Reading :: Global Social Media Design

Global Social Media Design
By Huatong Sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading :: Down to Earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Reading roundup: Mutizwa Mukute and colleagues)

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

The articles I've read include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading :: Hegel

Hegel

By Frederick Beiser

I’m continuing to avoid reading Hegel by reading Hegel commentaries. Next up is this 12-chapter overview of Hegel’s thought by Frederick Beiser. 

Beiser includes, among other things, a short chronology of Hegel’s life from birth to death (p.xix) and a discussion of relevance. He clarifies that he treats Hegel in historical context rather than as a contemporary philosopher -- that is, Beiser explores Hegel’s thought as it related to his time rather than mobilizing it in current debates (a choice that seems appropriately Hegelian) (p.5). 

The book includes the obligatory biography, then covers 5 parts:

• Early ideals and context

• Metaphysics

• Epistemological foundations

• Social and political philosophy

• Philosophy of culture

Rather than thoroughly reviewing these, I’ll just note some things that caught my attention.

In discussing Hegel’s grounding in Plato and Aristotle, Beiser notes:

Third, Plato and Aristotle understood nature in organic terms, as ‘a single visible living being’. In all these respects Plato and Aristotle presented the sharpest contrast with the modern worldview, whose self is divided into soul and body, whose state is a contract between self-interested parties, and whose concept of nature is mechanical. It was the great achievement of Hegel and the romantic generation to have reaffirmed the classical ideal of unity against the modern worldview. (p.38)

That ideal of unity, of course, is at the root of Hegel’s dialectic. Related (at least in my estimation):

It is indeed noteworthy that Hegel, along with Hölderlin and Schleiermacher, explicitly denied personal immortality and excoriated the entire ethic of salvation based on it. From his early Berne manuscripts to his 1831 lectures on the philosophy of religion Hegel attacked the ethic of salvation for its self-centered concern for the fate of the soul.

True to his immanent ideal of the highest good, Hegel believed that the meaning of life could and should be achieved in the community alone. We find satisfaction and purpose in our lives, he argued, when, like the ancient Roman and Greek, we contribute to the common good and help to create its laws. The ancient Greeks found immortality and meaning in their lives by living for the polis, which was a whole greater than themselves, and which they knew would survive them; they had no concern for their individual salvation, for the fate of their soul after death. In Hegel’s view, the Christian ethic of personal salvation was only a cry of desperation, a feeble Ersatz, after the loss of community. (p.43)

In terms of unity, Hegel (and Schelling) sought grounding in Spinoza:

Schelling and Hegel greatly admired Spinoza for his monism, for showing how to overcome dualism when Kant, Fichte and Jacobi had only reinstated it. True to Spinoza, their principle of subject–object identity essentially means that the subjective and the objective, the intellectual and the empirical, the ideal and the real –however one formulates the opposition – are not distinct substances but simply different aspects, properties or attributes of one and the same substance. (p.64)

But, Beiser points out, unity creates a problem:

In the end, the problem of contingency presents Hegel with a dilemma. The realm of contingency must be inside or outside the system. If it is inside the system, then contingency has only a subjective status, so that there is no explanation of real contingency. If, however, it is outside the system, it has an objective status; but it then limits the absolute and introduces a dualism between form and content. (p.79)

Hegel addressed this question via organicism, in which

The goal of subject–object identity contrasted sharply with the reality of a dualism between subject and object in ordinary experience. These dualisms can be overcome, Hegel maintains, only if we accept an organic concept of nature according to which the subjective and the objective are only different degrees of organization and development of a single living force. (p.105)

Recall that Hegel was a big influence on Vygotsky (which is why I’m reading about Hegel). Beiser describes Hegel’s use of the familiar terms of internalization and externalization:

In some striking passages from The Spirit of Christianity Hegel calls what both produces and results from love, the whole process of self-surrender and self-discovery, of externalization and internalization, spirit (Geist). He first uses the term in a religious context, in writing about how the spirit of Jesus was present at the Last Supper. He wrote that the spirit of Jesus is the spirit of love, which first makes itself objective, externalizing itself in the bread and wine, and then makes itself subjective, internalizing the bread and wine through the act of eating. Hegel likens the process to that of understanding meaning from a written word; the thought is first objectified in the sign, and it is then resubjectified when the sign is read as having a specific meaning. (p.115)

