Scholarly work and/as passion

With regret, we open this issue of Mind, Culture, and Activity acknowledging the loss of Fernando González Rey, a deeply human scholar whose work has been central to past and recent developments in CHAT scholarship.

In his moving InMemoriam, Subjectivity and Life: In Memory of Fernando Gonzalez Rey, Daniel Goulart, Fernando’s long-time student, colleague, and friend, portrays his mentor as an “academic legend” within CHAT circles, and as a warm, generous and accessible scholar who naturally broke “hierarchical protocols” otherwise typical in academia (Goulart, this issue). Those who were lucky enough to meet Fernando will recognize in Goulart’s tribute – enriched with glimpses of Fernando’s “noisy laughter” and “energetic arguments” – the scholar’s affable character and genuine presence in engaged and purposeful scholarship. Goulart recounts a man who seamlessly merged scholarship with passion,¹ epistemology and life: “alongside deep theoretical, epistemological and philosophical argumentations, he was permanently drawing from his rich biography as a raw material for us to reflect upon” (p. 104).

In this editorial, we emphasize that intimate connection between intellectual work and emotional passion that Gonzalez Rey’s life exemplified and embodied in the personal and the professional, and which, in different but connected ways, also is present in all of the articles in this issue. These articles study practices in which enthusiasm and engagement are inherent aspects of competent participation, and involve minorities whose lives and experiences are seldom portrayed in scholarly publications, including BMX city riders, transgender vloggers, impoverished children in Japan, and parents in latinx communities. Each of the articles discusses how these forms of participation emerge through developments in socio-economic and technological contexts, in turn leading to different forms of subjectivity and experience.

But before we detail the articles and book reviews included in this issue, we welcome Antti Rajala as our new Book Review Editor. Together, we will continue creating bridges between dedicated scholarship, lived experiences, and embodied biographies. As Fernando’s life and the articles published in this issue demonstrate, it is in the work of purposefully and affectively communing toward shared projects that the source of both social change and of personal development lies.

Scholarly work and passion throughout the articles

The connection between intellect and affect was not only Gonzalez Rey’s form of living scholarship, but was also one of his main areas of academic interest. An important moment in this regard comes with González Rey’s (2011) identification and re-examination of three “defining moments in Vygotsky’s work” (p. 257): an early emphasis on emotions and fantasy, an instrumental period during which such notions as tool and sign mediation were drawn, and a final, unfinished period that involved a “return to human spiritual complexity” (p. 269). It is as part of this latter period, never really advanced due to an untimely death, that Vygotsky most emphatically “argued against the separation between cognitive and affective processes in the study of thinking” (p. 271).

Today, a growing number of scholars are interested in further pursuing the lines of research that Vygotsky left open on the role of affects and the emotions in human activity (Nardi et al., 2018). González Rey’s own contributions in this regard, through his work on subjectivity and the history of cultural-historical theory, are many and important. In the present issue, we are privileged to publish Fifty Years After L. I. Bozhovich’s Personality and Its Formation in Childhood: Recovering Her Legacy and Her Historical Role, in which González Rey further expands the field by revisiting the work of an important, yet seldom cited figure of Soviet psychology, Lydia Ilinishna Bozhovich.

Bozhovich formed part of the so-called Vygotsky Circle, which, as Stetsenko (2004) noted, “included several brilliant women” (pp. 502–503). As is well known, however, women’s historical contributions to science tend to remain “buried in the footnotes,” as noted in a recent press article on the matter.² In his contribution, Fernando acknowledges Bozhovich’s work for actively criticizing and opposing the ideas of her teachers and superiors in a time when doing so was not easy. The author presents an outline of Bozhovich’s career in Soviet psychology, her advances in the theoretical and empirical study of human motivation and personality, and a summary of her theoretical model of personality development.

González Rey definition of three moments in Vygotsky’s scholarship is important for understanding Bozhovich’s contribution: in one sense she continued a direction Vygotsky had identified, but could not finalize in his latter works; in another sense, she brought her own expertise to a critique of this direction as well. On the first point, as González Rey (pp. 108–120) writes, she was “the only Soviet psychologist to bring to light Vygotsky’s concepts of perezhivanie and ‘social situation of development’ as the basis for advancing the topic of personality development” (p. 108). In doing so, Bozhovich “represented an alternative interpretation of Vygotsky’s legacy, different from that sustained by Leontiev and his group” (p. 109). Characteristic of this approach was the pursuing of concepts and units that would integrate affective and intellectual processes to describe psychological systems, which in Bozhovich’s case concerns the development and integration of affections and motivations in the formation of personality.

In positioning Bozhovich’s work, González Rey delves mostly into disagreements between Bozhovich and Leontiev. On the second point, however, it should be noted that Bozhovich did not shy away from critiquing Vygotsky as well. For example, she argued that, in defining perezhivanie as being determined by the child’s intellectual development, Vygotsky was “factually incorrect” (Bozhovich, 2009, p. 68), “taking a step backward, retreating to a certain extent beyond old boundaries” (p. 67), accusing him of intellectualism, a critique that Leontiev also raised. In the same spirit of scholarly integrity that González Rey praises in Bozhovich, the reader is invited to reflect upon the premises and possible empirical paths that different positions afford to our scholarly community.

