Showing papers by "Jaan Valsiner published in 2002"

Forms of Dialogical Relations and Semiotic Autoregulation within the Self

Abstract: The dialogical self entails relations between perspectival positions (I-positions) that maintain and develop within the self as a field. A typology of such relations is outlined, and related with the process of semiotic mediation. Semiotic mediation takes the form of flexible control systems that regulate the relations between I-positions. These autoregulatory processes generate both the meaningfulness of the flow of experience, and meta-level meanings that constrain the extent of construcion and loci of application of the direct semiotic regulators to the flow of experience. The dialogical self is an autocatalytic system that orients itself towards the future by either enabling or blocking the emergence of its own new states.

Irreversibility of time and ontopotentiality of signs

Abstract: Time plays the central role in any developmental system. Its irreversibility contrasts with the functioning of the psychological realm that attempts to stabilize the real flow by means of perception/action constancies and signs. Efforts of apprehending the possible events of the next moment in ordinary life are paralleled by the focus on prediction in psychology as science. Signs operate as tools for reduction of the uncertainty of the immediate future. The notion of ontopotentiality of signs is introduced—it is the set of possibilities for creating quasi-stable meanings that would direct the flow of personal experiencing (in time) in a specific direction. This perspective advances further the notion of presentation (Vorstellung) that was worked through within the Brentano-Meinong tradition in philosophy and psychology. Narratives—and their corresponding notion of narrating—constitute macro-level stabilizing devices for individuals coping with uncertainty.

Doesn't a dance require dancers?

Abstract: The dance metaphor of ape-human communication is valuable and needs to be pressed to its logical conclusion. When couples dance, they are both choreographers and dancers, and the dance arises dialectically out of the “peractions” of the dancers. We suppose that the way in which scientists communicate with their apes emerges by an analogous process.

Phenomenon, Methodology and Interpretation in the Study of Meaning: American Women Constructing Themselves as Mothers and Career Workers:

Abstract: This article provides a general overview of methodology as a cyclical process of conceptually integrating assumptions, theory, phenomenon, and methods with the goal of deriving data appropriate for

Buggers in the Field: Researchers as Tricksters in the Universe of Social Sciences

Abstract: This collection of essays by Klaus-Peter Köpping is a playful treatise on a basic issue—knowledge construction in anthropology. It is filled with humor, irony, sarcasm and many other ways of touching upon the reality of how knowledge is created in-between the researcher, the ‘native’ and ‘the society’. The latter of course should occur in the plural as the anthropologist’s efforts to make sense relate to two societies (at least). The questions raised about anthropology’s ambivalent relations with its subject matter are similar to those in other social sciences, and hence need elaboration. The picture that emerges from Köpping’s essays about anthropology’s honored rituals of ‘fieldwork’ is multi-sided. It entails the anthropologist’s diligence—as well as boredom and frustration. The well-documented negative comments about the people the anthropologist studied (made by Malinowski in his private writings) have tortured anthropology’s self-image of benevolence and acceptance of ‘primitive societies’. Anthropologists are not just positive heroes who diligently work ‘in the field’ to bring the understanding of unknown