And 

The opposing movements involved in the experience of love – its externalization and internalization, self-surrender and self-discovery – Hegel will later call ‘dialectic’. Hegel will later use the term in this sense to describe the process of spiritual development. It is important, however, to distinguish at least two meanings of this concept: the ontological, whereby it defines something happening in reality; and the methodological or epistemological, whereby it signifies a method of doing philosophy. (p.115)

Dialectic, of course, is one of Hegel’s primary contributions (and the contribution that most interests me). Beiser explains it further:

Hegel’s term for his own anti-methodology is ‘the concept’ (der Begriff), which designates the inherent form of an object, its inner purpose. It is the purpose of enquiry to grasp this inner form, Hegel argues, and it is for this reason that he demands suspending all preconceptions. If the philosopher simply applies his a priori ideas to the subject matter, he has no guarantee that he grasps its inner form or the object as it is in itself; for all he knows, he sees the object only as it is for him. When Hegel uses the term ‘dialectic’ it usually designates the ‘self-organization’ of the subject matter, its ‘inner necessity’ and ‘inherent movement’. The dialectic is what follows from the concept of the thing. It is flatly contrary to Hegel’s intention, therefore, to assume that the dialectic is an a priori methodology, or indeed a kind of logic, that one can apply to any subject matter. The dialectic is the very opposite: it is the inner movement of the subject matter, what evolves from it rather than what the philosopher applies to it. (p.160)

Like everyone else who writes about Hegel, Beiser cautions us that Hegel did not use the schema thesis-antithesis-synthesis (p.161). He also argues that dialectic is not some sort of alternative logic (p.161). Rather, it’s about the unity of the subject matter: “Indeed, the point of the dialectic will be to remove contradictions by showing how contradictory predicates that seem true of the same thing are really only true of different parts or aspects of the same thing” (p.162). Regarding contradictions, Beiser adds:

The dialectic arises from an inevitable contradiction in the procedures of the understanding. The understanding contradicts itself because it both separates things, as if they were completely independent of one another, and connects them, as if neither could exist apart from the other. It separates things when it analyzes them into their parts, each of which is given a self-sufficient status; and it connects them according to the principle of sufficient reason, showing how each event has a cause, or how each part inheres in a still smaller part, and so on ad infinitum. Hence the understanding ascribes both independence and dependence to things. The only way to resolve the contradiction, it turns out, is to reinterpret the independent or self-sufficient term as the whole of which all connected or dependent terms are only parts. (p.164)

Beiser adds:

Hegel states that there are three stages to the dialectic: the moment of abstraction or the understanding; the dialectical or negatively rational moment; and the speculative or positively rational moment. (p.167)

Beiser covers many other aspects of Hegel’s thought as well, but let’s stop there. I found this discussion to be helpful for understanding Vygotsky, but also Marx. If you’re trying to understand Hegel but, like me, are trying to either work up to or avoid reading the original, Beiser has written a clear summary that you should check out.

Reading :: Rethinking Cultural-Historical Theory

Rethinking Cultural-Historical Theory: A Dialectical Perspective to Vygotsky

By Manolis Dafermos

In this book, Dafermos reviews how Vygotsky’s work has been taken up in different parts of the world. Dafermos emphasizes the dialectical underpinnings of Vygotsky’s theory, which he believes have been lost in some of this work.

This argument begins on page 1, where Dafermos affirms that "diverse ways of interpreting and conceptualizing Vygotsky's legacy in different parts of the globe have been developed" (p.1) and "the expansion and implementation of a scientific idea beyond the boundaries of the field of its initial appearance and formation raises important epistemological and methodological issues. This question preoccupied Vygotsky in his work ‘The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology’" (p.2). Dafermos charges that Vygotsky has been transformed into a cure-all, and "The whole complexity of Vygotsky’s theory has been lost" (p.3). Vygotsky's implicit assumptions are unrevealed. Just as Vygotsky criticized methodological eclecticism, Dafermos critiques postmodernist approaches "connected with the celebration of fragmentation and incoherence" and attempts " to reconstruct Vygotsky’s research program not as a given, static set of ready-made concepts and ideas, but as a developing process" (p.3).

