Subjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Life 9783030299774, 3030299775

Table of contents :
1 Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge – The Formation of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research. . . . . . Ernst Schraube and Charlotte Højholt
Part I Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living
2 Subjectivity, Conflictuality, and Generalization
in Social Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt
3 Rethinking Generalization with Kurt Lewin
and Action Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Dege
...... . 1
...... . 23
...... . 41
4 Developing a Dialectical Understanding of Generalization: An Unfinalized Dialogue Between Vygotsky and Davydov . . Manolis Dafermos
...... . 61 5 Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events . . . . . . . 79
Jaan Valsiner
Part II Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological Generalization
6 On the Worldliness of the General: Why Concepts
Matter Ethically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Jytte Bang
7 Generalizing Together with Children: The Significance
of Children’s Concepts for Mutual Knowledge Creation . . . . . . . . . . 115 Niklas Alexander Chimirri
8 9
Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art
of Generalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Luca Tateo
Reproducing the General Through the Local: Lessons
from Poverty Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot
Part III Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization
10 Generalizations in Situated Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Ole Dreier
11 Situated Generalization with Prototypes in Dialogical Teaching . . . . 195 Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck
12 Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical Strategies
of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Citation preview

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences

Charlotte Højholt Ernst Schraube Editors

Subjectivity and Knowledge Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Life

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences Series Editor Jaan Valsiner Department of Communication and Psychology Aalborg University Aalborg, Denmark

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences will fill in the gap in the existing coverage of links between new theoretical advancements in the social and human sciences and their historical roots. Making that linkage is crucial for the interdisciplinary synthesis across the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, semiotics, and the political sciences. In contemporary human sciences of the 21st there exists increasing differentiation between neurosciences and all other sciences that are aimed at making sense of the complex social, psychological, and political processes. Thus new series has the purpose of (1) coordinating such efforts across the borders of existing human and social sciences, (2) providing an arena for possible inter-disciplinary theoretical syntheses, (3) bring into attention of our contemporary scientific community innovative ideas that have been lost in the dustbin of history for no good reasons, and (4) provide an arena for international communication between social and human scientists across the World. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15826

Charlotte Højholt  •  Ernst Schraube Editors

Subjectivity and Knowledge Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Life

Editors Charlotte Højholt Social Psychology of Everyday Life Department of People and Technology Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark

Ernst Schraube Social Psychology of Everyday Life Department of People and Technology Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark

ISSN 2523-8663     ISSN 2523-8671 (electronic) Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences ISBN 978-3-030-29976-7    ISBN 978-3-030-29977-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editor’s Preface

 iving Through Generalizing: Psychology of Desire L for Becoming This book—Subjectivity and Knowledge: Generalization in the Psychological Study of Everyday Life—is an important milestone in the theoretical advancement of the social sciences in our twenty-first century. Its editors—Charlotte Højholt and Ernst Schraube—have brought together a critical mass of scholars who collectively bring the need to consider the focus on generalization remain central for science and social practices. The volume leads to cardinal rethinking generalization in psychological theory, methodology, and research practice. The very core of the psychological science is open to new questions. The questions are many. How to get in touch and explore general connections between various areas of knowledge on the basis of the situated, partial, and contextual character of psychological phenomena? What is the role of critique in the processes of generalization? How to develop analytical concepts and strategies which help us to conceive psychological phenomena as processes and movements, and how does the development of psychological knowledge involve transformations of everyday practice? We create new solutions—in technology, in our ways of living in the environment, and in our thinking of it all—all the time. Technological innovations become not only helpful for living but turn into essentials of our human living. Anybody who has forgotten to take one’s cellular phone along leaving home and feels that one’s self is denied access to the latest Facebook news can testify about the paradoxical takeover of the human psyche by a small technological device— albeit through the meaning construction processes of the proud owner of that trivial communication aid. At the same time as generalization possibilities are being sought after in the book, the authors operate with the credo that science needs to explain the complex phenomena of our everyday lives and contribute to its betterment. Everyday living is unique—deeply subjective in its multitude of variations. Human beings live through their encounters with their Umwelts—and living through equals feeling v

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through. We feel into our environments and by doing that develop ourselves for further encounters with the world. Social practices carried out by human beings are affective practices—a simple truth that can be understood when one observes football fans performing their support acts on a stadium, or a gambler in a casino, or a mother trying to cope with her toddler’s temper tantrum in front of the supermarket audience. All of the participants in these dramatic events view these as meaningful—“our team must win,” “I want to win,” and “my child should obey” are the parallel reflections of subjective kinds to support the publicly visible actions. All these (and other) reflections are local particulars—yet the subjective affectivated (Cornejo et  al. 2018) meanings are a form of single-instance generalizations of desires and normativity. Human beings are intentional actors who strive towards goals beyond each and every local everyday life situation—yet the pathways towards these goals are worked out in each here-and-now situation. The present volume continues the path of inquiry into new directions in psychology that was outlined in the “Yokohama Manifesto” of 2016. In that collective work (Valsiner et al. 2016) the interdisciplinary foundations for the science of a specifically human kind of psychology which starts from the axiomatic bases of an open-­ systemic look at the psychological functioning of a species where higher psychological functions play a primary role in our relating with our environments. Psychological phenomena are unique among those of other sciences by being organized through normative constraints (Christensen 2019) and are inherently social in their origins (Joerchel and Benetka 2018). Psychological science is therefore necessarily in need to develop new conceptualizations of its approaches as normativity is not part of the phenomena of any other natural science. For that reason, borrowing theoretical systems from psychology’s usual “reference points” in the natural sciences—physics, chemistry, or even biology—would not lead to adequate epistemological solutions. Our contemporary fascination with the neurosciences is an intellectual impasse that replaces finding new solutions for understanding by the seductive beauty of multicolored brain images. Psychology as science needs to find its own solutions—rather than import these, wholesale, from neighboring disciplines. Nevertheless, there are some “near neighbors” from whom we can benefit. Closest to psychology’s needs would be developmental biology—yet even there the development of biological systems does not include radical reorganization of the whole biological system by an “inherent intention” of that system to innovate itself towards some goal state of an imaginary new “final form.” Psychological science of everyday life phenomena needs to be built on the assumptions of the active creation of novel forms of subjective personal worlds under the influence of invented possible and desirable states of the system in the future. Innovations in technologies and fashion designs demonstrate the open-endedness of human imagination. This specificity of psychology—a science of how desires for the future become turned into realities of human being in its present (and rapidly emerging past)—necessarily is based on the acts of generalization. These acts, however, acquire a special focus—that of generalizing for the future. The future of a developing human being is unknown—our personal life histories cannot be predetermined by the past. The

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specific features of the here-and-now states of being cannot be directly transferred to possible future encounters with similar settings. The experience from the present needs to be encoded into a generalized abstracted form to be recontextualized in the future. Such generalization operates on the basis of single instances—particular encounters with the world—so as to be pre-adapting for future similar (but never precisely the same) conditions. We are never the same but always similar. This simple general feature of psychological phenomena—never being “the same,” as the irreversibility of human life courses rules that out, but experiencing conditions that the meaning-making mind detects as being “similar” (to some past encounter)—makes the focus of this volume on generalization the arena for crucial innovation in psychological science of the twenty-first century. Aalborg, Denmark June, 2019

Jaan Valsiner

References Christensen, B. A. (Ed.) (2019). The second cognitive revolution: A tribute to Rom Harré. New York: Springer. Cornejo, C., Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2018). I activate you to affect me: Affectivating as a cultural psychological phenomenon. In C. Cornejo, G. Marsico & J.  Valsiner (Eds.), I activate you to affect me: Vol. 2. Annals of Cultural Psychology series (pp. 1–10). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Joerchel, A. C., & Benetka, G. (Eds.) (2018). Memories of Gustav Ichheiser: Life and work of an exiled social scientist. New York: Springer. Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (Eds.) (2016). Psychology as the science of human being. Cham: Springer.

Contents

1 Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge – The Formation of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research�������������������������    1 Ernst Schraube and Charlotte Højholt Part I Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living 2 Subjectivity, Conflictuality, and Generalization in Social Praxis ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   23 Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt 3 Rethinking Generalization with Kurt Lewin and Action Research��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   41 Martin Dege 4 Developing a Dialectical Understanding of Generalization: An Unfinalized Dialogue Between Vygotsky and Davydov������������������   61 Manolis Dafermos 5 Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events��������������   79 Jaan Valsiner Part II Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological Generalization 6 On the Worldliness of the General: Why Concepts Matter Ethically ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Jytte Bang 7 Generalizing Together with Children: The Significance of Children’s Concepts for Mutual Knowledge Creation��������������������  115 Niklas Alexander Chimirri

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Contents

8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art of Generalization��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  141 Luca Tateo 9 Reproducing the General Through the Local: Lessons from Poverty Research����������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot Part III Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization 10 Generalizations in Situated Practices����������������������������������������������������  177 Ole Dreier 11 Situated Generalization with Prototypes in Dialogical Teaching��������  195 Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck 12 Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical Strategies of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research�������������������������  221 Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  243

Contributors

Erik  Axel  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Jytte  Bang  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Peter Busch-Jensen  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Niklas Alexander Chimirri  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Manolis Dafermos  Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece Martin Dege  Department of Psychology, The American University of Paris, Paris, France Ole Dreier  Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Shiloh Groot  Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Darrin Hodgetts  School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand Charlotte  Højholt  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Pita King  School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand Line  Lerche  Mørck  Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Morten Nissen  Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

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Contributors

Ernst Schraube  Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Ottilie  Stolte  School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Luca Tateo  Pós-graduação em Ensino, Filosofia e História das Ciências, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark Jaan Valsiner  Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Chapter 1

Introduction: Subjectivity and Knowledge – The Formation of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research Ernst Schraube and Charlotte Højholt

Psychological phenomena are furnished with an astonishing doubleness: they are unique and general at the same time. Not only because of language, and because the words we use to articulate and give meaning to our experiences and activities unite the particular and the general, but also because we as human beings are social beings, developing our individual, unique, and particular mental life together with others in a common world. That is why the relationship between the particular and the general and processes of generalization are continuously at stake in people’s everyday lives. However, generalization is also a key activity of science. While outside science it is usually a more implicit process, it forms the heart of scientific research. The central aim of generalization within science is to engage in overcoming superficial, one-sided, and distorted ways of thinking and to develop systematic, reliable, and socially relevant knowledge. Society’s trust in science is based on a cogent practice of generalization and the idea that scientific research does not pursue one-sided and selective interests, but engages in developing multisided and general knowledge for the common good. Over the past few decades, there have been major critiques, from various perspectives, of the common practice of generalization in psychological research. Some even argue that the concept should be to abandon entirely. One problem articulated in the debates, for example, refers to the disposition to identify general knowledge with static, universal, and final knowledge created through methods isolating the objects of research from their connections in the social world. Such a perspective can invite an understanding of knowledge in knowledge hierarchies in which contextual, involved, and everyday knowledge is seen not as knowledge but as subjective views in need of objective correction. An example could be the

E. Schraube (*) · C. Højholt Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_1

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c­ollaboration of different professions on a particular case. When psychological experts present numbers or results from a test, it is considered as indisputable knowledge, while professionals working with the case in everyday practice present their experiences and understandings of connections it is often turned down as “anecdotes of everyday life” (Røn Larsen 2016), subjective, involved, and emotional. Within a hierarchical and disembodied vision of the production of knowledge, psychological research can turn into a control science involved in “governing the soul” (Rose 1999) and regulating, normalizing, and differentiating persons and their mental lives, and essential issues of human life slide out of the epistemic horizon. Attention to differences, for example, can turn into differentiating between persons and objectifying and othering particular people instead of studying common problems of the human world. In this way subjectivity is eliminated, together with the social context of everyday life to which subjectivity is connected. However, how can we understand psychological phenomena if we disarticulate human subjectivity and the uniqueness of each individual human being? As Jaan Valsiner emphasizes, “We need to come to terms with the uneasy recognition that it is the personally unique subjectivity that is objective in psychology” (2014: 6). We understand human subjectivity not as something inside persons but connected to persons’ experience, action, and collective participation in the everyday world and their ways of perceiving, forming, and changing social and material conditions. The everyday world is composed of and developed through differences, conflicts, and changes in relation to shared matters. From different positions and with different kinds of responsibility and access to knowledge about a problem, persons strive with and coordinate their efforts in relation to many-sided common causes and concerns (Axel and Højholt 2019, Chap. 2 in this volume). The practice of generalization in psychological research has to relate to such common processes in continuous change, building on particular subjective experiences and action, and analyzing the relevant internal relations, connections, and constructions of meaning. Psychology, which roots psychological processes in human life, has to transcend the disposition to understand generalization as a practice of disarticulating social connections and human subjectivity and embrace a scientific research practice which facilitates an understanding of how persons experience, act, and create meaning in a common world. The vision of a disembodied, static, and universal knowledge represents a major challenge in the production of psychological knowledge and insight. Based on a critique of disembodied and universalist conceptions of developing psychological knowledge, this book is engaged in rethinking the practice of generalization in psychological theory, methodology, and research. How do we get in touch and explore general connections on the basis of the situated, subjective, and contextual character of psychological phenomena? What is the role of critique in the processes of generalization? How do we systematically include the subjectivity of the researcher as well as the research participants in the practice of generalization? How do we develop analytical concepts and strategies which help us to conceive of psychological phenomena as processes and movements, and how does the development of psychological knowledge involve transformations of everyday practice? The chapters of the book contribute to a theoretical and methodological vocabulary which systematically includes the subjective dimension of human life in psy-

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chological inquiry and situates the processes of generalization in persons’ common, social, cultural, and material practices of everyday living. The authors engage in developing an understanding of generalization as a basis for forming a viable future society. Before we present the chapters of the book, we will begin by delineating major approaches to generalization in psychological research, and then we will reconsider the challenge for psychology to include human subjectivity and everyday life in the production of knowledge and describe significant perspectives from the history of psychology contributing to the formation of situated, subjectivity-and-­ context-based generalization in psychological research.

 ajor Understandings of Generalization in Psychological M Research Within contemporary psychological research, we can distinguish three major approaches to generalization as the basis for the production of theory and knowledge: first, numerical traditions, generalizing through representative samples primarily based on quantitative methodology; second, post-generalizing traditions, which conceive of generalization not as a decisive goal in scientific research; and third, situated traditions, emphasizing the significance of scientific generalization and generalizing not through representative samples but through subjectivity-in-­ context primarily based on a qualitative methodology. Each of these approaches provides an important epistemic quality and has its place in scientific work. However, “the difficulties arise,” as Charles Tolman underlines, when one of them “is taken as the principal or only form of generalization” (1989: 203). Even though situated and subjectivity-based traditions of generalization can be found throughout the history of psychology, numerical approaches have almost exclusively dominated the production of knowledge in psychology since the early part of the twentieth century. In this book we argue for an epistemological shift and for expanding and redirecting the practice of generalization in psychological research toward a situated, subjectivity-and-context-based conception of generalization. This shift refers to the specific content and characteristics of the psychological subject matter. An embodied, qualitative perspective is the fundament of any numerical account.

Numerical Generalization Numerical generalization (other common terms are generalization in frequencies [e.g. Holzkamp 1983], nomological generalization [e.g., Kaplan 1964], or the quite misleading term empirical generalization [e.g. Flick 2014]) focuses on classification and identification of traits or principles that are common to the largest number of instances. The methodological strategies build on measuring the phenomena in their relations, identifying the general with the abstract, detached from concrete social

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contexts. Within this perspective, generalization is seen as not possible from a single case. This principle refers to the problem of induction and the notion that it is logically untenable to conclude from a single case to many or all cases (or from unknown to known, or from particular to general propositions). Therefore, the research design is usually based on representative samples which aim to adequately reflect the population as a whole so that the findings of the sample can be “generalized” to the population. To generalize, here, therefore means to generalize through representative samples. It is a form of concluding on the basis of statistical inference from a representative sample to a more general population, category, or class and in this way a move toward the abstract aiming at universality. Major traditions of psychological research build on numerical generalization of frequencies as the basis of evidence and the central practice of developing knowledge, and apply it in various forms especially in classical experimental settings as well as surveys with questionnaires. The exploration of frequencies can definitely help to develop relevant and societally important knowledge, especially about the distribution of a phenomenon (for instance, about the frequency of stress in a certain population). However, as the principal or only form of epistemic approach in psychological research, it would be too narrow and one-sided. Usually, the results require further, more in-depth psychological investigation to shed light on the phenomenon in its relevant contexts (e.g., why and how do persons of a certain population develop stress, how is it experienced in everyday practice, what is stress about, and what kind of conditions is it connected with?). One issue, which refers to a fundamental dilemma of generalization in frequencies is, that the methodological strategies make it difficult to access the richness of psychological phenomena. Depending on how numbers are used, interpreted, and communicated, they may lead to a kind of overgeneralization. In fact, epistemic strategies of measuring can reduce and even distort psychological phenomena and undermine the possibility of investigating human subjectivity, experience, and action. Accordingly, a major concern with numerical generalization as the only form of developing psychological knowledge refers to the lack of systematically including human subjectivity in the epistemic account. How can we approach and constructively work with the problems, concerns, and dilemmas of people in the contexts in which they actually unfold if we do not include the subjective experience, perception, emotion, thought, and reasons for action of persons? How can we contribute with substantial knowledge to understanding and bringing movement into the ­problems of human life if we do not systematically include human agency and the creation of and dealing with the problems we are confronted with in our contemporary world? When the world is dangling on a string and natural scientists are warning that the whole is at risk (Ripple et al. 2017: 1028, in the declaration Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, signed by over 15,000 scientists), the question of rethinking scientific generalization and the relationship between the particular and the general is at stake. To be able to understand and work with these issues and participate in forming a possible future society, we have to systematically include the question of human subjectivity, experience, and agency. Since the 1960s, the issue of a too narrow, particular, and fixed conception of generalization and ways of developing scientific knowledge has been widely dis-

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cussed in psychology, including the need for a fundamental epistemic renewal of psychological research practice (Chimirri and Schraube 2019; Gergen 2015; Holzkamp 1983, 2013a; Teo 2009; Valsiner et al. 2016). In response, an epistemological shift from a god’s eye view toward situated knowledge has crystallized in psychological theory of science and the understanding of the practice of developing scientific knowledge. The representational vision of the production of knowledge is especially challenged today, as well as the notion of the researcher as an isolated knower who stands outside the world, aiming to produce knowledge which represents the world correctly (Brinkmann 2012; Bang 2019, Chap. 6 in this volume). Scholars realize that their research activities and practices in developing knowledge do not occur in a social vacuum, but are rooted in the world, a world involving other human beings as well as societal relations, culture, technology, politics, and nature. They realize that through their research and production of knowledge, they not only participate in the creation of the social world, but also view the social world in turn as affecting their research practices, including their theories, concepts, and methodologies as well as their own thoughts, ideas, and conduct of everyday life (Jensen 1999; O’Doherty et al. 2019). With the words of Svend Brinkmann: Knowing is not something that simply happens – as if we were able to magically represent the world ‘as it is’ – but rather … an activity. Knowing is something people do, as part of their lives … . We need to desacralize knowledge and admit that if knowing is a human activity, it is always already situated somewhere – in some cultural, historical and social situation. (2012: 32)

With an extensive body of theoretical as well as empirical work, Science Studies substantiate this epistemological shift and argue for an understanding of scientific research and the production of knowledge as an inherently worldly situated, embodied, and socially and culturally constructed process (Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Hess 1997). As the historian of science Donna Haraway explains, the “view from above”, the isolated, disconnected, and infinitive scientific vision is no longer convincing, “only partial perspective promises objective vision” (1991: 190), and she argues for transcending the dichotomy between human subjectivity and scientific objectivity. The topography of subjectivity is multi-dimensional; so, therefore, is vision. The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another. Here is the promise of objectivity: a scientific knower seeks the subject position not of identity, but of objectivity; that is, partial connection. (1991: 193)

Post-Generalizing Approaches Drawing on the epistemological shift toward a situated, subjectivity-based conception of the production of knowledge, post-generalizing traditions of thought emerged, which fundamentally question scientific generalization and conceive of it as neither possible nor desirable. Within this perspective, the diversity and multi-

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plicity of psychological phenomena and human life are seen in conflict with nomothetic accounts aiming to identify general principles and laws. Scientific practices of classification and categorization cannot acknowledge and facilitate the investigation of the heterogeneity and contextuality of human experience. However, psychological inquiry, which appreciates the unique and gives proper weight to the diversity of human life in local conditions (including those in which numerical generalizations are applied)—so the main argument—has to turn any generalization into a tentative working hypothesis, not a conclusion. As Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba explain, “Local conditions … make it impossible to generalize. If there is a ‘true’ generalization, it is that there can be no generalization” (1985: 124). The shift toward situated epistemologies and the inclusion of the subjectivity, diversity, and multiplicity of human life consequently involves a move toward understanding scientific inquiry as action. To a certain extent, the science-as-action perspective can also lead to a post-generalizing perspective. Within this view, the success of scientific research can be seen as based not on the universality and truth-­ claims of knowledge, but on its social relevance and how it actually can do something, contributing to improve the world and changing it for the better, including people’s everyday life. “The researcher,” Kenneth Gergen notes, is “an active agent in fashioning the future” (2015: 305). “The aim of research,” he explains, is not “to illuminate what is, but to create what is to become” (2015: 294), and he argues for “research as a future forming practice – a practice in which social change is indeed the primary goal” (2015: 292). The perfectly justified emphasis on science-as-action can turn the question of generalization into a more marginal issue, pivotal is only how scientific research and the production of knowledge matters as a part of forming a viable future society. However, it could be stated that any activity to form a viable future society involves the question of the relationship between the particular and the general and specific practices of generalization. In fact, the specific practices of generalization are, in our perspective, a central question in the making of the world. In continuation of such thinking, we cannot just reject generalization, but have to expand and re-­ invent it. That is our vision with the concept of situated generalization.

Situated Generalization Traditions of situated generalization (also commonly described as substantial [e.g., Davydov 1984], structural [e.g., Holzkamp 1983], analytical [e.g., Kvale and Brinkmann 2009], or theoretical generalization [e.g., Demuth 2017]) build on a qualitative stance; however, this does not mean that they dismiss quantitative methodology but rather that they include it, if appropriate, in relation to the specific content and questions of the investigation. Situated generalization systematically includes human subjectivity, context, and change and focuses on the investigation of the genesis, internal relations, and interconnections of phenomena in the construction of psychological knowledge. It attempts to achieve scientific objectivity and

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general knowledge not at the cost of the subjective and by disarticulating the subjective dimension of human life, but rather through the generalization of the subjective. It is correct that we cannot conclude from a single case to many or all cases. However, because psychological phenomena are subjective givens, psychological generalization is only possible from and through single cases, and we have to expand the conception of generalization as quantitative conclusions toward a qualitative stance of elucidating the subjective in its worldly connections. As Valsiner explains: Not only is generalization from the single case possible – but it is the only possible base for generalization. And even more – generalization necessarily happens on the basis of a single instance  – each and every new experience  – within the life space of the single case…. While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we operate through general principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments. Generalization is possible from any single instance of our encounters with the environment. Generality is in singularity. (2015: 233)

The key to situated generalization is the notion that generality is in singularity. It builds on the conception that individual human beings are social beings, living their everyday life together with others in a shared world. Even if psychological processes are subjective, particular and unique, they do not exhaust themselves in it, but relate in their general dimensions to others and the objective world with its possibilities and limits. That is why they integrate the fascinating doubleness of being unique and general at the same time (Brock 2016; Dreier 2007; Salvatore and Valsiner 2010). And that is why the practice of generalization matters, not only in the construction of theory and knowledge, but also more fundamentally in people’s everyday life, the making of the social and material world and the formation of future society. Because we cannot recognize immediately in the unique, subjective experiences how they relate to the common world in its relevant dimensions, the investigation of the internal relations and the processes of making meaning of ourselves in the world is precisely the task of psychology as a science. Starting from specific questions, problems, and concerns in everyday experience, situated generalization is in such an approach rooted in human subjectivity. However, it is a world-oriented practice and a continuous process of exploring human experience and action (and their ­implications) in their relevant worldly connections as a way to analyze, work with, and bring movement into the problems of human life. The fundamental challenge of situated psychological generalization is how can we achieve generalization, objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the uniqueness, individuality, and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena? This challenge forms the central question of this volume, and all chapters engage with it. Looking back over the history of psychology, in the following paragraph, we present major lines of thought dealing with this challenge and contributing to a psychological conception of how to develop knowledge through the generalization of the subjective. But first, we will take a look at why it is so difficult for scientific psychology to include human subjectivity in its epistemological framework.

