Humanity’s leading activity: survival, of the humanity of our species

An urgent call

In the midst of ongoing and unprecedented global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, we open the present issue with an editorial call to scholars worldwide about learning in and from these crises. The call directs attention to contributing to what may be thought of as humanity’s leading activity, that is, the activity whose development accounts for the most important changes in humanity’s response to current and forthcoming crises (cf. Leont’ev, 1981). In other words, what we learn from coronovirus today may be decisive in the next crisis and forthcoming crises, including the climate crisis that threatens whole species and large fractions of our populations.

We want to use this opportunity to invite academics to respond quickly to two key questions:

1. What can we learn immediately about mind, culture, and activity from around the world that might help interventions and survival now (to be published quickly on the Cultural Praxis website)?

2. What can we learn from this crisis about long-term and irreversible changes in the face of climate and other crises for humanity and its survival for the next decade or two (to be published in Mind, Culture, and Activity)?

The two questions articulate responses on two different (but not exclusive) time scales, and to allow for the type of immediate, fast-pace publishing called for in the first question above, we have created a new online platform, Cultural Praxis. Conceived as a means for extending Mind, Culture, and Activity (MCA), the Cultural Praxis site is moderated and curated by the MCA editors and can be accessed at http://culturalpraxis.net/. It provides a space for scholars and practitioners interested in understanding and being creative about issues at the intersection of culture, experience, and praxis to publish original works in formats other than fully peer-reviewed, scientific articles. These can include blog entries on past, current, and future matters; book and article reviews; teaching and activist resources; artistic works; and other (multi)media products. The current global situation demands immediate and fast-paced—as well as long-term and well-developed concepts and solutions. With these two complementary publishing platforms, we hope to better address this need.

Authors interested in addressing the two questions above may consider sharing and developing ideas, methodologies, or practices related (but by no means limited) to some of the following issues:

Issues of solidarity and equity: In addition to the death and suffering that it is causing, the COVID-19 pandemic has made visible two related but contradictory aspects that characterize human societies. On one hand, the current pandemic demands and has generated examples of solidarity and cooperation at a scale otherwise difficult to achieve in normal times. On the other hand, the pandemic is making visible preexisting systemic inequalities among social groups and classes, with, for example, African American and Latinx people becoming infected and dying at disproportionate rates in the United States (Williams, 2020), and the United Nations having warned of a “hunger pandemic” in developing countries (Anthem, 2020). In part, the current situation makes more visible failures of the social and political systems governed by capital and its institutions, and of cultural praxis more generally, which allow humans to fail to empathize and engage with the “other” in their own locales/countries and elsewhere. Today’s socio-ecological crises cannot be addressed without also addressing long-lasting problems of social injustice and colonization, class and imperialist oppression.

The role of science and technology: There are also specific questions about challenges in the “sciences” (including our own) and its impact—the current situation suggests that we must learn from many failures here but also understand and document some important, creative breakthroughs. Questions arise about the way in which scientific and other forms of epistemic praxis and technology relate to citizenship and political action, and these are crucial to understanding and addressing our future as a global society. With socio-ecological challenges predating both the global and the local, as well as any previous disciplinary boundaries, looking at innovative and interdisciplinary breakthroughs seems crucial.

The role of education: Tightly connected to the need for specialist science to break out of its silos is the role of science in engaging the wider public, but also powerful forces that need to be well informed of science when making decisions. This involves the role of (formal, informal) education, broadly conceived. In particular also, the current and unprecedented restrictions enacted to fight the spread of the new coronavirus have dramatically transformed the educational landscape across many nations, again making visible problems and potentials that otherwise tend to remain latent: the increased involvement of families and communities in education of young people who are now not in school, for instance. We therefore invite considerations of education conceived as social, cultural, political, public, lifelong, and family/community-wide, and certainly beyond the confines of traditional institutions.

As a matter of urgency, we want to emphasize our call for MCA readers and authors to submit works to us for publication in Cultural Praxis, when the works are fast paced and/or do not fit the formats accepted for review in MCA. You can read the current publications and submission guidelines on Cultural Praxis to learn more about accepted formats and criteria for acceptance. We intend new works published in Cultural Praxis to be indexed in each MCA issue published (see section below). At the same time, we want to restate the need for developing scientific materials for publication in MCA as one crucial means for advancing and making our field more relevant. Initial ideas published in Cultural Praxis may well become full-fledged pieces submitted for publication in MCA, so choosing to submit a work to Cultural Praxis should not be in conflict with the goal of publishing your work in MCA. Indeed, we intend to support such developments where appropriate.

Our intention is to learn lessons immediately as the current crisis circulates and recirculates round the globe while seeing the international struggle to respond as a leading activity, preparing us for the next stage of humanity’s development, which, as the ecological crisis deepens, may become a struggle for survival and against extinction of the species, but most important about finding more humane forms of activity. Along whole ecosystems, it is the humanity of our species that is at stake.

The articles in Volume 27, Issue 2

After this urgent call, we move on to the contents in this issue.

