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History of Psychology as a ground for reflexivity

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... Los tres niveles interaccionan y, en las dinámicas de esta interacción, generan condiciones de posibilidad para el proceso de producción y el subsiguiente proceso de divulgación y difusión. Rosa (1994) reconoce su deuda intelectual con Dazinger (1984) y Leahy (1980) en esta aproximación, al tiempo de considerar que los tres niveles y las unidades de análisis correspondientes a cada uno son compatibles con el enfoque sociocultural del estudio de la acción humana. Argumenta que la aplicación de este enfoque es un terreno fértil para la reflexividad histórica porque permite la elaboración de redes de referencias recíprocas. ...
... En el análisis que realiza en este texto del alcance y los límites de las explicaciones de la psicología de su tiempo, que sirve de preludio a su teoría de la sociogénesis de las funciones psíquicas superiores, Vygotski llega a algunas conclusiones más cercanas a posiciones en la sociología del conocimiento y la filosofía de la ciencia contemporáneas reflejadas en el trabajo de Rosa (1994), Huertas y Blanco (1996, de Van der Veer y Valsiner (2000) y los antes mencionados de Dazinger, que da las ideas de su época sobre el quehacer científico. Entre otras cosas, Vygotski concluyó que para entender las dinámicas de las producciones científicas relacionadas con el nacimiento y muerte de conceptos y los cambios en categorías, deben tenerse en cuenta el sustrato sociocultural de la época, las exigencias de la realidad objetiva en que se genera el conocimiento y las reglas mediante las que se organiza el proceso de su producción y difusión. ...
... La reflexividad histórica obliga a pensar las omisiones y tergiversaciones en la ventana de oportunidad que permitió la entrada de su obra a Occidente y a asumir una posición de alerta a la forma en que se rescatará su legado al lugar de la dimensión afectiva. Al valorar las producciones que se comienzan a producir y se estarán produciendo en un futuro cercano, debemos tener en cuenta la reflexión de Vygotski en su análisis de la crisis de psicología sobre la producción, distribución y uso del conocimiento, así como las contribuciones de autores contemporáneos al tema de la reflexividad histórica (Rosa, 1994;Valsiner, 1994) y los usos de la historia en la psicología (Sánchez, 2004). ...
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The purpose of this article is to affirm historic reflexivity as a conceptual and methodological tool in the vindication of the place of activity in Vygotski’s psychology. The cognitive bias that has dominated the interpretation of Vygotski’s works and the sociocultural and institutional context where it was forged is examined. Through the analysis of original texts and cotemporary elaborations, we establish the place of emotions and affects in Vygotski’s theory. We conclude that current cultural and historical transformations have opened the door the consideration of these dimensions, and at the same time warn about the risk of oversimplification that has characterized the uses of other Vygotskian’s ideas, as happened with his concept of zone of proximal development.
... By the use of these practical methods, modern psychology created a new world of psychological objects that increasingly defined the field and to which any purely theoretical developments were forced to accommodate (Danzinger, 2002, p. 4). These ideas could be explained using the "epistemic market" metaphor (Rosa, 1994). Valsiner (2010) uses this idea to understand how objectivity in psychology is framed by the necessity of a market with its methodological trends and concepts in vogue. ...
... Moreover, they could appear as a form to elucidate the commitment of social sciences and humanities in order to achieve a kind of knowledge engaged with the emergence of social inequality to consciousness, in terms used by Freire (2005). Considering "methodolatry", Danzinger (2002) argues about what Rosa (1994) calls "epistemic market" and assumes that, in the history of psychology, the major concern was about the scientific status sought by psychology. It demonstrates that the scientific practice is closely related to features that belong to the social process. ...
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The focus of this article is the mind–body problem in mainstream modern psychology examined from a decolonial perspective. The construction of the idea of the separation of mind and body is a seminal point of division of labor in the history of modern capitalism. This division perpetuated by the mind–body dualism idea was necessary to justify the enslavement of some and employment to others. Colonization processes have had profound importance on the mind, feelings, behaviors, and political settings. Throughout its history, the subject treated in EuroAmerican psychology has sought to deal with the mind–body problem as an individual, a separate entity, not as part of the psyche as a whole. A new perspective where the mind and body play an intertwined role is necessary considering subjectivity in a cultural-historical approach. The subjective level is defined by the unification between symbolical and emotional cultural processes. The body (emotions) operates in conjunction with the culture and, when amalgamated, constitutes what we entitle as subjectivity. An ontology defines the assumptions that lie under a cosmovision and sustains a way of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting with oneself, others, and the whole living world. It is what defines the real. The trajectory of this paper is an invitation to shed light from a decolonial perspective on social inequality concerning the present crises of humanity. The consequences of social inequality expressed today indicate the difficulties created by the dichotomy of mind and body.