Dafermos argues:

By reformulating the previous insights, the investigation of the development of a theory (in this particular case, cultural-historical theory) includes the study of the following interconnected aspects:

(1) the sociohistorical context within which a theory is formed,

(2) the scientific context, trends in the field of philosophy and science,

(3) the specific characteristics of the subject matter of the investigation,

(4) the particular subjects involved in the production and application of scientific knowledge, the development of their research program,

(5) a study of the personal network of these subjects and their relations to the scientific community (p.5)

He adds that cultural-historical theory is best understood dialectically: "From a dialectical perspective, cultural-historical theory is examined as a developing, unfinished project that emerged and formed historically in the process of solving concrete conceptual and practical tasks" (p.6). Here, he quotes Ilyenkov to claim that "From a dialectical perspective, the internal contradictions of a concrete object constitute the basic source of its own development. Moreover, the emergence and resolution of contradictions can be considered as a course of development of scientific knowledge" (p.6). Thus "A dialectical approach brings to light the logic of the development of Vygotsky’s theory in terms of a drama of ideas and discloses zigzags, returns and loops in the process of its building, rather than a linear accumulation of new knowledge" (p.7). 

Unfortunately, he says, "One of the difficulties in grasping the essence of cultural-historical theory is connected with the devaluation of the dialectic underpinnings of cultural-historical theory" (p.6). That is the problem his book addresses: "The gist of the argument of the book is that Vygotsky’s theory should be examined not as a static and closed system of ideas, but as a developmental process" (p.7) -- thus we examine Vygotsky's mistakes as he works through them to improve the theory (which -- and this is my own commentary -- is still a story of ascent).

With that introduction in mind, Dafermos reviews the context of psychology and philosophy leading up to Vygotsky’s work, specifically the crisis of psychology that Vygotsky addressed in his “Crisis” manuscript (p.47). 

Acknowledging that "there is a need to develop a holistic account of Vygotsky’s research program in the process of its own development. In other words, Vygotsky’s research program can be analyzed as a developmental process" (p.56), Dafermos overviews different authors' perceived periods of Vygotsky's work (pp.60-63). He affirms that 

The idea of the cultural origin and development of higher mental functions constitutes the “hard core” of cultural-historical theory. But this leading idea develops further in different stages of the development of cultural-historical theory. (p.63)

He overviews Vygotsky’s roots in Hegel, praising Jan Derry’s book on the subject (p.67), and notes that "Self-creation of Man was considered by Hegel both as a process and a result [of] his own work” (p.75). Mediation also makes an appearance:

Hegel developed the concept of mediation as opposite to immediacy. It refers to conceptualization through the union of two terms by a third. “it is only through the mediation of an alteration that the true nature of the object comes into consciousness” (Hegel 1991, p. 54). Vygotsky recognized his debt to Hegel in developing his concept of mediating activity. (p.75)

and

The Vygotskian concept of mediating activity cannot be adequately understood without bringing to light its clear connection with the Hegelian concept of mediation and Marx’s concept of labor. (p.75)

He adds, "Taking into account the Hegelian concept of mediation and Marx’s concept of labor, Vygotsky attempted to investigate how Man becomes master of himself by using sign-mediating activity" (p.76). 

Skipping a bit: Dafermos emphasizes that Vygotsky’s “Crisis” manuscript opposed eclecticism (p.119). Vygotsky was working toward a unified theory of psychology. In his “concrete” period, Vygotsky transitioned from signals to signs (signification) (p.129). He distinguished between material (labor) tools, which are oriented to labor, and psychological tools, which are oriented toward controlling one’s own “mental processes” (p.130). In examining psychological tools, 

Vygotsky’s studies of mediating activity opened the path for the investigation of the problem of consciousness. At this point, a theoretical inconsistency in Vygotsky’s theoretical interpretation can be found. Vygotsky discovered the cultural origin of higher mental functions, rather than the overall human psyche. The realm of lower mental functions continued to be considered at the level of naturalistic immediacy. The study of the more developed and mature forms of psychological processes enabled to bring to light their social essence. The less developed sides of the subject matter (the lower mental functions) continued to be assessed in light of the previous naturalistic approaches. (p.152)

Sign mediation was significant for Vygotsky and the cultural-historical program in general, and “Vygotsky’s research focus gradually shifted from the study of the sign mediation to the investigation of sign meaning" (p.163).