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 ubjectivity, Everyday Life, and Psychological Origins S of Situated Generalization Psychology’s difficulty with systematically including the subjective dimension of human life in its theoretical and methodological framework can be traced back to some confusion in understanding the relationship between human subjectivity and scientific objectivity. Major psychological traditions assume that human subjectivity represents bias. Both the subjectivity of the researcher and the subjectivity of research participants seem to be incompatible with scientific objectivity—therefore, we cannot consider it. However, such a scientific vision seems illusory. It denies the reality that psychological phenomena are given subjectively. Instead of starting from the content of research, the human subject and her/his psychological processes, and asking about objectivity and generalization from that point to attain scientific knowledge, the starting point is the apparently objective methodology, and on this basis, the content of research is operationalized and “objectively” constructed (Teo 2015). Reversing the form of knowledge production in psychology in this way demonstrates confusion between epistemic and ontological objectivity, a kind of misunderstanding that the philosopher of mind, John Searle, has described in detail. He explains: We resist accepting subjectivity as a ground floor, irreducible phenomenon of nature because, since the seventeenth century, we have come to believe that science must be objective. But this involves a pun on the notion of objectivity. We are confusing the epistemic objectivity of the scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical subject matter … Since science aims at objectivity in the epistemic sense that we seek truths that are not dependent on the particular point of view of this or that investigator, it has been tempting to conclude that the reality investigated by science must be objective in the sense of existing independently of the experiences in the human individual. But this last feature, ontological objectivity, is not an essential trait of science. If science is supposed to give an account of how the world works and if subjective states of consciousness are part of the world, then we should seek an (epistemically) objective account of an (ontologically) subjective reality, the reality of subjective states of consciousness. What I am arguing here is that we can have an epistemically objective science of a domain that is ontologically subjective. (2002: 11)

Psychological phenomena are simply subjective givens. On the one hand, they are always socially mediated processes (through social, discursive, cultural and technological practice); on the other hand, they are always someone’s processes. They exist from the point of view of a unique human being who experiences them, and in this sense in a subjective, first-person mode (Schraube 2013; Teo 2017). The emotion of love, for example, is ontologically subjective in the sense that it only exists because it is experienced by individual subjects. Without the concrete experience of love by an individual, there is no love. Love is an emotion, socially mediated in a specific historical practice, but still we explore it through different individual subjects’ different experiences with it—connected to their specific participation in social practice. That is why the analysis of connections is so fundamental to generalization (Højholt and Kousholt 2019). Accordingly, because the typical subject

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matter of psychology is ontologically subjective reality the epistemic objectivity of the scientific investigation has to be based on it. Therefore, the personally unique subjectivity is objective in psychology, and we have to come to terms with it as the foundation of our processes of generalization and of developing knowledge. As already mentioned, the concept of subjectivity not only refers to human experience and the multiplicity of psychological processes but also to human action. This includes the notion that humans do not just live their life in a world, but are actively engaged in the making of the societal world on the basis of their experience and action, which in turn is re-making themselves. To be able to grasp this internal relation between subjectivity and the world in its concrete form, we work with the concept everyday life. Everyday life, in our perspective, does not refer just to a particular context, such as everyday life in public spaces, but to all the various everyday contexts and practices—family, educational institutions, organizations, workplaces, digital spaces, etc.—in and through which psychological processes actually unfold (Brinkmann 2012, 2015; Hodgetts et al. 2020; Højholt and Schraube 2016; Lave 2019; Lave and Wenger 1991; Lawrence et al. 2004). The concept does not exclude broader cultural, societal and technological relations: on the contrary, everyday contexts are embedded in broader societal structures which are accessible through the everyday, perhaps in their most concrete form. The concept conduct of everyday life tries to grasp such an integrated understanding of subjectivity in everyday contexts and practices (Dreier 2016; Holzkamp 2013b, 2016; Schraube and Højholt 2016). Despite the difficulties of psychology to include the subjective dimension of human life in its epistemological frame, psychologies of human subjectivity permeate the history of psychology from the very beginning. Within these traditions, we can find the endeavor to develop subjectivity-in-context-based conceptions of scientific generalization, and from this body of work, we present in the following a few important contributions to the formation of situated generalization. In an historical review of the development of psychology of the nineteenth century, William Stern, one of the most distinctive psychologists of the early twentieth century, differentiated between two major directions: “subject-less psychology” (subjektlose Psychologie) rooted in a natural science tradition and “subject-­ psychology” (Subjektpsychologie) rooted in a concept of an active human subject, integrating various dimensions of mental life in the individual person (1900: 431). Although major parts of his body of work engage in experimental psychology in a natural science tradition, he also knew about its limits. With the development of his Critical Personalism, he puts the person in everyday life at the center of his thinking. His theory of early childhood and language development, for example, was based on an investigation of his own everyday family life with three children and included detailed research diaries covering more than 18 years. Stern can be seen as the founding father of the psychological study of everyday life, influential already during his time (e.g., for the research by Martha Muchow and her classical study of children’s everyday life in the city [Muchow and Muchow 2015]). Generalization, Stern argues, requires rethinking psychological research as “synthesis” and “to trace the connections between the phenomena investigated” (1938: 15). As he explains:

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E. Schraube and C. Højholt Since man and the human mind are in the midst of a world, mental phenomena are connected with the most varied spheres, even with spheres outside mind; the body, fields of external stimulation (light, sound, etc.), climate and weather, other people and human society, civilization, historical circumstances, values. (Stern 1938: 15)

With his notion of persons as active subjects in the world, his concept of synthetic investigation as well as his concern with moving psychological research out of the laboratory into everyday life, in which psychological processes actually unfold, he contributes with important steps toward a situated approach to developing psychological knowledge. Furthermore, with the concept of psychography (Stern 1911: 327), he suggests not sample-based but individual-based research practices which actually take the uniqueness and diversity of human life seriously, and which can be seen, as Valsiner underlines, as “the starting point to understand how generalization occurs from single episodes of the lives of single persons” (2019: 14, Chap. 5 in this volume). Kurt Lewin with his Topological Psychology and the development of Action Research continues in a subject-psychological direction. His concept of generalization refers to human action and connects it systematically with the fabric of the everyday world aiming to increase human agency. Building on a critique of an Aristotelian mode of thought in which lawfulness remains limited to the recurrence of the same event—an idea which underlies the practice of generalization in frequencies—he argues in a Galilean mode of thought for rethinking the lawfulness and intelligibility of psychological events. “Lawfulness,” he noted, is “inherent in the nature of the psychic, and hence in all psychic processes, even those occurring only once” (1931: 152). Every activity and single case, he recognized in his attempt to rethink lawfulness, can be considered as lawful in the sense of meaningful, because it resonates with the general structure of the social space in which it occurs (Tateo 2013). Lewin worked with the question of the relationship between the particular and the general, the individual and lawful by taking the single case as a starting point and exploring the dynamics of human life in the concrete situations and social life-spaces in which psychological processes unfold and by examining the concrete possibilities and limits of human experience and action within these spaces. As Martin Dege explains, “Lewin lays the grounds to rethink generalization as a tool in the hands of the research subjects to understand and shape their individual life-space agentively” (2019, Chap. 3 in this volume). One of the founders of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Lew Vygotzky, expands the formation of situated generalization. The activity of generalization, we can learn here, is based on language, general concepts, and theory. Understanding the phenomena under investigation is not independent of the words we use, and all words and concepts already embody a process of generalization. Language is the medium of the human capacity to think, understand and act, and essential in any process of developing scientific knowledge. As Vygotzky explains: Everything described as a fact is already a theory … When we meet what is called a cow and say: “This is a cow,” we add the act of thinking to the act of perception, bringing the given perception under a general concept … I do not see that this is a cow, for this cannot be seen. I see something big, black, moving, lowing, etc., and understand that this is a cow.

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And this act is an act of classification, of assigning a singular phenomenon to the class of similar phenomena, of systematizing the experience etc. Thus, language itself contains the basis and possibilities for the scientific knowledge of a fact. The word is the germ of science and in this sense we can say that in the beginning of science was the word. (1927/1997: 250f).

No empirical reality is ever perceived just as such; instead, it is always perceived through the available language and theoretical concepts which, in turn, affect our views of the world and, thus, our relations to it. In this sense, psychological research does not just reflect (or represent) reality but virtually creates reality through the way it conceptualizes it. Every form of empirical research requires explicit theory and concepts, otherwise it would be lost in pure reproduction of norms, traditions, and immediate understandings. Scientific generalization therefore includes a continuous work with the concepts and theoretical vocabulary employed in the investigation (Dafermos 2019, Chap. 4 in this volume). Furthermore, we can learn from Activity Theory that not only activity and language but also the material objects produced through human activity involve processes of generalization. As Aleksei N.  Leontyev explains with the example of an axe: The use of an axe not only corresponds to the objectives of a practical action but at the same time objectively reflects the properties of the object, i.e. the object of labour, onto which its action is directed. The blow of an axe subjects the material that constitutes this object to an unfailing test; it makes a practical analysis and generalisation of the objective properties of objects according to a certain attribute objectivised in the tool itself. It is thus the tool that is the carrier or vector of the first real conscious, rational abstraction, the first real conscious, rational generalisation. (2009: 191)

The produced material tools, objects, and technologies refer to human life. They embody human experience and action, and in their making, the relationship between the particular and the general and the processes of generalization are at stake. These generalization processes are never complete thought-out; they are in a certain extent always narrow, one-sided, ambivalent, and partial and therefore require continuous critical deliberation and re-formation of materialized generalizations (Chimirri and Schraube 2019). Within the tradition of Cultural Psychology, Jaan Valsiner and colleagues contribute to the vision of generalization as an ever-new process of signification and meaning-making. The conception emphasizes the central role of generalization in any scientific endeavor and fundamentally challenges any form of scientific generalization which does not acknowledge that any event in the world exists in particulars. Accordingly, psychological generalization is addressed and elaborated through the uniqueness and concrete situation of human living and an exploration of the various ways we create meaning in an ever-changing world of becoming. An essential dimension of such “intersubjective generalization” (Tateo 2016: 59) is seen in the processes of reflexivity, distancing, and breaking away from the uniqueness, subjectivity, and concrete reality of human life through abstraction, signs, models, and analyses of the conditions under which the concrete reality of human life occurs. As Zach Beckstead, Kenneth Cabell and Jaan Valsiner underline:

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E. Schraube and C. Højholt If phenomena are qualitatively organized by the whole system they are embedded within (and interrelated with) then generalization should not be based on premises of separate variables, but rather generalization should be based on the premises of generalizing under what systemic conditions something occurs. (2009: 72)

However, the processes of reflexivity, distancing, and analyzing conditions do not mean constructing abstract knowledge disconnected from the concrete reality of human life; on the contrary, as Valsiner explains, “The key to generalization is the distancing from the single instance while retaining a connection with it, for the future” (2015: 241). In his endeavor of developing Critical Psychology as a Science of Human Subjectivity, Klaus Holzkamp contributes to the formation of situated generalization with the concept of generalization of possibilities. The concept is based on a systematically developed conception of human subjectivity and a theoretical and methodological framework articulating in detail the complex societal mediation of human life. Quite close to Lewin’s perspective, it connects societal structures and everyday practices with the possibilities and constraints of human experience and action. Because human experience and agency refer to a shared social world, “my” experience actually refers to the experiences of others. Through my personal experience, I am connected with other people in real terms, because our experiences relate to the same world and its fabric of possibilities, constraints, problems, and necessities for action. In such an intersubjective context of experience, subjective experience becomes objectifiable and generalizable as the individual ways of participating, dealing with and realizing societal possibilities and limits of experience and action. As Klaus Holzkamp noted: Generalization here means recognizing and accounting for those mediational levels and aspects by which each particular case of subjective-intersubjective experience or situations is understandable as a specific manifestation of a general case. (1991: 77–78)

Within this perspective, to generalize implies not to disarticulate or abstract away subjectivity. On the contrary, its aim is to understand difference and uniqueness as different forms of appearance of general connections and, based on an analysis of the social conditions, to clarify the possibilities, constraints, and necessities for action as a fundament for developing everyday practice. Such historical origins and conceptual contributions move the production of psychological knowledge from dissecting, isolating, and individualizing toward synthetic, relational, and embodied research practices. They reveal that scientific generalization does not mean just to follow fixed procedures but is an ongoing, never-ending process determined by the subject matter and content of the investigation. With the presented psychological contributions, we want to indicate that situated generalization has a long history. However, its conception is still at its early days and cannot build on a fine-tuned theoretical and methodological framework. Nevertheless, over the past few decades, a substantial body of work emerged, and in this volume, we present some major contributions from distinctive scholars within the field. The aim of the book is (1) to introduce this emerging body of work and to

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demonstrate how it could contribute to a substantial and necessary renewal of the psychological production of theory and knowledge (2) to present in detail the practice of situated generalization, its central principles, theoretical concepts, methodologies, analytical strategies, and empirical work as well as historical lines of thought it can build on.

 he Practice of Situated Generalization: Outline T and Summary of Chapters The chapters in this collection are structured according to three sections. The first section, Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living, features chapters that provide a vision for situated generalization that build on subjectivity and context in continuous movement, and an integrated understanding of human life in a social, cultural, and material world. In this context, Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt (Chap. 2) identify generalization as a subjective process in praxis in which the way praxis is coordinated, the things persons deal with in it, and the generalizations unfold together. Generalizations are understood as subjective and social at the same time. They are about common causes in praxis, and both are concrete as well as contradictory. Moreover, participants have different perspectives on the common causes, which stem from the way they participate in them. Generalizations, they argue, relate to concrete conditions in praxis, and as a consequence, our generalizations appear varied in particular ways according to the actual conditions. This theoretical exposition is elucidated using examples from empirical research on school life. In Chap. 3, Martin Dege presents Kurt Lewin and his concept of generalization. Lewin is one of the most well-known psychologists. He is the founder of topological psychology, closely related to the Gestalt psychologists, and the originator of action research. Less well-known is the extent to which he saw a political agenda connected to his work, and little light has been shed on his reflections in the philosophy of science. Dege attempts to bring both these valuable aspects of Lewin’s body of work into the discussion. From there, he shows how Kurt Lewin’s approach can contribute to an alternative concept of generalization in psychology and the social sciences. In Chap. 4, Manolis Dafermakis presents a dialectical understanding of generalization based on a dialogue between Vygotsky and Davydov. Questioning formal accounts of generalization, a dialectical perspective highlights the concrete, dynamic, historical connection between the general and the particular. Dafermakis shows how a dialogue between Vygotsky and Davydov, who were both adherents of the dialectal tradition in psychology, can provide important insights for re-­ conceptualizing generalization. A dialogue on dialectical understanding of generalization and its relation to changing societal practices is offered as a way to promote active, transformative subjectivity.

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In Chap. 5, Jaan Valsiner undertakes an intellectual journey to the realm of generalization in irreversible time. The coverage leads him to a rather paradoxical conclusion: in order to create any knowledge, the knowledge maker has to act on the basis of unique, transient phenomena that occur in the flow of irreversible time. To accomplish the making of general knowledge, the mundane flow of irreversible time needs to be transcended. This is only possible through semiotic mediation— abstracting from experience through signs—arriving at generalized knowledge that is freed from the confines of time. The process by which this is achieved is abduction, re-constructing explanations in retrospect, across the border of the present, into the vanished past. Furthermore, Valsiner argues, the generalized knowledge leads to very concrete anticipatory actions in practice, thus testing its adequacy again at the level of unique events. We live on and through personally unique life courses which are general for all human lives in their basic organization. Part 2 of the book, Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological Generalization, provides a series of theoretical and empirical works, which highlights the ethical and esthetical dimension of psychological research practice and the production of scientific knowledge. In opening this section, Jytte Bang (Chap. 6) discusses the worldliness of the general and why concepts matter ethically. Empiricist ideas have influenced classical psychology’s view of the general. Here, the general appears as a mind-product, an outcome of individuals’ generalizing mind activities. However, such a view is problematic in terms of presupposing a dichotomy between the individual and the world, leaving the dynamic and historical character of the individual–environment relationship unexplored. In contrast to such a representationalist approach, Bang argues, drawing on the body of work of Jakob von Uexküll, Niels Engelsted, and Aleksej N. Leontjev, for a worldly conception of the general. Furthermore, she explains that it is not solely of theoretical interest how psychology conceives the general. Conceptions have ethical implications, which means that, with regard to its basic concepts, psychology does not stand on any neutral ethical ground. Finally, she problematizes the ethical implications of a representationalist approach to the general. In Chap. 7, Niklas A.  Chimirri presents a notion of generalizing conducted together with children. Children’s generalization practices and knowledges, he argues, are granted too little societal, pedagogical, and scientific significance: they remain surrounded by an aura of defectiveness when contrasted with adult knowledges. As a result, the question of what there is to learn of children about the world and its doings, including of what there is to learn of each and every unique child about their respective perspectives on everyday life, in order to purposefully and sustainably develop society together across generations, is too easily rendered oblique or even superfluous. In response to this shortcoming, he highlights how researchers and other adults can learn from children for the purpose of developing more democratic knowledge creation processes in pedagogical institutions, as well as in other arenas of everyday life. For enabling the systematic inclusion of children’s knowledges into generalization processes, he builds on dialectical praxis

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psychologies and suggests the praxis-philosophical concept of teleogenetic collaboration. Finally, he suggests to understand academic research and generalizing as part of everyday life, rather than as aiming for the study of other people’s everyday life, and argues that its generalizations should become more immediately accessible and negotiable for everyone irrespective of age. In Chap. 8, Luca Tateo examines what psychological generalization can learn from art, in particular from Michelangelo da Caravaggio’s paintings. Tateo presents a discussion of Caravaggio’s naturalistic style, with respect to the process of generalization in the painting The Seven Works of Mercy, trying to identify the conceptual elements that make this work a specimen of the human condition of suffering and relieving. From this analysis, he argues that the process of generalization is neither an inductive-based extension nor the formulation of a context-independent and abstract list of traits. The process of generalization starts from experiencing and, through a zone of potential estrangement, it must be able to return to experience improving our understanding of it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paintings, we must be able to create specimen by abductively distancing from the single case and be able to find back the single case using the specimen to understand. In Chap. 9, Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot trace how the general is reproduced through the local based on empirical research on poverty. They identify three interrelated forms of generalization, which invoke issues around how macro-level structures and intergroup relations are reproduced through micro-level situations. First, theoretical generalization constitutes our efforts to enlarge the significance of small-scale exemplars through research by relating local insights into the broader body of academic knowledge. Second, referential generalization involves relating everyday artifacts produced by our research participants to the broader social context and intergroup relations at play. Third, empathetic generalization involves promoting witnessing, recognition and empathy toward people experiencing poverty by people who are not living in poverty. These three forms or elements of generalization, they show, are central to the development of action strategies to address issues of poverty. Part 3 of the book, Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization, collects chapters that articulate how generalization and the production of psychological knowledge involves social transformation and change and which present analytical strategies of situated generalization. Ole Dreier (Chap. 10) explores generalization in situated practice and addresses basic issues about generalization from the perspective of critical psychology. He frames his argumentation by a critical analysis of the classical psychological notion of generalization because psychologists are educated in this notion and constantly confronted with it in the research literature and in discussions, reviews, and evaluations of their work. This complicates the development of an alternative notion of generalization which does not, implicitly or explicitly, take over key features of the mainstream notion. Dreier’s aim is to present such an alternative conception of generalization based on the tradition of critical psychology and by focusing on its key characteristics, accomplishments, issues, and

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revisions. Human beings are theorized within this tradition of thought, as participants in structurally arranged, situated social practices. Their psychological processes unfold in, and hang together with, their participation and conduct of everyday life in such social practices. So, their psychological processes are always affected by being directed at and part of situated nexuses in subjects’ lives in social practices. Therefore, to generalize means to generalize about subjects’ psychological functioning in situated nexuses. But, while it is necessary to establish generalizations in capturing concrete nexuses, it cannot be the sole purpose of research. It is also important to capture how general and particular aspects hang together dynamically in nexuses and how their situated composition affect the qualities and status of the aspect or problem we study. Case studies offer unique possibilities for accomplishing this which Dreier briefly illustrated by an example. Finally, he argues that grasping phenomena and problems in situated nexuses of social practice is necessary in basic theorizing as well as in knowledge-based expertise and professional interventions in subjects’ problems in the nexuses of their everyday lives. In Chap. 11, Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck engage in the development of situated generalization through the creation of a prototypical model of dialogical teaching practiced at a PhD course about identity formation, self-representation, and self-exposure. A prototype is a singular practice (with its objects, premises, subject-positions, conditions, and structures) modeled as relevant to a specific field of practice. The idea of the prototype as situated generalization is philosophically rooted in an epistemology of practice, as read through critical psychology as well as social practice theory. Nissen and Mørck propose dialogical teaching by recounting how that was performed, articulated, and reflected at the PhD course by students, teachers, and co-researchers as different from traditional university teaching. This is unfolded in several aspects: (a) teaching is resituated as relevant to sociocultural change in which all participants are equally involved; (b) texts are deconstructed as relevant to that process of change; (c) participants—including Frigga Haug and Emily Martin who provided important inspiration—are multi-positioned as the participants of the course meet on neutral ground and in movement; (d) together, the participants make artifacts (including this chapter) with which they represent and recognize themselves as individuals and as collective; (e) this implies co-creating ethics of care, overcoming the separation and externality of ethics from practice. In Chap. 12, Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube focus on the methodology of situated generalization, including the importance of analyzing social and material structures. Based on a presentation of fundamental characteristics of psychological processes including its subjective, contextual, and transient dimensions, they argue for a notion of psychological generalization which does not abstract away human subjectivity and difference but understands it as different manifestations of the same relationship. Based on such an embodied, subjectivity-in-everyday-life approach to the production of knowledge, they ask how generalization in psychological research practice can be done, and they present a variety of basic analytical strategies of situated generalization including Zooming In to Zoom Out and Zooming Out to Zoom In.

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Højholt, C., & Schraube, E. (2016). Toward a psychology of everyday living. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 1–14). London: Routledge. Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt/M.: Campus. Holzkamp, K. (1991). Experience of self and scientific objectivity. In C. W. Tolman & W. Maiers (Eds.), Critical psychology: Contributions to an historical science of the subject (pp. 65–80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holzkamp, K. (2013a). Missing the point: Variable psychology’s blindness to the problem’s inherent coherence? In E. Schraube & U. Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Selected writings of Klaus Holzkamp (A. Boreham & U. Osterkamp, Trans.) (pp. 60–74). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Holzkamp, K. (2013b). Psychology: Social self-understanding on the reasons for action in the conduct of everyday life. In E. Schraube & U. Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Selected writings of Klaus Holzkamp (A. Boreham & U. Osterkamp, Trans.) (pp. 233–341). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Holzkamp, K. (2016). Conduct of everyday life as a basic concept of critical psychology. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 65–98). London: Routledge. Jensen, U. J. (1999). Categories in activity theory: Marx’s philosophy just-in-time. In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard, & U. J. Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social practice (pp. 79–99). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Kaplan, A. (1964). The conduct of inquiry: Methodology for behavioral science. San Francisco: Chandler. Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. London: Sage. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lave, J.  (2019). Learning and everyday life: Access, participation, and changing practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lawrence, J. A., Dodds, A. E., & Valsiner, J. (2004). The many faces of everyday life: Some challenges to the psychology of cultural practice. Culture & Psychology, 10(4), 455–476. Leontyev, A.  N. (2009). Problems of the development of the mind. Pacifica: Marxists Internet Archive. Lewin, K. (1931). The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in con-­ temporary psychology. Journal of General Psychology, 5, 141–177. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage. Muchow, M., & Muchow, H. H. (2015). The life space of the urban child. In G. Mey & H. Günther (Eds.), The life space of the urban child: Perspectives on Martha Muchow’s classical study (pp. 63–146). New Brunswick: Transaction. O’Doherty, K., Osbeck, L., Schraube, E., & Yen, J. (Eds.). (2019). Psychological studies of science and technology. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Ripple, W.  J., Wolf, C., Newsome, T.  M., Galetti, M., Alamgir, M., Crist, E., Mahmoud, M.  I., & Laurance, W.  F. (2017). World scientists’ warning to humanity: A second notice. BioScience, 67(12), 1026–1028. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix125 Røn Larsen, M. (2016). “May I please tell you a little anecdote?”: Inter-professional decision-­ making about inclusion in the borderland between normal and special schooling. International Journal on School Disaffection, 12(1), 65–84. https://doi.org/10.18546/IJSD.12.1.04. Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Free Association Books. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Between the general and the unique. Overcoming the nomothetic versus idiographic opposition. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), 817–833.

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Schraube, E. (2013). First-person perspective and sociomaterial decentering: Studying technology from the standpoint of the subject. Subjectivity, 6(1), 12–32. https://doi.org/10.1057/ sub.2012.28. Schraube, E., & Højholt, C. (Eds.). (2016). Psychology and the conduct of everyday life. London: Routledge. Searle, J. R. (2002). Consciousness and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stern, W. (1900). Die psychologische Arbeit des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, insbesondere in Deutschland. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie und Pathologie, 2(6), 413–436. Stern, W. (1911). Die Differenzielle Psychologie in ihren methodischen Grundlagen. Leipzig: Barth. Stern, W. (1938). General psychology: From the personalistic standpoint (H. D. Spoerl, Trans.). New York: Macmillan. Tateo, L. (2013). Generalization as creative and reflective act: Revisiting Lewin’s conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 23(4), 518–536. Tateo, L. (2016). The nature of generalization in psychology. In G.  Marsico, R.  Andrisano Ruggieri, & S. Salvatore (Eds.), Reflexivity and psychology (pp. 45–64). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Teo, T. (2009). Philosophical concerns in critical psychology. In D.  Fox, I.  Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (pp. 36–53). London: Sage. Teo, T. (2015). Historical thinking as a tool for theoretical psychology: On objectivity. In J. Martin, J. Sugarman, & L. Slaney (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of theoretical and philosophical psychology: Methods, approaches, and new directions for social sciences (pp. 135–150). New York: Wiley. Teo, T. (2017). From psychological science to the psychological humanities: Building a general theory of subjectivity. Review of General Psychology, 21(4), 281–291. Tolman, C. (1989). The general psychological crisis and its comparative psychological resolution. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2(3), 197–207. Valsiner, J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2015). Generalization is possible only from a single case (and from a single instance): The value of a personal diary. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, & P. Hviid (Eds.), Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts (pp. 233–243). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Valsiner, J. (2019). Generalization in science: Abstracting from unique events. In C. Højholt & E. Schraube (Eds.), Subjectivity and knowledge: Generalization in the psychological study of everyday life (pp. 79–98). New York: Springer. Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (Eds.). (2016). Psychology as the science of human being: The Yokohama manifesto. New York: Springer. Vygotzky, L. S. (1927/1997). The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology: A methodological investigation. In R. W. Rieber & J. Wollock (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 3. Problems of the Theory and History of Psychology (R. van der Veer, Trans.) (pp. 233– 243). New York: Plenum Press.

Part I

Generalization and the Practice of Everyday Living

Chapter 2

Subjectivity, Conflictuality, and Generalization in Social Praxis Erik Axel and Charlotte Højholt

“I thought you were against that sort of thinking!” was a reaction we got while we were writing about generalization. Through such exchanges, we realized that in everyday conversation when somebody says “now you are generalizing,” it implies that one is simplifying the matter at hand, overlooking important aspects of it, and sometimes even obliterating them. Actually, our friend was right, we question generalizations of that character. On the other hand, simplifying can be necessary, since not all aspects of a situation are important for our purpose in question. We must be able to identify what is meaningful in a certain historical social practice. To generalize also means that we must be able to identify what is important for our purpose, and what is not. To state, on the one hand, that generalizations can be simplifications and may be understood as holding good for too much, as overgeneralization, and that on the other we need simplifications and something which holds under these conditions, offers a clue to our approach to this issue. We want to embed the analysis of generalization in the “historical actualities of people’s doings and relations” (Smith 2005: 56), or as Dreier states regarding his notion of nexus: “A theory meant to capture linked aspects in a changing social practice must combine generality with change” (2008: 298, compare Lave 2019). Our critique of generalization as overgeneralization points to the theoretical challenge we will address: instead of searching for scientific methods to verify that whatever studied is universally general, is widespread, counts for everybody in this category, and so on, we need to build on differences, perspectives, connections, and concrete situations relevant for our purpose. In this chapter, we seek to demonstrate how we understand the general through differences, variations, and changes to historical causes and common problems in

E. Axel (*) · C. Højholt Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_2

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social praxis. We argue that a generalization is in a social praxis (Juul Jensen 1999). We posit that in order to live in our everyday life, we constantly generalize with all the strengths and weaknesses of the process. We further posit that scientific generalization is a specific form of everyday generalization that is developed under specific conditions, never final. In the chapter, we will scrutinize generalization as an everyday matter from which we can learn about the conditions for scientific generalization and about how we may work with these in relation to research. As a consequence, our approach blurs the distinction between theory and praxis. People’s doings and relations are rife with insights, and we can find theories developed on these. They have been developed more or less systematically in social praxis. Researchers develop scientific theories on the basis of what appears reasonable to them, which includes their everyday praxis just like other people’s, as well as their scientific empirical work and that of others. Whether a generalization comes to us immediately or slowly over an extended period of time, it is always a process, and sometimes we find ourselves generalizing in ways we never did before. Our conceptual approach to generalization must therefore assist us in understanding how we make new generalizations and how we learn in concrete, changing practices. In order to understand how we generalize, we must focus on the historical conditions of the process. For instance, we generalize about schooling by taking part in its changing social practice and its historical conditions, and by investigating how the practice of the school developed before we took part. So, our understanding of generalization must enable us to grasp such connection practice, conditions, and history. According to our approach to generalization situated in historical and everyday relations, we must begin our presentation by examining how we as human beings generalize. To do this, we will use examples from everyday school life. We shall connect generalization to the concrete everyday aspects of human life and analyze and discuss generalization as tied to people’s doings and relations. This requires that we study generalization as a personal phenomenon. Drawing on our background in critical psychology, we will discuss the subjective aspects of our actions in praxis (Schraube and Osterkamp 2013; Dreier 2008; Axel 2009; Schraube 2015). These subjective aspects shape, and are thereby shaped by, the way we act and participate in praxis: we must turn things over in praxis in order to generalize while we act—we must deliberate in order to act in a better way. This means that generalization has critical elements. On the basis of situating generalization every day, we shall suggest how an understanding of scientific generalization can be developed. As a consequence, we shall argue that research must be critical and oriented toward its own development and focus, its institutions, theories, methods, and field of study. We will show how in spite of the experienced and systematic development, scientific generalizations are beset by the same problems as everyday generalizations, namely for example oversimplification and overgeneralization. We shall argue that these problems can be addressed by understanding scientific generalizations as continuous processes, as a praxis involving relevant, historical, and critical aspects. It is thus the critical approach open to development which ensures whether a generalization is anchored in the problems of concrete

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social praxis and encompasses relevant aspects for the combined and relevant efforts of the different participants. For example, when we generalize in relation to a problem in a school, we must critically take into account the concrete social praxis around the school and historical conditions relevant to the problem. If the generalization of the problem is open to different perspectives in these practices, and to the context of the school, the relevance of the research to school life will help us to avoid simplifications and overgeneralizations.