In The idiocultural Sensibilities of Spothunting in Action Sports Culture: Affect, Desire, Change, Ty Hollett and Christian Ehret (pp. 121–137) examine the unity of intellect and affect with regards to both the theoretical approach proposed, and the context of activity studied. The authors present what they refer to as a theory-driven analysis of the social practice of spothunting in action sports, more specifically, in BMX street riding. Their definition of spothunting, which “entails an enthusiast seeking out elements of the built or natural environment with which to ride and perform tricks” (p. 121), suggests this unity of intelligence and affect/passion. Throughout their analysis, spothunting is described as a process of learning and developing involving the development of a “feeling for spots that inspire tricks” (p. 123). This starkly contrasts with other common descriptions of learning as involving the intellectual mastering of school subjects. Here, the learners develop sensitivities or attunements that allow them to identify suitable spots, where there is an “intimate connection between desire and difference production in BMX” (p. 126). This desire, in turn, is shaped by the production of videos that capture the tricks; sharing videos through social media, creates and connects communities of practitioners and contributes to the development of a shared social purpose.

The authors refer to an ontology of immanence, which “approaches the continuous production of difference and variation as the basis of social life” (p. 121). From this perspective, the authors introduce the notion of idiocultural sensibilities, as “group members’ attunements to how potential activity may both common and vary with large-scale cultures with which the group is affiliated” (p. 121). They emphasize affective aspects inherent in intelligent, competent action, such as longing, potential, and care, thereby offering ways to name embodied, vital experience. Through this lens, spothunting comes to be described as “the production of affective intensities” (p. 134), which, through video and social media, blend both local and global dimensions of practice.

Whereas the authors claim that this approach offers conceptualizations alternative to cultural-historical approaches, their case clearly suggests many opportunities for further bridging and expanding complementary notions in cultural-historical theory – the case of mediation through social media is particularly salient in the article – in line with calls for bringing motivational and affective aspects to the center that we found in González Rey’s article.

In the article Transvlogs: Online Communication Tools for Transformative Agency and Development, Chana Etengoff (pp. 138–155) further explores the context of social media and how it generates forms of political and artistic expression and engagement. Egentoff draws on a social justice framework to explore, through narrative content analysis, how transgender vloggers³ “enact their transformative development” (p. 138). Resonating with Hollett and Ehret’s paper emphasis on the constitutive role of social media, Egentoff describes how social media becomes a means for individuals and communities not only to create and share content, but also “to agentively enact social change” (p. 138).

Passion is present in the ways in which transvloggers voice their hopes, concerns, and struggles as they take on digital media as a means to position themselves as political actors, while at the same time experiencing the changes that are involved in gender transitions and struggles. Egentoff does not limit herself to describing the vloggers’ expressive activity but also shows how the latter lead to transformative agency and, ultimately, to taking “consequential offline action to create community change” (p. 149). Touching on issues raised in the other articles in this issue, this article exemplifies how, when people invest themselves (intellectually and affectively) in projects with social change motives, they simultaneously “develop their own identities and personhood” (p. 150).

In terms of methodology, Egentoff makes the case for expanding our focus from interventionist change models to collaborative change models, where “researchers acknowledge and build upon participants’ enacted and envisioned efforts to create change prior to researchers’ involvement” (p. 150). This involves not assuming that change is made possible primarily through research engagement, and that researchers ought to first attempt to understand what the dispositions and opportunities are for societal change that the participants already are starting to pursue, joining them as partners, respecting the participants’ historical agency.

Takumi Hirose and Yuji Moro’s Socio-material Arrangements of Impoverished Youth in Japan: Historical and Critical Perspectives on Neoliberalization further illustrate the ways in which socio-economic and technological contexts become intertwined with the development of specific forms of subjectivity, here addressing Neoliberalism and its implications for youth living in impoverished conditions in Japan. Again, the enthusiasm and dedicated engagement of members of a community becomes central to understanding their learning and developing. In this case, members are community builders in an impoverished district in Tokyo who act to provide care for children who, due to socio-economic conditions imposed by the neoliberal context, lack societal resources to address their developmental needs.

More specifically, Hirose and Moro focus on how changes in the socioeconomic organization of the city, including an unequal distribution of material resources and public housing, directly impact the learning and experiences of children living in poverty. These changes, connected to neoliberal policies, also translate in new functions and demands of school institutions. These include a transformed accountability system that, in line with neoliberal premises, sets the focus on school productivity and academic achievement indicators, in turn affecting the capacity of teachers, and the school in general, to address children’s developmental needs in addition to academic achievement.

