influence him, organize his behavior, and attract his attention" (p.189).

Yet, as the authors demonstrate with a discussion of the famous forbidden colors experiment (pp.190-192), these mediators can be internalized—an analogue to the numeric system that "counts for us" in Chapter 2. "Upon closer examination we are convined that the process of attention still remained indirect; although instead of externally indirect, it became internally indirect" (p.192). That is, children's natural memory did not improve; instead, they internalized psychological tools that changed and systematized the task.

The authors also discuss the so-called Vygotsky blocks (pp.193-199) as a way to explore how children developed abstraction.

Ultimately, the authors conclude that the difference between natural and cultural ability was crucial. They argue for a better understanding of cultural giftedness:

Cultural giftedness means first of all to rationally use one's endowed capabilities, be they average or poor, to achieve the kind of results that a culturally undeveloped person can achieve only with the help of considerably stronger natural abilities.

Cultural giftedness, in essence, means the ability to control one's own natural resources; it means the creation and application of the best devices for using these resources. (p.230)

This advice would be right at home at Lifehacker.

In conclusion, the book is fascinating and valuable. It is in some ways not as developed as other work by the authors, and the discussion of primitives did not endear it to me, but it explains some of the Vygostky Circle's work more clearly than other texts I have read. If you're interested in cultural-historical psychology, definitely pick it up.

(A lot of presentations)

I've been busy this year giving different presentations. Rather than a post for each, I decided to put together a megapost pointing to my Slideshare account.

Being an academic:

• Publishing for students and faculty (for UT's Undergraduate Writing Center)
• Time management for academics (for UT's Undergraduate Writing Center)

Research methodology:

• Workshop: Modeling qualitative data (for ATTW 2016 and Syracuse University)
• What's wrong with CHAT? (for CCCC 2016)
• Three networks walk into a bar... (for Syracuse University)

(Time management for academics)

Here's a presentation I gave today for our Undergraduate Writing Center.

How can you be more productive as an academic? You probably won't get smarter. But you can use texts to work more effectively. In this presentation, I discuss different levels of productivity and how to integrate them to organize and plan time and projects.

Writing :: A good idea is not enough

Spinuzzi, Clay/Jakobs, Eva-Maria/Pogue, Gregory (2016): A Good Idea Is Not Enough: Understanding the Challenges of Entrepreneurship Communication. In: International Conference on Competitive Engineering - Resource Efficiency for Global Competitiveness (Coma 2016), 27.1. bis 29.1.2016. Stellenbosch University (ZA), Proceedings, 547-552

This is another in my series on writing articles. In this case, it's an article that my colleague Eva Jakobs was kind enough to present at COMA 2016 in South Africa. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it.

But writing the article was really useful for us. It's an overview article that pulls together the research we have done at IC2 over the last few years, studying entrepreneurship communication across several related research studies. The individual studies allowed us to draw specific conclusions about cases; the overview paper let us step back and develop broader conclusions. 

Although I'm lead author, the other authors were quite active, writing portions and critiquing others. We collaborated by emailing Word attachments (not my favorite way to collaborate—I prefer Google Docs, but not everyone did). To keep things straight, we used Track Changes. And we had to struggle to shrink the paper down to the requisite six pages. 

In fact, I should say something here about page limits. They frustrate me, but they typically result in better, clearer writing. I find myself paying far more attention to clarity, brevity, and word choice than I would normally; I prune citations that aren't doing enough work; I ask whether this figure is really needed; and I cut block quotes. In fact, I'm starting to think that I should force myself to follow an arbitrary page count for the final version of my publications, just to push my writing to be better and clearer. (But not for my initial submissions, where I'm more concerned about expressing the broad sweep of the argument and probing what the reviewers think of it.)

Is this paper clearer because of those limits? Click through and see what you think!

CFP: Written Communication special issue on narrative

From Written Communication:

Call For Papers

Written Communication

Special Issue on Narrative and Writing Research in Honor of Carol Berkenkotter

http://wcx.sagepub.com/

The Editor and Editorial Board of Written Communication invite article submissions for Narrative and Writing Research: A Special Issue in Honor of Carol Berkenkotter, tentatively scheduled for publication in January 2017. Submissions from established and new scholars of writing theory and research are welcome.