Generalization as Necessary in Everyday Praxis To understand subjective aspects of human action, we must take point of departure in the concrete and varied conditions that human beings move in and thereby move. The acting persons must identify what is relevant and meaningful for them here and now and in a broader perspective. The concrete conditions vary from location to location and from one point in time to another. This means that they are never identical. All the time, we must be able to identify their general implications for our praxis. We move in concrete circumstances where the general significance of things is not given in an identical way at any one time. Based on our experience, we must make the general appear to ourselves in the concrete particularities, in other words we must generalize. In trying to understand a new situation, our experiences may help our search for relevant connections. When, for instance, a teacher meets a new class, she cannot know how the new children will collaborate, but due to experiences with similar situations she might, without directly thinking about the earlier situations, investigate how, for instance, restlessness in the class is connected to insecurities in the pupils’ social relations. She has to take into account that the situation is new, but her experience may help her to investigate and generalize what might be relevant for understanding this specific situation. The way we handle the general depends on the particular conditions, we cannot separate our varied way of handling the general from the conditions in which we must act: the general is concrete, appears in different particular ways, and therefore it cannot be something beyond subjective experiences. This does not mean that the general is only about the here and now. The fact that we are able to identify the general implications of actual conditions means that we can draw on previous incidents we have participated in or heard of and that we can get an idea of what happens here or similar places somewhere else and anticipate the consequences. In our experience, we connect the past, present, and future. We have thereby characterized a way to approach the subjective aspects of our actions. Since we must identify the concrete, general implications which are relevant to us, we explore our conditions. Since conditions vary depending on the time and location, since we cannot separate the general from the conditions in which it appears, and since the conditions and the general influence each other dialectically, the general appears in a particular way. In other words, a general aspect does not appear in an identical way each time we generalize in different locations. The

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s­ ubjective aspects of our action can therefore be seen as related to how we identify what is relevant by exploring concrete conditions aware of what is going on, what we want to achieve, and aware of the fact that more is going on, than we are aware of. When we generalize, we recognize what is important for our purpose and what is not, and we mediate the past, present, and the future, here and there in meaningful ways. In moving praxis, we assume that our generalizations will provide stability. However, since generalization is made on the run in concrete praxis with many connections, its stability is not guaranteed, so we must constantly be prepared to put it on trial. In Dewey’s (1929/1958: 57) words, the stability of generalization is precarious, perilous, and unsettled. This openness is in contrast to the character of generalization simplifying the matter at hand, overlooking important aspects of it that we criticized in the beginning of the chapter and will return to later.

Praxis as Common Causes Seen from this perspective, human beings are entangled in praxis, and generalizations are in the relations between human beings and the praxis in which they participate. Since we generalize on the basis of what is relevant for our participation, the general is an aspect of our subjective relations in a given situation. We learn about things acting with each other. On the other hand, our insights depend on the ways in which each of us participates and has possibilities for it. Even though generalizations come out of social praxis, any generalization occurs from a person’s subjective participation in praxis. Above, we have offered a preliminary account of the relation between praxis and generalization. Even though generalization mediates other times other places here, it is in praxis, not brought to it, nor over it, nor taken out of it (Dreier 2019). Because we are human beings, and because we share similar locations in praxis with similar experiences and have arranged our conditions in common ways, we can share each other’s experiences and understandings. As a consequence, our use of the term “general” points to something changeable that encompasses differences and variations. For instance the word “family” alludes to something we understand in common even though particular families vary over time and across the world according to relations and arrangements. Accordingly, because we generalize in historical concrete praxis where our activities are distributed, our generalizations are neither universal nor a-contextual. Rather, they are historical, social, subjective, and contextual. Therefore, we generalize differently according to our experiences in praxis. To grasp the differences in our generalizations that arise due to our different experiences, we must explicate a concept of praxis. Historically, praxis is connected with how well an activity is performed with respect to its ethical and political aspects (Bernstein 1971). Later this understanding was included in the tradition of historical materialism (Marx and Engels 1845/1969), which is about how human beings produce and distribute their means of existence and thereby their social conditions and themselves. We take point of departure in this understanding. Praxis is

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thereby a general term about human productive social activity which is steeped in ethical and political aspects due to the distribution of the means of existence. The term praxis incorporates the comprehensive distributions in human activity. The term practice comprises specific activities, like teaching and studying, and the resources they require, while praxis enables us to see how the distribution of the specific activities is embedded in the more extensive activities of praxis. In their historical social praxis, people arrange themselves around specific common causes such as schools, companies, families, construction projects, or political activities of our time. Each common cause is concrete and consists of compound practices or things. In schools, for example, children are kept off the streets, and they find friends in relation to their school life; they are put there in order to learn and develop, professionals teach them and make arrangements around their social life, and the professionals cooperate with public administration, other professionals, and parents. When we work with a common cause, we cannot work with one aspect in isolation, we must work with the compound aspects of the common cause. All the same, we strive to simplify matters by attempting to keep things apart. With laws and privileges, we seek to stabilize the separations of the aspects. Nevertheless, those involved must acknowledge that they are entangled in the compound aspects of the common cause to make things work. Today, different kinds of professionalism and expertise are separated, e.g., through education, examinations, and rules of access. In schools, expertise related to teaching is differentiated from social work or pedagogical strategies aimed at children’s general development. As professionals in school, teachers are there to teach children. But they cannot separate their teaching from other activities at school. Teachers have to relate to the social life of children and, in a way, to all aspects of children’s lives. And today in Denmark we see how pedagogues increasingly become part of the school: they are supposed to take care of the children’s social life, and neither can they separate their pedagogical work with the children’s social life from other activities at school. Thus, the distribution of contributions and responsibilities in teaching becomes divided and connected in new ways which must be coordinated in order to make things work. To sum up, we want to illustrate how different groups of professionals make different contributions to the same cause and that every contribution blend with other ones.

Contradictions in the Common Causes of Praxis The compound aspects of a common cause mostly do not fit together; they contain incompatibilities, and that is why we might term them contradictions. Contradiction is a concept with a long tradition in philosophy, and contradictions have been understood in many different ways. In some ways of thinking contradictions have been related to the development of things or meanings. This understanding of development is termed dialectics. In some traditions, researchers have sought to establish a fixed method for analyzing development: the first thing to do is to find the thesis, i.e., the present thing; then its antithesis (or its negation or contradiction), i.e., the

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un-present thing; and lastly the synthesis of the positive and negative theses, i.e., its idea, thus establishing how the idea of the thing appeared or developed. However, this fixed procedure has rightfully been rejected for being schematic, a-contextual, and practically a mere play on words. Other understandings are more situated. The philosopher Charles Taylor writes about Hegel, who developed a historical notion of contradictions and dialectics: His aim is simply to follow the movement of his object of study… . If the argument follows a dialectical movement, then this must be in the things themselves, not just in the way we reason about them. (1975: 129)

The quote by Taylor suggests that Hegel’s historical understanding of dialectics was a world view—we are part of the world moved by contradictions. Furthermore, dialectics to Hegel implies that a method cannot be described as an abstract procedure: it must be demonstrated concretely. These points were also fundamental assumptions in Marx’ thinking, where contradictions open up the possibility of investigating how apparently irreconcilable aspects of social life meet, work together, and move it in specific directions. This approach has had a great impact on the human sciences, sociology, anthropology, and psychology (Harvey 1996; Ingold 2000; Lave and Wenger 1991; Vygotsky 1978; Leont’ev 1978; Holzkamp 2013), while dialectics is much rarer in the natural sciences (Havemann 1966; Levins and Lewontin 1985). We will limit ourselves to unfolding the implications of such contradictions for the understanding of the concept of “common cause.” Bertell Ollman’s assumption of contradictions is based on Marx’ work and is concrete and historical. We will therefore explicate it in more detail here. Ollman states that contradiction and other confusing dialectical concepts serve to avoid static, partial, and one-sided understandings (2003: 4). His concept of contradiction is related to the concept of internal social relations, which we must identify first. To embrace the pluralities and diversities in praxis, Ollman advocates a concrete understanding of it, writing that the interconnection of things includes their ties to their own preconditions and future possibilities as well as what is affecting them and being affected by them (2003: 4). When we investigate schools, we must embrace their history, what goes on in them, what we are trying to turn them into, and what they affect and are affected by. To us there is a problem with Ollman’s concept of social internal relations. The fact that the way these relations are identified invites us to define their nature in structural terms without necessarily thinking of their relevance in and for praxis. To state that a school is constituted by social relations might, for example, open up for understanding the teacher–pupil relation as objectified in laws, texts, and objects of the school, and persons who enter it are subjectified. However, with the notion of common cause, we hope to open up for an understanding of the human subjects in praxis and of how they participate and coordinate their activities on the basis of their compound common causes. Thereby our identification of the cause depends on what is to be achieved, and the identification is tied to the processes in the cause. History results from the processes in praxis, in which participants contribute and their contributions push each other along. Based on the particular ­conditions in

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praxis, we may develop a common cause. For example, we may open or close a school (e.g., when the number of children in that part of town changes), we may be concerned about schools and discuss it in the media, we may write about how it could be changed, we may as children feel forced to participate in it and participate in it for different reasons: e.g., to meet friends, to try to protect ourselves from risks through it, e.g., to get a job based on one’s exam papers when grown up; or by avoiding stress by attending schools without grades; we may as parents see our children as safer in school than on the streets; we may, as teachers, change school because we are critical of injustices. But, in whatever way, we all participate in common causes, and to achieve things in the common causes, we are dependent on one another in them, and our experiences and knowing come through our participation in them. As human beings, then, we are social beings. Our insight into internal social relations—or, as we suggest, common causes— comes from their differences, their cracks, or their incompatibilities, which we term contradictions. In this way, contradictions are not seen as isolated incompatible elements. They are aspects of the common cause which force us to adapt to the incompatibilities, arrange, or transform them. The common cause is seen as the unit which makes the contradictions dependent on each other (Ollman 2003: 17), and this forces us to rework them to make things work. Ollman’s concept of internal social relations and our concept of common cause are ways of stressing that contradictions are bound together in a many-sided cause—for instance, a school, a house, or a family.

Examples of Contradictions in School Life By seeing the common cause not simply as compound but contradictory, we open up the possibility of understanding the aspects of its processual nature. We can move from understanding change as surprising, and apparently coming out of nowhere, to understanding how people struggle with incompatibilities in their common causes. Their struggle with incompatibilities helps us to get a sense of possible directions in which things might develop in praxis. Some directions are intended by the participants; others are unintended but develop due to overlooked aspects of the contradictions. We will now draw on some examples to clarify this. While being taught, children must attend to how teachers instruct them and to what they want from them. To relieve children from this strict focus, they are allowed regular breaks in which they mingle with one another and start or stop common causes like play, sports, and gaming and invite some into the common activity. Among other things, teaching requires that children focus for a given time on specific issues that do not always engage them. Between this prolonged focus on teaching and the vivid flexibility of the children’s social life, we find contradictory aspects that are still dependent on one another. Children in schools relate to the teaching together and cooperate in their learning processes, but they may still be disturbed by conflicts in their social relations at the expense of attention to teachings in the

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c­ lassroom. Sometimes they are able to combine teaching with their social life in a productive way, but sometimes they get stuck in conflicts about this (Højholt 2016; Højholt and Schwartz 2018; Højholt and Kousholt, 2019b). We have stated that teachers cannot separate their teaching from the social life of children, that the two are inseparable, and that we may find possible directions for developing the common cause of school life in the tensions between teaching the children and their social awareness in the classroom. All the same, in political discussions about the school, some strive to keep aspects apart that are tied together in the everyday life of school practice. We will unfold the content of this statement using an example about different perspectives on the outcome of a school reform ushering in “longer school days.” We use this example to illustrate how we work with generalization by anchoring the understanding of a specific situation in its historical praxis. The example stems from the research project, Conflicts about Children’s School Life, funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research and organized in connected subprojects with a joint focus on Children’s Inclusion in School Investigated as Conflictual Cooperation, which study the same schools from different perspectives: those of the children, as well as their parents, teachers, pedagogues, psychologists, officials, and school executives (Højholt and Kousholt 2018, 2019b). As a part of this project, the researchers regularly met and talked with the professionals at the involved schools. In a situation where everybody presented their current issues, a teacher of one ninth grade class presented the following example. The teacher explicated the process, as well as its contradictions, conflicts, and personal dilemmas. At the meeting the teachers and the researchers discussed how conflicts between pupils can be connected to political conflicts over the school, and how pupils’ provoking engagement in their school life can be regarded as contradicting the positive publicity of a school. A radio channel had interviewed some eighth graders, and the pupils had commented positively on the longer school days. Part of the interview was uploaded on Facebook, and some of the ninth graders felt provoked and contradicted the interview. Their teacher explained at the above-mentioned meeting that she was also provoked by the one-sidedness of the history and remarked that she understood her pupils’ reaction since she knew that they had a much tougher timetable. They had school days running from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with theoretical teaching—and she was together with in the afternoon hours and had the feeling that this was too much for them. Still, she found that the way they had expressed themselves was problematic, and she talked to them about how to deal with disagreements and with the media. As their teacher, she wanted to show her pupils that she understood their perspectives, and she also wanted to use the episode as an occasion for them to learn about how to address different perspectives and exchange standpoints in the media. Professionals from the radio channel visited the class and taught them about how to engage with the media and behave on the Internet, and the teacher was satisfied with this. Still, later, the head of the school made it clear to her that the pupils should not talk in a negative way about school problems. The teacher had the feeling that the head of the school was happy about the positive publicity from the eighth graders,

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but she stated that one school could not solve the problem of the longer school days. At the research meeting in question, this example was the focus of an exchange about dilemmas between new demands to “brand schools” to ensure that they compared favorably with other schools, and the need to organize and teach about exchanges of perspectives in a democratic way. Another teacher talked about educating for citizenship, and the discussion turned to how the school as a democratic welfare institution today has to compete on the basis of its success measured through data collected about, e.g., grades, absence, and well-being—and that this threatens the ideals of democracy, inclusion, and citizenship. During the discussion, the teachers claimed that it was bad for democracy if teachers and students could not talk openly about problems in their everyday lives, asking “are we not allowed to have problems”? We see here that a communicative contradiction between two groups of pupils opened up a fundamental contradiction in praxis about incompatible ways of relating to school problems. This reveals various possible directions for development in praxis. One approach is based on the evidence of good teaching from grading and testing; it involves instruction and training, and it is controlled by the curriculum, supported by the school administration and the law, and includes branding in an effort to attract pupils from other schools (Busch-Jensen 2018; Røn Larsen 2019). Another approach takes up current problems, uses them to teach the curriculum, and thereby opens up for democratic perspectives and for the pupils’ voices. The teachers take this standpoint since they take their point of departure in the need to teach and to talk openly about problems in their own and the pupils’ everyday lives. The teachers have to handle these two incompatible ways of teaching, and thereby develop their teaching practice—not in order to reach a harmonious compromise but as a way of dealing with the conflicts in question. Like the teachers, as researchers we find that we must accept the concrete conflictual content of common causes, and we must recognize that children handle these through subjective perspectives and with priorities. We have to understand concretely how children are obliged to juggle the contradictory conditions of the teaching with their social relations. Analyzing such connections and contradictory conditions is part of the generalizing processes. Our generalizations must be concrete to be relevant in this regard, as this enables us to follow a dialectical movement. The concrete contradictions in praxis enable us to understand the content of the conflicts and how they are connected to political questions, and in this way the conflicts offer possibilities. Finding our way relates to the priorities we may identify when exploring the subjective meanings of the contradictions. We cannot simply continue doing what we always do; we cannot solve the contradiction as a problem with a solution. Rather, we must understand what makes the contradictions incompatible, how they blend together when they are not attended to, and how we should make them work together in the midst of a constantly moving praxis, which is not solving them. Still, sometimes it is possible to develop the conditions, and thereby the contradictions, fundamentally. We have tried to illustrate that the process of generalizing elucidates how a conflict connects to contradictions and different conditions for working with these. The contradiction

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between teaching and the children’s activities in their social life is central in developing pedagogical strategies and the organization of educational practice.

Abstracting as Focusing in Context Until now, we have stated that generalizing must be understood as an aspect of how participants relate subjectively to common causes in praxis. As a historical relation between person and praxis, generalizing is a concrete simplification of contradictory praxis that involves identifying what is personally relevant in a common endeavor. In this way, generalization anchors a conflict in its historical connections and is an analysis of how historical changes and political debates form the conditions for the interplay and discussions among the participants and the possible development of their praxis. We have unfolded the concept of praxis, its common causes, and contradictions, to grasp how we as human beings generalize in our different ways of handling, moving, and developing praxis and ourselves. As mentioned earlier, there are weaknesses and strengths in generalizing being concretesimplifications. Based on the above discussion, it is now possible to qualify this statement conceptually. We will qualify the statement about generalization by taking our point of departure in Ollman’s discussion of focusing as abstraction, the idea being that focusing is selective with more or less context. Since we do not know everything in a given situation, our selective focusing is tentative. We must select what we find as relevant aspects in order to find a proper way to handle the cause. Commonly, to focus means to pinpoint something and stick to it, but there is a double meaning in the word “to focus.” The term has a dialectical content. Originally, focus meant domestic hearth, the place from where light and heat spread out, lighting, and warming the room. This meaning is retained when we talk about the focus of an earthquake from where energy spreads out and damages things. Focus can substitute the term focal point and now means the point where light or energy is collected, concentrated, and intensified. From this last meaning of the term derives the idea of being in focus, which is the point where a thing must be located in order to give a precise picture behind the lens of a camera. The fact that focusing can mean concentrating as well as spreading out shows us that the two can be confounded—or better understood as one—and later on we will present an example of this. Now, Ollman emphasizes that we are engaged in the process of abstraction when we focus on, give special attention to, isolate, or simply notice something inside the field of investigation, whether we sense it or whether we remember, dream about, hope, fear, plan, or conceptualize it (2015: 15). Again, there is a double meaning in the term abstraction here. The practical meaning of abstracting refers to, e.g., removing salt from water. In some psychological traditions of thought, the theoretical meaning of abstraction is derived from its practical meaning: to abstract a concept is to separate it from irrelevancies so that it stands out well defined, homogenized, and purified. Here “well defined” means that the boundaries of the concept are marked out clearly—sometimes this

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purifying sense of abstraction is even wrongly taken to mean the same as generalization. When we argue that all of us must abstract even when we focus, we understand the process of abstraction more concretely as tied to focusing with others—from different perspectives—in context: when we focus we select or abstract what we are concentrating on and spread out our attention to what we perceive as relevant to a problem in a field. By combining the concepts of abstraction and focus, we see that Ollman insists on understanding abstraction as our way of selecting something in a situation but not everything, and with the term focus, he underlines that the selected focus is formed by its context and forms it. We see that generalization at the same time is abstracting and focusing, the former simplifying, and the latter concentrating and dispersing our undertaking in context. We thus simultaneously abstract/simplify and concretize. In this way, generalization is a dialectical process of selecting contextually what is relevant for our problem in praxis. We can demonstrate this using the previously presented example, in which we had to concentrate on the situation of the youngsters as well as to “spread out” the analysis to many related contexts. The researchers were discussing how to understand this situation, and in the ensuing discussion, the dispersed preconditions and consequences of the disagreement were incorporated according to the specific and common relevancies of the focus point. One of the common relevancies was the prolonged school days—a key issue in political conflicts over the school reform. The school leader worried about the school’s brand and wanted to prevent the pupils from talking in a negative way about school problems. From the teachers’ perspective, the ninth graders’ anger was seen as something to take seriously and as an opportunity to teach the pupils about their democratic possibilities. From the ninth graders’ perspective, their anger at the same time could be understood as containing their feeling of being constrained and wish to do something about it. Their anger became a point of focus for the constraining conditions and for their exploration; their anger was a concentration and spreading out. The constraining aspect of the anger may contain many other contradictions to explore, like having to concentrate and dissipating attention in class, but the ninth graders fell upon the eighth graders. The participants select and prioritize different aspects of the incident in the discussion, according to their perspectives, in exploring how to understand the situation. In general, teachers must deal with an administrative approach to their many-sided activities, and they have to accept things whose relevance they may not agree upon. They will prioritize, and they will engage in discussions about what can be ignored, what is irrelevant, and what must be kept apart. The focus, or the problem discussed, forces them to both spread out and concentrate in order to handle the problem properly. Still, the teachers must insist on incorporating apparently irrelevant aspects like the children’s social lives in specific ways in their teaching, in order to make the teaching work. With this example, we hope to have exemplified the concepts of focusing, spreading out, selecting and the conflicts about relevance and to have illustrated how we came to understand the problem in new ways. There is truth in all perspectives, and as researchers we are not in a privileged position, but by investigating and trying to systematically integrate the different

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perspectives, it becomes possible to ensure that the generalization is anchored in the problems of concrete social practice and encompasses relevant aspects of the combined efforts of the different participants. We see that the weakness of generalization is based on the fact that we do not know everything relevant to our endeavor and that its strength derives from how we handle contradictions and explore how the generalizations become integrated into everyday life. Mostly, we do this through more or less conflictual discussions about our different ways of understanding the common cause. This is an illustration of how one can work with the concept of generalization as simultaneously spreading and concentrating. This could be conceptualized as concrete abstraction, unlike abstract abstraction which supports one-­ sided ways of understanding. In line with Ollman’s observations, we see that generalization is a social process: in our example, the evaluation of eighth and ninth graders’ school day arrangements is tossed between pupils, teachers, and leaders, with different meanings appearing in the process. The generalization is historical, since what it encompasses depends on the conditions at the time. Ollman also states that abstraction is a result of processes in praxis, even though it is not the final one: understanding the impact of the school day is a result of the ongoing social process of generalizing among participants. But most importantly, he stresses that the extension of the field we focus on varies. We see that on the one hand, when we generalize there is always a field, a context, but our access to that field can be more or less concrete and differently formed in terms of relevancies. It is a matter of how we systematically take heed of what might be relevant. It is a matter of how to proceed, method, and generalizing processes. Because generalization is a process, and since different aspects are connected in common causes, and since different perspectives are connected in social praxis, we have to deal with focus in a flexible way.

To Focus and to Be Flexible Since we generalize in a continuous exploring process in a context where we do not know everything, it becomes important to establish how we should proceed if we want to integrate the different ways of understanding a situation, namely we need to focus and be flexible at the same time (Højholt and Kousholt 2018, 2019a). We need to keep track of what we are doing while at the same time we are obliged to take heed of what might be more or less unexpectedly relevant for our purpose. For example, teachers must focus on teaching, but must take other activities into account in order to be able to teach. For a teacher to teach a maths class, she must stay focused on maths, which may tempt her to, for example, overlook the distracted, silent child brooding over a lost friendship, or to perceive the noisy activity of some children as disturbance. However, she must be flexible and attend to the social aspects of the children’s participation in order to help them concentrate on the teaching (Mardahl-Hansen 2018). Thus, participants struggle with coordinating the aspects and help each other to do it.

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If they do not do that, teaching will not work properly. We term this outcome the “vengeance of the concrete” (Axel 2003). Aspects of praxis that are overlooked by abstract generalized procedures for evidence-based teaching appear in the teachers’ praxis in class and require attentiveness, ultimately moving praxis in specific directions. In the presented example, the overlooked contradiction that manifested itself resulted in a particular type of cooperation, and the teacher conceded to the concrete, overlooked aspects of praxis. To struggle with the incompatibilities of teaching and social relations in the common cause of school life is a case of conflictual cooperation (Axel 2011). With the concept conflictual cooperation we emphasize how participants cooperate in a common contradictory cause in praxis, in which contradictions can be handled in different ways, some of which lead to conflict. We have argued earlier that the common cause forces us to adapt contradictions or incompatibilities to it, and to arrange or transform them. Thereby, we can understand the intricacies of the common cause by developing it through its contradictions. This also means that we may learn about the intricacies through the conflicts generated by the contradictions in the common cause, and this is one of the ways in which we can open up the possibility of developing praxis (Busch-Jensen 2015). Participants generalizing around a common cause thus perform a practical contradictory endeavor. In everyday school life, the contradiction between teaching and the children’s social lives does not always lead to more or less severe conflicts. Mardahl-Hansen (2018) has shown how when teaching in the classroom, teachers simultaneously organize and reorganize social situations in practical ways—adjusting rules, switching between different foci, keeping focus, engaging as well as demanding things of children, involving different perspectives and aspects in flexible ways. This involves practical procedures such as agendas, rules for speaking up, and lists of things to remember, and it also involves using such things in flexible ways due to the ongoing exploration of situated challenges in the classroom. For their part, the children seem to wish for flexibility while at the same time they constantly try hard to restore the focus of their engagement, and they can only combine the many aspects of their school life by working with the way they focus themselves.

 he Historical Splitting of Experience into the Contradiction T Between Theory and Praxis We have focused on generalization, argued that it is in praxis, and demonstrated how it appears in our everyday life. Some would claim that our understanding of generalization is, in Bernstein’s words, for “the practical man (who) is one … not concerned with theory … who knows how to get along in the rough and tumble world; he is interested in the ‘practical’ or ‘material’ things in life” (1971: xiv). Following this line of thought, some readers might ask: does the notion of experience based on generalization that we have outlined constitute a theoretical and scientific approach?

