LEGO's

Question 1

How does Jaan Valsiner explain culture?

Answer 1

• Culture is viewed as a process of semiotic mediation of human relations with the environment.
• Culture is a tool and object of constant innovation of human ways of living.
• Culture is co-constructed by the person relating with others, and oriented towards reaching some goals (Valsiner, 2014, p. 51)

Question 2

What does Valsiner mean by illusory intersubjectivity and actual intersubjectivity?

Answer 2

Argument from Ragnar Rommetveit (1985) in Valsiner (2014):

• Based on the illusion of understanding “the other”.
• A relationship can change from imaginary to an experienced other
• There is always an asymmetric pattern in the relationship (symmetry is a transitory phase between asymmetri)
• 2 versions of encounter with the other: relaxed + endangered (blocking/protecting)

Question 3

What was the example with the horizon all about?

Answer 3

“Horizontal movement” is a process of generalization and abstraction - or signification

• constant re-positioning of sender and receiver
• signs to enhance the abstraction process
• experiences between past and present creates a hyper-generalized sign

Question 4

What’s a schema all about?

Answer 4

Bartlett

• an alternative to memory as saved spaciously in the brain
• memory is between the environment and the organism

Question 5

What is the limits of the interactionism perspective?

Answer 5

Harry Heft

• Individuals is seen independent and as entities
• ex with “billiard”-balls and linear causality gives a mechanic view on human being
• Heft’s 3 conditions: dynamic, dependent + constituting

Question 6

Under which conditions will spaces become places?

Answer 6

When the encounter enters the room and starts adding meaning, so anyplace becomes a meaningful place
- also a hierachy is being made, fx comparison to home (Nikita Kharlamov)

Question 7

What is dialogicality?

Answer 7

An interplay between self and “other”

- Discursive perspective: Bakhtin, polyphony, utterance

Question 8

What is an index?

Answer 8

Direct contact with the object

Question 9

What is an icon?

Answer 9

Indirect contact, non-physical, analogic relation

Question 10

What is a symbol

Answer 10

No relation with the object, only interpretation

Question 11

Mention 3 levels of artefacts

Answer 11

Primary: Materiel and symbolic
Secondary: Representations and rules
Tertiary: Organized human actions and common sense

Question 12

How can we understand overload?

Answer 12

Reference to the system’s capability to cope with input from the environment

Question 13

What can we say about italian family dinner conversations?

Answer 13

Laura Sterponi

• accountability in family discourse
• account as excuses or justifications
• 60 videos, 20 families, 7 excerpts
• position; controlling function and autonomi/responsibility

Question 14

What is irreversible time?

Answer 14

We can’t go back in time, we’re always in the present looking forward while using past experinces

Question 15

How does John Shotter explain realities?

Answer 15

Realities is described from an egologic dynamic perspective with regard to social constructionism
- in a postmod world realities is more fragmented, dynamic and caotic

Question 16

What does John Shotter think is interesting to study about language?

Answer 16

Languages formative, shaping function and the resistances they meet (so when speaking in contrast to spoken words)