Over the past thirty years, Carol Berkenkotter has substantially shaped the ground of two major areas of study. Much of her work, including particularly her 1995 book with Thomas Huckin, Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication, has been foundational for studies of genre. More recently she has extended her work to investigate narrative in psychiatric discourse in her book, Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Use of Narrative in Psychiatry (2008), as well as many other chapters and articles. In Patient Tales, Berkenkotter examines patient case histories and positions narrative in a tension with the expository logico-scientific mode of writing, a mode that undergirds the biomedical paradigm in psychiatric medicine.

We believe Berkenkotter’s work is representative of a broader interest in narrative as a concept and research tool in studies of writing. Narrative accounts, genres and methods have been woven through writing research for decades. Indeed, articles published in the very first issue of Written Communication drew from narrative as a concept or accounting technique in their research and discussions (Flower & Hayes, 1984; Haas Dyson, 1984; Lunsford & Ede, 1984).

In this special issue, we honor Carol Berkenkotter by taking up her interest in the nature and affordances of narrative, not only in contexts of psychiatry genres, but in other realms of interest to writing studies scholars. While submissions need not draw directly from Berkenkotter’s work, we imagine that many may do so. Submissions might also elaborate, respond to, or revise existing theories and accounts of narrative, including those of Berkenkotter and of other scholars.

In keeping with Written Communication’s mission, we are primarily interested in reports of original research. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Fine-grained narrative accounts of in situ literacy practice
• The ways narrative resists or coexists with other discourse genres or research
• The role of narrative in qualitative research
• Potential uses, strengths, and weaknesses of narrative methods
• Longitudinal studies of writing practices that make use of narrative
• Contested narratives in writing research paradigms
• The relationships between narrative and studies of genre
• Issues of narrative and power: whose narratives count?
• The role of narrative in changing global and digital contexts

Authors submitting manuscripts should indicate in a cover letter that they wish the submission to be considered for the Special Issue on Narrative and Writing Research.

Authors should submit manuscripts electronically as .doc or .docx file attachments to writcomm@umn.edu. Please send (a) a manuscript that is free from references to the author or authors (“blind”); (b) an abstract of 100–150 words; (c) five to seven keywords (which do not appear in the title) to facilitate electronic search; (d) a cover page that includes the title of the submission, author names, institutional affiliations, mailing addresses, office telephone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses; and (e) a three- to four-sentence biographical statement for each author. Author names should not appear anywhere else in the manuscript. Submissions should generally not exceed 9,000 words. Please see the Written Communication Submission Guidelines for further requirements.

Please note: Prospective authors are strongly urged to acquaint themselves with previously published issues of the journal and to strictly follow the Guidelines for Submission (in the print journal and on the website), as well as conform to the guidelines for publication of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). Failure to do so will result in a delay in the processing of your submission.

Submitting a manuscript indicates that the work reported has not been previously published, that the article—in present or revised form—is not being considered for publication in other journals or in edited volumes, and that the authors will not allow it to be so considered before notification in writing of an editorial decision by WC. Consideration for this special issue will begin April 15, 2016, and continue through June 20, 2016, or until a suitable number of publishable manuscripts have been identified. Submissions for this special issue will follow the normal, peer-review practices of WC. 

Reading :: The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2ed

The Social Psychology of Organizing
By Karl E. Weick

I finished this book about a year ago, and ever since, I've been dragging my feet about reviewing it. Since I read a lot of books, I always seem to have another one that I could review instead, and they tend to be (a) easier or (b) more directly related to what I'm doing. But today I've decided to buckle down and knock this one out.

It's not that Weick's book is especially long: It's 294pp with the index. But it's dense. It's also very Weickian, which means that the author tends to back into his dense points.

For instance, in the first sentence, the author tells us that "This book is about organizational appreciation" (p.1). We must wait a couple of pages to find out what organizing is: "a consensually validated grammar for reducing equivocality by means of sensible interlocked behaviors. To organize is to assemble ongoing interdependent actions into sensible sequences that generate sensible outcomes" (p.3). Understanding these two sentences takes considerable unpacking.