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We can find a preliminary answer to this question in Dewey’s notion that “the things of ordinary experience contain within themselves a mixture of the perilous and unsettled with the settled and uniform” (1929/1958: x). We see this as a consequence of the fact that we know something but not everything in a context and are affected by the unknown. Dewey identified two aspects of experience. On the one hand it is a “limit of movement” based on past activities and on the other a prospective orientation of the person involving curiosity and experimentation (1911/1985: 448f). We would stress that keeping to the past or being proactive is not only an isolated act of a person but depends on what the person’s conditions and possibilities for participating in praxis are and how the person can relate to them. Socially and historically, Dewey saw that the differentiation of experience has developed problematically into a split of theory and practice (1929/1958: 358), implying that theory separated from experience leads away from exploration and into the assumption that theory involves direct access to things: “Philosophies have often tried to forego the actual work that is involved in penetrating the concrete experience, by setting up a purely theoretical security and certainty” (Dewey 1929/1958: xi). Again, we would stress that this widespread social phenomenon must be understood not as an individualized matter but as a subjective matter in social praxis: how we understand and work with theories, whether we believe we should try to apply them or with Dewey explore with them and their contradictions, depends on our contradictory social locations, our conditions therein, and the way we relate to these based on our experience. We will never know everything relevant to our case. Therefore, we will never know when we must revise our generalizations: we may put ourselves at risk by sticking to them, and they are never settled once and for all. This may expose us so that we are at the mercy of events and their conditions in praxis. How to work with generalizations in research praxis is therefore also a matter of how we relate systematically to our generalizations and experiences and of being able to criticize our understandings—by focusing and being flexible in our exploration of concrete common causes. Historically, being at the mercy of conditions has made us strive more for certainty in our generalizations than for elusive mastery. Knowing in praxis how to do things also makes it possible to instruct others what to do. Instruction may take place in locations where the things one is talking about are not present. It therefore becomes common to degrade practical knowledge by stating that it is unstable, messy, incoherent, and undependable. Accordingly, in such an approach experience seems to become split between undependable practice, which is approximate and to be constantly corrected, and on the other hand dependable procedures with trusted results. In our current secularized society, it has become common to strive for abstract, one-sided scientific theory, with final statements confirmed by experiments. Without going into the historical reasons why scientific practice developed so as to generally favor theory meant for application, we can describe this state of affairs using Schön’s words: Science became … a hypothetico-deductive system. In order to account for his observations, the scientist constructed hypothesis, abstract models of an unseen world which could be tested only indirectly through deductions susceptible to confirmation or disconfirmation

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by experiment. The heart of scientific inquiry consisted in the use of crucial experiments to choose among competing theories”. (1983: 33)

The confirmed theories were considered so dependable that it would be possible to select the means appropriate to one’s ends by applying relevant scientific theory (ibid. p.  34). This is what we find in some political demands regarding school administration today when some politicians admonish school leaders to use evidence-­based teaching methods and tests, to use well-defined theories and fixed methods that supposedly ensure that children learn better and more (cf. the critique of John Hatties’ visible learning theory, e.g., Klitmøller and Nielsen 2017). Schön coined the term “technical rationality” to describe this way of using science. The separation or split between unstable messy praxis and dependable, final, and fixed scientific theories was criticized by Dewey, who turned the meaning of what is prestigious upside down: “The proper contrast is not between experience and something else higher and better than experience, but between a crude, narrow, and mechanical experience, and an intelligent, enriched, and free, or growing, experience” (1911/1985: 451). To him, the contrast is not between theory and practice, but between whether we relate to our experiences in a one-sided way or an investigative way. In this chapter, we have limited ourselves to outlining two striking ways of relating to experiences of, participation in, and attempts at understanding praxis. We have stressed that praxis must always be understood from particular perspectives. It may be defensive of the current praxis and some participants’ dominant interests. The defensive position will strengthen the tendency to instruct others to do specific things, overlooking their concrete conditions. On the other hand, the perspective may attempt to push praxis in a direction that integrates the participants’ different interests. By this, we are not implying that specific positions will lead to specific understandings, i.e., that leaders maintain one understanding and teachers another. But we stress that the different social conditions of participants’ activities put them under pressure to understand their activities in particular ways, and yet it is their way of relating to their conditions which is decisive. For us, it is important to note that teachers are under pressure to take the concrete into account and that they are thereby also under pressure to integrate different understandings of the problems of the school system. The scientific researcher has the possibility to systemically uncover the intricacies in a complex common cause in praxis like a school, and thereby participate in its integrating development. We have argued that scientific theoretical work in the human sciences is based on our participation in social praxis and that this includes an explorative stance even toward the understandings we are working with. It is with theories that we become surprised by unexpected phenomena, and we must reflect systematically on the contradictions in our theories in order to develop them further. How to work with generalizations in research praxis is therefore also a matter of how we relate systematically to widespread generalizations and experiences, and of being able to criticize one-sided understandings and restrictive conditions.

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 eneralization as Flexibly Focusing on the Relevancies G of a Problem We have presented an understanding of generalization as connected to subjective aspects of persons’ participation in common causes in praxis. It is commonly understood that generalization decontextualizes a phenomenon so that it appears valid everywhere. We have challenged this by arguing that the way we generalize appears in concrete praxis and has implications for how praxis is coordinated. The things we generalize about appear to vary in particular ways, and we experience things as a compound of aspects. Our generalizations are at once subjective and social. Persons must identify what is relevant for them in their concrete many-sided praxis. They must coordinate themselves around common causes which contain incompatible elements and are contradictory. Working systematically with generalizations in research, we must generalize around the contradictions and how they cohere in praxis: we must focus on what is relevant and the context thereof. Our understanding of contradictions gives us a sense of the direction of the development of praxis. To make the common causes work, we must more or less explicitly include more or less context as needed. The more concrete our struggle with common causes with particular variations, the more concrete and comprehensive our generalizations. In our struggle with common causes, we must explore openly and systematically, that is, we must focus on the relevancies of a problem and flexibly focus around it as needed (Højholt and Kousholt 2018). The common cause does not run its course automatically. We must maintain it. We can achieve a flexible stability through the processes of many-sided generalizations. This has become more necessary with the division of labor by professionals: We are forced to restrict who must be knowledgeable about what, and who must do what. That is, with privileges we are forced to prioritize specific ways of seeing things. However, even if our approach is supported by privileged theories and tools and we thereby try to maintain stability, the concreteness of praxis forces us to stay flexible and thereby critical in order to make things work. In this way, critique is seen as a way to surmount one-sided, isolated and excluding generalizations. The more comprehensive the possibility for critique, the more comprehensive the development we can achieve.

References Axel, E. (2003). Theoretical deliberations on “regulation as productive tool use”. Outlines: Critical Social Studies, 5(1), 31–46. Axel, E. (2009). What makes us talk about wing nuts? Critical psychology and subjects at work. Theory & Psychology, 19(2), 275–295. Axel, E. (2011). Conflictual cooperation. Nordic Psychology, 63(4), 56–78. Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and action. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Busch-Jensen, P. (2015). The production of power in everyday life of organizational practice: Working with conflicts as heuristics. Outlines, 16(2), 15–25.

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Busch-Jensen, P. (2018). Skoleledelse: mellem konflikter og samarbejde. In C.  Højholt & D. Kousholt (Eds.), Konflikter om børns skoleliv (pp. 126–171). København: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Dewey, J. (1911/1985). Pedagogical dictionary. In John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899–1924. Carbondal: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1929/1958). Nature and experience. Mineola, NY: Dover. Dreier, O. (2008). Psychotherapy in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreier, O. (2019). Generalizations in situated practices. In C.  Højholt & E.  Schraube (Eds.), Subjectivity and knowledge: Generalization in the psychological study of everyday life (pp. 177–193). New York: Springer. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature and the geography of difference. Malden: Blackwell. Havemann, R. (1966). Dialektik ohne Dogma (dialectics without dogmatism: Natural sciences against communistic ideology). Aula: Het Spectrum. Højholt, C. (2016). Situated inequality and the conflictuality of children’s conduct of life. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 145–163). London: Routledge. Højholt, C., & Kousholt, D. (Eds.). (2018). Konflikter om børns skoleliv. København: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Højholt, C., & Kousholt, D. (2019a). Developing knowledge through participation and collaboration: Research as mutual learning processes. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 17. Højholt, C. & Kousholt, D. (2019b, In press). Contradictions and conflicts—Researching school as conflictual social practice. Theory & Psychology. Højholt, C., & Schwartz, I. (2018). Elevsamspil, konflikter og udsathed i skolens fællesskaber. In C. Højholt & D. Kousholt (Eds.), Konflikter om børns skoleliv (pp. 58–91). København: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Holzkamp, K. (2013). Psychology: Social self-understanding on the reasons for action in the conduct of everyday life. In E. Schraube & U. Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject. Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp (pp. 233–341). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in the livelyhood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. Juul Jensen, U. (1999). Categories in activity theory: Marx’s philosophy just-in-time. In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard, & U. Juul Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social practice: Cultural-historical approaches (pp. 79–99). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Klitmøller, J., & Nielsen, K. (2017). John Hattie som uddannelsesteoretiker—en kritik af teorien om synlig læring. Dansk pædagogisk tidsskrift, 2, 3–15. Lave, J. (2019). Situated learning, historical process and practice. In Learning and everyday life: Access, participation, and changing practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leont’ev, A.  N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Levins, R., & Lewontin, R. (1985). The dialectical biologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mardahl-Hansen, T. (2018). Teaching as a social practice. Nordic Psychology, 71, 3. https://doi.org /10.1080/19012276.2018.1457451. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1845/1969). Werke (Vol. 3). Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Ollman, B. (2003). Dance of the dialectic: Steps in Marx’s method. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ollman, B. (2015). Marxism and the philosophy of internal relations; or, how to replace the mysterious ‘paradox’ with ‘contradictions’ that can be studied and resolved. Capital & Class, 39(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816814564128.

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Røn Larsen, M. (2019). Interdisciplinary collaboration and conflict concerning children in difficulties—Conditions, procedures and politics of everyday life in school. Annual Review of Critical Psychology. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London: Arena. Schraube, E. (2015). Why theory matters: Analytical strategies of critical psychology. Estudos de Psicologia, 32(3), 533–545. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-166X2015000300018. Schraube, E., & Osterkamp, U. (Eds.). (2013). Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Selected writings of Klaus Holzkamp. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Oxford: AltaMira Press. Taylor, C. (1975). Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L.  S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 3

Rethinking Generalization with Kurt Lewin and Action Research Martin Dege

Introduction My goal in this chapter is simple. I want to shed light on the not-so-well-known accomplishments of the  well-known psychologist Kurt Zadek Lewin. Lewin has found his place in the history of psychology and is generally considered to be one of the important voices in Gestalt psychology, the originator of the concept of volition, and the inventor of topological psychology. His political agenda is however generally ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood. In an attempt to rectify this mistake, I am using the following sections of this chapter to go over Lewin’s work in chronological order from his very early research projects in Berlin to his work in New  York, at MIT, and the beginnings of a promising collaboration with the Tavistock Institute in London shortly before his untimely death in 1947. The purpose of this narrative is to show that Lewin’s research and his commitment to concrete projects were always politically motivated. Lewin’s theoretical works, particularly his writings in the philosophy of science and epistemology, lay the grounds for a revamped understanding of social science research, which he himself defined as “no action without research, no research without action” (Lewin 1945b: 5). Part and parcel of this concept is of course Lewin’s famous Action Research approach which provided the grounds for developments in the field of participatory research for years to come. Interestingly enough though, Lewin’s works in psychology proper in addition to his writings in epistemology and the philosophy of science are generally rendered as a separate body of work, entirely disconnected from his efforts in Action Research. Scholars of one branch of his research often ignore the other, as if there were two Kurt Lewins: Lewin the psychologist and Lewin the Action Researcher. My goal in this chapter is not to convince one or the other side M. Dege (*) Department of Psychology, The American University of Paris, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_3

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that a holistic reading of Lewin would be beneficial, for one because this seems self-­ evident to me; at least if you want to do justice to the full body of Lewin’s thought. The other reason is more practical and guided by the theme of this book. I believe that from this peculiar combination of the two (or maybe even three) Lewins  the  (theoretical) psychologist and epistemologist, and the Action Researcher - derives a particular understanding of the politics of research. More concretely, I believe that Lewin develops a particular understanding of the effects and consequences of research results in the social sciences, that is, their generalization. In so doing, Lewin envisions a concept of generalization that goes beyond the traditional equation in psychology where generalization amounts to a question of frequency (Michell 1999: 39). I am not the only one (Dege 2011) and certainly not the first to argue this (see, e.g., Beckstead et al. 2009; Tateo 2013; Danziger 1994; Lück 2009, 2001; Schönpflug 1992). However, I believe that, so far, the literature has ignored the connection between  Lewin’s revolutionary thinking in methodology  and his political agenda. I want to argue that we can better grasp the interrelations of action, change, research, and subjectivity that come to light in his concept of generalization if we take the political aspects of his work into account. Lewin understood that generalization of a research practice that consisted of action must itself consist of action. He understood, so I claim, that research in the social sciences cannot focus on historically geographically concrete data (Lewin 1936a: 30) to speculate about events in the present or the future. In other words, for Lewin it seemed clear that— no matter how sophisticated the research procedure would be, including complex statistical models—concrete data points from the past could tell us very little about a future to come. Instead, Lewin understood that we would have to generalize actions: The core of any social science research project in such manner would be to increase human agency in any given situation. In turn, the social science endeavor would be inherently political. It is this political impetus in Lewin’s work that is lost if his work is split into two. And it is the far-reaching consequences of his ideas that drop out of sight if researchers fail to relate his work on action research (and his community work and his work on teacher education) back to his more psychological studies and his reflections on the philosophy of science. To show how valuable such a connection might be, I want to draw a more political picture of Lewin’s work in the following sections to ultimately show how a concept of generalization as generalization of human agency naturally follows from his research agenda.

Kurt Lewin’s Development as a Researcher: The Early Years For Kurt Lewin, as for many psychologists of his time, psychology was closely connected to politics. His attempts to change the discipline went hand in hand with his commitment to building a better world in the face of inexplicable suffering. Like many of his German colleagues in psychology, he was of Jewish decent (Lewin 1916: 37, 1992: 16) and became the victim of an ever growing anti-Semitism in Europe, and specifically in Germany. In a letter addressed to Wolfgang Köhler who

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served as the chair of the psychology department in Berlin, Lewin reflects on this anti-Semitism. I don’t know whether you realize to what extent the social exclusion of Jews and their forced restriction to a very few professions actually existed before the war. My parents were among those few Jews who owned a farm. I therefore know that 100% anti-Semitism of the coarsest type was taken for granted and constituted the basic stance not only of the landed aristocracy, but also of the peasants in the surrounding area. (Lewin 1981, 1986: 42)

Despite such experiences early on in his life and like so many other Germans with a Jewish background, he enlisted in the army as soon as World War I broke out. In 1918, he was injured, discharged from the army and honored with the iron cross. While in the military, Lewin defended his dissertation in 1916 and published his first article (Lewin 1917). He was a member of a left-leaning student group during that time which discussed social issues and organized seminars for workers called workingmen’s courses. The seminars focused on the general education of the working class (Marrow 1969: 6/7). Out of this group of students, it was particularly Hedda and Karl Korsch who developed a close relationship with Lewin. Together with Karl Korsch, Lewin wrote a paper about the problems of using mathematical formulas in social psychology (Lewin and Korsch 1939), and he also published an article about Frederick Taylor’s concept of scientific management in Korsch’s journal (Lewin 1920). Together with Hans Rupp, he worked on attitude measurement in the textile industry (Lewin and Rupp 1928a, b) in the hopes to improve the working conditions of the mostly female employees. Most of these politically charged activities early on in Lewin’s career are typically downplayed or ignored in favor of his more academic (and experimental) work during the 1920s until the early 1940s, when he established himself as an academic psychologist in the USA. However, a close reading of his academic work shows the same impetus, it points into a similar direction. As such, Lewin’s turn to experimental psychology and problems of volition measurement (Lewin 1916, 1922a, b) was at least to some extent forced upon him as a prerequisite to secure a position in academia (Métraux 1992). The first version of his Habilitationsschrift (Lewin 1921)—a second qualifying thesis after the PhD required in Germany at the time to receive the venia legendi (the right to teach)— submitted in 1919 or 1920, was rejected by the Berlin department. Why he was first rejected remains subject to speculation; it is however safe to say that the committee was unhappy with the direction Lewin had chosen for his research. Lewin later passed his Habilitation to become a university professor on the basis of an extended version of his dissertation (Lewin 1922b).1 After his Habilitation, Lewin taught at the Berlin Institute, offering classes in psychology and philosophy, and developed his field theory. Facing rapid political changes in Europe, Lewin would eventually be forced to leave Berlin. Thanks to his American student Junius Flagg Brown who published a paper entitled “The ­methods

 For details about the rejection and eventual acceptance of Lewin’s Habilitationsschrift, see Métraux (1983). 1

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of Professor Lewin in the psychology of action and affection” in Psychological Review (Brown 1929), his work became known in the United States. Also, in 1930 Lewin was able to persuade Donald K. Adams to translate one of his papers entitled “Der Übergang von der aristotelischen zur galileischen Denkweise in Biologie und Psychologie” which was about to appear in Erkenntnis, a well-known German journal concerned mainly with epistemological questions (Lewin 1931a). Adams had considerable difficulties translating the text specifically because Lewin’s style of writing was oftentimes demanding, not particularly reader-friendly and made extensive use of neologisms.2 In 1931, Adams’s translation appeared in the Journal of General Psychology entitled “The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology” (Lewin 1931b). With this article, Lewin became popular in the USA and started to build his reputation as a theorist in psychology who aimed at re-elaborating the very foundations of the discipline.

The Early Years in the USA: Methodology and Politics The central argument of “The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology” (Lewin 1931b) was indeed revolutionary for American academic psychology at the time. Lewin argued for psychology as an idiographic science: Psychological laws, so he claimed, cannot be generated from huge studies with large samples, but rather from investigating the single individual in its wholeness (De Rivera 1976: 18). In many ways, this paper is the first articulation of a reinvention of the concept of generalization (Tateo 2013). Lewin’s concept of an ideographic psychology was fully unfolded, eventually, in his Principles of Topological Psychology (Henle 1984) which he translated into English during the summers of 1934 and 1935 with the help of Fritz and Grace Heider (Lewin 1936a). The book—and specifically the translation—is notoriously difficult to read; a fact that most likely contributed to its ultimate failure on the academic market. Lewin himself acknowledged this fact and spoke of the book as an unfinished product of “a very long growth” (Lewin 1936a: vii). In the book, Lewin presented his concept of Topological Psychology, an approach to understand human (inter)action based on his field theory. Lewin wrote: The person is to be represented as a connected region which is separated from the environment by a Jordan curve. Within this region there are part regions. One can begin by distinguishing as such parts the inner-personal regions […] from the motor and perceptual region […]. The motor and perceptual region has the position of a boundary-zone between the inner-personal regions and the environment. (Lewin 1936a: 177)

 See Adams interviewed by Marrow, specifically the creation of the term “valence” which translated the German “Aufforderungscharacter” and quickly became adopted by Tolman as a replacement for his concept of “demand value” and later even translated back to German as “Valenz” (Marrow 1969: 56–57). The “affordance” concept as discussed today in technology studies and first introduced by Gibson also draws on Lewin’s Aufforderungscharakter (Gibson 1977, 2015). 2

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Passages as these contribute to the typical reading of Lewin’s body of work within the discipline of psychology. He is largely regarded as a theorist who contributed to Gestalt psychology and founded his own school of vector psychology (also called field or topological psychology); an approach that is considered to carry historical value only (Ash 1992). While it is true that vector psychology is not an active field of development in psychology today, it allowed Lewin to rethink the concept of generalization from the standpoint of a theoretical critique of his discipline. As I have outlined above, however, this is not the end of the story: Lewin was concerned with and strongly influenced by political issues early on in his career. Even more so, his political activities intensified after he had migrated to the United States (van Elteren 1993). Among other things, Lewin’s political agenda is visible in his attempts to establish a psychology department at the Hebrew university in Palestine. During February 1935, Lewin wrote two papers (Lewin 1935a, b; see also Bargal 1998) to outline his ideas for research in Palestine in general and for the psychology institute to be founded in particular. A Department of Psychology in the Hebrew University is an essential unit of the cultural, educational and practical services of the University […]. Its research work will begin by concentrating upon the psychological problems connected with immigration, social adaptation and the processes by which Jews from different parts of the world integrate into a single cultural community. […] Because Palestine is a concentrated area in which there come together a great variety of people of diverse and conflicting cultural backgrounds, it will be possible to undertake fundamental studies in certain problems of social fusion and adjustment which are characteristic of social and cultural history everywhere. (Lewin 1935a: 1–2)

Lewin suggested to closely examine several topics: the relationship between immigrants from different countries, the lack of a common language, the impact of a more collectivist society found in the kibbutzim on immigrants with more individualistic cultural backgrounds, the influence of ideology—specifically Zionism—on the individual. For Lewin, theory, methodology, and politics are deeply connected: I personally find especially intriguing endeavours to coordinate with the field-studies experimental studies of the factors that condition the opinions and transformation of ideologies; of the effects of cultural and social homogeneity and non-homogeneity on the structure of a group; of the effect of cultural differences on work; etc. (1935b: 4)

These descriptions carry the seeds of what Lewin would later call Action Research. Had he been able to secure funding for his project at Hebrew University, the history of Action Research in the Lewinian tradition might have started some 10 years earlier. However, creating a psychology institute at Hebrew University did not work out, Lewin gave up on his attempts to secure funding and the university on its own was not able to provide the salary Lewin was asking for, let alone offer the kinds of research funds necessary to conduct Lewin’s projects.3  The faith of psychology at Hebrew University took a different turn after negotiations with Lewin had failed: In 1939 Joseph Bonaventura was appointed Professor of Psychology at Hebrew University. However, according to the university archives he did not teach in psychology and focused on education instead. Only in 1941, psychology was approved as a secondary field of 3

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Instead of Hebrew University, Lewin moved to Iowa with a research grand from the Rockefeller foundation with the amount of $90,000 per year (Ash 1992: 201). At Iowa, Lewin was quick to establish research networks such as the famous Quasselstrippe—the hot air club (Marrow 1969: 88). The Topology Group which he founded around the same time met annually even long after his death; the last meeting took place in 1964 (Marrow 1969: 111–115). The group quickly grew to a meeting place for some of the most influential thinkers in psychology and the social sciences. Thanks to Lewin’s benefactor Lawrence Frank, the Rockefeller Foundation covered all expenses. Among the participants were Donald K. Adams, Karl E. Zener, Edward C. Tolman, David Krech, Tamara Dembo, Erik Erikson, Lawrence Frank himself, Fritz and Grace Heider, Wolfgang Köhler, Donald W. MacKinnon, Margret Mead, William Stern, and others. The freedom at Iowa and its  intellectually rich atmosphere allowed Lewin to establish himself in the USA. Lewin continued his reflections on the methodology of psychology and published several papers during his Iowa time. In 1935, Lewin elaborated his concept of life space and social space that indicate his growing interest in social psychology (Lewin 1935c). He also worked on measurement theory in combination with his field theory in “The conceptual representation and the measurement of psychological forces” (Lewin 1938). Most of his other publications during this time period speak the same language. In 1939, he published a paper together with Karl Korsch in which he describes the tasks for psychology on three levels: experimental research, formalization and mathematization, and inventing dynamic constructs (Lewin and Korsch 1939). Yet another article published in the American Journal of Sociology that same year focused on the advances of a formalized approach to the social world and efforts to make various approaches more commensurable (Lewin 1939b). Lewin writes: [The commensurability of various approaches] can be accomplished by the use of constructs which characterize objects and events in terms of interdependence rather than of phenotypical similarity or dissimilarity. It may seem that emphasizing interdependence will make the problem of classification even more difficult because, generally, it is more difficult to describe a fact in terms of its effect on others and its being affected by others (its conditional-genetic properties) than in terms of its appearance (phenotypical properties). However, as soon as one grasps the idea, it becomes evident that if one characterizes an object or event by the way it affects the situation, every type of fact is placed on the same level and becomes interrelated to any other fact which affects the situation. (1939b: 888)

As can be seen, Lewin concentrated on methodological problems during his Iowa years. And indeed, it can be argued that many of the issues he grappled with and actually provided valuable solutions for, are still at the heart of the most elementary methodological questions in psychology today. It was during his Iowa times that Lewin “connect[ed] the concrete to the conceptual and deal[t] with the essential

specialization for BA students. No experimental psychology existed at the university until the end of World War II (Bargal 1998: 65). A psychology department was not established until 1957, 10 years after Lewin’s untimely death.

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structures […] that occur beneath observation and description.” Lewin realized that “the focus on essential structures moves us from breaking phenomena apart and studying elements in isolation to a systemic orientation that is oriented towards” what Beckstead et al. call “systemic causality” (Beckstead et al. 2009: 71): Lewin moved away from a variable centered psychology; he realized that a generalization of phenotypical properties on average cannot lead to proper results. Instead his psychology is concerned with the effects of what he calls ‘facts’ rather than  the ontology of those facts. In this vein, he describes the “Formalization and Progress in Psychology”: [T]o make oneself master of the forces of this vast scientific continent one has to fulfill a rather peculiar task. The ultimate goal is to establish a network of highways and superhighways, so that any important point may be linked easily with any other. This network of highways will have to be adapted to the natural topography of the country and will thus itself be a mirror of its structure and of the position of its resources. (1940: 11)

In many ways, the appeal of Lewin’s work to (some, theoretically inclined, critical, etc.) psychologists today is reflected in the above quotation. Lewin provides a very early critique of variable-centered psychology; a critique that is in many respects still applicable today. Furthermore, he elaborates his alternative on his profound expertise in methodology and the philosophy of science. And he promises a clear, scientific, and formalized way in his attempts to “find a mathematization which adequately represents this dynamic interdependence between psychological processes” (Lewin and Korsch 1939: 398). It is this keen interest in formalization and in solving methodological problems that most reconceptualizations of generalization draw upon. Tateo, for example, argues that, following Lewin, “generalization is a conceptual abstraction, establishing meaningful relationships between the parts of a whole” (Tateo 2013: 534). In a similar vein, Beckstead et  al. argue that “Post-­ Galilean thought not only denied the epistemological treatment of generalization through ‘frequency’ but also changed the locus of causation away from the intrinsic properties of the object to the structural relationships between objects” (Beckstead et al. 2009: 79). While I do not see anything wrong with either of these conclusions, I contend that they fall short of Lewin’s own approach to generalization as he shaped it over the course of the final years of his career.

 he Later Years: Empirical Projects, Community Work, T Political Action The famous experiments on autocracy and democracy Lewin conducted during the late 1930s and early 1940s together with his students Ronald Lippitt and Ralph White (Lewin et al. 1939; Lippitt 1940; White and Lippitt 1960), influenced Lewin’s future work in two significant ways. First, he turned more strongly to the social world and to groups, a shift in his work that had already started with his paper on minority research in 1935 (Lewin 1935c). Second, Lewin became more involved in

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a public debate on democracy and democratic education that reached beyond the dominant discourse in American psychology at the time toward a more transdisciplinary, action-oriented, and political approach. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Lewin wrote a clairvoyant paper entitled “When facing danger,” the general tone of which can perhaps be summarized in one quote: “[T]hose who are interested in democracy,” Lewin attested, “need to realize that there is but one of two alternatives, either to live as slaves under Fascism, or to be ready to die for democracy” (Lewin 1997b: 116). His concern with the fate of the Jewish population not just in Europe but all over the world also directly translated into his research. He realized that researching the individual alone will not accomplish any change on a broader scale. Instead, it seemed more promising to study the interaction of groups with other groups, specifically if interaction patterns between minority and majority groups were to be understood. Lewin writes: If it has ever been a question whether the Jewish problem is an individual or a social one, a clear-cut answer was provided by the S. A. men [S. A. was the acronym for Sturmabteilung, the paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), M.D.] in the streets of Vienna who beat with steel rods any Jew irrespective of his past conduct or status. Jews all over the world now recognize that the Jewish problem is a social problem. (1997b: 117)

Also, Lewin realized that change cannot be brought about by changing the respective minority or majority alone. Instead “[I]t should be understood that any underprivileged minority is preserved as such by the more privileged majority” (Lewin 1997b: 117). There is a “need of the majority for a scapegoat […] [A need that] grows out of tension, e.g. from an economic depression. […] No ‘logical’ argument will destroy these basic forces” (Lewin 1997b: 118). Lewin realized that the problem of the Jewish people and, more broadly, the problem of minorities cannot be singlehandedly resolved by science proper. Instead, “the Jew will have to realize that for him (sic) as well as for any other underprivileged group the following statement holds: Only the efforts of the group itself will achieve the emancipation of the group” (Lewin 1997b: 118). As such, Lewin believed that to emancipate a group, one first needs to invest in the strengths and inner cohesion of the group itself because such a “group will have an organic life of its own. It will show organization and inner strength.” In contrast, a “minority kept together only from outside is in itself chaotic. It is composed of a mass of individuals without inner relations with each other, a group unorganized and weak” (Lewin 1997b: 119). The emancipation of a group “would be more than a self-centered act. It would have a direct bearing upon the struggle of the majority for the solution of their economic and political problems” (Lewin 1997b: 121). In the following years, Lewin’s research concentrated on topics such as group dynamics (Lewin 1939a), social change (Lewin 1943a), and action research (Lewin 1943b, 1946). With an increasing amount of funding that Lewin was able to secure, he inaugurated two research centers. In the first months of 1945, Lewin established the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T. and the Commission on Community Interrelations (CCI) of the American Jewish Congress located in New York City.