The authors’ analyses make visible the way in which socio-economic and material arrangements lead to different subjectivities and forms of agency across a wide range of social actors, including teachers (as mentioned above). In the case of children, the authors describe drifting agency. This involves a context created for children when, a lack of access to resources – such as financial resources to enroll children in after school activities and/or care or the time to care for children themselves – requires that children search “for places to spend time” (p. 160). In this, regard, there is a disparity, but also a compelling parallel, between: 1) “searching for places” that result from a need to avoid boredom and negative affect and 2) searching practices described by Hollett and Ehrett in terms of spothunting in street sports.

Along with the drifting agency associated with children living in poverty, other forms of agency and participation emerge in relation with community builders who willingly dedicate their time and resources to support children’s search for something to do. This form of agency is not simply a passive result, but an active and, potentially, critical form of engagement. To account for this important difference, the authors draw from the Marxist notion of practical-critical activities, “which are the activities of actively engaging with history rather than passively occupying a predetermined society” (Hirose & Moro, p. 167).

Beatriz Quintos, Marta Civil, and Jill Bratton bring us another example of what Hirose and Moro may have called a practical-critical activity, also connected to the potentially transformative role of schools and schooling in a changing society: parental engagement in mathematics. Their article, Promoting Change Through a Formative Intervention: Contradictions in Mathematics Education Parental Engagement presents a study investigating systemic conditions and contradictions involved in a program aiming to support parents’ leadership in mathematics education in the context of low-income, ethnic, and language minoritized (latinx) communities.

Drawing from both third generation activity theory and critical theory, the authors identify three groups engaged in three linked activity systems involved in the organization of a set of gatherings called tertulias: the parents, the team of teachers, and the school district officials involved in the project. These types of school and out-of-school connections are becoming increasingly common as perceptions of the role of school and education change. In their analysis, the authors identify contradictions relating to power imbalances between parents and school personnel, and between the object of the parents’ activity system and the division of labor in the school’s activity system. In and through the collaborative work of addressing these contradictions, opportunities for expanding the joint object emerge, leading to an expanded view of parental engagement in mathematics that translates in new institutional parent-school relations. Studies of the challenges and opportunities that emerge in such multi-institutional arrangements are highly needed.

The book reviews

Closing the issue, we include three book reviews, one of which is presented in a new format, involving the engagement of multiple reviewers along with comments by the book author herself – a format that we will continue pursuing.

The review of the book, What Did You Learn at Work Today: The Forbidden Lessons of Labor Education, is first introduced by the author, Helena Worthen, who identifies as a main thread and motive in her work that “the world of education … and the world of labor … do not talk to each other” (p. 187). Speaking of passion and scholarship, Worthen describes how, in parts of the book, she presents her frustration about this situation in dramatical ways, and connects this objective and subjective situation not to accident, but to quite definite socio-political contexts.

As Worthen points out in her introduction, the two reviews on her book manifest precisely the division between work and education that the book aims to address. Thus, the first review by Noah Carmichael, focuses on highlighting Worthen’s skillful way of drafting a work that in a powerful and empowering manner speaks to workers primarily, rather than academicians or theorists. As the author poses it, Worthen’s book “devotes more attention to the actual content and material condition of the life of the average worker, their struggles and aspirations, and the critical link between worker education and self-actualization” (p. 188). Julian Williams’ review, in turn, focuses on the ways in which questions of identity work and power relations that become visible through theoretically informed analysis remain implicit in the book. Williams goes on to expand on those potential paths of analysis, compelled, as he argues, by the examples of practice that the book offers. This testifies to the book’s potential as “a starting point for this extension of theory” (this issue), and to the dialectical idea that “practice is the negation of theory, and hence the source of its development” (this issue).

Reviewing the volume Vygotsky and Creativity: A Cultural-Historical Approach to Play, Meaning Making, and the Arts, edited by Connery, John-Steiner, and Marjanovic-Shane, Bojana Skorc summarizes the 17 chapters, all of which build upon Vygotsky’s theory to address connections between creative expression, learning, and development. In line with recurrent themes in this issue, Skorc emphasizes that, in this book, “the opposition between the purely scientific and the applicable … is fully avoided” (p. 195). The author also notes that the book and its theoretical framing facilitates the sense that authors and readers share a common historical context and responsibility as academicians and/or practitioners, becoming a particularly compelling read.

Alison Larkin Koushki, a second language educator, reviews Erika Piazzoli’s Embodying Language in Action: The Artistry of Process Drama in Second Language Education. Koushki resonates with Piazzoli’s way of presenting, in her book, language education as an artistry, likening it to jazz musicians’ improvisation. In her review, the author and educator shares her experiences as teacher and how this book on embodiment and process drama in second language education touches upon and further encourages that experience.

Notes

1. Here, we use the everyday sense of the term passion, as captured in encyclopedic entries such as Wikipedia’s, “a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_(emotion)).

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/womens-history-in-science-hidden-footnotes/582472/.

3. Vlogging is the video-based version of text-based blogging in which users produce and publish content online through video, often sharing their own experiences, observations and opinions.