One part of that unpacking has to do with plans. Weick takes the same position that Lucy Suchman did in Plans and Situated Actions (and perhaps this is where she got it—I don't have my copy of Suchman with me—or perhaps she got it from Cohen and March, whom Weick cites here). Plans, in his reckoning, "are important for organizations, but not for the reasons people think" (p.10): they are symbols that "negotiate a portion of the reality that then comes back and rearranges the organization"; they are advertisements that persuade externally; they are games that test a person's commitment to a goal; and they are excuses for interaction, putting people in contact about current rather than future circumstances (pp.10-11). "Plans are a pretext under which several valuable activities take place in organizations, but one of these activities is not forecasting" (p.11). And this point leads into a second thing about organizations: "there is not an underlying 'reality' waiting to be discovered. Rather, organizations are viewed as the inventions of people, inventions superimposed on flows of experience and momentarily imposing some order on these streams" (pp.11-12). Like plans, organizations are fictions that allow us to conceptualize reality, not independent phenomena—according to Weick.

But calling plans fictional doesn't mean that causality is fictional. Rather, causality and interdependence are major themes. Weick distrusts ethnographic thick description, the upswing of which he attributes to Watergate (p.38; recall that this 2ed was published in 1979) and the effect of which he believes to be volume of description rather than understanding. Rather, Weick wants readers to evoke and test minitheories about interdependent relationships. For instance, he suggests that readers go to a college campus, count the statues and busts of famous people, and determine how many are donors vs. national heroes. "On the basis of this observation alone, predict the answer to each of the following questions:

1. Will the college have open or closed library stacks for undergraduates?
2. Will the faculty be listed by rank or alphabetically in the college catalog?
3. Will more space in the alumni magazine be devoted to necrology or to current activities of living alumni?
4. ..." (pp.60-61)

He lists ten questions. The point isn't just to test relationships, but also to test the implicit theories that the guesser has about interrelationships (p.61). "What is found is secondary to the incipient reasons for expecting to find it. It is the reasons that are important to uncover, because they may supply the grit for a better set of ideas about organizations" (p.62). 

Those better ideas tend to involve interdependence, which can be mutual or sequential (p.68). Weick demonstrates how one might draw causal loops, and he argues that "any causal loop that has an odd number of negative signs counteracts deviations" (p.74). (It is not clear to me how one conceptualizes the units that make up these diagrams.)

Moving on. Weick argues that organizational structure is equal to interlocking behaviors (p.90). Social structure is created, not through common ends, but through common means (p.92). "Once the members converge on interlocked behaviors as the means to pursue diverse ends, there occurs a subtle shift away from diverse to common ends. The diverse ends remain, but they become subordinated to an emerging set of shared ends. This shift is one of the most striking that occurs in group life and it is exceedingly complex" (p.92). 

Later, Weick draws an analogy between organizing and natural selection. He argues that organizing has four elements:

• Ecological change: "Ecological changes provide the enactable environment, the raw materials for sense-making" (p.130).
• Enactment: Enactment is variation, and can include bracketing as well as producing ecological change (p.130).
• Selection: We impose maps of past structures on new situations in order to impose order (p.131).
• Retention: We store "the products of successful sense-making, products that we call enacted environments" (p.131). 

Beliefs, he adds, "are cause maps that people impose on the world after which they 'see' what they have already imposed. One of the aims of this book is to equip you with lots of beliefs so that you'll see some of what is talked about here, or at least you'll see enough that you'll be able to amend the mistakes that inevitably must litter any attempt to understand human beings" (p.135).

And perhaps that's a good place to stop. The book is challenging and interesting, but as the above paragraph suggests, it provides a way of thinking about organizations that continually questions its own interpretations. In a sense, the book is attempting to teach a methodology—sense-making—and at the same time apply the criticality of sense-making to itself. The principles of the methodology are somewhat clear, but the application isn't, because Weick refuses to lock down interpretations and thus denies us the hard-and-fast rules that tend to underpin methodologies. Consequently, to me, the book seems more allusional than methodological; it's thought-provoking, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure what one can do with it beyond critique. And that, I suppose, is why I have been sitting on this review for so long.

However, I know that many use (or at least refer to) Weick's sense-making approach, so they have been able to (or at least seem confident that they can) apply it more effectively than I have here. 