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Naturally, Lewin was interested in combining the work of the two institutes. Most of his students, such as Lippitt, Radke, Festinger, French Jr., and Cartwright were involved in both the projects (Marrow 1969: 173). Lewin also kept close relationships with Douglas McGregor and Charles Myers at MIT as well as Henry Murray and Gordon Allport at Harvard. The Research Center for Group Dynamics was mainly concerned with positive and negative forces at work in human groups. Lewin himself described the goals and research prospects of the center in an article published in Sociometry in 1945. The Center should investigate “the forces which bring about change or which resist change.” He insisted that “all aspects of group life would have to be taken into consideration.” Further, Lewin claims absolute independence for his project: “[T]he study of group life should be independent of the way in which society is accustomed to classify a particular group phenomenon.” He envisions a “systematic scientific approach” for the Center which “follow[s] comparative lines.” This approach includes the “use of whatever qualitative or quantitative psychological, sociological, or anthropological methods […] are needed for investigation.” This could only be achieved, so Lewin argues, if “theories [are kept] abreast and partly ahead of the gathering of data” (Lewin 1945a: 130–131). As such, the Research Center for Group Dynamics was envisioned with a primary focus on theoretical development and empirical application to gain results which would explain the basics of group functioning.4 The Commission on Community Interrelations, in contrast, had a strong focus on applying scientific knowledge to existing social issues. The American Jewish Congress (AJC) as the central provider of funds used the Commission as their tool to investigate the ongoing struggles of public concern. The AJC itself was originally established to help European Jews in America after World War I and to advocate civil rights and equality for Jews (Cherry and Borshuk 1998: 121). This focus broadened however specifically during World War II when American liberals began to fear that forms of fascism and racism could become more dominant in the United States. These fears were specifically underlined by Gunnar Myrdal’s study about race inequality in the United States (Myrdal et  al. 1944; Jackson 1994; McLean 1946: 159). Following these results, “Jewish Congress leaders perceived the need for a more broadly based attack on discrimination and prejudice. Indeed, the American Jewish Congress’ leadership adopted the principle of ‘collective security’; an assault on anyone’s constitutional rights was now [a] just cause for the Jewish Congress to come to the defence of the injured party or group” (Frommer 1978: 540). Such attacks on the constitutional rights of people should be contested not only with the means of the law itself, but also with social sciences. As such, the CCI from the beginning set out to use social science knowledge to improve the life circumstances not only of the Jewish population in the United States but of minority groups in general. A self-description published in the Weekly Congress, the main Journal of the AJC, reads like this:  A good illustration of the way in which group dynamics were approached at the Center can be found in (Lewin 1947a, b). An extended list of the publications during Lewin’s time at MIT can be found in Marrow (1969: 277–284). 4

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M. Dege There are other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, engaged in this work. The question the layman is entitled to ask is: What innovation will the new Commission bring into the general strategy? The answer is knowledge of facts. In the struggle against anti-Semitism two fundamental issues are involved: the safety of Jewish life and—what is of greater importance to all people—the ability of democracies to build a better world. […] What the Commission on Community Interrelations proposes to do is to acquire precise and thorough knowledge of facts and to proceed with action based upon the facts. (Lewin 1945b: 4–5)

The facts needed “to build a better world” are to be gathered in a scientific manner. The aim is to “take the struggle against prejudice out of the realm of hope, faith, opinion and guesswork and place it within the scope of scientific measurement and scientific fact” (Interrelations 1945: 3–4). The credo is “no action without research, no research without action” (Lewin 1945b: 5). For Lewin, the CCI offered a “new approach to old problems,” and its methods could be the “infra-red rays of social science” (Lewin 1945c: 7). His hope was to effectively combine immediate action and long-range research to generate effective responses to social problems: “[W]e do not want that type of so-called ‘realistic policy’ which lives from day to day. […] Any constructive plan must see both the long range goal and the day by day action. It should see not only the local situation […] but also the broader issues and social forces” (Lewin 1945c: 6). In the last year of his life, Lewin became involved with the Tavistock Institute in London which was founded by Eric Trist, whom Lewin had met during the APA congress in 1929 at Yale University, and the British psychologist A. T. M. Wilson. Together, they established the Journal Human Relations. Lewin had originally planned to spend the summer of 1947 at the Tavistock Institute in London. On the evening of February 11, 1947, however Lewin fell sick. The family doctor diagnosed a minor heart attack and advised Lewin to go to the hospital the following day. But before he could leave the house the next morning, another heart attack stroke him. This time it was fatal.

Lewin and the Problem of Generalization The purpose of the sections above was to shed some light on the complexities of Kurt Lewin’s research from his very first projects in Germany to his role as a coordinator of several large-scale research projects later and until he died. As I have tried to show, Lewin’s career cannot be understood independently from the historical circumstances he had to witness. Neither can it be understood without tying all the ends together: Kurt Lewin the psychologist, Kurt Lewin the methodologist and philosopher of science, and Kurt Lewin the politically engaged citizen. I have already pointed to a specific reading of Lewin’s concept of generalization that is indeed revolutionary for psychology (and other social sciences that follow the variable-­ centered model, see Beckstead et al. 2009; De Rivera 1976; Tateo 2013). And I have also indicated that, in my view, this understanding is not radical enough. To elaborate my point, I will briefly go over Lewin’s philosophy of science and clarify his

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understanding of  generalization and how this understanding carries the potential to reflect scientific debates in the political realm. During the time in Germany as well as in the first years in America, Lewin had strong affinities to the left and was inspired by Marxist thought. When he began to develop Action Research, however, Lewin had turned toward liberalism and became an advocate of American liberal democracy. This shift occurred not only in Lewin’s thought but seemed to be a general phenomenon of the time and the way in which essential events were interpreted, that shaped social psychology in the United States before, during, and after. Lewin established field theory and topological or vector psychology toward the end of his Berlin years (published in his magnum opus during the first years in the USA (Lewin 1936a)), largely on the basis of his background in phenomenology that he inherited from his PhD advisor Carl Stumpf (1992: 15). As such, Lewin’s psychology offers a combination of phenomenology (Lewin 1917), sociological meta-­ theory (Lewin 1943a), empirical and mathematical rigor (Lewin and Korsch 1939), and applied psychology (Lewin 1943b). It can be said that Lewin conceived of psychology as a tripartite system: theorizing, which for the psychologist was enriched and at the same time substantiated by experimental research, and applied psychology. The often quoted line “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” (Lewin 1997a: 288) is frequently misread and seems to suggest that Lewin gave a primacy to theory. However, the full quote reveals Lewin’s critique of the “pure theoretician.” Instead he advocated mutually constitutive relationships between theory and (political) practice. It would be most unfortunate if the trend toward theoretical psychology were weakened by the necessity of dealing with natural groups when studying certain problems of social psychology. One should not be blind, however, to the fact that this development offers great opportunities as well as threats to theoretical psychology. The greatest handicap of applied psychology has been the fact that, without proper theoretical help, it had to follow the costly, inefficient, and limited method of trial and error. Many psychologists working today in an applied field are keenly aware of the need for close cooperation between theoretical and applied psychology. This can be accomplished in psychology, as it has been accomplished in physics, if the theorist does not look toward applied problems with highbrow aversion or with a fear of social problems, and if the applied psychologist realizes that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. (1997a: 288)

From the very beginning of his works, Lewin was well aware of the necessity to bridge the gap between theory and applied research. He realized that a systematic approach to the problems of the social sciences can only be successful, if it meaningfully combines theory and praxis. And this combination is, for Lewin, possible because “Kant in his Copernican Turn, transformed the question of ‘is insight (Erkenntnis) possible’ into ‘how is insight (Erkenntnis) possible.’” For Lewin, it is the transformation from speculative science to phenomenological science, “a science which—instead of being based on a few presupposed axioms—takes its starting point in the concrete, existing (vorliegenden) objects” (Lewin 1927: 375). Lewin’s goal was to capture the subject under investigation as an empirical whole— and that whole had to be lawful. Put differently, Lewin realized that every form of

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behavior was lawful—that is to say meaningful—not just lawful on average (as variable-centered psychology would have it). Lewin’s way of thinking about the epistemology in psychology is of course strongly influenced by Ernst Cassirer with whom he studied in Berlin (Lück 2009: 83) and whom he considered to be one of his central influences (Lewin 1999: 23). There is but one paper where Lewin makes this connection explicit. It was published in a collection of essays about Cassirer’s work (Schilpp 1949) only after Lewin’s death (Lewin 1949). The paper examines Cassirer’s philosophy in relation to the natural sciences and Lewin’s attempts to put these concepts to use in the social sciences, and in psychology in particular.5 If Carl Stumpf and the phenomenological tradition shaped Lewin’s general approach to perception (Bargal 2006: 370), then it was clearly Ernst Cassirer’s work that shaped Lewin’s understanding of science. Specifically, Cassirer’s ideas of Substanzbegriff and Funktionsbegriff (Cassirer 1910)—literally meaning “the term of substance” and “the term of function” but somewhat problematically translated into English simply as “substance” and “function” (Cassirer 1923)—proved to be invaluable for Lewin (Lewin 1999: 24). In Substance and Function, Cassirer investigates the production of knowledge in the natural sciences and develops a concept of scientific progress. Lewin subscribes to these ideas and renders scientific development based on an interplay between the development of theory (function) and the acquisition of facts (substance) for “the term ‘scientific development’ refers to levels of scientific maturity” (Lewin 1999: 26). Moreover, Lewin believed that Cassirer’s model, originally developed for mathematics and then broadened to encompass the “exact sciences” (Cassirer 1923: iii), can be applied to and would indeed benefit the social sciences as well (Lewin 1999: 24). Cassirer sees science as a system, very much alike Lewin’s view of the social world. Cassirer argues that stable facts can only be understood as part of a greater whole in which changes occur: [I]f it were true that exact proof were only possible of that which always maintains itself in the same form, then change could be tolerated as an auxiliary concept, but could not be used as an independent logical principle. […] [B]ut this unchangeableness cannot be defined unless we understand, as its ideal background, certain fundamental changes in opposition to which it gains its validity. (1923: 90)

In line with his neo-Kantian education of “philosophy as a consultant to science” (Lewin 1999: 24), Lewin develops his own methodological approach based on Cassirer’s thought. Following Cassirer’s model of science as a system, Lewin comes to terms with the “particular state of development of his science.” He realizes that research “methods have to be adjusted to the specific state of affairs at a given time” (Lewin 1999: 25), rendering “the basic character of science as the eternal attempt to go beyond what is regarded scientifically accessible”(Lewin 1999: 26), to take “the next step from the known into the jungle of the unknown” (Lewin 1947a: 6).

 Cassirer’s philosophy provides the grounds for Lewin’s reflections in many ways; Cassirerian philosophy shines through in many places and is explicitly mentioned several times throughout Lewin’s writings (Lewin 1931b, 1947a, b). 5

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Progress thus always means to invent new methods and new theories which will at first inevitably be considered “unscientific” or “illogical” because like social taboos, a scientific taboo is kept up not so much by a rational argument as by a common attitude among scientists: Any member of the scientific guild who does not strictly adhere to the taboo is looked upon as queer; he is suspected of not adhering to the scientific standards of critical thinking. (Lewin 1999: 28)

The young (pre-war) Lewin believed in a final scientific revolution which would bring about unity for his discipline or even the social sciences in general. Galilei achieved this for physics—in Cassirer’s interpretation which Lewin follows—and clearly Lewin felt that his field theory represented the Galilean/Copernican revolution for the social sciences in “that it has shifted the previous logical constants […], that it has set them at another place than before” (Cassirer 1923: 373; Lewin 1936a). And indeed, the Aristotelian mode of thought, which Lewin described as dominant in psychology in his 1931 paper (Lewin 1931a, b: 158) is framed as a diminishing relic of the past in his later writings (Lewin 1947a, b, 1949). The Aristotelian approach is nothing but “anthropomorphic and inexact. […] It classes many things with very slight or unimportant relationships together and separates things that objectively are closely and importantly related” (Lewin 1931b: 142; Brown 1935). For Lewin, distinctions in psychology such as “pathological” and “normal” or “personality” and “social” psychology are an expression of this Aristotelian, anthropomorphic view, since logically all these fields are heavily intertwined (Lewin 1936a: 5). “Psychology speaks of the ‘errors’ of children, of ‘practice,’ of ‘forgetting,’ thus classifying whole groups of processes according to the value of their products, instead of according to the nature of the psychological processes involved” (Lewin 1931b: 143). Instead, psychology must “yield to a conception which seeks to derive the same laws for all these fields, and to classify the whole field on the basis of other, essentially functional, differences” (Lewin 1931b: 144). Lewin is convinced that “[w]e are to return to the making of speculative ‘systems’ [to avoid] a blind collecting that splits the field of psychology into a number of unrelated branches” (Lewin 1936a: 5). A flexible system is needed to unite the various subfields of psychology. It would need to be oriented in two directions, namely toward theoretical connectedness and empirical concreteness. It would have to be equally suitable for the representation of general laws and the characteristics of the individual case (Lewin 1936a: 5). It would in turn allow for the dissociation of “generalization” and “frequency,” since every behavior would be considered lawful and would thus be a reflection of a general structure that represents not attributes of subjects on average but the network of conditions under which something occurs. The distinction between lawful behavior and chance—that is, the idea that parts of the variance are explained while others are random occurrences—is therefore reversed. Instead of looking for empirical instances that follow a scientific law, Lewin sets the law as the premise and argues that everything follows a particular law. The single case, regardless of its frequency of occurrence, must be considered lawful (Lewin 1931b: 150). In the same way, the nature of an object or construct cannot be determined by its “membership in a certain conceptual class.” Objects in

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the Galilean mode of thought are not determined by their classification but by their relation to each other (Lewin 1931b: 149). While this could easily be turned into an argument against quantitative approaches in psychology, for Lewin this is not the case. The problem is not simply one of mathematization, it is the way in which mathematics and statistics are applied in the Aristotelian mode: “Lawfulness is believed to be related to regularity, and considered the antithesis of the individual case” (Lewin 1931b: 154). “Frequency of occurrence” poses a central problem in psychology, namely that knowledge based on empirical data collected in such a manner is inherently historically and geographically determined (Lewin 1936a: 30); it relies on data of past occurrences in specific locations—it assumes that the past is predestined to repeat itself. Generalization in this mode of thought becomes a measure of the extent to which the present can be described as mirroring some event in the past. The determination of the cases to be placed in a statistical group is essentially on historicgeographic grounds. For a group defined in historic-geographic terms, perhaps the one-­ year-­old children of Vienna or New York in the year 1928, averages are calculated which are doubtless of the greatest significance to the historian or to the practical school man, but which do not lose their dependence upon the “accidents” of the historic-geographic given even though one go [sic] on to an average of the children of Germany, of Europe, or of the whole world, or of a decade instead of a year. Such an extension of the geographic and historic basis does not do away with the specific dependence of this concept upon the frequency with which the individual cases occur within historically-geographically defined fields. (Lewin 1931b: 157)

For Lewin “the content of a law cannot then be determined by the calculation of averages of historically given cases.” Laws generated in such a manner apply “to an ‘average’ situation. But there just is no such thing as an ‘average situation’ any more than an average child” (Lewin 1931b: 172). From a Galilean perspective, historical frequency is a mere “accident” and a “matter of chance” (Lewin 1931b: 162) and can only be generalized on average; it reports a potential future that is preconditioned upon certain assumptions about the past (Beckstead et al. 2009: 66). Leaving the Aristotelian point of view behind, Lewin turns to the dynamics of life, because “[o]nly by the concrete whole which comprises the object and the situation are the vectors which determine the dynamics of the event defined” (Lewin 1931b: 165). From this viewpoint, the psychologist aspires to “comprehend the whole situation involved, with all its characteristics, as precisely as possible” (Lewin 1931b: 166). Again, Lewin’s concept of psychological research is not a negation of quantitative research nor does it express a strong preference for what we call qualitative research today. Even more so, Lewin is not arguing for a special interest in the single event or the individual subject alone. Deconstructing historically-geographically concrete data as what they are—events of the past—allows for a critical discussion of their generalizability. In Galilean terms, there is no reason to assume that past events will reoccur—independently of their frequency. This however does not mean that psychological research cannot be generalized or that generalizability is a concept unsuitable to psychological research. On the contrary, “[t]his step to the general is automatically and immediately given. […] Instead of a reference to the abstract

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average of as many historically given cases as possible, there is a reference to the full concreteness of the particular situations” (Lewin 1931b: 166). From this perspective, it is Aristotelian psychology—traditional mainstream psychology—that fails to produce generalizable results; for one because mainstream research relies on frequencies of historically and geographically concrete data. More importantly though, generalization must fail because psychological research in what Lewin calls an Aristotelian manner, always already operates on a level of abstraction in order to produce countable frequencies. Present-day child psychology and affect psychology also exemplify clearly the Aristotelian habit. […] The fact that three-year-old children are quite often negative is considered evidence that negativism is inherent in the nature of three-year-olds, and the concept of a negativistic age or stage is then regarded as an explanation […] for the appearance of negativism in a given particular case! Quite analogously, the concept of drives, for example, the hunger drive or the maternal instinct, is nothing more than the abstract selection of the features common to a group of acts that are of relatively frequent occurrence. This abstraction is set up as the essential reality of the behavior and is then in turn used to explain the frequent occurrence of the instinctive behavior, for example, of the care of infant progeny. (Lewin 1931b: 153)

The concrete, individual case—individual life—in contrast, fails to produce “actual repetition, a recurrence of the same event, is not to be expected” (Lewin 1931b: 152). Lewin attests a circular process to Aristotelian/mainstream psychology: historically-­geographically concrete data are collected and averaged to produce propositions as explanations of individual behavior. These explanations rely on a paradoxical abstraction from the concrete subject and the concrete situation in which the subject acted. Consequently, “lawfulness and individuality are considered antitheses.” Individuality is reduced “to a treatment […] in terms of mere averages, as exemplified by tests and questionnaires” (Lewin 1931b: 155). Such “investigations are consequently unable as a rule to give an explanation of the dynamics of the processes involved” (Lewin 1931b: 157). To be clear, Lewin is not favoring qualitative over quantitative approaches, for it can be shown that qualitative studies can exhibit the same flaw if they rely on attempts to generalize research results based on empirical date; that is past occurrences categorized in abstraction. “[T]he Aristotelian immediate relation to the historically regular and its average really means giving up the attempt to understand the particular, always situation-conditioned event” (Lewin 1931b: 166). Instead, Lewin proposes an understanding of generalization in psychological research based on a different form of abstraction. He advocates for what he calls the study of the lawfulness of the individual case. And he exemplifies his concept with Galilei: The mere fact that [Galilei] did not investigate the heavy body itself, but the process of ‘free falling or movement on an inclined plane’ signifies a transition to concepts which can be defined only by reference to a certain sort of situation (namely, the presence of a plane with a certain inclination or of an unimpeded vertical extent of space through which to fall). The idea of investigating free falling, which is too rapid for satisfactory observation, by resorting to the slower movement upon an inclined plane, presupposes that the dynamics of the

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As such, individual, subjective behavior can be understood, if the historically regular average is substituted by a reinstated particular in the situation as a whole. As a presupposition, it must be “just the same whether the situation is frequent and permanent or rare and transitory” (Lewin 1931b: 166–167). It follows that “[t]he dynamics of the processes is always to be derived from the relation of the concrete individual to the concrete situation, and, so far as internal forces are concerned, from the mutual relations of the various functional systems that make up the individual” (Lewin 1931b: 174). Borrowing from Max Wertheimer (1922, 1923, 1925), Lewin emphasizes “situation” as a central term. Instead of investigating certain past occurrences and accumulate those, Lewin argues that the concrete situation needs to be investigated. This way, “a picture that shows in a definite way how the different facts in an individual’s environment are related to each other and to the individual himself [sic], can be acquired” (Lewin 1936a: 13). For Lewin, a situation (unlike an occurrence as a historical-geographical data point) is never a single incident but always a process of change. To understand the situation means to understand that change.

 onclusion: Lewin, Minorities, and the Politics C of Generalization Lewin invented a clever metaphor to elude to a problem he had identified in psychology. He keenly observed a methodological difference between what he identifies as an Aristotelian and a Galilean mode of thought. This metaphor allows him to introduce a concept for research to psychology that privileges the individual case over large collections of data points. It allows for the minorities that he so enthusiastically supported throughout his life, to be as “scientifically lawful” as the societal majorities against which they had to prove themselves. Lewin realized that traditional psychology was the psychology of the manifestation of the majority and their believes. He understood that psychology “confused the notion of abstraction and democratic majority dominance” (Beckstead et al. 2009: 78). Minorities in research that rely on historically-geographically specific data are rendered as “the exception [that] proves the rule” (Lewin 1931b: 156). Lewin develops a model based not on a single occurrence of an event, but on a single meaningful situation and its dynamics, where “the situation is to be regarded as the total of possibilities” (Lewin 1936a: 15)—what Lewin first called psychological life space (Lewin 1936a: 12) and later social space (Lewin 1939a) or group life space (Lewin 1935c, 1947a: 12). It is at this point that Lewin goes beyond the consequences drawn from his methodological reflections. The subject becomes an actor in a situation confronted with various (inner and outer) forces. As such, the individual is determined by the situation and the concrete possibilities of action therein. At the same time, the individual

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determines the situation in that it produces effects that determine the psychological reality: “What is real is what has effects” (Lewin 1936a: 19). Consequently, “the situation must be represented in the way in which it is ‘real’ for the individual in question, that is, as it affects him [sic]” (Lewin 1936a: 25), because it is the person in their life-space who determines the “degrees of freedom” (Lewin 1936b: 272). Lewin is not interested in attitudes, states, and trades of the person. Instead, he wants to understand the very situation in which agency is shaped dynamically as an interplay of the subject and the situational forces: “A dynamic psychology has to represent the personality and the state of a person as the total of possible and not possible ways of behaving” (Lewin 1936a: 14). For Lewin, subjectivity is not a composition of historical facts, nor should it be understood as “nothing more than an abstraction—a being who properly should be described as a cross section of the groups to which he belongs” (Lewin 1939a: 21). Instead it is the very subjectivity produced in the dynamics of a specific situation which presents the starting point of psychological investigations. From there, psychological research, be it with individuals or with groups, follows a specific pattern: The subjective life space is investigated with respect to its “facts,” i.e., everything that “matters” for the particular person or group. This procedure creates an account of the actions taken by the person or group and the subjectively following steps. In case of a conflict, the resolution depends on the analysis of the subjective life spaces of the parties involved, paired with an analysis of the objective situation, i.e., all the possible actions in the very situation which is used in order to “communicate to each other the structure of their life spaces with the object of equalizing them” (Lewin 1947a: 12) to create a shared subjectivity as a generalization from the situation. As such, the analysis of group conflict “swings from an analysis of ‘perception to that of ‘action,’ from the ‘subjective’ to the ‘objective’ and back again” (Lewin 1947a: 12–13). Generalization in those terms is not a generalization of research results, nor a generalization on average. It is the generalization of individualized potentialities within a particular life-space. As such, Lewin lays the grounds to rethink generalization as a tool in the hands of the research subjects that enables them to understand and shape their individual life-space agentively.

References Ash, M.  G. K. (1992). Cultural contexts and scientific change in psychology. American Psychologist, 47(2), 198–207. Bargal, D. (1998). Kurt Lewin and the first attempts to establish a department of psychology at the Hebrew University. Minerva, 36(1), 49–68. Bargal, D. (2006). Personal and intellectual influences leading to Lewin’s paradigm of action research: Towards the 60th anniversary of Lewin’s ‘action research and minority problems’ (1946). Action Research, 4(4), 367–388. Beckstead, Z., Cabell, K.  R., & Valsiner, J.  (2009). Generalizing through conditional analysis: Systemic causality in the world of eternal becoming. Humana. Mente, 3(11), 65–80.

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Lewin, K. (1938). The conceptual representation and the measurement of psychological forces. Contributions to Psychological Theory, 1(4), 247. Lewin, K. (1939a). Experiments in social space. Harvard Educational Review, 9(1), 21–32. Lewin, K. (1939b). Field theory and experiment in social psychology: Concepts and methods. The American Journal of Sociology, 44(6), 868–896. https://doi.org/10.2307/2769418. Lewin, K. (1940). Formalization and progress in psychology. University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 16(3), 7–42. Lewin, K. (1943a). Cultural reconstruction. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38(2), 166–173. Lewin, K. (1943b). Forces behind food habits and methods of change. In C. E. Guthe & M. Mead (Eds.), The problem of changing food habits: Report of the committee on food habits 1941– 1943 (pp. 35–65). Washington, DC: National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Lewin, K. (1945a). The Research Center for Group Dynamics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sociometry, 8(2), 126–136. https://doi.org/10.2307/2785233. Lewin, K. (1945b). An action program. Congress Weekly, 4–5. Lewin, K. (1945c). A new approach to old problems. Congress Weekly, 6–7. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34–46. Lewin, K. (1947a). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5–41. https://doi. org/10.1177/001872674700100103. Lewin, K. (1947b). Frontiers in group dynamics: II. Channels of group life; social planning and action research. Human Relations, 1(2), 143–153. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100201. Lewin, K. (1949). Cassirer’s philosophy of science and the social sciences. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (pp. 269–288). Evanston: Library of Living Philosophers. Lewin, K. (1981). Kein Ort, an dem man aufrecht leben kann. Psychologie heute, 8(6), 50–56. Lewin, K. (1986). “Everything within me rebels”: A letter from Kurt Lewin to Wolfgang Köhler, 1933. Journal of Social Issues, 42(4), 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1986. tb00868.x. Lewin, M. (1992). The impact of Kurt Lewin’s life on the place of social issues in his work. Journal of Social Issues, 48(2), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1992.tb00880.x. Lewin, K. (1997a). Problems of research in social psychology. In Resolving social conflicts: Field theory in social science, Originally published as “Constructs in Psychology and Psychological Ecology,” University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 1944, 20:23-27; reprinted as “Problems of Research in Social Psychology,” in Dorwin Cartwright, ed., Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), pp. 155-169 (pp. 279–288). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lewin, K. (1997b). When Facing Danger. In Resolving social conflicts: Field theory in social science, originally published in Jewish Frontier, 1939 (pp. 116–121). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lewin, K. (1999). Cassirer’s Philosophy of Science and the Social Sciences. In M. Gold (Ed.), The complete social scientist: A Kurt Lewin Reader (pp. 23–36). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (APA). Lewin, K., & Korsch, K. (1939). Mathematical constructs in psychology and sociology. Erkenntnis, 8(1), 397–403. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00176045. Lewin, K., & Rupp, H. (1928a). Untersuchungen zur Textilindustrie I. Psychotechnische Zeitschrift, 3(1), 8–63. Lewin, K., & Rupp, H. (1928b). Untersuchungen zur Textilindustrie II. Psychotechnische Zeitschrift, 3(2), 51–63. Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created “social climates”. The Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271–299. Lippitt, R. (1940). An experimental study of the effect of democratic and authoritarian group atmospheres. University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 16(3), 7–42.