Dafermos gets to development, which Vygotsky understood via dialectics: "Development is a contradictory process of continuous and discontinuous, directed and spontaneous, quantitative and qualitative transformations of personality as a bio-social entity and a member of society as a whole" (p.177). Vygotsky identified four laws of child development:

1) "development is a process that takes place in time and flows cyclically" (177)

2) "child development is not uniform and proportional" (177)

3) "there are not only progressive, forward-reaching processes, but also regressive processes of development" (177)

4) "the law of ‘metamorphosis’ in child development. The development is not reduced to simple quantitative changes, but it includes a chain of qualitative changes and transformations. Vygotsky designated the qualitative changes that emerge at each age as ‘novoobrazovanija’ (‘neoformations’)" (178-179)

In the last stage, Dafermos adds, "Vygotsky developed his theory of consciousness in the context of a critical dialogue with the representatives of Gestalt psychology and especially with Kurt Levin" (p.196). And  "In the context of a critical dialogue with Kurt Levin and other representatives of Gestalt psychology, Vygotsky was driven to the conclusion that it is necessary to develop a dialectical, holistic, historical approach to consciousness" (p.197).

That approach involved understanding meaning: "Meaning was treated by Vygotsky as the unit for the investigation both of thinking and speech. Moreover, for Vygotsky meaning constitutes the unit of the analysis of human consciousness" (p.198). Dafermos adds: "For Vygotsky, generalization and communication constitute two interconnected aspects of human consciousness reflected in meaning. Meaning in its interconnection with sense as the unity of generalization and communication serves as the unit of analysis of consciousness" (p.198). This brings us to Vygotsky’s focus on word meaning:

For Vygotsky, consciousness as a whole is reflected in the microcosm of a word. The analysis of the microcosm of a word was developed as the key strategy for the investigation of the macrocosm of consciousness. The top-down strategy of the investigation of consciousness that was developed by Vygotsky (1987a) during the last period of his life was focused on word meaning as a unit of analysis. The bottom-to-top strategy of the investigation of consciousness that was proposed by Leontiev (1983), Galperin (2003a) and others emphasizes object-oriented activity. These two different perspectives were contrasted in the examination of the puzzle of consciousness. (p.199)

In this context, Dafermos addresses the split between Vygotsky and the Kharkovites, who would go on to develop activity theory: "From my perspective, the relations between cultural-historical theory and activity theory were more complex and contradictory than it is usually presented in literature. Activity theory is not a simple continuation of cultural-historical theory, and simultaneously, it is not reduced to its total rejection" (p.202). But "Vygotsky’s approach to consciousness was unacceptable in the social context of the 1930s" (p.202).

A little later on, Dafermos lauds "Vygotsky's commitment to social justice" (p.224). I’ll just note that the road to Stalinism was paved with good intentions, including Vygotsky’s good intentions of elevating the Uzbeks with what was in retrospect ethnocentric research, and that although Vygotsky did take a position studying defectology (essentially what we would call special needs education) as Dafermos notes, his consistent focus was on the other end of the spectrum: creating a New Soviet Man modeled on the Nietzchean Superman.

In any case, Dafermos provides a list of types of dialectics:

• spontaneous (naive) (p.244)

• Sophistic (eristic) (244)

• Platonic (244-5)

• Aristotelian (245)

• Stoic (245)

• (then an account of how dialectics fell out of favor in early modern period) (246)

• Kant (246)

• Fichte (247)

• Hegel (247)

• Marx (247-248)

And he then discusses critiques of dialectics, characterized as misapprehensions (248). Incredibly, he does not mention Engels, whose Dialectics of Nature provided a hugely influential simplification of dialectics, or Stalin, whose compact explanation of dialectics in the Short Course (modeled on Engels) became required dogma in the USSR. 

Vygotsky, Dafermos says, used two conceptualizations of dialectics (p.251) 

• A general outlook on nature, society, thinking (cf. Engels here)

• A method for studying a concrete object in process of development

"Obviously,” he adds, “Vygotsky did not realize the difference between Engels’ concept of dialectic as a general world outlook and K. Marx’s concept of dialectic as the peculiar logic of the peculiar object" (p.252). Dafermos then goes on to discuss (in detail) Ilyenkov and his contemporaries' thoughts about dialectic.

Dafermos concludes by defending dialectics against postmodernism, charging that "The post-modern repudiation of all grand narratives of modernity including dialectics leads to the rejection of the project of human emancipation" (p. 297). I am not sure most postmodernists would agree.

Overall, I found this book to be highly interesting. Dafermos has clearly thought a lot about dialectics’ role in Vygotsky’s system, has provided a good overview of the development of dialectic (for which I am grateful), and has identified differences between cultural-historical theory and activity theory while still making room for reconciliation between the two. On the other hand, the book sometimes (unintentionally) reveals the limits of dialectics as a method of understanding human development. It’s a very useful book. If you’re interested in these issues as I am, definitely pick it up.