In any case, although I am unsure how to apply the book methodologically, it's certainly thought-provoking. If you're interested in organizations, or just in a substantial social psychology-based challenge to ethnographic approaches, take a look.

Reading :: Common Knowledge?

Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia
By Dariusz Jemielniak

How does Wikipedia work? I don't mean the software, which seems simple enough, but the social system that produces a seemingly inexhaustible body of knowledge. I've poked around the back end and seen the revision history and chats; I've read some scholarship on dispute resolution and collaboration; but I haven't really looked into the emergent social system that makes the whole thing tick.

Dariusz Jemielniak has. He's a professor of management, an ethnographer, and an active Wikipedian. Drawing on that background, he combines first-person narrative and careful study (including an appendix on his methodology) to provide an inside look at Wikipedia as a social system. In this social system, Wikipedians nominally work within an egalitarian, meritocratic system enforced by rules embedded in software; yet Wikipedia has evolved mechanisms of social control and status that create tensions with this overarching goal (Ch.2). Jemielniak carefully chronicles these mechanisms, noting how Wikipedia's consensus-driven process sometimes leads to intractable conflicts and at least four kinds of conflict trajectories (Ch.3).

Wikipedia's social controls Jemielniak argues in Ch.5, include liquid surveillance: all actions on Wikipedia are recorded and can be used in later disputes, and thus "although Wikipedia is a free and egalitarian community, its members are closely controlled, in some aspects to an unprecedented extent" (p.86). "Wikipedia resembles a Panopticon (Foucault, 1977) or an open-space office: everybody is watched by everybody else, and all actions remain on the record, forever" (p.91). He adds that "Common sense outweighs procedures, and users are expected to do what they believe is good for Wikipedia, using their best judgment, rather than following the letter of the law" (p.96)—but that freedom entails permanent ambiguity, which itself can be a coercive element.

Since Wikipedia rejects credential checking in favor of merit based on Wikipedia activity, Jemielniak argues in Ch.5, trust is instead invested in procedures. Those procedures are instantiated in an "astonishing" set of formalized rules: "Apparently, trust or credential control is substituted with precise behavioral scripts and formalization of discussion rules" (p.120). As Jemielniak argues in Ch.6, "Wikimedia communities are chaotic and rely on adhocratic principles," and "Adhocracy in this case is not incompatible with bureaucracy" (p.127).

All in all, Jemielniak provides a meticulous and thought-provoking overview of Wikipedia as a social system. For those of my readers who study rhetoric, he overviews the rules of argumentation and the conditions of persuasion in this system, drawing on contemporary scholarship in digital ethnography as well as management theory. For those not in rhetoric, Jemielniak's insights extend into the social system and provoke thought on how a nominally egalitarian system works in practice. Take a look.

Reading :: Designing Delivery

Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy
By Jeff Sussna

Jeff Sussna and I follow each other on Twitter via a mutual contact, and I've been impressed by his insights. His 2015 book is even better. Although it's tackling something that I don't do—the development of software as a service (SaaS)—the insights are well aligned with topics I covered in my own 2015 book. That's because Sussna isn't just talking about development, he's talking about how SaaS makes sense in the context of larger changes in the economy.

Sussna lays down this marker in the Introduction, where he argues that quality in software development must be understood in terms of "how well the service helps its customers accomplish their practical goals and satisfy their emotional needs" and thus "the entire organization must align itself with users' goals. Only when it has a holistic understanding of itself and its relationship with its customers can an organization successfully co-create value with them" (p.xxi). Thus SaaS involves "continual repair" because "Co-creation implies that users contribute to defining solutions through using them. In the process, they generate new problems for designers to solve" (p.xxii).

With this foundation, Chapter 1 examines the turn to post-industrialism, in which the pervasiveness of computerization leads to a shift from products to service; from manual labor to knowledge work; and from stability and continuity to change and innovation (p.3). Sussna systematically examines these transformations, emphasizing co-creation (cf. Lusch and Vargo's 2014 book; he goes on to discuss their concept of service-dominant logic in Ch.6). He also discusses the shift from complicated systems (many moving parts, arranged in navigable and hierarchical structures; p.9) to complex systems (in which simple components have fluid relationships with many other components; p.10) and the issue of emergence that arises from complex systems (that is, characteristics that exist at the system level but not at lower levels; p.10). Complex systems, he notes, are prone to cascading failures (p.11).