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Chapter 4

Developing a Dialectical Understanding of Generalization: An Unfinalized Dialogue Between Vygotsky and Davydov Manolis Dafermos

Introduction The issue of generalization was an object of intensive, ongoing discussions at different stages in the history of philosophy (see, for example, the dispute between Plato and Aristotle on the existence of forms, the debate between realism and nominalism on universals, the long-standing conflict between empiricism and rationalism on the origin of knowledge, and the discussion on analytic/synthetic distinction). The issue of generalization arose in the period of the emancipation of psychology from philosophy in the context of the endeavor to establish psychology as a strict natural science in accordance with the pattern of Newtonian physics. Even nowadays, psychology pretends to become a discipline able to find some universal laws of mental life and human behavior. Discovering and justifying laws and law-like generalizations stem from the striving to establish psychology as a natural, “nomothetic” discipline. Danziger (2009) labeled the search for universals as the “Holy Grail” in psychology. Despite the claim to produce generally accepted and universal knowledge, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, psychology was trapped in a deep crisis. Various attempts at conceptualization and explanation of the crisis in psychology emerged (Willy 1897, 1899; Bühler 1927; Lewin 1931; Driesch 1925; Vygotsky 1997a). The crisis and fragmentation of psychology undermined the claim to establish universal generalizations and raised difficult questions: how is the establishment of psychology as a scientific discipline possible? What kind of generalization can be employed for building a psychological theory? The problem of generalization in quantitative research is examined as “a numerical problem, which is to be solved by statistical means” (Flick 2007: 118). M. Dafermos (*) Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_4

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Generalization in psychology is examined mainly in terms of formal logic. Operationalism promoted further the technical apparatus of formal logic in relation to measurement in psychology in its quest for universality. This type of generalization produced on the basis of statistical means has been criticized for formalism that leads “to an epistemological misunderstanding, as far as the nonreflexive researchers forget that any inference—whether inductive, deductive or abductive—is context and content dependent” (Tateo 2015: 60). In comparison with the dominant nomothetic approach to explaining human behavior, an idiographic approach is formed as a way of understanding unique individuals in particular contexts. Nomothetic-idiographic perspectives reflect and elaborate further the ongoing controversy between the general and the particular in the study of mental life and human behavior. In contrast to widespread methodological dualism between idiographic and nomothetic approaches, dialectics focuses on the close interconnection between the general and the particular. From a dialectical perspective, the knowledge spiral includes the double movement of thinking from the particular to the general and from the general to the particular (Blakeley 1964; Vygotsky 1987). The issue of generalization and the relation between general and particular are complex theoretical and methodological problems connected with the examination of a set of other issues such as inductive and deductive reasoning, the relation between the concrete and the abstract, the analysis–synthesis process, and the interaction between everyday and scientific concepts. In contrast to the abstract and formalistic conceptualization of generalization that has become widespread in mainstream positivist-oriented psychology, the adherents of the dialectical tradition in philosophy and psychology advocate that the general is internally bound up with the particular. The concept of the concrete universal developed within the dialectical tradition is especially important in order to go beyond the rigid particular/general dichotomy. Due to the hostility to dialectics in Anglo-American and continental philosophy of science in the twentieth century (see Popper 1940), dialectical thinking remains “terra incognita” in North Atlantic academia. The present work is an attempt to fill the gap in understanding of dialectics by conceptualizing the issue of generalization from a dialectical perspective. More concretely, the chapter explores how generalization has been conceptualized in Vygotsky’s work. The chapter also discusses the contribution of Vasily Davydov (1930–1998), an eminent psychologist in Vygotsky’s footsteps who investigated theoretical generalization. Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s ideas on generalization were formed within the dialectical tradition in the field of psychology. Bringing into dialogue Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s dialectical insights can enrich the contemporary discussion on formal and situated generalization.

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Exploring Generalization as an Act of Human Consciousness Vygotsky’s project has rightly been characterized as “the first attempt in psychology and education to apply the principles of Marxist dialectics in developing theory of human development and learning” (Stetsenko 2010: 70). Materialist dialectics was employed by Vygotsky as a way to overcome the crisis in psychology that was internally connected with the dominant conceptualization of generalization in the domain of psychology. For Vygotsky, the crisis in psychology is related to the tendency of the main trends in the field of psychology toward generalization. The representatives of various trends of psychology such as Gestalt, psychoanalysis, and reflexology go beyond their boundaries and transfer their concepts to adjacent fields. Particular concepts, ideas, or discoveries from the particular fields and subdisciplines of psychology tend to become universal postulates for the explanation of the totality of psychological phenomena. Vygotsky focused his attention on the tendency for the extrapolation of particular ideas beyond the proper boundaries into the broader realm of knowledge. This tendency demonstrates the real need to develop a kind of generalization in the domain of psychology and the failure of the current approaches to offer a solution to this problem. Vygotsky found a link between the tendency toward unification and generalization in a discipline. Moreover, the failure to solve the problem of unification and generalization is examined by Vygotsky as an objective and necessary illusion, instead of attributing it to the personal mistake of the scientists involved. The failure to solve the problem of unification and generalization through the extrapolation of concepts and ideas beyond their boundaries is similar to the transcendental illusions of pure Reason that were analyzed by Kant. Transcendental illusions inevitably emerge when Reason attempts to apply concepts beyond all possible experience. Vygotsky discussed critically Neokantian conceptualization of psychology. He agreed with Binswanger’s idea that general science is “a theory of ultimate foundation, of the general principles and problems of a given area of knowledge” (Vygotsky 1997a: 247) from special disciplines (sub-disciplines). However, he challenged Binswanger’s examination of general science as a part of the logic that studies various logical forms in different disciplines. More generally, Vygotsky called into question Kantian and Neokantian “critique of psychology” and any kind of a priori formalistic construction of a system of concepts of scientific knowledge: “We proceed by induction-we generalize enormous groups of facts, compare them, analyze and create new abstractions” (Vygotsky 1997a: 252). However, for Vygotsky, scientific research is not reduced to a simple observation and description of empirical data. Scientific knowledge goes beyond the boundaries of sensuous experience. Scientific work “isolates, analyzes, separates, abstracts a single feature” (Vygotsky 1997a: 274). In the first stages of their development, concrete disciplines move from the sensuous concrete to the abstract by using methods such as the analysis of phenomena into their elements and inductive generalization. The absolutization of the movement from the sensuous concrete to the abstract leads to the “cult of empiricism” in

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mainstream North American psychology (Toulmin and Leary 1985). The attempt to avoid philosophical theory and the concomitant faith in empirical data and the “facts” themselves is one of the expressions of the “cult of empiricism.” As part of the movement of thinking from the sensuous concrete to the abstract in the domain of psychology a set of quantitative procedures and technical tools has been employed as a means to establish universality of psychological knowledge. Vygotsky found not only the Kantian a priori construction of a system of scientific concepts problematic but also the empiricist account of science as a linear accumulation of pure empirical facts. Vygotsky accepted Goethe’s idea that every fact becomes fact within a particular theory: “Everything described as a fact is already a theory” (Vygotsky 1997a: 249). The strict opposition between the description of facts and the articulation of theoretical concepts reproduces a dualism in the process of knowledge construction. More generally, Vygotsky challenged the reproduction of an unbridgeable gap between concepts and objects as well as the separation of the conceptual system of psychology from its historical development as a discipline. Moreover, in contrast to the examination of methodology as a homogeneous corpus of technical instruments, Vygotsky stated that there is not a general methodology of psychology, but a struggle between “deeply hostile, mutually exclusive, methodological principles” (Vygotsky 1997a: 261). For Vygotsky, a general theory or a general methodology cannot be established through an eclectic combination of elements from different theories and methodologies. Challenging eclecticism, Vygotsky proposed the development of “the dialectic of psychology – this is what we may now call the general psychology” (Vygotsky 1997a: 256). The need for the re-foundation of psychology as a discipline stems first and foremost from the societal practice. Bridging the gap between theory and societal practice is one of the most important challenges from the perspective of dialectics. “The dialectic unity of methodology and practice” (Vygotsky 1997a: 310) was presented by Vygotsky as a way to develop a new conceptualization of generalization. Developing a monistic, dialectic system of psychological concepts on the basis of new societal and professional practice was crucial for Vygotsky. It was argued that a system of concepts of psychology should be built, as Marx established the system of concepts of political economy. “Psychology is in need of its own Das Kapital” (Vygotsky 1997a: 330). But for building the system of concepts of psychology, it is necessary to find its “cell,” its starting point. In contrast to analysis into elements, Vygotsky proposed promoting an analysis into units that reveals the smallest part of a complex whole with all its essential properties. The unit of analysis serves as a starting point for the theoretical reconstruction of a complex whole as a developing process. Vygotsky’s idea on “cell” and “units of analysis” constitutes an important contribution to the understanding of generalization in the domain of psychology. The “cell” and “units of analysis” fit the investigation of self-organizing, changing, developing systems, rather than mechanical systems. Vygotsky employed these concepts in order to develop a dialectical, holistic, historical approach to consciousness (Dafermos 2018). In his manuscript “The historical sense of psychological crisis,” Vygotsky supposed that “the mechanism of reaction” (Vygotsky 1997a: 320) is the “cell” of psychology as a science. In the subsequent stages of his creative development,

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Vygotsky proposed other definitions of the “unit of analysis” (or “cell”) (Vygotsky 1987: 46), “instrumental act” (Vygotsky 1997b), “meaning” (Vygotsky 1987: 244), “perezhivanie”1 (Vygotsky 1994). It seems that Vygotsky was not satisfied by his own proposals of the “cell’” and “units of analysis” (Veresov 1999; Dafermos 2014). The issue of theoretical generalization was posed by Vygotsky, but it remained unsolved. Generalization was examined by Vygotsky in the context of his investigation of concept formation by using the method of double stimulation2 from a developmental perspective. Vygotsky distinguished different types of generalization in the process of concept development. During the syncretic stage, children collect objects together in accordance with their subjective impressions, without understanding the objective relations between the objects themselves. Complexive thinking was examined by Vygotsky as a crucial stage of concept development. Children become able to define both subjective and objective connections that actually exist among the objects that are involved in a practical operation. “The complex-­ collection is a generalization based on their co-participation in a single practical operation, a generalization of things based on their functional collaboration” (Vygotsky 1987: 139). Conceptual thinking is based on the ability to generalize on the basis of essential relations between objects. It consists of the development of an ability to reveal the complex hierarchical relations between things, the relations between the general and the particular: “the process of concept formation came to be understood as a complex process involving the movement of thinking through the pyramid of concepts, a process involving constant movement from the general to the particular and from the particular to the general” (Vygotsky 1987: 162). For Vygotsky, concept development is connected with the formation of the child’s ability to generalize. The development of generalization is internally connected with the transition from the sensuous concrete to abstract thinking in the process of resolving concrete problems. The main limitation of Vygotsky’s investigation of concept formation on the basis of the method of double stimulation was connected with his focus on artificial concepts and the lack of attention on the word meaning. From the investigation of artificial concepts on the basis of the method of double stimulation, Vygotsky moved toward an inquiry into real-life concepts. Vygotsky investigated the interconnection between everyday and scientific concepts on the basis of a critical reflection of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.  The Russian word “perezhivanie” refers to living through experience and working through it. The concept of perezhivanie was used by Vygotsky as a part of the system of concepts of cultural-historical theory. This concept expresses the dialectical, dynamic relation between personality, and the social environment which is part and parcel of personality development (Dafermos 2018). “In an emotional experience [perezhivanie] we are always dealing with an indivisible unity of personal characteristics and situational characteristics, which are represented in the emotional experience [perezhivanie]” (Vygotsky 1994: 342). 2  L. Sakharov and L. Vygotsky developed the method of double stimulation for the study of the development of higher functions with the help of two types of stimuli: simple stimuli that cause a direct response and auxiliary means that help the subject to organize his behavior (Vygotsky 1987; Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018). 1

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Everyday concepts are acquired by children in their everyday life, while scientific concepts are formed in the context of the systematic school instruction. Everyday concepts develop from “bottom to top,” from everyday experience to generalizations, while scientific concepts from “top to bottom,” from verbal explanations to children’s everyday experience. “Concepts are distributed between poles ranging from an immediate, sensual, graphic grasping of the object to the ultimate generalization (i.e., the most abstract concept)” (Vygotsky 1987: 226). Concept development was examined by Vygotsky as a transition from a concrete, immediate sensory grasp of an object to the abstract thinking based on maximally generalized conceptualization. Braun (1991) notes that Vygotsky associated the concrete thought with factually based mental complexes and the abstract thought with the articulation of logical concepts. The identification of the concrete with sensuous perception and the abstract with a maximally generalized conceptualization in Vygotsky’s writings demonstrates that despite Vygotsky’s attempt to develop a dialectical account of human development, he could not avoid the influence of the Lockean empiricist tradition on his research on concept development. At the last stage of the elaboration of his book Thinking and Speech Vygotsky took an important step toward overcoming the intellectualistic understanding of concept formation. For Vygotsky, thinking as a higher mental function reflects reality “in a generalized way” (Vygotsky 1997a: 48–49). For Vygotsky, every word contains a kind of generalization. The generalized function of a word is connected with its meaning. “From a psychological perspective, word meaning is first and foremost a generalization” (Vygotsky 1997a: 47). Meaning was examined by Vygotsky as a unit of analysis of consciousness. The elaboration of the concept of unit of analysis can be examined as an attempt to go beyond empirical, inductive generalization and develop a theoretical generalization. Empirical generalization is a kind of inference based on identifying external similarities between different properties or parts of an object. For example, a phenotypical, formal analysis of the external characteristics of the whale leads to the conclusion that it is a fish. A theoretical generalization is an act of thinking that reflects the internal relations of an object as a whole, its dynamics of development. Based on a theoretical generalization, comparative and evolutionary biology offers evidence that the whale is a marine mammal. Vygotsky’s understanding of the word as a kind of generalization was formed under the influence of his reading of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebook. Lenin articulated the idea that “every word already universalizes” (Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018: 136). According to Vygotsky, Lenin examined the rational core of idealism which connected the freedom that every concept offers. “In the simplest generalization, in the most elementary general idea, there is a certain bit of fantasy = freedom. In the concept, there is freedom” (Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018: 134). This bit of fantasy offers the freedom from the thing. The danger of idealism consists in turning concepts into isolated, separated beings. The dialectical understanding of generalization reflects the twofold movement of thinking “toward the real thing and away from it” (Zavershneva and Van der Veer 2018: 134).

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Generalization as a product of this twofold movement of thinking develops in the process of social communication, rather than an individual mind. Vygotsky established an internal connection between generalization as function of thinking and communication: “generalization becomes possible only with the development of social interaction” (Vygotsky 1997a: 48). Vygotsky’s idea of the unity between thinking and communication is linked with his project on the investigation of consciousness. The interconnection between thinking and communication is reflected in the etymology of the word “consciousness” that originates from the Latin ‘conscius’ (con- ‘together’ + scientia- ‘to know’). The very term “consciousness” refers to the process of sharing knowledge jointly knowing: Etymologically, of course, the term ‘consciousness’ is a knowledge word. This is evidenced by the Latin form, -sci-, in the middle of the word. But what are we to make of the prefix con- that precedes it? Look at the usage in Roman Law, and the answer will be easy enough. Two or more agents who act jointly—having formed a common intention, framed a shared plan, and concerted their actions – are as a result conscientes. They act as they do knowing one another’s plans: they are jointly knowing. (Toulmin 1982: 64)

Due to his early death, Vygotsky’s project on the investigation of consciousness remained unfinalized. However, several of Vygotsky’s ideas, developed in the last phase of his life, still retain their importance for the examination of the issue of generalization. It is worth noting that for Vygotsky, thinking and generalization as its essential function is a social process, rather than an individual or purely cognitive process. From a cultural-historical perspective, thinking can be examined as a sign-mediating joint action. From this perspective, generalization is a reflective, sense making, intersubjective act of human consciousness, rather than a purely cognitive process based on formalist procedures. In separation from a sense-making process of human consciousness in a concrete sociohistorical and scientific context, any kind of generalization can lose its meaning. Based on an analysis of Vygotsky’s “Psychology of Art,” Valsiner (2015) argues that Vygotsky developed an affective generalization in the form of feelings. More concretely, Vygotsky employed the concept of short circuit (korotkoe zamykanie) that emerges as a result of the clash and destruction of tension between opposite emotions. In other words, generalization as a form of dialectical synthesis can be achieved not only on a cognitive level but also in the form of feelings and, more generally, as an act of human consciousness.

A Search for Theoretical Generalization The issue of generalization arose in the context of discussions on activity theory and its relation to Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory. One of the most important contributions to the investigation of the issue of generalization was associated with the eminent adherent of activity theory, Vasily Davydov. He was involved in a debate about the possibilities of the creation of a system of psychological concepts on the basis of the concept of activity.

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Calling into question Vygotskian conceptualization of generalization, Davydov developed his own understanding of generalization under the influence of discussions on dialectics of Marx’s “Das Kapital” in the 1950s to early 1960s in the USSR. A rich and multifaceted tradition of the study of the concepts and laws of dialectics was formed in that context (Ilyenkov 1960; Vaziulin 1985, 2002; Dafermos 2003; Levant and Oittinen 2014). On the basis of a reflection on Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s “Das Kapital,” Ilyenkov (2009) offered a critique of Locke’s empiricist tradition in philosophy and concrete disciplines and their understanding of the universal in terms of sameness, a common characteristic of a group of phenomena. In the empiricist tradition, universal is examined as a property abstracted, isolated from the concrete phenomena. In contrast to the concept of abstract universal, Ilyenkov proposed the concept of the concrete universal as the substance, or the genetic root of a concrete whole. For Ilyenkov, Marx’s concept of value in Das Kapital serves as a form of a concrete universal (Ilyenkov 1960). Challenging the examination of generalization from the perspective of formal logic, Davydov proposed that dialectical logic can offer a new understanding of theoretical generalization. Under the influence of Ilyenkov’s account of dialectical logic, Davydov advocated that the method of the ascent from the abstract to the concrete can be employed for the construction of a system of psychological concepts. For Davydov, the concept of activity serves as a concrete universal, the “germ cell” for building a monistic psychological theory. Davydov proposed the elaboration of the concept of theoretical generalization. He criticized the dominance of a narrow empiricism in school education and educational psychology. In accordance with the dominant, empiricist type of conceptualization, generalization is a process of finding some similar (or common) qualities, stable characteristics in a class of objects. Generalization is based on the transition from the empirical description to making comparison between the qualities of an object (or a class of objects). Moreover, by using the operation of abstracting, some common elements or qualities are defined. Following the nominalist tradition, empirical generalization deals with observable, individual objects, their comparison, and the process of abstracting of their common properties on the basis of formal logic. According to Davydov (1990, 1996), the dominant understanding of generalization in psychology and didactics originates from formal logic. The formation of concepts takes place through finding similarities and differences in observable, individual objects. In other words, empirical generalization is internally linked with the movement of thinking from the concrete sensory to the abstract. The general is defined in formal logic as something important and essential that emerges as a result of the isolation from the non-essential, the particular. General and particular, essential and non-essential are presented as mutually exclusive concepts. In other words, the dialectical, historical relationship between the general and the particular is lost. The lack of a dialectical understanding of the relation between the general and the particular is reflected in the realism vs. nominalism debate. The representatives of nominalism argue that the properties and relations of objects are particular, not universal. Denying the existence of universals, nominalist tradition

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leads to the reproduction of dualism between general/universal concepts and particular facts. Particular facts are examined as singular and divorced from any general concepts, while general, universal concepts are presented as formal and abstract. Davydov demonstrated the limitations of formal logical understanding of generalization. For Davydov, formal logic and mathematical logic cannot serve as a main criterion of truth, because they are “isolated from the concrete elaboration of empirical material” (Davydov 1988: 174). It was argued that the truly concrete universal is distinct from both the formal general and sensible concrete. Davydov argued that Vygotsky did not offer a well-defined criterion for the distinction between spontaneous (everyday) and scientific concepts: “the determining difference between everyday concepts and scientific ones was found, not in their objective content, but in the method and ways of mastery (‘personal experience … the process of instruction’)” (Davydov 1990: 88). For Davydov, the criteria between spontaneous (everyday) and scientific concepts lie in the distinction between empirical and theoretical types of knowledge. Spontaneous (everyday) concepts are based on observation and categorization of the external properties of a concrete object, while scientific concepts represent its essential, internal relations. Theoretical generalization of the internal relation of an object was examined by Davydov as a result of a deduction, a movement of thinking from the general to the particular, from the internal to the external. It was argued that the educational process should be oriented on the formation of contentful generalizations that reproduce the concrete universal properties of things. This kind of contentful, theoretical generalization develops from the basis of special activities replicating the concrete object as a whole, rather than as a sum of elements (Davydov 1988). Theoretical thinking was considered by Davydov as a purposeful activity oriented to the reflection of essential relationships and transforming the material reality. The deep knowledge of the internal societal contradictions offers the opportunity to promote transformative action. Davydov’s conceptualization of theoretical generalization has been criticized from various perspectives (Engeström 2015; Koshmanova 2007; Nissen 2012; Hedegaard and Chaiklin 2005). For Koshmanova (2007: 84), Davydov’s conceptualization of theoretical generalization “might lead to the formation of formalistic knowledge.” Similarly, Nissen (2012) notes that Davydov’s “theoretical concepts” are not dialectically connected with empirical concepts, and they shape scholastic knowledge. Engeström (2015) argues that Davydov’s argumentation tends to reproduce a dichotomic way of thinking. From my perspective, because of his strong criticism of empiricism, Davydov was led straight to the other extremity, the absolutization of theoretical thinking and the devaluation of empirical thinking. First, it is significant to note that sensuous experience is not identical with empiricism. Second, the understanding of the relation between theoretical and empirical thinking in Davydov’s theory of generalization is found problematic: “Empirical thinking and theoretical thinking are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives. Their mutual dependency and mutual penetration are temporarily set aside” (Engeström 2015: 196). The exclusive emphasis on theoretical generalization is a problematic approach because it does not consider the complexity of the educational process.

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Koshmanova (2007) argues that theoretical generalization should be combined with inductive generalization. However, the following questions can be raised: How is it possible to combine empirical and theoretical thinking, empirical and theoretical generalization? Usually, the very idea of the combination between empirical and theoretical thinking stems from their examination as isolated processes. The strong opposition between empirical and theoretical thinking as well as the gap between particular and general seems to be questionable. More specifically, it can be argued that there are two different approaches to the relation between empirical and theoretical thinking within the dialectical tradition. The representatives of the first approach focus almost exclusively on the development of theoretical thinking (Davydov 1996). The representatives of the second approach propose to go beyond the absolute distinction between theoretical and empirical thinking and concepts (Nissen 2012). From the perspective of the second approach, the general is internally bound up with the particular. In the same direction, it can be argued that empirical and theoretical thinking internally connects moments of the knowledge spiral (Vaziulin 1985). Moreover, the question of the relation between the general and particular, between empirical and theoretical thinking, is not merely cognitive or epistemological but also social and practical. In particular, it is important to address some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of the combination of empirical and theoretical thinking? What type of problems can we attempt to solve by using empirical and theoretical generalization and in which context?

 romoting a Dialogue on Dialectical Understanding P of Generalization From the previous analysis, we see that both Lev Vygotsky and Vasily Davydov attempted to overcome the crisis of traditional psychology based on formal generalizations and develop a dialectical account of human development in its complexity. They were inspired by dialectics as a way of thinking and attempted to build a monistic theory in the domain of psychology. Developing a monistic account of human development was a way to go beyond Cartesian dualism that still dominates psychology. Moreover, in the quest for a “dialectical synthesis,” both Vygotsky and Davydov posed the problem of the concrete universal in the field of psychology, but they resolved it in different ways. There are essential differences between Vygotsky and Davydov in understanding of the relation between empirical and theoretical generalization as well as the interaction between everyday and scientific concepts.

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They were involved in the search for the theoretical generalization that can become the fundament of the construction of a new psychological theory. Both Vygotsky and Davydov articulated this crucial question, but they attempted to solve it in different ways. In contrast to the dominant tendency in psychology for a reductionist analysis into elements, Vygotsky proposed “units of analysis.” He was looking for a way of investigating the complex configuration of human subjectivity. For Davydov, the concept of activity can serve as the “germ cell” for the building of a system of psychological concepts. Vygotsky’s search for “units of analysis” and Davydov’s emphasis on theoretical generalization can be examined as different ways of formulating the problem of concrete universal in the field of psychology. Inspired by Davydov’s concept of generalization, Tolman argue that “…the crisis in general psychology is such that it can only be resolved by resorting to an alternate form of generalization that leads to concrete theoretical knowledge rather than abstract generalities” (Tolman 1989: 207). This type of universality that became the dominant way of thinking in psychology was labeled by Hegel as “abstract”: The activity of the understanding consists generally in the bestowing of the form of universality on its content; and the universal posited by the understanding is, of course, an abstract one, which is held onto in firm opposition to the particular. (Hegel 1991: 126)

Hegel’s conceptualization of generalization is based on the distinction between Understanding (Verstand) and Reason (Vernunft). Understanding applies a set of concepts and procedures to empirical data in order to produce generalized knowledge. Understanding as a way of thinking moves away from sensuous perception to the abstract through an analysis based on the separation of various aspects of its object. The concepts formed through Understanding are static, inert and unchanging. For Hegel, Understanding is not able to go beyond abstract generalization of phenomena based on the separation of the universal from the particular. Understanding cannot grasp and conceptually reflect the internal relations of a concrete object, its movement and change (Vaziulin 1985; Pavlidis 2010). At the level of Understanding, the general and the particular are considered as isolated and alienated each from other (the general as negation of the particular and the particular as a negation of the general). Offering an abstract, formal generalization, Understanding as a way of thinking is unable to grasp the complex configuration between various sides and determinations of an object. It is important to clarify that according to Hegel, a reflection on universals is crucial for philosophical thinking: “Philosophy is in the region of thought, and has therefore to deal with universals” (Hegel 1892: 24). However, developing a strong criticism of abstract generalization, Hegel proposed the concept of the concrete universal as “a unity of distinct determinations” (Hegel 1991: 71). The concrete universal can be considered as a totality of the essential relations between particularities (Baumann 2011). Ilyenkov (1960) argued that the concrete universal is the “cell” of all particular phenomena. From this perspective, the concrete universal incorporates into itself the richness of particularities, but it is not reduced to them or to their sum.

