Sunday, October 22, 2006

Wertsch, Mind as Action

Wertsch, James. Mind as Action. New York: Oxford, 1998.

Sociocultural analysis is best understood by taking into account "mental functioning" as it relates to "cultural, institutional, and historical context[s]" (3). Toward an integrative methodology for the human sciences (set against the APA's 49 divisions and much disciplinary wrangling), Werstch proposes mediated action as a the pervasive object of study: an agglutination of agent (subject/person) and agency (instrument/mediational means/cultural tools). Furthermore, he draws on Burke's pentad and urges us, as Burke did, to think in terms of ratios, rather than reducing any element to isolated treatment (15). The pentad provides a method, a "tool for conducting inquiry about human action and motives" (14). Like Bronfenbrenner, Werstch is concerned with the "individual-society antimony"; he responds to a similar problem in the tendency of controlled inquiry to sequester individuals from contexts ("there is a general tendency among many psychologists to focus exclusively on what Burke would call the agent" (16)).

Next, Werstch sets out ten properties of mediated action. It is especially important to him that "analyses of action not be limited by the dictates of methodological individualism" (23). The analytical framework focuses on three central considerations: 1. agents and their cultural tools, 2. mediated action or "agent-acting-with-mediational-means", and 3. the link between action and broader cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. The ten basic claims or properties of mediated action (25):

1. Mediated action is characterized by an irreducible tension between agent and mediational means (25): agent is redefined. Ex. pole vaulting (27).
   Like Latour's hybrid, no?
   Also, Werstch introduced "semiotic mediation," like a multiplication problem. ^See problem below.
2. Mediational means are material (30). Even when spoken (acoustic "sign vehicles"), mediational means are material.
3. Mediated action typically has multiple simultaneous goals (32).
4. Mediated action is situated on one or more developmental paths (34).
5. Mediational means constrain as well as enable action (38).
6. New mediational means transform mediated action (42).
   From Vygotsky: "by being included in the process of behavior, the psychological tool alters the flow and structure of mental functions" (43).
7. The relationship of agents toward mediational means can be characterized in terms of mastery (46). W. prefers "mastery" and "knowing how" over "internalization." ^Consider this alongside Nardi and O'Day's emphasis on both know-why and know-how (IE 70).
8. The relationship of agents toward mediational means can be characterized in terms of appropriation (53).
9. Mediational means are often produced for reasons other than to facilitate mediated action (58). Spin-offs.
10. Mediational means are associated with power and authority (64).

Werstch goes on to explore the function of narrative as semiotic mediated action that represents the past (ch. 3) (W. is especially interested in turning this toward constructions of national history). In chapter four, he takes up mediated action that is more socially involved (unlike pole vaulting, multiplication, and recounting past events). For this, he suggests the co-presence and co-evolution of intersubjectivity (shared perspective) and alterity (generative digression).

Finally, because Werstch expands mediated means to encompass language (like Bruner's "instruments of thought", the combination of tools and language) and also contends that mediational means are always material. Because he also invokes Gibson, this brings up a quandary rel. to affordances, which Gibson says must be substantive. That is, how does language as a mediational means work relative to the concepts of affordance and constraint? It's not clear to me that language as a mediational means can yield affordances in quite the same way Gibson sets it up.

Key terms: connectionist (8, 51), individual-society antimony (10), dramatism (12), circumferences (14), mediated action (17), ratio (17), mediational means and cultural tools (interchangeable) (17), appropriation (25, 53), anti-reductionistic stance (26), semiotic mediation (28), affordances (29), illusion of perspective (41), internalization (48), utterances (73), narrative (78), social interactional and intermental (interchangeable) (109), individual and intramental (interchangeable) (109), intersubjectivity (111), alterity (111), reciprocal teaching (124), microdynamics (167).

"People often seem to think of the environment as something to be acted upon, not something to be interacted with" (21).

"The major point to be made here is that mediated action can undergo a fundamental transformation with the introduction of new mediational means (in this case the fiberglass pole)" (45).

"In contrast to the univocal function, which tends toward a single, shared, homogenous perspective comprising intersubjectivity, the dialogic function tends toward dynamism, heterogeneity, and conflict among voices" (115).

"The general point to be made about intersubjectivity and alterity, then, is not that communication is best understood in terms of one or the other in isolation. Instead, virtually every text is viewed as involving both univocal, information-transmission characteristics, and hence intersubjectivity, as well as dialogic, though-generating tendencies, and hence alterity" (117).

"In reciprocal teaching, students as well as teachers take on the role of guiding other members of a group through the processes required to understand texts (usually written texts)" (125).

"In the terminology of Burke's pentad, social reductionism amounts to focusing exclusively on the scene and failing to take the agent into account" (141). ^This is a reversal of the methodological trap concerning Bronfenbrenner.

"So in the end, the discussion of the microdynamics of appropriation in this case draws on at least three pentadic elements: agent, instrument (i.e., cultural tools), and scene (i.e., context)" (176).

"Methodological individualism assumes that cultural, institutional, and historical settings can be explained by appealing to properties of individuals, and social reductionism assumes that individuals can be understood only by appealing to social fact" (179).

"Indeed, one of the reasons for choosing mediated action as a unit of analysis is that it does not carve up phenomena into isolated disciplinary slices that cannot be combined into a more comprehensive whole" (180).

Posted by Derek Mueller at October 22, 2006 9:26 PM to Tools-in-use