... Esto implica que estas actividades se realizan generalmente de manera descontextualizada, sin considerar las condiciones históricas, sociales y culturales en que son producidas originalmente y luego trasladadas a, y recibidas en, otros tiempos y contextos (Dafermos, 2016;García, 2019). Si bien esta parece ser una representación adecuada de las producciones de conocimiento científico en general, es intrigante y sorprendente que se observe también en las producciones del enfoque histórico-cultural en el curso de su desarrollo (Rosa, 1994;Matusov, 2008). Esto, a pesar de que el propio Vygotski (1927Vygotski ( /1991) en su ensayo sobre el significado histórico de la crisis de la psicología planteó y argumentó que la regularidad y el cambio en el desarrollo de las ideas, la aparición y la muerte de los conceptos, incluso el cambio en categorizaciones puede explicarse científicamente si se relaciona la ciencia en cuestión con 1) el sustrato sociocultural de la época, 2) las leyes y condiciones generales del conocimiento científico, y 3) con las exigencias objetivas que plantea al conocimiento científico la naturaleza de los fenómenos bajo estudio (p. ...
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Este artículo es una revisión temática del concepto de perezhivanie, el cual desde hace aproximadamente dos décadas recibe creciente atención en el campo de estudios vygotskianos. En el trabajo examino por qué un concepto que en este momento histórico recibe tanta atención en la perspectiva histórico-cultural fue invisibilizado en las lecturas e interpretaciones dominantes de la obra de L.S. Vygotski. Tras ese ejercicio de reflexividad histórica examino el lugar del concepto en la obra de Vygotski y el lugar prominente que ocupa actualmente en el enfoque histórico-cultural. En ese recorrido discuto algunos obstáculos enfrentados en la recuperación del concepto desde problemas de traducción hasta diversidad en su significación. El objetivo es ofrecer una perspectiva amplia y compleja orientada a promover una aproximación contextualizada y crítica del concepto en sus aplicaciones actuales a diversas áreas de la psicología y la educación.
... The social processes that create a science's relationship with its surrounding society (at its currently existing state) are of fundamental kind, and thus shared by different social sciences, and the same science in different countries (Mulkay, 1993). The discourse-based social construction of such relationships leads to a differentiated picture in which social processes surrounding a science set the stage for it (Rosa, 1994;Rosa and Valsiner, 1994;Valsiner, 1988Valsiner, , 1994. ...
... Interesting theoretical elaborations on the logic of scientific production have been made based on the influence of the capitalist economic system (Rosa, 1994;Valsiner, 2010). The time allocated for publication, the organization of quality indices and the definition of scientific quality criteria are components of the publication process that have many similarities with the capitalist logic. ...
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The challenges faced by science in the international communication process range from the choice of philosophical and epistemological assumptions used in scientific research to the choice of participants who comprise the sample of the studies produced. There is, in the hierarchy of scientific production, Westernized trends of theoretical assumptions that predominate. The challenge of producing and communicating scientific knowledge is now guided by a review that geographically and philosophically shifts the Western prominent place. The purpose of this article is use a decolonial perspective to theoretically problematize scientific practice and the process of publishing its results. It criticizes the assembly line in which psychology ends, especially in the publication of results as a condition for the constitution of scientific communities. The scientific community can assist in the dissemination of a certain theory, but it can also constitute an obstacle to new ideas. It points to decoloniality as an alternative path as a possibility of breaking with the production-line logic of publications. By presenting the example of González Rey’s theory of subjectivity, it advocates the history-education-time tripod as necessary elements to address contemporary crises studied by psychology. The article demonstrates the possibility of rupture with the market-related scientific status quo.
... This implies the recognition of the importance of the assumption of a reflexive attitude in scientific analysis. This is certainly no new epistemological standpoint in the field of human sciences (Bourdieu, 2004;Latour, 1987;Rosa, 1994;Woolgar, 1988), however, on account of its complexity, it has not been adequately investigated by researchers who, all too frequently, have kept silent about their investigation methods and the conditions in which analyses are produced. ...