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We ought to take into account a contradiction in Hegel’s understanding of the concrete universal. In contrast to dogmatism of the metaphysics of Understanding that “consists in its adherence to one-sided thought determinations in their isolation” (Hegel 1991: 70), Hegel advocated dialectical Reason (Vernunft) that reflects a concrete universal as a totality of multiple determinations. From this perspective, the universal is contained within its particular manifestations. At the same time, subsuming the particular under the universal, Hegel treats an object in general (its logic in general), rather than the peculiar logic of a peculiar object as Marx proposed. Instead, Marx proposed that the main task consists “in grasping the specific logic of the specific subject” (Marx 1975: 91). Inspired largely by Hegel, Marx developed a further dialectical method for the theoretical reconstruction of the capitalist mode of production as a living, organic, developing whole through the creation of a system of interrelated categories. As I have already mentioned, Vygotsky’s and Davydov’s views on generalization were developed in the context of an extensive discussion on dialectical methodology in Marx’s “Das Kapital” in the USSR. From a dialectical perspective, the concept of concrete universal is crucial for the investigation of complex organic systems that could not be sufficiently explained by employing reductionist, atomistic models based on abstract and formal generalizations. Vygotsky developed the concept of “units of analysis” as a part of his project of the investigation of consciousness. Davydov developed the concept of theoretical generalization in the context of his attempt to establish an interdisciplinary activity theory. Despite the essential differences in the subject matter and the research focus between Vygotsky and Davydov, both thinkers shared some important common orientations. Both Vygotsky and Davydov attempted to investigate human subjectivity as a complex phenomenon that it is impossible to grasp by employing abstract and formal generalizations of empiricist psychology. Both of them were against the “cult of empiricism” in psychology. Vygotsky was aware of the limitations of narrow empiricism, but for him inductive generalization cannot be expelled from psychology. For Vygotsky (1987), inductive generalization is employed inevitably in the concrete stages of cognitive development (e.g., thinking in complexes). Vygotsky (1987) focused on the double movement of thinking from the general to the particular and from the particular to the general in the process of concept formation. Davydov (1988) emphasized exclusively on the movement of thinking from the general to the particular in the practice of teaching. However, the dialectics of the knowledge process can be lost as a result of the underestimation of the opposite side, the movement of thinking from the particular to the general. In this regard, it is worth mentioning Oscar Wilde statement that “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” Although I am firmly convinced that Davydov was very far from being a shallow person, I think that the depreciation of the movement of thinking from the appearance to the essence3 is a weak point in his  There is a fundamental difference between essentialism and the dialectical conceptualization of the relation between essence and phenomena. Essentialism is a metaphysical conceptualization of generalization based on the examination of specific properties of an object as stable, universal, and 3

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theory of generalization. The movement of thinking from the appearance to the essence as well as from the particular to the general is dialectically connected with the movement from the essence to the appearance and from the general to the particular. The indifference to particularities and the lack of understanding of the dialectical interconnection between the particular and the general leads inevitably to the transformation of theoretical generalization into a new abstract, formal universal. For Davydov, the learning activity of children can be built only on the basis of theoretical generalization. Hence, a question may arise: Is it fruitful to reduce the learning process to the replacement of everyday concepts by the scientific concepts based on theoretical generalization? From my perspective, ignoring subjectivity and the active agency of participants of the learning process, the idea of the replacement of everyday concepts with the scientific concepts is linear and one-dimensional. It is more constructive to examine the learning process in terms of a dialectical transformation of both everyday and scientific concepts rather than as the replacement of the former by the latter. It is important to take into account that the question of the interaction between everyday concepts and scientific concepts is not a purely cognitive or epistemological question but also a practical issue. Both Vygotsky and Davydov advocated that teaching/learning can promote children’s mental development. Vygotsky’s concept of Zone of Proximal Development was an attempt to respond to the question of what kind of teaching/learning can promote development. Davydov’s theory of developmental education marks a slightly different route to solve the same crucial problem. Theoretical and practical questions raised by Vygotsky and Davydov remain reasonably discussable. Hedegaard and Chaiklin (2005) argue that Vygotsky’s investigation of everyday and scientific concepts is insufficient, because “it does not have an analysis of the relation of knowledge to children’s societal lives, and his analysis of the relation between forms of practice and forms of knowledge was not sufficiently explicit” (Hedegaard and Chaiklin 2005: 34). From a radical-local point of view, Hedegaard and Chaiklin expand dialogue on the relation between everyday and scientific concepts by proposing its examination in the context of the living conditions of children and the real problems that they face in their everyday life. In fact, in order to overcome the cognitivist framework of the examination of the relation between everyday and scientific concepts, it is important to focus on participation in society’s existing and potential economic, political, and cultural practices.

not dependent on the concrete context. From a dialectical perspective, essence is examined as a system of contradictory, dynamic, historical relations of a concrete, developing object, rather than an abstract, formal set of deconceptualized attributes. Moving from a purely descriptive, empirical study of phenomena to investigate their internal essence was a crucial issue for Vygotsky. “In theory, the internal essence of things and the external form of their manifestation do not coincide. “If the form of manifestation and the essence of things coincided directly, then all science would be superfluous”” (Vygotsky 1998: 188–189).

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 dvancing Dialogue on Generalization and Its Relation A to Changing Societal Practice Addressing the issue of the contribution of different forms of practice (in home, school, community, work, etc.) to concept formation, the theory of situated learning promises a broader perspective for research of generalization. The community of practice framework has been proposed by the adherents of situated learning as a way to go beyond the abstract and decontextualized models of generating by focusing on the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of human life (Rogoff and Lave 1984; Henning 2004). Situated learning became one the most important ways to fill a real gap in understanding the relation between everyday and scientific concepts and offer a contextual, relational, and intersubjective understanding of learning. The question arises whether the knowledge that has been acquired in everyday situations in particular contexts and domains can be generalized. It is important also to clarify what kind of generalization it is and how it is associated with other forms of generalization. The issue of the relation between formal and situated generalization provokes tension and controversy. Nemirovsky argues that “adherents of the situated cognition perspective are at ease with the pervasive evidence that local circumstances, ongoing goals, and tools at hand, shape human thinking and action, while, on the other hand, generalizing and abstraction appear difficult to account for” (Nemirovsky 2002: 234). Calling into question formal generalization, the situated cognition perspective brings to light the complexity of cognition and learning in particular domains and contexts. Clancey argues that “the theory of situated learning claims that every idea and human action is a generalization, adapted to the ongoing environment” (1995: 49). The particularistic emphasis implicit in the theory of situated learning is an understandable reaction against universalism of cognitivism (Bredo 1997). The focus on situated cognition has been developed—to a significant extent— under the influence of the postmodern criticism of the modern pursuit of universality that “leads to the repression of particularity” (Susen 2015: 46). Particularism as a way of thinking is close to the postmodern glorification of difference and diversity. However, the postmodern celebration of particularity and differences risks asserting them as a new “universal” (or an “new absolute”). It is easy to jump from one extreme to another and difficult to grasp the dialectical interconnection between the general and the particular. The reduction of the general to the particular is no less one-dimensional than the Hegelian approach to subsume the particular under the universal. More generally, I argue that universalism and particularism mutually reinforce each other, and they can be examined as two sides of the same coin. From my perspective, the creative potential of the concrete, situated ways of knowing can be tapped only in its dialectical interconnection with the general forms of cognition in terms of a dialectical synthesis. The dialectical way of thinking offers the opportunity to go beyond the tension between empirical and abstract generalization and highlight the spiral-like

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d­ evelopment of knowledge that includes both the movements of thinking from the concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to the concrete (Vaziulin 1985). By employing this dialectical, double movement of thinking (the movements of thinking from the sensuous concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to the concrete), the subjects become aware of the complexity of the real world and are actively involved in societal practice. From a dialectical perspective, generalization emerges as a creative, reflective act (see Tateo 2013) with a complex configuration. Revealing the shortcomings of abstract, formal generalization that remains dominant in positivist-oriented psychology, both Vygotsky and Davydov proposed to develop a dialectical approach to generalization. The disagreements between them on the ways of the development of a dialectical approach to generalization demonstrate the complexity of this issue and the real need to examine it concretely and historically. The relation between the general and the particular is not static, but it changes dynamically in the process of the historical development of society and science. The dialectical way of thinking brings to light the historicity of the concepts “general” and “particular” and the transformations of their interrelations (included their meanings) in the social history and the history of science. Moreover, the dialectical way of thinking offers the opportunity to address the issue of generalization not only on the domain of actually existing societal forms, but also anticipate potential future societal development. The understanding of the dynamic, historical relation between the general and the particular as well as the spiral-like development of knowledge as a contradictory unity of both movements of thinking from the sensuous concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to the concrete are essential in order to develop a dialectical grasp of the relationship between theory and societal practice. Challenging the traditional theory–practice dichotomy that remains dominant in psychology, Holzkamp argued that “the comprehensive meaning of the reason-guided reflection and generalization of human issues is not merely to be reconstructed in practice but also in theory … And only then can the self-evident insight become effective that, just as theory remains irrelevant without practice, practice is inevitably blind without a ‘theoretical public’” (Holzkamp 2013: 110–111). Moving beyond the theory–practice dichotomy, the dialectical way of thinking reflects the historical relation between the general and the particular in order to promote active, transformative subjectivity.

References Baumann, C. (2011). Adorno, Hegel and the concrete universal. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 37(1), 73–94. Blakeley, T. (1964). Soviet theory of knowledge. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. Braun, C. M. J. (1991). The Marxist categories of the ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ and the cultural-­ historical school of psychology. Multidisciplinary Newsletter for Activity Theory, 4, 36–41. Bredo, E. (1997). The social construction of learning. In G. Phye (Ed.), Handbook of academic learning: The construction of knowledge (pp. 3–43). New York: Academic Press.

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Bühler, K. (1927). Die Krise der Psychologie. Jena: Gustav Fischer. Clancey, W. J. (1995). A tutorial on situated learning. In J. Self (Ed.), Proceedings of the international conference on computers and education (Taiwan) (pp. 49–70). Charlottesville, VA: AACE. Coughlin. Dafermos, M. (2003). Ob issledonanii logiki Kapitala K. Marxa v SSSR [about investigation of logic of K. Marx’s Kapital in USSR]. In D. Dzohatze (Ed.), Marxism: Proschoe, Nastajashee, Budushee [Marxism: Past, present, future] (pp.  271–276). Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences/Institute of Philosophy. Dafermos, M. (2014). Vygotsky’s analysis of the crisis in psychology: Diagnosis, treatment, and relevance. Theory & Psychology, 24(2), 147–165. Dafermos, M. (2018). Rethinking cultural-historical theory: A dialectical perspective to Vygotsky. Singapore: Springer. Danziger, K. (2009). The holy grail of universality. In T. Teo, P. Stenner, & A. Rutherford (Eds.), Varieties of theoretical psychology: International philosophical and practical concerns (pp. 2–11). Toronto: Captus. Davydov, V.  V. (1988). The concept of theoretical generalization and problems of educational psychology. Studies in Soviet Thought, 36, 169–202. Davydov, V. V. (1990). Types of generalization in instruction: Logical and psychological problems in the structuring of school curricula. In J. Kilpatrick (Ed.), Soviet studies in mathematics education (Vol. 2). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Davydov, V.  V. (1996). Teorija razvivajuscego obucenija [Theory of developmental education]. Moscow: Intor. Davydov, V.  V. (1998). The concept of developmental teaching. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 36(4), 11–36. Driesch, H. (1925). The crisis in psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding. An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flick, U. (2007). Managing quality in qualitative research. London: Sage. Hedegaard, M., & Chaiklin, S. (2005). Radical-local teaching and learning. A cultural-historical approach. Aarhus: Arhus University Press. Hegel, G. (1892). Lectures of the history of philosophy (Vol. 1). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Hegel, G. W. F. (1991). Encyclopaedia of philosophical sciences (part 1) (Transl. by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, & H. S. Harris). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Henning, P. H. (2004). Everyday cognition and situated learning. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp.  143–168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Holzkamp, K. (2013). Practice: A functional analysis of the concept. In E.  Schraube & U. Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Selected writings of Klaus Holzkamp (pp. 87–111). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ilyenkov, E. (1960). The dialectics of the abstract and the concrete in Marx’s ‘Capital’. Moscow: Academy of Sciences of USSR. Ilyenkov, E. (2009). The ideal in human activity. Pacifica, CA: Marxists Internet Archive. Koshmanova, T. S. (2007). Vygotskian scholars: Visions and implementation of cultural-historical theory. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 45(2), 61–95. Levant, A., & Oittinen, V. (2014). Dialectics of the ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and creative soviet Marxism. Leiden: Haymarket Books. Lewin, K. (1931). The conflict between Aristotelian and Galieian modes of thought in contemporary psychology. Journal of General Psychology, 5, 141–177. Marx, K. (1975). Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law. In K. Marx & F. Engels (Eds.), Collected works (Vol. 3, pp. 3–129). London: Lawrence & Wishart.

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Nemirovsky, R. (2002). On Guessing the essential thing. In K. P. Gravemeijer, R. Lehrer, H. J. van Oers, & L. Verschaffel (Eds.), Symbolizing, modeling and tool use in mathematics education (pp. 233–256). Dordrecht: Springer–Science +Business media. Nissen, M. (2012). The subjectivity of participation. Articulating social work practice with youth in Copenhagen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pavlidis, P. (2010). Critical thinking as dialectics: A Hegelian-Marxist approach. The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, 8(2), 74–102. Popper, K. (1940). What is dialectic? Mind, 49(196), 403–426. Rogoff, B., & Lave, J.  (Eds.). (1984). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context (pp. 9–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stetsenko, A. (2010). Standing on the shoulders of giants: A balancing act of dialectically theorizing conceptual understanding on the grounds of Vygotsky’s project. In W.-M. Roth (Ed.), Re/structuring science education: ReUniting psychological and sociological perspectives (pp. 53–72). New York: Springer. Susen, S. (2015). The ‘postmodern turn’ in the social sciences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tateo, L. (2013). Generalization as creative and reflective act: Revisiting Lewin’s conflict between Aristotelian and Galilean modes of thought in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 23(4), 518–536. Tateo, L. (2015). The nature of generalization in psychology. In S. Salvatore, G. Marsico, & R. A. Ruggeri (Eds.), Reflexivity and psychology (pp. 45–64). Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Tolman, C. (1989). The general psychological crisis and its comparative psychological resolution. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2(3), 197–207. Toulmin, S. (1982). The genealogy of ‘consciousness’. In P. F. Secord (Ed.), Explaining human behavior: Consciousness, human action, and social structure (pp. 53–70). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Toulmin, S., & Leary, D.  E. (1985). The cult of empiricism in psychology, and beyond. In S. Koch & D. E. Leary (Eds.), A century of psychology as science (pp. 594–617). New York: McGraw-Hill. Valsiner, J. (2015). The place for synthesis: Vygotsky’s analysis of affective generalization. History of the Human Sciences, 28(2), 93–102. Vaziulin, V.  A. (1985). Rassudocnoe i razumnoe myslenije v razvitii poznanija [Understanding and reason in the development of cognition]. In M. N. Alekseev, & A. M. Korshunov (Eds.), Dialektika protsessa poznanija [Dialectics of the cognitive process]. Moscow: MGU. Vaziulin, V.  A. (2002). Logika ‘Kapitala’ Karla Marksa [The logic of K.  Marx’s “capital”]. Moscow: Sovremennij Gumanitarnij Universitet. Veresov, N. (1999). Undiscovered Vygotsky. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.  S. Vygotsky: Problems of general psychology (Vol. 1, pp.  39–285). New  York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1994). The problem of the environment. In R. Van der Veer & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Vygotsky reader (pp. 338–354). Oxford: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L.  S. (1997a). The historical meaning of the crisis of psychology. In R.  Rieber & J.  Wolloc (Eds.), The collected works of L.S.  Vygotsky (Vol. 3, pp.  233–344). New  York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. (1997b). The instrumental method in psychology. In R. Rieber & J. Wolloc (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky (Vol. 3, pp. 85–89). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. (1998). The problem of age. In R. Rieber (Ed.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 5, pp. 187–205). New York: Plenum Press. Willy, R. (1897). Die Krisis in der Psychologie (first and second article). Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 21(79–96), 227–353. Willy, R. (1899). Die Krisis in der Psychologie. Leipzig: Reisland. Zavershneva, E., & Van der Veer, R. (2018). Vygotsky’s notebooks: A selection. Singapore: Springer.

Chapter 5

Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events Jaan Valsiner

Generalization is an ever-new process of signification. New understanding grows step by step based on the experience as it unfolds, and moves beyond the concrete into the abstract realm. By looking carefully at the ways in which new ideas are reached in the slow process of scientific process (Wertheimer 1982) we can find evidence for both pathways to breakthroughs and stagnation domains (Valsiner 2012, Chap. 10). The latter is often linked with making a science into a domain of knowledge where practical uses dominate over efforts at generating basic knowledge. Generalization was, is, and will remain the main goal of any science. My goal in this chapter is to give further elaboration to the idea that generalization in science is not only possible from single cases (N = 1) but is necessarily limited to it (e.g., if N = 2 there are two single cases involved, if N = N + 1 there is precisely that infinite number of single cases under study). Furthermore, given the flow of irreversible time—making many phenomena in developmental sciences, from psychology to astrophysics1—uniquely transient, we need to accept that generalization can be limited to the database of a single instant (Valsiner 2015a, b). This focus is diametrically opposite to the contemporary fascination of collecting “big data” through the help of ever extensive technological devices. I here elaborate the  Astrophysics is a developmental science of objects (galaxies, neutron stars, “black holes,” etc.) that emerge, develop, and extinguish. They do not belong to the category of living systems but are examples of open systems in the existence of the universe. They exist in temporarily equilibrated states of dynamic stability, transforming from one form into another. All these qualitative transitions are unique events of irreversible kind. Completely new and difficult to classify new phenomena are observed—such as Oumuamua (the first interstellar object traveling from constellation of Lyra toward Pegasus, discovered on October 19, 2017). The return of such interstellar objects is not expected. Likewise the emergence of “black holes” from the collapse of neutron stars is a short one-time event of no recurrence (producing gravitational waves—https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/ page/what-are-gw) 1

J. Valsiner (*) Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_5

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new focus on nanopsychology (Valsiner 2018)—the maximum theoretical benefit by generalizing from the minimal (but relevant) data. The present perspective treats the “sample size” as being constant at N = 1, and deals with finding out how from such base general knowledge could be obtained.

What Does “Single Case” Mean? The meaning of the denotation “single case” is variable. In psychologists’ usual opposition it is the counterpart of a “sample,” and in the value system dominated by the statistical mindset denigrated to be untrustable, and at times even “unethical” to be used for scientific generalization. In direct contrast to this orientation is the focus on the reality of human existence within irreversible time—each event in psyche is a unique single case and its validity is given by its real function in the given moment within a real human life course. A successful act of suicide—started by an instant affective moment or from long dissatisfaction with one’s life—is a single existentially definite event in the life of a single person in the given context. If successful, it is the single event that ends the life of a human being. As such it is deeply existentially real—and does not need any further validation in a second act of similar kind that is no longer even possible.

Practice and Theory United—Focus on the Single Case The reality of the single instances within single cases brings two areas of work within psychology—clinical, educational, and organizational practices on the one hand, and basic science on the other. The advancement of idiographic science (Molenaar 2004; Salvatore et al. 2009, 2010a, b, 2012, 2014; Salvatore and Valsiner 2010) indicates the move of basic science away from the statistical mindset of large sample research to the focus on the real individual cases. The focus on such cases is a given reality for all applied areas—a clinical treatment of a patient, a consultation of a business firm, or advice to a government about the impacts of introducing a new legislation are all single cases where the general understanding of the principles of their organization is crucial. This leads us to the question of our axiomatic setup of how we conceptualize the structure of the single case (event).

A Case Is Not a Thing But a System There are three possible ways how to axiomatically conceptualize a single case (Fig. 5.1), The three ways have dramatic implications for science.

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Fig. 5.1  Axiomatic presentations of a single case

The CASE AS AN OBJECT (Fig. 5.1a) axiomatic stand is the standard implicit option used in all social science research efforts where samples of data are collected for some purposes. The individual cases (events) are classified into similarity categories (X) and that classification makes it possible to accumulate the data over time and space (contexts) into summary indices which are subsequently submitted to statistical routines leading to inductive generalization. The relevance of the single case (event) here is limited to the maximum—it needs to occur (be detectable), it must be classifiable into a given or emerging strict classification systems, the accumulations of which are then compared (e.g., Xs versus Ys). “Irregular” cases (e.g., those that do not conform to the assumed form of distribution) are either discarded or the distribution is transferred to the expected one (non-normal to normal distribution transfers in statistics). The single case here is no longer relevant once it has become accumulated into the data set. This axiomatic stand is naively realistic—it detects events that did occur (and accumulates those) while being completely “blind” to similar events (X) that in a current context could have become expressed (but were not). The absence of context of Xs makes such determination impossible. The axiomatic look at the case as a SYSTEM (Fig. 5.1b) presumes that each case entails internal structure (the minimal case—A and B) and the relationship between these internal structural units. Within this axiomatic stand, the single case is definitive—only one of such systems needs to be analyzed to arrive at general knowledge about how it functions. The system can be dynamic (e.g., the dominance relations between A and B can fluctuate) but it cannot be developmental (no not internal structure can evolve).

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It is only the OPEN SYSTEMIC AXIOMATIC VIEW (Fig. 5.1c) that is appropriate for the study of all human systems. In this case the dynamic structure of the system is situated within the context (C) with which it is in constant and critically relevant exchange relationship (i.e., the defining nature of open systems). The single case is here treated as definitive (no accumulation needed), dynamic, and developmental. The focus of research efforts to figure out how it is organized is on the border—documenting the inward-outward transfers of materials. Under ordinary circumstances this transfer is organized without any difficulty—we breathe in and out, and our breathing makes it possible to maintain our biological being. However, if our breathing becomes occluded we realize how dependent we are on this constant interchange with the environment. This focus on the border zone of the open system’s relation with its immediate context is new for psychology. In psychology, the use of intra-individual and especially inter-individual reference frames (Valsiner 2000, 2017a) is naturalized—in perfect non-fit with the nature of the phenomena (which are of open systemic nature). Instead, it is the individual-socioecological reference frame that fits the axiomatic bases for psychological science. What would make psychology into science is the development of new methodology of the investigation of the membrane dynamics of the border of the system and its surroundings. Generalizable knowledge comes from the analysis of this dynamics within the single case (Nedergaard et al. 2015). In this respect—generalizing knowledge does not exclude the context, but includes it in the abstracted generalized knowledge.

Basic Processes of Generalization The act of generalization includes selective abstraction of some features of the concrete phenomenon. In a classic summary of the idea on the border of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the notion of generalization was described in conjunction with abstraction: All generalization involves abstraction; to generalize is to recognize likeness which had been previously masked by differences; to recognize the likeness is also therefore to recognize these differences as irrelevant, and to disregard them from the point of view of the general conception. Such recognition is abstraction (Stout and Baldwin 1901a: 408, added emphases)

In the generalization process, differences are detected—but they are not maintained. What these differences allow us to do is to find unity that transcends these differences. This is done by abstraction. Abstraction includes selection and distancing. The latter leads to the act of dismissal: …abstraction occurs only when the interest of thought lies in following out of its relations, not within, but outside this context. To this end its relations within the given context must be as far as possible ignored; and when they obtrude themselves, they must be recognized as irrelevant, and for that reason disregarded. (Stout and Baldwin 1901b: 8, added emphases)

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The process of abstracting is an act of distancing of some aspect of the selected phenomenon in opposition to the rest—which become the context for the selected part. Imagination is necessary for that distancing—together with the dismissal of the original context as irrelevant. Abstraction is a process of making a generalized AS-IF structures of thought by leaving the confines of the reality (AS-IS). Abstract generalization: …breaks up the very constituents of existence and puts them together again in a far more general manner, in the process discovering the many possibilities which might still—have been possible (Vaihinger 1935: 55)

Abstraction leads to generalization—which opens new possibilities for the extension of an idea at the expense of losing the ties with the local context. It entails the unity of construction and destruction—through increasing the level of the Gestalt (von Ehrenfels 1932/1988; Valsiner 2016). This level of Gestalt is the qualitative character of the whole in terms of its depth of structure. Thus a whole comprised of two parts W(A & B) is of lower level Gestalt than another consisting of an extra unit C—such as W{C & (A&B)}. Raising of the Gestalt level leads to distancing from the original whole and constructing its new image by abstractive generalization. All higher psychological processes of intentional nature work through abstractive generalization (Bühler 1934/1965: 45ff)—it is through the worm of similes and metaphors that human thinking distances itself from the here-and-now setting to make transfer (Katona 1940) of meanings through higher-level Gestalt sign fields to new anticipated settings. Such transfer based on higher-level Gestalts is usual in memory where specific cases of some kind of event (e.g., unlucky event a, b, c, d) lead to generalization “I have little luck” and to abstraction (“I am an unlucky person”). That generalized Gestalt about the self as “unlucky person” would then become re-contextualized various settings where on its basis further “unlucky events” are anticipated.

Negation: From Single to Double The act of negation is central for our cognitive processes. It entails resistance to the imposition of the here-and-now settings (Valsiner 2017a) which makes it in principle possible to “go beyond the information given”—which is—to think. The function of negation …appears in refusal, prohibition, imperatives, and wishes. Without negation no sphere of human activity could reach the stage of decision and determination or overcome the stage of chaos and indecision and enter the stage of order and cosmos. Without negation no creation of the human mind (like science, philosophy, art, or religion) could reach unity of meaning. (Heinemann 1943-1944: 137)

The cognitive dynamics in abstractive generalization is isomorphic with the notion of double negation in the framework of classical dialectical philosophy (Hegel 1802/1998). Most of psychological research never goes beyond the first negation:

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What is negated in this First Negation is the similarity of A and B. An example is simple. Psychologists like to demonstrate gender differences between samples of males and females in almost any “measure” they ever invent. Once a statistically significant difference is found between averages of sample A (men) and of sample B (women) then through the rules of inductive generalization they claim that men are different from women and vice versa. This generalization entails a trick of abstractive homogenization of the samples (Valsiner 1986)—in the empirical phase of research the heterogeneous nature of the samples is accepted (and used for statistical analysis). Once the resulting significant difference is obtained, the heterogeneity of the sample is left behind and substituted by the assumption of homogeneity (all A are A and all B are B: all women are similar to one another as women and all men to one another as men). Most of psychology’s generalizations end at this stage of abstraction. Double negation makes generalization possible. The Second Negation in the tradition of dialectical philosophy—not utilized widely in psychology—entails the negation of the relevance of the First Negation: IF WE FIND A TO BE DIFFERENT FROM B (empirically) then it is true that A IS NOT B AND B IS NOT A (logically) But THE FOUND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A AND B DOES NOT MATTER since we assume that the compared phenomena have some basic aspects in common that MAKE THE FIRST COMPARISON POSSIBLE

It is notable that the comparison of males and females happens within the whole of the given species (human) rather than across species. No psychologist would probably take seriously a suggestion that a sample of army ants be compared with a sample of males recruited into an army to find out their differences in “aggressivity.” Such comparison makes no sense—while that of men with women does. But why does it? Men and women are parts of the same whole (humans) differentiated into two complementary subforms that are necessary for the survival of the whole (species) and of the sub-wholes (family units that guarantee reproduction)—thus survival of the species. As long as higher biological species have left the reproductive tactics of parthenogenesis behind, the difference between men and women hides their basic compatibility. That can be seen in androgyny—the unity of male and female characteristics within each and every man and woman. The question that presents itself at this junction is—why do psychologists document between-samples empirical differences at all, if these in the end do not matter? The takeover of the “empire of chance” (Gigerenzer et al. 1989) in the domain of psychology’s methodology, together with the underdevelopment of the theoretically productive abstractive languages (in contrast with chemistry—Valsiner 2012) has

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led psychology into a state where the empirical accumulation of data grows exponentially while the generalizing theoretical systems have only slowly advanced (Toomela and Valsiner 2010). Psychology today is similar to a powerful engine that is working at full strength in accumulating empirical evidence but failing to arrive at generalized basic knowledge of the psyche.

