On August 29, 2007, Michael Cole wrote:

Dear Xmca-ites—
Toward the end of the month I will begin teaching a grad course on mediational theories of mind. I would love suggestions for interesting readings. We will be looking in a sort of “McLuhanesque” way at the affordances of different kinds of mediators in human action/activity/mind.
So,

• language and thought
• writing
• film
• music
• tv
• rituals
• games

………
Starting with early 20th century writers of general familiarity to members of this list, I have been thinking about including such works as Cszikentmihalyi, “meaning of things,” Turkle’s recent “evocative objects,” and perhaps something on mediated behavior in large groups such as “the wisdom of crowds.”
Any and all suggestions warmly welcomed. So much going on its hard to even think about how to begin to think about this upcoming fall!!
mike

XMCA list members volunteered a panoply of suggestions. In one response, Mike wrote:

…. Lots of good sugggestions there, some of which I am already considering or have decided upon.(olson, where is your review?)

My mind this morning is going to burke and dramatism, ritual, etc.

On a slightly different topic I attach John Shotter’s interesting review of herb clark on joint, mediated, activity, as the unity of analaysis in the study of language/communication. The review lays out a really principle difference in the directions used for adopting this unit of analysis.

I am undecided between raw bakhtin and a mixture of short originals and explications by clark and holquist on chronotopes and dialogism.

Remember, I am teaching in a comm dept, not an ed department: both easier
and harder.

mike

I want to add “genres” to the list. Obviously Mike has a lot of sorting, ordering, and selecting to do, lest his undergrads get buried in the bewildering array of mediations and approaches to mediation. But the addition of “genre” complicates matters not only by piling on, but also I think by perhaps raising questions about the diverse matters already on the pile.

First, as to genre. By this, I mean the idea of genre derived from Bakhtin and developed in the North American genre school discussed by Spinuzzi in

• Spinuzzi, Clay. Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003.
• —. “Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power (Book).” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4, no. 3 (1997): 210-13.

Here are some other articles (including from MCA) dealing with genre (there’s also an article dealing with genre in MCA by Ritva Engestrom from before the online archives, which I haven’t seen):

• Artemeva, Natasha. “Book Review: Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary-Crossing. Edited by Terttu Tuomi-Grohn and Yrjo Engestrom.” Technical Communication Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2007): 360-65.
• Berkenkotter, Carol, and Thomas N. Huckin. Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition, Culture, Power. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
• —. “Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective.” Written Communication 10, no. 4 (1993): 475-509.
• Berkenkotter, Carol, and Doris Ravotas. “Genre as Tool in the Transmission of Practice over Time and across Professional Boundaries.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4, no. 4 (1997): 256-74.
• Freedman, Aviva, and Graham Smart. “Navigating the Current of Economic Policy: Written Genres and the Distribution of Cognitive Work at a Financial Institution.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4, no. 4 (1997): 238-55.
• Hicks, Deborah. “Learning as a Prosaic Act.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 3, no. 2 (1996): 102-18.
• —. “Self and Other in Bakhtin’s Early Philosophical Essays: Prelude to a Theory of Prose Consciousness.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 7, no. 3 (2000): 227-42.
• Russell, David R. “Writing and Genre in Higher Education and Workplaces: A Review of Studies That Use Cultural–Historical Activity Theory.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4, no. 4 (1997): 224-37.

In his book (one of three by MIT Press that I have reviewed for MCA [too-long review MS submitted last month]), Spinuzzi proposes a methodology of “genre tracing,” in which genres, operating within “genre ecologies,” are seen to operate across the levels of operations, actions, and activities within activity systems.

Do “genres” fit in with the list alongside “… film, music, tv, rituals …”? Genre would seem to fit with “language,” but it would seem that speech, rather than language, would belong with film, music, tv, and rituals. Speech (like TV) would seem to be a medium of communication, whereas language (like genre) would seem to be like form in which mediation is ordered. Of course, film, music, tv, and rituals can also be analyzed as matters of ordering form (i.e., as genres); but once chronotopes, dialogism, and dramatism are thrown into the mix (as well as the diverse and valuable suggestions from several other members of the list), it seems to me that we are surveying different sorts of things.

I think Mike’s reference to Shotter is suggestive: Tools, signs, and artifacts are often referred to as things that people use, and people make, and people make for use — including their use in mediating interaction. Shotter’s point is that the Wittgensteinian rules, language games, and forms of life, etc. are not artifacts (pace Clark) in the sense that people construct or make them for their use in interaction. Rather, it is in our participation in the forms of interaction (the forms that mediate our interaction) that we ourselves come to form, as human beings. As Peirce wrote, instead of saying that “thought is in us,” we should rather say that “we are in thought.”

This makes a big difference for mediational theories of mind. An affinity with CHAT can be seen in the idea that Activity Systems come to form through emergence from goal-oriented action within the social function of the activity system — i.e., it is not the case as a rule that the goal of action is construction of the activity system (which would be more in line with Clark’s theory).

I don’t think Shotter would say that people never “deliberately contrive” their coordinations (at any rate I wouldn’t say that, or that people never “deliberately contrive” the design of an activity system) — just that this is not the normal case.

A quick way to think about these things: We can think of speech or film as a medium that we can use; and we can think of genres, practices, activities as things that we participate in. Our interaction (and our “minding”) is mediated by things we use, as well as the forms of practice, interaction, etc. in which we participate. It seems there is a difference. We can “use” a genre, but we act intelligibly within genres whether we are “using” them deliberately or not; and if we are still “using” a genre, even if unconsciously, a genre is not, in general, something that was consciously devised for use in the same way as, say, a telephone.

Lurking beneath all this is the difference between info*mation, in the cybernetic sense, and in*formation, in the older sense of “information” as the noun form of a verb, referrring to the action in which someone or something (someone’s character, consciousness, a concept, etc.) is formed in part by being in-formed by something or somebody else.