Reading :: Mind, Self, and Society

Mind, Self, and Society

By George Herbert Mead

I read this book (Kindle edition, so I refer to locations rather than pages) quite a while ago, but have not gotten around to reviewing it until now. As with most of my other reading over the last few years, this one relates to Vygotsky, who read and was influenced by Mead. I don't think Vygotsky read this specific book—it was put together posthumously by Mead's students after he died in 1934, the same year Vygotsky died—but I can see how their lines of thought paralleled.

"If we abandon the conception of a substantive soul endowed with the self of the individual at birth, then we may regard the development of the individual's self, and of his self-consciousness within the field of his experience, as the social psychologist's special interest," Mead begins (loc. 11). And "Social psychology studies the activity or behavior of the individual as it lies within the social process; the behavior of an individual can be understood only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member, since his individual acts are involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group" (loc.75). Thus "For social psychology, the whole (society) is prior to the part (the individual), not the part to the whole; and the part is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms of the part or parts. The social act is not explained by building it up out of stimulus plus response; it must be taken as a dynamic whole-as something going on-no part of which can be considered or understood by itself-a complex organic process implied by each individual stimulus and response involved in it" (loc. 88)

In Chapter 3, in a discussion of gestures, Mead argues that language works within a complex of conditioned reflexes—in fact, language gives us control over the organization of our actions around a referent (loc.176 — compare this characterization to Vygotsky's early formulation of consciousness as a reflex of reflexes). Mead saw language as emerging from social behavior rather than being a prrequisite (loc. 240). Later, in Ch.7, he argues, "Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience-not communication through mind" (loc. 691). 

Consequently, as he argues in Ch.11, "objects are in a genuine sense constituted within the social process of experience, by the communication and mutual adjustment of behavior among the individual organisms which are involved in that process and which carry it on. just as in fencing the parry is an interpretation of the thrust, so, in the social act, the adjustive response of one organism to the gesture of another is the interpretation of that gesture by that organism-it is the meaning of that gesture" (loc. 1108). And here he sounds quite externalist:

The basis of meaning is thus objectively there in social conduct, or in nature in its relation to such conduct. Meaning is a content of an object which is dependent upon the relation of an organism or group of organisms to it. It is not essentially or primarily a psychical content (a content of mind or consciousness), for it need not be conscious at all, and is not in fact until significant symbols are evolved in the process of human social experience. Only when it becomes identified with such symbols does meaning become conscious. The meaning of a gesture on the part of one organism is the adjustive response of another organism to it, as indicating the resultant of the social act it initiates, the adjustive response of the second organism being itself directed toward or related to the completion of that act. In other words, meaning involves a reference of the gesture of one organism to the resultant of the social act it indicates or initiates, as adjustively responded to in this reference by another organism; and the adjustive response of the other organism is the meaning of the gesture (loc. 1132). 

In Ch.13, Mead refers to the executive function of voluntary attention, though not by that name: "Man is distinguished by that power of analysis of the field of stimulation which enables him to pick out one stimulus rather than another and so to hold on to the response that belongs to that stimulus, picking it out from others, and recombining it with others" (loc. 1327).

This brings us to this great quote from Ch.16: "The whole process is not a mental product and you cannot put it inside of the brain. Mentality is that relationship of the organism to the situation which is mediated by sets of symbols" (loc.1780). 

He continues this line of thought in Ch.17, in which he sounds a bit like Vygotsky and a bit like Bateson: "The organism, then, is in a sense responsible for its environment. And since organism and environment determine each other and are mutually dependent for their existence, it follows that the life-process, to be adequately understood, must be considered in terms of their interrelations" (loc. 1849). And:

The processes of experience which the human brain makes possible are made possible only for a group of interacting individuals: only for individual organisms which are members of a society; not for the individual organism in isolation from other individual organisms.