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Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness
... Brock (2015) suggests that we should all abandon Bthe naïve view that Western psychology has universal validity and [take] the reflexive discourse of their own culture more seriously.^This solution could work if the issue of reflexive discourse about psychology happened within an open, unconstrained field of an epistemic market (Rosa 1994). But that is not the case. ...
Chapter
Over the twentieth century, psychology has adopted the scheme of causal thinking that involves the S → R (stimulus → response) basic structure. It brings into the thinking of psychologists the axiomatic acceptance of linear causality (“S causes R”) without a focus on elaboration of how the supposed process of causing actually operates. In the experimental and quasi-experimental practices of research, that scheme has become contextualized as the practice of specifying “independent” (manipulable) and “dependent” (outcome) factors called “variables,” creating the illusion of the researcher’s control over the processes under investigation in a context of an experiment (or its derivatives, such as questionnaires or interviews). This is unrealistic in the case of human psychological processes that are of the character of open systems characterized not by “effects” but by exchange relations with the environment (exemplified by Dewey in his replacement the “reflex arc” by the “reflex circle”) which operate on the basis of cyclical (catalyzed) rather than linear causality. The result is a situation—well captured by Ludwig Wittgenstein—that in psychology the problems and methods pass each other by. We trace the history of the terminology of “independent” variable as it became used in psychology, discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of “variable” in a universe of dynamically structured and normatively guided psychological phenomena, and suggest that the notion of “variables” be abandoned and replaced by other concepts that would capture the qualitative nature of the human phenomena more adequately.
... Advances in technology coincide in time with the sociological tendency of appropriation of the academic world by the "market dominance" of the globalizing corporate world (KURASAWA, 2002, p.327). The sciences are not merely an "epistemic market" (BOURDIEU, 1988;ROSA, 1994) but become a commodity market where working conditions of scientists, research teams, and even research institutes are exchanged on the basis of some currency equivalent. As with all currencies it is an illusory process depending on irrational "trust" in one or another economic success parameter-number of publications, total values of obtained research grants, and use of fashionable equipment (e.g., fMRI 7 ) for purposes of answering trivial-but-publishable questions. ...
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I claim that what is called "open access" is actually a transformed form of traditional ("closed") access, and is "open" only by its obviously appealing label. As a re-organizational move of institutionalized kind, it benefits the economically powerful—usually "first world" based—research groups and corporations, and leads to new economic limits for the publication of innovative research emanating from less affluent researchers and laboratories. By shifting the costs of scientific publication from the recipients (journal subscribers) to the authors of published articles, "open access" creates a social scenario of one-sided information flow rather than a new form of "openness" in scholarly communication. By monopolizing the sources of scientific communication the "open access" initiative defeats its stated purpose. The articles in the reviewed Special Issue of Historische Sozialforschung have productively outlined a whole range of specific issues related to this rapidly developing social movement in scientific communication, but have failed to analyze the wider sociological nature of the ongoing negotiations of the control over scientific communication channels of which the "open access" movement is a part. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0602230
... This implies the recognition of the importance of the assumption of a reflexive attitude in scientific analysis. This is certainly no new epistemological standpoint in the field of human sciences (Bourdieu, 2004;Latour, 1987;Rosa, 1994;Woolgar, 1988), however, on account of its complexity, it has not been adequately investigated by researchers who, all too frequently, have kept silent about their investigation methods and the conditions in which analyses are produced. ...
Chapter
In mainstream clinical practice, language is regarded as a medium by means of which to keep (and/or to change) specific “essences” – characteristics that are conceived as “inner” properties of the individual mind. I outline the unity of mind and discourse: we construct the world we habit by speaking. Hence language use – as sensemaking process – is intrinsically an intersubjective process. I intend to underline the implications of this perspective in the way of defining the object that has to be processed by the therapist, the role of the social and discursive context in the understanding of the reality constructed by the patient, and the aim of the clinical exchange, shaping as intrinsically intersubjective process of sensemaking
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Disputes about the origins of psychology in the history of the discipline are functional not for our understanding of the past, but as normative signs that regulate the construction of ideas in the future. We introduce the notion of open-ended normativity that regulates the development of a given discipline towards its future. Hence the question of the cultural origins of psychology becomes contested in the 21st century as an important topic. It proves that the history of psychology is an active participant in the making of psychology, as it is creating its future.
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