Commentary: Building a New House out of Old Materials—and with Sharpened Tools

Abstract

I discuss Eugene Matusov's claim that there is a clash between the cultural-historical paradigm and the sociocultural paradigm within Vygotskian academia. I argue that even though the paradigms may look quite opposite, none of them seem to be based on a dialectical (Hegelian) analysis of culture and on the concreteness of cultural change and development. The lack of dialectics in general tends to lead to mechanical socioculturalism and mechanical ideas of development. The example of headscarves used among Muslims girls and women to gain potentials for action illustrates the dynamic nature of cultural change. It is argued that we need to get beyond a point where the notion of culture is based on philosophical elementarism (so strongly criticized by William James). In general, I argue for an indeterminist-dialectical version of cultural-historical change which, hopefully, will vaporize false dichotomies like 'if something is contextual, it cannot be universal'. Thus, for the sake of discussion, I am trying to challenge the way Matsuov presents the problem of 'clashes between paradigms' in the first place.

El Contexto en Los Estudios De Psicología Genética. Problemas Y Revisiones

“…Se puede optar por una unidad, enfocada dialécticamente "en las diferencias o en la oposición dinámica" de los componentes, entre entrevistador y actividad del entrevistado; entre las condiciones contextuales de la actividad y la elaboración de ideas previas. Aquí lo contextual se entiende como una "concretidad" en el sentido hegeliano del reconocimiento de la complejidad de la descripción: "una unidad de sus múltiples determinaciones", en su dinámica, no la eliminación de alguno de sus componentes (Bang, 2008). Dicha unidad presupone claramente que cualquier interpretación de los datos tiene que asumir simultáneamente los aspectos cognoscitivos como los situacionales, como hemos mostrado más arriba respecto de los estudios actuales en psicología del desarrollo y del cambio conceptual (Halldén, Cheja y Haglund, 2008).…”

Response: Dialogue with Sociohistorical Vygotskian Academia about a Sociocultural Approach

“…The Problem of Conceptual-Ontological Determinism Several commentators criticized my focus on the diverse ontology of Vygotskian academia (again, I want to emphasize the heuristic nature of this term). Thus, Bang (2008) wants to 'loosen a little the close tie . .…”

“…Jytte Bang (2008) made a very keen observation about my anti-Hegelianism in particular, and that of sociocultural folks in general. I applaud her observation that the Hegelian notion of 'concrete' and the sociocultural notion of 'context' (and 'situatedness') are very different.…”

“…Developmentalism: a trend of explaining psychological (and social) phenomena in developmental terms as a kind of progression. The commentators differed in their versions of developmentalism: Toomela (2008) apparently provided a 'hard' version of developmentalism with known developmental goals, while Bang (2008) provided a 'soft' version of developmentalism arguing for emergent developmental goals. I agree with Jytte Bang's keen observation that the issue of development is rather problematic in a sociocultural approach (at least, in my interpretation)-see my latest work addressing this issue (Matusov, DePalma, & Drye, 2007).…”

“…However, the commentators are also aware of the tragic history of the 20th century that this position was keenly associated with, if not responsible for. Bang (2008) discusses Stalinism, Toomela (2008) asks 'right for what?, ' Bradley (2008) talks about oppression of Australian Aborigines in the government's delivery of 'aid, ' Allakhverdov and Ivanov (2008) bring in the example of the fall of mighty Rome. However, at the same time (but in different ways), they emphasize a strong possibility and desirability of universal judgment: the dialectical materialism (for Bang), the logic and experts (for Toomela), the practice (for Bradley, please notice his use of singular for the term 'practice' in his commentary), and the logic (for Allakhverdov and Ivanov).…”