Mind arises in the social process only when that process as a whole enters into, or is present in, the experience of any one of the given individuals involved in that process. When this occurs the individual becomes self-conscious and has a mind; he becomes aware of his relations to that process as a whole, and to the other individuals participating in it with him; he becomes aware of that process as modified by the reactions and interactions of the individuals-including himself-who are carrying it on. The evolutionary appearance of mind or intelligence takes place when the whole social process of experience and behavior is brought within the experience of any one of the separate individuals implicated therein, and when the individual's adjustment to the process is modified and refined by the awareness or consciousness which he thus has of it. It is by means of reflexiveness-the turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself-that the whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means, which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other toward himself, that the individual is able consciously to adjust himself to that process, and to modify the resultant of that process in any given social act in terms of his adjustment to it. Reflexiveness, then, is the essential condition, within the social process, for the development of mind. (loc. 1906)

And let's stop there. As I mentioned, Mead's thought clearly parallels Vygotsky's in terms of a social, sign-mediated mind. On the other hand, he is not working under (some might say burdened with) a dialectical materialist framework, and consequently he sounds a bit more like Bakhtin in some places and Bateson in others. Overall, fascinating—and I really ought to read more Mead. 

Reading :: Vygotsky: Philosophy and Education

Vygotsky: Philosophy and Education

By Jan Derry

This book was recommended to me by another scholar, who suggested that I needed to better understand Hegel's influence on Vygotsky. True. I have been avoiding reading Hegel. Fortunately Jan Derry has done some of the hard work on this question already.

Derry's first sentence is: "This book is a response to the claim that Vygotsky holds abstract rationality as the pinnacle of thought" (p.1). Throughout the book, Derry explores how Vygotsky understands rationality, contrasting that understanding with how Vygotsky has been taken up by others, comparing Vygotsky's thought to situated cognition (Ch.2), and constructivism (Ch.3), Piaget (Ch.4). She then explores roots of Vygotsky's thought in Spinoza (Ch.5) and Hegel (Ch.6-7).

A few quick notes from the early part of this book:

In Chapter 2,

• Derry sketches the evolution of the Vygotsky school, drawing on Kozulin to discuss the split between Vygotsky's more "complex" view vs. the Kharkovites (p.12)
• She mentions, drawing again on Kozulin, that Vygotsky's "followers ... were inevitably compromised by the difficult conditions of Stalinism," leading to the activity approach, which was "a more 'materialist' approach [that] occurred in a climate of terror that had become life-threatening" (p.13, quoting Zinchenko here).
• Specifically, the Kharkov school moved from the study of consciousness to that of object-orientedness (p.13)
• Derry quotes Zinchenko, who said that in the context of Stalinism, symbols were deemed idealistic, whereas "the thing" was materialist (p.13); one was unsafe to study, the other was safe.
• Critically, Zinchenko says, activity was reduced to the understanding that a human being was a functional organ for carrying out the Soviet state's directives (p.14).

In Chapter 3, Derry criticizes Wertsch for not understanding Vygotsky because he didn't appreciate Vygotsky's grounding in Hegel (a lack that I share, which is why I read Derry's book!). Specifically, "Although Hegel offers a radically different appreciation of 'abstract rationality,' that is lost to much contemporary work, owing in part to the alignment of Hegel with Marxism and Marxism with the failures of Soviet practice" (p.35). She also criticizes the North American approach more broadly as representationalist, understanding meaning as representing something that exists out there (p.39-42), rather than being created through human agency; if we subscribe to a representationalist paradigm, she says, "agency can be and is ascribed to anything that appears to exert effect" (p.42, in a passage that calls out Wertsch's discussion of tools but can be applied to posthumanism as well). 

In Chapter 4, Derry explores the underlying philosophical differences between Vygotsky and Piaget, arguing that Piaget worked within a dualist Kantian framework (p.71) while Vygotsky worked within a monist Hegelian framework (p.75). 

In Chapter 5, Derry argues that "Vygotsky's understanding of free will derives from Spinoza" (p.85). "Freedom and necessity are at the heart of Vygotsky's account of how mindedness is formed and sustained by mediation with artefacts in a social domain" (p.86). And "Vygotsky follows Spinoza in taking the basis of freedom to be the human ability to separate ourselves from our passions, from the contingencies of nature, and to make for ourselves a space within which we can determine our actions" (p.90). 

Later in the chapter, Derry returns to the Vygotsky/Kharkov split, arguing that 

The idea of economic determinism is fostered by a crude reading of Marx, where a determinate relation is taken to exist in what became known as the base and superstructure model. The temptation is then to see human beings simply as a product of their circumstances. This determinism plagued Vygotskians: It was precisely this that provoked the rift with Leontiev and the Kharkov group because they could not accept Vygotsky's insistence on the existence of a plane that was not explicable in terms of tool use in an environment. (p.97)

I'm not all-in on the first part of this interpretation: Lamdan and Yasnitky make a pretty good case that Vygotsky and Luria had themselves subscribed to economic determinism in the Uzbek expedition. But I agree that the Kharkov group collapsed the Vygotskian distinction between physical tools and psychological tools (signs). 