The present issue is devoted to commenting on and/or adding to The Story of LCHC: A Polyphonic Autobiography (https://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu), which is a detailed record of the research conducted by the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) at the University of California, San Diego, over the past five decades. An introduction to the collection of articles, titled Responding to the LCHC Polyphonic Autobiography: Studying Rocks in a Landslide and the Creation of New, More Humane Forms of LCHC’s Own Activity, is written by Beth Ferholt and Natalia Gajdamaschko, and we refer the reader to that introduction for more details about the special issue.

The issue also includes a book review of Erica Burman’s Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method by Kalonji Nzinga. The book provides a novel reading of the work of the decolonial scholar Franz Fanon from the perspectives of the role and functions of “the child” and childhood. Nzinga welcomes the discussion of Fanon’s work as an opportunity to expand the canon of sociocultural theorizing with a classical author from the Global South. According to Nzinga, the book is a useful contribution to contemporary research and practice of antiracist education. Nzinga notes that Burman’s child as method approach to Fanon generates nuanced new understanding of colonialism and racism, especially their implications for marginalized children.

Regenerating CHAT project

Both Nzinga’s book review and the article by Jornet, Guarrasi, and Rajala included in the LCHC collection are motivated by the project Re-Generating CHAT in Challenging Times, which MCA is sponsoring with the support of the Spencer Foundation and the affiliated institutions. You can read more about this project at http://www.re-generatingchat.com. The project began with the organization of two initial meetings, limited in budget and therefore also in number of participants, but which have proven generative. Today, we are working to expand the network and collaborations emerging from it.

That project aims to bring scholars interested in mind, culture, and activity to an intergenerational reexamination of CHAT, drawing on critical theoretical perspectives, to enrich its capacity to advance theory, methodology, and practices in the challenging times of raising nationalisms, social injustices, and ecological crises that we are facing. The current pandemic has further reaffirmed and altered our focus, bringing to the fore questions about local and global cooperation in health, education, and science in new and sharp relief as we all struggle to adapt and respond to immediate concerns while developing humanity’s potential.

With our work as editorial collective, we hope to offer our readers, colleagues, and future collaborators a viable (set of) platform(s) for cooperation toward much needed transformation.

Recent Cultural Praxis publications

Along with the newly launched website, we are including a section listing recent publications appearing in Cultural Praxis. In each MCA editorial, we shall include the name, title, brief description, and link to Cultural Praxis publications.

Article, by Moisès Esteban-Guitart. Covid-19 and Education: Beyond our Zone of Current Development [original in Spanish]. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/11/covid-19-y-educacion-mas-alla-de-nuestra-zona-de-desarrollo-real/

In this short article, Esteban-Guitart describes the current pandemic as historical rupture. He critiques superficial discussions about implementing education in the exceptional situation and invites us to consider what deeper challenges that the post-COVID-19 pandemic school may have to face.

Article, by Andy Blunden. The Coronavirus Pandemic is a World Perezhivanie. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/15/the-coronavirus-pandemic-is-a-world-perezhivanie/

In this short article, Blunden draws from the CHAT notion of perezhivanie to discuss how the current global situation may be understood as a world perezhivanie, a moment of crisis in a developmental trajectory in which a world subject—made possible through global means of communication and travel—is emerging.

Article, by Jaakko Hilppö, Anna Rainio, Antti Rajala, & Lasse Lipponen, Children and the COVID-19 Lockdown: From Child Perspectives to Children’s Perspectives. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/26/children-and-the-covid-19-lockdown-from-child-perspectives-to-childrens-perspectives/

Hilppö and colleagues provide an insightful reflection on the ways children’s lifeworlds are being transformed through the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on Finland. They examine how children are being positioned in the media, and how these views lose a most important point of view: children’s own perspectives.

Article, by Ana Belén García Varela, Cuando el Aprendizaje Surge Desde el Interior: Aprender a Crear Sentido en Familia. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/26/cuando-el-aprendizaje-surge-desde-el-interior-aprender-a-crear-sentido-en-familia/

García Varela, a professor at the University of Alcalá (Spain), discusses the current exceptional situation of confinement that many families are living as a time of opportunity. Taking a humanistic perspective, she discusses notions from positive psychology to support people’s achievement of meaningfulness in life, also in adverse times.

Article, by Beth Ferholt, Playworlds, portals and airlocks between timescales: Generating hope in Brooklyn, early April, 2020. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/27/playworlds,-portals-and-airlocks-between-timescales:-generating-hope-in-brooklyn,-early-april,-2020/

In this short article, Ferholt draws from her work with playworlds, a form of adult–child joint play, and her experiences of the pandemic from New York City to think about hope.

Book review, by Julia Pfitzer. Power play: Explorando y empujando fronteras en una escuela en Tejas through a multilingual play-based early learning curriculum (2018) by Tim Kinard, Jesse Gainer, Mary Esther Soto Huerta. http://culturalpraxis.net/wordpress1/2020/04/26/power-play-explorando-y-empujando-fronteras-en-una-escuela-en-tejas-through-a-multilingual-play-based-early-learning-curriculum/

Julia Pfitzer, a preschool special education teacher and current doctoral student studying leadership and equity at University of Colorado Denver, describes Power Play as offering an example of how learning environments that honor the ways in which children learn and the contexts they bring with them can be created. The authors, she argues, consider critical theories of education and the sociocultural context within the early childhood experience.