Based on this foundation, in Chapter 2, Sussna discusses necessary changes in control due to the shift to post-industrialism. Cybernetics, he says, is a model of control through conversation (p.26); autopoesis, or self-production, provides a way to understand how systems self-produce and self-regulate (pp.30-31). The implication is that "living systems co-create reality through circular influence," via conversation (p.35). One example he gives is that of Lean Startup, in which a minimum viable product is rapidly iterated via continual feedback (p.35).

Given Ch.2's insights, he says in Chapter 3 that IT's new mandate is "serving as a medium for digital conversation" (p.41). He thus argues that post-industrial businesses must "self-steer through empathetic conversations," and he advocates a combination of Agile, DevOps, cloud computing, and design thinking (p.42). The rest of the chapter describes and relates each.

The rest of the book brings in other concepts (such as Jobs to be Done, Service-Dominant Logic, and OODA) to flesh out what post-industrial SaaS development looks like. Since development is focused on self-steering through empathetic conversations, it becomes inseparable from branding and marketing.

All in all, this little book takes a broad scope and pulls eclectically from varying sources in order to pull together a coherent vision of SaaS. Despite its eclecticism, its argument is coherent and well thought out. If you're interested in SaaS, or just what the future of work looks like, I recommend Designing Delivery.

Reading :: Get Backed

Get Backed: Craft Your Story, Build the Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams
By Evan Baehr and Evan Loomis

I wish I had had access to this 2015 book before I taught last fall's Writing for Entrepreneurs course. It's a beautifully produced book that promises to teach you how to "craft your story," "build the perfect pitch deck," and "launch the venture of your dreams." Essentially, it's about how to undertand and craft a pitch deck (Part I) in order to effectively argue for venture funding (Part II).

In Part I, the authors note that example pitch decks are in short supply since entrepreneurs are reluctant to show them; this book presents several and contextualizes them in terms of how long they took to get funded, how much funding they got, and what the sources were. But the authors also discuss the genre at length so we can understand how it fits in the overall argument and how it interacts with other genres (such as the elevator pitch).

Near the beginning of the book, the authors explain that "Pitch decks do three things: they get people to understand, they get people to care, and they get people to take action" (p.10). They say that there are two kinds of pitch decks: one for assisting presentations and one for standalone reading (p.10). Pitch decks are customizable, and in fact the authors encourage us to develop "a whole archive of slides to draw from and sequence for each meeting or presentation" (p.15)—slides that are modular but yet must consistently yield coherent arguments. Their "essential 10" slides include:

• Overview
• Opportunity
• Problem
• Solution
• Traction
• Customer or Market
• Competition
• Business Model
• Team
• Use of Funds (p.15)

These are similar to, but not the same as, Guy Kawasaki's "Only 10 Slides You Need in a Pitch." The authors provide 1-2 pages of detail on each slide, including multiple examples from real pitch decks as well as descriptions and guidelines. 

After describing these 10 essential slides, the authors discuss how the pitch deck must tell a story. In fact, they say, there are at least three ways that you will use a story in the pitch deck:

• a narrative arc to create coherence across slides
• an explanation of one or more individual slides
• a reservoir of topics for discussions and Q&A (p.39)

They suggest that you'll typically use four story types:

• the origin story
• the customer story
• the industry story
• the venture growth story (p.40)

Together, these four story types can be layered in the pitch building blocks to create a unified arc (and coherence) (p.52). 

In subsequent chapters, the authors give advice on design (Ch.4) and text (Ch.5). By the time we get to the examples of actual pitch decks (Ch.6), we have the tools to interpret and critique them.

That's Part I. In Part II, the authors discuss how to get backed, starting with a primer on startup financing (Ch.8) and an overview of the five funding sources (Ch.9). Although I was less interested in this section, I was impressed by how clearly the authors laid out the basics of financing and sources—that is, the activity and the audience in which the pitch had to be rhetorically successful.