In any case, Derry notes that a rapprochement could occur only when orthodox Stalinist concepts developed that would make it possible: "only when Vygotskian theory was reinstated in the language of the second signal system of Pavlov. The second signal system incorporates the notion that language and concepts mediate human existence as a second signal system rather than as a first signal where stimuli act on the nervous system directly" (p.98; for examples, see my reviews of Simon, Cole & Maltzman, and especially Luria). 

In Chapter 6, Derry finally turns her attention to "the most significant philosopher for Vygotsky—Hegel" (p.105). "Hegel's philosophy is not readily accessible," she adds with some understatement (p.105). To lead us through it, she contrasts Kant and Hegel:

1. Kant believed in an unknowable realm; Hegel believed that everything was knowable.
2. Kant believed that the mind in itself could construct the world in a particular way; Hegel believed that the mind emerges in social activity.
3. Kant emphasized representations corresponding to a world of which we have knowledge; Hegel emphasized "meaning arising inferentially within a system" (p.106).

Based on Hegel, Vygotsky understood forms of knowing as "developed from activity rather than linking the categories of understanding" (p.108). He also argued that words and concepts "do not merely reflect but actually structure thought. Concepts do not follow, but actually precede, thought" (p.112). Indeed, "Under the influence of Hegel, Vygotsky is bound to reject the representationalist view of knowledge, which presupposes a terminus where knowledge is complete" (p.116). 

In Chapter 7, Derry considers Vygotsky, Hegel, and education. Here, she emphasizes that Vygotsky's views were not "the caricature of evolutionism mistakenly attributed to both Hegel and Marx" (p.135). I won't go further into this chapter, but it is illuminating.

Overall, this book really helped me to understand Hegel (and Spinoza, and Kant) in relation to Vygotsky's thinking. If that's something you want to do also, definitely pick this book up.

Reading :: Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

By Peter Singer

I don't enjoy reading philosophy, yet I've been told that to really understand activity theory, I have to understand Hegel—a notoriously unclear writer. So I've been reading summaries and commentaries on Hegel before tackling his original work. And what better place to start than a book that in its very title promises to be Very Short?

Thanks to COVID-19, I chose to buy the Kindle version. The book is indeed Very Short, with just six chapters covering Hegel's life and major aspects of his thought. My review will be Even Shorter, focusing on those aspects that resonate with activity theory.

One of those aspects was, obviously, Hegel's attention to change and development through history, something that he accepted from Schiller and that went on to influence Marx and Engels (p.13). 

A bit later, Singer describes the master-slave dynamic in Hegel, in which, through his [sic] labors, the slave "makes his own ideas into something permanent, an external object" (p.80). In doing so, the slave becomes aware of his own consciousness. This insight, Singer says, inspired Marx 40 years later to develop the concept of alienated labour, in which the worker objectifies or externalizes himself by putting the best of himself into his labour (pp.80-81). When the object is someone else's property, the objectified essence of the worker is lost to him and actually oppresses him. This concept of alienated labour becomes the basis for Marx's concept of surplus value (p.81).

Singer also describes Hegel's understanding of dialectics and the dialectical method, which Hegel uses "to uncover the form of pure thought" (p.99). Singer draws from Hegel's Philosophy of History to provide an example of the dialectical method, in which Greece's customary society (thesis) was revealed as inadequate via Socrates' questioning and independent thought (antithesis), leading to the "acceptance of the supreme right of individual conscience" (synthesis) (p.100). The synthesis then becomes the thesis for the next movement of history. I am not sure how adequate this explanation is, since (according to other sources, including Wikipedia) the thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad first appeared in Fichte's summarization of Hegel's work. But perhaps it is enough: Singer goes on to explain that dialectic involves detecting how development involves opposing elements, leading to the disintegration of the current state and the creation of a relatively stable new state, which then develops its own tensions (p.102).

And I think that's enough for now. Singer has indeed produced a Very Short book, one that is highly readable. It did not sell me on the prospect of reading Hegel in the original, but it did give me an idea of the sweep of his thought and how it connects to themes about which I am concerned. If you're interested in taking the first step toward understanding Hegel, check it out.