Overall, I was impressed by the book, and I walked away with a much more thorough understanding of how the pitch deck works and what it accomplishes. The book is a good guide, coherently bringing together advice about the pitch deck that up to this point I've had to piece together from websites and other scattered pieces of information. If you're interested in a primer on the pitch deck and funding, I highly recommend it.

Reading :: Team of Teams

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
By General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell

Former Army General Stanley McChrystal became a household name when he was profiled by Rolling Stone. That's also when he lost his job, after one of his aides was quoted denigrating the Vice President. Arguably his resignation had to happen, since the military needs to display respect for its civilian chain of command. But it was also a loss: McChrystal had intelligently reformed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during his tenure of commander.

After his resignation, McChrystal taught courses at Yale and started the McChrystal Group, which is "a leadership and management consultancy composed of a diverse mix of professionals from the military, academic, business, and technology sectors." The group provides consulting services that help these stakeholders to manage complexities using the "team of teams" approach that McChrystal devised for JSOC.

Team of Teams is the McChrystal Group's calling card. It was a NYT bestseller. And it lays out the basics of the approach. McChrystal cites people such as John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, John Boyd, and Henry Mintzberg, people who should be familiar to longtime readers of this blog. Drawing from these sources and from his own experience as JSOC commander, McChrystal describes a flatter organizational structure that emphasizes command without close control; constant mutual adjustment; and cultivated associational links across silos. The lessons of the book are provided along with detailed examples from McChrystal's time in JSOC.

None of the lessons in the book will be much of a surprise to those who have read the source materials. But the book discusses these lessons in a popular narrative mode, drawing us along and summarizing its lessons at the end of each chapter. The book is a lot more readable than Boyd, certainly.

If you've been steeped in the readings above or in other 4GW readings, this book won't have a lot to teach you. But if you're new to the application of organizational networks in complex multidisciplinary environments, and you want a gentle introduction, this book could be it—especially if you're coming from a hierarchical or bureaucratic environment. See what you think.

Reading :: 4th Generation Warfare Handbook

4th Generation Warfare Handbook
By William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele

I've been interested in 4th-generation warfare ever since I began to read the work coming out of RAND on networks. Not for its own sake, specifically, but for what it tells us about a world in which hierarchy is no longer the main organizing principle.

Fourth-generation warfare, as the authors explain, represents an evolution of warfare away from states and toward nonstate actors—that is, away from the Westphalian concept of war as being the monopoly of the state, and toward warfare that can be waged by nonstate actors such as families, clans, tribes, and business enterprises both legal and illegal (Introduction). As the authors point out, nonstate actors regularly waged war before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, and now they are beginning to take up that role again, leading away from two-sided wars and back to many-sided wars. The authors argue that this multisided understanding of war has come back due to a crisis of the legitimacy of the state (cf. Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles and Terror and Consent).

So how does one prepare for, and fight, 4GW? The authors undertake this question, drawing examples from recent 4GW conflicts as well as speculative scenarios from a future war. Their viewpoint is that of a state's armed forces trying to wage war with nonstate actors; the running example is a fictionalized scenario in which the US Army has occupied "Inshallahland." Throughout the book, they argue that the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of warfare should be addressed in terms of physical, mental, and moral aspects; they suggest a grid for planning how these different axes of factors will interrelate. Such a grid is important because things that are productive at one level can be counterproductive at others.

The authors advocate an approach in which light infantry units interact constantly with the occupied population, being exposed but also solving problems, creating ties, and demonstrating that they will bring stability and safety—that is, providing the benefits that a State has to offer. Everything is a PsyOp—that is, every act is understood as having a persuasive component.

These light infantry units also handle the bulk of the fighting. The authors essentially want to see the light infantry units functioning as special forces who can live off the land, move with a light footprint, and out-hunt irregular forces. They even include a sort of 12-week syllabus for training light infantry units for their new roles.

In all, this lightweight book is interesting, but may not be especially helpful for the scholar of organizations, communication, or rhetoric. It distills the lessons of other 4GW texts into a practical guide that works best for leaders of armed forces. Those of us who aren't in this hierarchy, however, can still learn something from the authors' brief history of warfare and their claim that 4GW arises from the crisis of the legitimacy of the state.