Where Is the Problem? The problem for psychology today is similar to that of chemistry from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries—the mismatch between the wholistic nature of the phenomena on the one hand, and the elementaristic analytic conceptual instruments to make sense of the complexity, on the other. In the human case, this is further complicated by the inherent intentionalities encoded into complex phenomena. This limitation goes beyond the parallel with chemistry—while complex chemical compounds may relate with others in complex ways, none of these relations can be claimed to have any trace of intentionality. It would be absurd to claim that the intention of water is to put out fire upon which it is thrown, but it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the fire fighter who wants to put out a fire intentionally throws water on it. Human conduct is structured and intentional—both of these features are forgotten in psychology over the past century. Two forgotten directions of thought are waiting to be reintroduced in our contemporary psychology. First, Franz Brentano’s philosophy of intentional nature of objects combined with William MacDougall’s “hormic psychology” if developed further from their starting efforts and turned into methodologically solid (i.e., qualitative) analytic schemes would overcome the basic “error of the measurement orientation”2 that has plagued psychology since the 1950s. Secondly, the pioneering efforts of Ganzeitspsychologie in the 1910s–1930s can be revisited for innovation. The Ganzheitsychologie tradition (Krueger 1915; Diriwächter 2008) maintains the primacy of the whole—fluid, semi-­structured, or well-structured (such as in case of Gestalt psychology) over its parts—thus fitting with the nature of the complexity of psychological phenomena.  What I refer to here is not “measurement error” but the error of the whole task of measurement in psychology. As Joel Michell (1999) has demonstrated, it is from the 1950s onward that psychology has canonized the notion of measurement as a task of “assigning numbers” to psychological phenomena and subsequently considering the results of such assignments as representing real psychological characteristics that causally influence one another within the objects thus “measured.” This act is a projective construction of consensually accepted non-reality as if it can explain the reality of psychological functions. 2

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Fig. 5.2  A cloud as a dynamic Ganzheit

Structures of Ganzheit Wholistic units—even temporary and vaporous ones (Fig. 5.2)—have structure. A cloud is a good example of a whole that has semi-structure that changes all the time. The dynamics of various layers of air and particles of dust provide for a large variety of recognizable cloud types.3 The variety of clouds are generated by similar general principles—even if their observable forms are highly variable. Clouds are wholes that are characterized by topographic continuity—each part of the cloud is a neighbor to some other part, until the edge of the form. The contours of the edges are complex curves that vary in form all the time. This variability of contours over time can be fascinating for the observers but irrelevant for the researcher into the basic processes of cloud formation. Cloud dynamics does not create permanent structures—their impermanence is the rule of the game. Other forms in nature—geological formations and biological organisms—develop relatively stable forms of organization that are also topographically continuous. Developing of embryos is of such kind—calling for a field theory to make sense of the transformation of form over the life course of the organisms (Gurwitsch 1914, 1922, 1947).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud#Formation_and_distribution

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Differently from clouds, embryos develop into an expected adult form of the given species. While this process of development happens without any intentionality of psychological kind (no embryo is expected to “want to grow into adult form”), it poses theoretical problems connected with the necessity to consider anticipation of the species-specific final form in embryonic development (e.g., Hans Driesch’s efforts—Valsiner 2017b). The theoretical dilemma is profound—in our scientific model making we are reluctant to operate with notions of expected futures (and if we need to do so—we resort to one or another notion of probability). At the same time, the reality of biological organisms transforming from embryonic states to adult forms happens across generations with remarkable consistency and living up to the principle of equifinality. The plan for movement into the adult form needs to be guaranteed by the biological developing organism as of now—but the form of the plan is for the future. This would call for some version of pre-formist hypothesis (e.g., that of genetic determinacy of the adult forms) but at the same time it is precisely the epigenetic perspective that informs contemporary genetics (Lux and Richter 2014) that renders such pre-formist hypothesis untenable. In the middle of epigenetic variability and the open systemic modulation of exchange relations with the environment the developing organisms still manage to grow up into a recognizable adult form of the given species. How is that continuity in the middle of variability amplification (Maruyama 1963, 1991) possible? In embryogenesis, answers are sought in the ways in which the whole (geometry of the region) includes the various movement vectors for the cells (Chardantseva and Cherdantsev 2006). If this is the case, the present wholistic configuration of a field generates its own inherent “intentionality” for the ways in which the system moves into a new state. The field is self-transforming—but not goal-oriented (Fig. 5.3). In Fig. 5.3, a simple system of two units (AB) generates such development vector in the interaction on their shared border (membrane) where the new part C emerges. Figure 5.3 is a hypothetical example of the central relevance of the periphery—of the border of A and B where the oppositionally directed forces →← operate. This follows the general notion of Gegenstand (Fig. 5.4.). Gegenstand—something that stands against something else in literal expression, it is the minimal wholistic structure in systems that include inherent intentionality—in its minimum form this equals the presence of directionality vector in the system—toward the border D. The vector toward D starts from an imaginary “starting field” within which many other potential directions of vectors (all except the actual one detected as oriented to D). This leads us to accepting the axiomatic determination that all psychological phenomena include inherent directionality once they are formed (from the not-differentiated “starting field”). “I am striving towards D but have not yet reached there” would be a personal translation of the abstract scheme in Fig. 5.4. It also entails recognition of the movement in irreversible time— from the past through the present (“I am moving towards D”) to the future. The notion of Gegenstand as a theoretical term was widespread in philosophy and psychology from eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, but together with the monologization of psychologists’ focus onto elementary constituents (“behavior”)

88 Fig. 5.3  The central role of the border

Fig. 5.4  The basic structure of Gegenstand and its origins

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Fig. 5.5 A Gegenstand facing an opposite Gegenstand: the birth of a directional vector on the common border

of complex phenomena and the monopolization of psychological science by quantitative focus in methodology, it has vanished from theorizing. The current ­reinstallation of the relevance of qualitative foci in psychology (under the disguise of “qualitative methods”) makes it necessary to return to structural-dynamic abstract units of analysis that unite direction of psychological processes with resistance to such actions (Chaudhary et al. 2016). Gegenstand is one of such possible elementary forms. Each cell membrane (Fig. 5.3) operates in resistance both to what is in the given cell and in its neighboring cell. Figure 5.5 gives a generalized version of the emergence of directionality vector from the tension point of two Gegenstände. It is an abstract elaboration of the cell division processes depicted above (Fig. 5.3). In traditional field theories of growth of multicellular organisms (Cherdantsev 2006; Gurwitsch 1914, 1922, 1947) the direction of the growth-orienting lines is posited and demonstrated on the basis of cross sections of cell patterns, not specifying the mechanisms of growth in-between neighboring cells. By actively creating the tension and counter-tension for the border of the whole co-construct the emergence of a new direction is accomplished. It makes the border region of any system—cf. Fig. 5.1c above—the place where innovation is happening.

Abstractions in Theory Building: Inductive and Deductive Where do abstractions come from? In our contemporary qualitatively oriented psychology they are often viewed as results of inductive generalization—result of diligent sieving through the qualitative data within the scheme of Grounded Theory research. In contrast, the reintroduction of the notion of Gegenstand comes from deductive insertion as a result of thinking through the Methodology Cycle (Fig. 5.6). It is only mildly ironic that the Methodology Cycle—that has been around for more than two decades (Branco and Valsiner 1997)—has been ignored by the thinking of researchers most of whom are busy demonstrating their productivity by empirical work. Being filled with empirical evidence does not let the research reports become relevant for generalizable knowledge. Grounded Theory is no solu-

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Fig. 5.6  The Methodology Cycle

tion—no inductive generalization can be complete unless at some moment it is transcended and it turns into a deductive basis for understanding. This happens through the process of abduction. The basic meta-code (“basic assumption”) in psychological research is the qualitative nature of all psychological phenomena—from the simplest (simple reaction to stimuli based on nervous system) to the most complex (religious and ideological values). Secondly, psychological phenomena are person-based and unique—as human lives are bounded by their flow within irreversible time. Thirdly, human conduct is intentional and oriented toward self-generated goal orientations. Fourthly—all human conduct is guided by other human beings—immediately present or imagined to be present. Based on these four axioms, it is possible to generate a theory for different kinds of human psychological issues (Van Geert 1986, 1988). The axiom of uniqueness requires that the testing of the theory needs to happen within one episode—be it that of life experience or a question in an interview or questionnaire. It also calls for the theory to be of the kind—of sufficient generality—to be testable on single episodes. The question of generalization from empirical evidence requires analysis of the axiomatic and theoretical structures about which the evidence is to provide knowledge. “Evidence-based” empirical work becomes science only if it is theoretically clear what kind of evidence is relevant for our generalized knowledge.

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Pathways to Generalized Knowledge Arriving at generalized knowledge in any science is a matter of thinking strategies: what kind of knowledge is to be obtained from what sources under what conditions and with what limitations? Back in 1911, William Stern systematized four different perspectives on empirical research (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8) that have shaped psychology over the past century. Figure 5.7 illustrates the socially normative generalization strategies in most of contemporary psychology—reliance upon inter-individual reference frame (Valsiner 2000) and using the inter-individual variation within samples to arrive at generalizations which are then projected back into individuals (Valsiner 1986). The futility of this knowledge construction trajectory has been demonstrated in basic ways (Molenaar 2004; Van Geert 1998; Michell 1999; Smedslund 1995) but as an accepted social practice continues to proliferate. In contrast, Stern also outlined individual-based research tactics (Fig. 5.8). Of these, it is precisely the Psychographie that is the starting point to understand how generalization occurs from single episodes of the lives of single persons. A human being proceeds on the trajectory of one’s irreversible life course. On that course many similar (but not same) events happen. Within the life course, the person can compare each of these unique events over time and arrive at some generalization about him or herself. Such general psychological features of the life course have similar basic structure—each birthday party of the person over life is similar in

Fig. 5.7  William Stern’s view on sample based research tactics

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Fig. 5.8  Individual-centered research tactics (Stern 1911/1994: 18)

structure yet different in personal meaning. Becoming 18 differs from becoming 80. The psychographic depiction of the life course is that of unique events, while the basic structure of the life course is formally similar across all persons. Similarly to the generality of human anatomical universality across history of the species and geographical distribution, it is in the area of psychological functions that similar generality is expected. The only question is that about its abstract nature. Stern’s depiction of psychography did not include time—the parameters in Fig. 5.8 constitute a synchronic profile (of a single case, or in comparison with a second or other cases in Komparationsforschung). This is a major limitation for any perspective that recognizes development of the system under study to take place. There can be synchronic profiles—representing the current cross section of the system—but these profiles are undergoing change all the time in the case of each and every compared individual (Molenaar et al. 2002). The psychographic generalization needs to involve the study of various features (Merkmale) in their systemic unity over time (Fig. 5.9). Generalization under conditions of irreversible time necessarily involves relying on the singular episodes observable in the look at the single case (Fig. 5.9). The first observation—by definition an idiographic description—becomes nomothetic as some features from it become generalized. These features are not about that single case or about that episode itself, but about general principles that are analyzable in this selected empirical model. Lev Vygotsky back in 1927 clarified the relevance of the empirical work in physiology by Ivan Pavlov: I.P. Pavlov practically studies the activity of the salivary gland of the dog. What gives him the right to call his study that of the higher nervous activity of animals? Maybe he should test his experiments on a horse, a crow, etc.—on all, or at least on the majority of animal

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Fig. 5.9  Generalization from single instances over irreversible time species, so as to make his conclusions? Or, maybe he should label his study like this: investigation of salivation in the dog? But Pavlov did not study actually the salivation of a dog as such. His research does not add anything to our knowledge of the dog as such or salivation as such. In his studies of the dog he studied not the dog, but the animal in general, in salivation – the reflex in general, i.e. in the study of this animal and in that phenomenon he emphasized that what was common with all similar phenomena. That is why his conclusions not only relate to all animals but to all biology: the fact of salivation in the case of Pavlovian dogs to Pavlov’s signals become directly into a general biological principle—transformation of the inherited experience into that of the animal. (Vygotsky 1982/1927: 404)

Vygotsky pointed to Pavlov’s abstraction of the principles of conditional nature of the reflexes that could be created in laboratory conditions—and on one species— to all living organisms with nervous systems and under all conditions of “local contexts.” That universality than include many-to-many relations between the parts in the system. For example, our contemporary developmental biologists study the genes-to-neurons connections on a tiny nematode C. elegans because in this species the connections of the very few neurons that are mapped (301 in number) for small body (1 mm in length, including precisely 959 cells) can be contrasted with a not too big a genetic generating system that is also described (comprising 20,470 protein-­coding genes). What has been the target for researchers’ interest—is the epigenetic principles by which the many (genes) to few (neurons) linkages are organized. The genetic code of C.elegans has 35% overlap with the human genome. That overlap would be insufficient to look at specifically human features in the nematode but models of genetic encoding of neurons relevant for different diseases that are present in humans (Alzheimer’s disease) can provide for fruitful analogy. Similarly, the example in Fig. 5.9 entails the remove of the generalizable knowledge from the episodes observed. The knowledge at stake is that of general principles of development that are to be found in a sequence of idiographic episodes of developmental transitions. It is therefore not surprising that much knowledge in basic developmental science—of the kind practiced by James Mark Baldwin,

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William and Clara Stern, David and Rosa Katz, and Jean Piaget—comes from the observations of single episodes of conduct of children under the conditions of life-­ time longitudinal investigation.

General Conclusions: Abstraction as the Key to Knowledge To answer the question set in this chapter—how is generalization from a single episode possible in science?—my answer is simple—through abstraction that includes both making empirical distinctions in the analysis of the episode and then selectively ignoring some of the comparisons in the act of generalization. It is here where the inductive and deductive knowledge making operations meet. The distinctions made—given that the episode under consideration is unique— are all necessarily of the kind THIS IS X BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN Y. These are {As-Is As-If} structures in terms of Hans Vaihinger (1935). The distinctions thus entail both a real and imaginary component, leading to the need to adjust psychology’s methodological schemes to this axiomatic necessity. This has been put into research practice in the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach—Sato 2017, Sato et al. 2016). Each unique forward move in human life course includes affective contrasting (Zittoun 2008) of the different possibilities of the future out of which only one ends up being real as the life course proceeds. At the theory construction level, this research attitude equals the adoption of the abductive perspective on the knowledge creation process. Abduction as a generalizing tool grew out of Charles Sanders Peirce’s efforts to overcome the contrast between inductive and deductive pathways of inference (Valsiner and Salvatore 2012; Pizzarroso and Valsiner 2017). When set up in irreversible time, the traditional scheme of abduction (X was found → it is surprising given considered explanations A or B → but if explanation C were the case X would be ordinary → hence C is likely) needs modification as it operates backward across the border of the Present in the irreversible time (Fig. 5.10). Figure 5.10 is a hybrid of Peirce’s scheme on time (where past and future never meet, except for coming infinitely close in the present and creating polarized tension of insistency) and the notion of abduction of looking for hypothetical explanation backward across the border of the present—leading to new knowledge to be deductively applied to a future expected episode of a similar kind. Thus abductive generalization is a “hostage” to the thinking process always proceeding forward in irreversible time. Any generalization is thus time-freed abstraction that lags behind the process of experiencing. This “lagging behind” sets up constraints upon the use of abductive generalizations. The move from the abductive act to that of making a new deduction base through the generalized nature of the abducted explanation is the critical move in which both breakthroughs and blunders of theoretical innovation become possible. Nevertheless this risk of inventing bogus explanatory concepts on the border of real generalized knowledge is worth taking. We cannot escape the reality of research taking place in irreversible time.

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Fig. 5.10  Abduction in irreversible time

In this chapter, I undertook a complicated intellectual journey to the realm of generalization in irreversible time. The coverage led us to a rather paradoxical conclusion—in order to create any knowledge, the knowledge maker has to act on the basis of unique, transient, phenomena that occur in the flow of irreversible time. To accomplish the making of general knowledge the mundane flow of irreversible time needs to be transcended. This is only possible through semiotic mediation— abstracting from experience through signs—arriving at generalized knowledge that is freed from the confines of time. The process by which this is achieved is abduction—reconstructing explanations in retrospect, across the border of the present, into the vanished past. Furthermore—the generalized knowledge leads to very concrete anticipatory actions in practice—thus testing its adequacy again at the level of unique events. We live on and through personally unique life courses which are general for all human lives in their basic organization. Acknowledgments  The editorial suggestions by Charlotte Højholt and Ernst Schraube were helpful in fine tuning this chapter. I am grateful to Danske Grundforskningfond for 5 years of support to my work in 2013–2018 under the Niels Bohr Professorship scheme.

References Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9(1), 35–64. Bühler, K. (1934/1965). Sprachtheorie. Stuttgart: Fischer. Chardantseva, E., & Cherdantsev, V. (2006). Geometry of mechanics of teleost gastrulation and the formation of primary embryonic axes. International Journal of Developmental Biology, 50, 157–168.

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Sato, T. (Ed.). (2017). Collected papers on the trajectory equifinality approach. Tokyo: Chitose Press. Sato, T., Mori, N., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2016). Making of the future: The trajectory Equifinality approach in cultural psychology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Smedslund, J.  (1995). Psychologic: Common sense and the pseudoempirical. In J.  A. Smith, R. Harré, & L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking psychology (pp. 196–206). London: Sage. Stern, W. (1911/1994). Die Differenzielle Psychologie. Bern: Hans Huber. Stout, G. F., & Baldwin, J. M. (1901a). Generalization. In J. M. Baldwin (Ed.), Dictionary of philosophy and psychology (p. 408). New York: Macmillan. Stout, G. F., & Baldwin, J. M. (1901b). Abstraction. In J. M. Baldwin (Ed.), Dictionary of philosophy and psychology (p. 6). New York: Macmillan. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Vaihinger, H. (1935). The philosophy of ‘As if’. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Valsiner, J.  (1986). Between groups and individuals: Psychologists’ and laypersons’ interpretations of correlational findings. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 113–152). New York: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and human development. London: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2012). Learning from the fate of psychology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Valsiner, J.  (2015a). The place for synthesis: Vygotsky’s analysis of affective generalization. History of the Human Sciences, 28(2), 93–102. Valsiner, J. (2015b). Generalization is possible only from a single case (and from a single instance). In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, & P. Hviid (Eds.), Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts (pp. 233–244). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Valsiner, J. (2016). The nomothetic function of the idiographic approach: Looking from inside out. Journal of Person-Oriented Research, 2(1–2), 5–15. https://doi.org/10.17505/jpor:2016.02. Valsiner, J. (2017a). From methodology to methods in human psychology. New York: Springer. Valsiner, J.  (2017b). Making sense of self-completing wholes: Epistemological travels of Hans Driesch. In D. Carré, J. Valsiner, & S. Hampl (Eds.), Representing development: The social construction of models of change (pp. 28–48). London: Routledge. Valsiner, J. (2018). Needed in psychology: Theoretical precision. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 14(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v14i1.602. Valsiner, J., & Salvatore, S. (2012). How idiographic science could create its own terminology. In S. Salvatore, S., A. Gennaro, A., & J. Valsiner (Eds.) Making sense of infinite uniqueness. Vol. 4 of YIS: Yearbook of Idiographic Science. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Van Geert, P. (Ed.). (1986). Theory building in developmental psychology. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Van Geert, P. (1988). The concept of transition in developmental theories. In W. J. Baker, L. P. Mos, H. V. Rappard, & H. J. Stam (Eds.), Recent trends in theoretical psychology (pp. 225– 235). New York: Springer. Van Geert, P. (1998). We almost had a great future behind us: The contribution of non-linear dynamics to developmental-science-in-the-making. Developmental Science, 1, 143–159. von Ehrenfels, C. (1932/1988). On Gestalt qualities (1932). In B.  Smith (Ed.), Foundations of gestalt theory (pp. 121–123). München: Philosophia Verlag. Vygotsky, L.  S. (1982/1927). Istoricheskii smysl psychologicheskogo krizisa [Historical sense of the crisis in psychology]. In L. S. Vygotsky (Ed.), Sobranie sochinenii (Vol. 1). Moscow: Pedagogika. Wertheimer, M. (1982). Einstein: The thinking that led to the theory of relativity. In M. Wertheimer (Ed.), Productive thinking (pp. 213–233). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zittoun, T. (2008). Janet’s emotions in the whole of human conduct. In R. Diriwächter & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Striving for the whole: Creating theoretical syntheses (pp. 111–129). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Part II

Ethical and Aesthetical Compositions of Psychological Generalization

Chapter 6

On the Worldliness of the General: Why Concepts Matter Ethically Jytte Bang

The core point of the present chapter is that the general can be conceived in opposite manners depending on how the relationship of the individual and the environment is approached. One position (dualism) assumes a dichotomy between the individual mind and the environment, suggesting that psychology is a discipline which is occupied with reflections caused by impressions received from the world. This position is influenced by Descartes’ philosophy as well as by empiricism. An opposite position considers a dichotomy between the individual (mind) and the environment to be a major issue to psychology and argues that overcoming dualism potentially changes the ways in which psychology and psychological phenomena are conceived. From the perspective of its critiques, the dualist position is sometimes thought of as “representational” theory or just “representationalism” indicating that psyche is a cognitive activity which mirrors and combines (represent) impressions from the outer world in mind. From such a position, the critique of dualism can be referred to as critique of representationalism. The present chapter argues that these two basic positions influence how we think about core-concepts in psychology—in this particular case, about the general. The aim of the present chapter is (first) to discuss the possibilities to get beyond a representational understanding of the general and pave the way for a worldly and genetic (that is, historical/developmental) approach. Furthermore, the chapter aims to discuss, how the different “psychologies of the general” have ethical implications to psychology.

J. Bang (*) Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]

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The General from the Perspective of Representationalism Alan Costall (2007) suggests the terms “mediationism” and “representationalism” to describe the assumed barrier (dualism) between an individual and the world, which is often assumed in psychology. He argues that what characterizes such an approach is that we neither have, nor can have, direct contact with our surroundings. One can feel the irony when he states that: “Something or other is always supposed to be getting in our way: internal rules and representations, schemas, or prototypes, in the case of standard cognitive theory” (Costall 2007: 109). The problem is that by thinking of psychological processes in terms of representations, individuals become detached and abstracted from their concrete and practical life conditions— psychology becomes occupied with “cognition” rather than with “practice.” Therefore, a psychology based on representationalism tends to reproduce dualism in psychology. According to Costall, representationalism can be viewed as a means by which psychology historically could break free from behaviorism and introduce “cognition” in terms of representations. This turn has been very successful and influential, and (since the 1980s) psychology as a whole has (roughly speaking) been defined as the study of cognition. However, as Costall outlines, there are fundamental issues, which follows with representationalism. For example, how can rules and representations apply to actual life situations and how do we know that they are appropriate? What are the origins of representations in the first place and how do they come to have meaning? If we argue that representations derive from our past experiences, how can we know how the past experiences can apply to the present? Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor (2015) likewise address issues that relate to representationalism and suggest that such mediational theory is paradoxical: if the “simple ideas” come through pure causal impingement, how can they be challenged? They can only be what Dreyfus and Taylor call “pure Givens”; hence, they argue that mediational theory builds on the “Myth of the (Pure) Given” (2015: 73). Despite such obvious theoretical concerns, representationalism has been widely influential with regard to the ways in which psyche is conceived. According to a commonsense view, psyche is that activity which goes on in the head of an individual. This view supports a dualism, which originated in Cartesian philosophy (that is, his distinction between res cogitans and res extensa). Even though the view is challenged by post-Cartesian theorists, it nevertheless is widely accepted (Bernstein 1983: 116). There are differences between Descartes and the empiricist philosophers, but they also share common views. Being inspired by Descartes (and influencing Enlightenment thinker) (Favrholdt 1965), Locke’s empiricist position influenced philosophy as well as psychology by operating with a distinction (dualism) between senses and experience (impression coming from the outside), on the one hand, and reflection (the cognition of ideas), on the other hand. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1961), John Locke outlines his theory about the mind and the sources of it. According to Locke, the mind is “white paper void of all characters” (1961: 77) and the “idea” is the first effect made on the mind mediated through the

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senses (as sensations). These ideas may become connected and combined by the operations of mind (the reflections). He says: First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them […]. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation. […] Second, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our minds; which we, being conscious of and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. (Locke 1961: 77f)

How does such a widely accepted dualism between sensation and reflection influence the ways in which psychology conceives the general? If accepting Locke’s line of thought, it seems obvious that the general must be associated with reflection in the mind of an individual; it is defined as generalization. According to Locke, when simple ideas are received passively by mind based on sensations, mind actively reflects on these simple ideas and combine them in various manners into complex ideas, relations as more simultaneous ideas, and abstracts; that is, the discrimination of ideas from other ideas and the formation of general ideas. Hence, it follows from empiricism that the general is a mental construct and generalization is the process in which mental operations work on the simple ideas to form general ideas. Psychology becomes the study of how the individual’s senses meet the stimulations from the world in terms of impressions (ideas); and (next) of the inner reflections (wider, emotions) that follow the reception of ideas. Hence, the general is an outcome of the individual mind’s cognitive processing.

Why Is There a Problem with Representationalism? A prominent critical voice concerning the influence of dualism and representationalism in psychology belongs to James J. Gibson. According to Gibson (1966), it is important to study the mutual relationship of an organism with its world. Organisms do not live in a mechanical world from which they receive impressions in a passive and receptive manner; they live in an ecological world in which they actively take part. Organisms have ecological niches; they are part of their environment in species-specific ways and do not stand opposite to the world as isolated “cognitive” individuals. The senses are not just passive receptors of outer impressions but functional systems, which are available for the organism’s active exchange with the

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environment. From this perspective, psychology is not just the discipline to study cognition; rather, it is the discipline to study the (species-specific, niche-based) manifold, complex, and practical exchanges of organisms with the environment. Gibson’s view, and ecological psychology in general, settles psychology into the history of practical, explorative activity of living organisms which opposes individualized, passive and abstract notions of psyche. According to ecological theory, psyche does not begin with the individual mind nor with cognitive operations. Psyche begins with the historically developed meaningful activities of organisms in their species-specific environments. It begins with active explorative activities of the organisms (for discussion, see also Bang 2007, 2009). According to the ecological perspective of Gibson, it is quite problematic to define the general merely with reference to the individual mind. Rather, the general is a lived relationship, not just a cognized one. Organisms live the general whenever they actively live their meaningful relationships with the world. They live the common, historically developed, environmental conditions of life—the general is a worldly phenomenon.

The Worldliness of the General What does it mean that the general is a worldly phenomenon? In order to open up a perspective on the general not limited by representationalism, a few theoretical illustrations may be helpful. The illustrations are concerned with meaning relations in nature and in human life and draw on the work of von Jakob von Uexküll, Niels Engelsted, and Aleksej N. Leontjev. Meaning Relations in Nature (First Illustration)  Von Uexküll’s (1940/1982) theory of meaning relations in nature presents the phenomenon of lived biological relationships. One of his credits was that he showed how the biological environment is different for different species and that the biological environment include complexes of food, enemies, means for protection, etc. From the perspective of identifying the general as a lived relationship, Von Uexküll’s theory is interesting because he addresses how meaning resides in the invisible. Meaning is a kind of (invisible, yet present) ‘plan’ behind the particular members of a species or the particular environmental characteristics. From this theoretical perspective, the ‘plan’ mirrors a kind of ‘fit’ or mutuality between the species and the environment and in this respect, it cannot be reduced to a single individual organism’s relationship with specific environmental objects. Rather, von Uexküll’s idea of the ‘plan’ creates a connection between the individual’s specific environmental relationships and the general life conditions of the species to which the individual belongs. From this perspective, meaning is theorized to be the general dimension of the individual-­ environment relationship. This view of the general implies that the concrete and the particular individual-environment relationships are genetic (i.e., historical, see Wertsch 1985), they are specific outcomes of ongoing historical processes. From this perspective, the general is the relational character of the biologically founded

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mutuality—it is active without being visible (it is absent-present). For example, a spider and its web constitute such a mutual relationship. Rather than beginning his environmental analysis with the individual fly and spider (that is, with the individual organism and a particular fly that it perceives), Von Uexküll begins with the web, which he describes as a reflection of the fly. The web is not just a reflection of a specific fly perceived by a spider. Rather, the individual spider makes its web before it ever actually sees a fly. In this sense, the web reflects the archetypical fly (any fly, the fly ‘as such’). The spider is a meaning-user, which is adapted to the meaning-­ carrier, that is, the fly. The web is a picture of the fly even if it is not a picture of a specific or perceived fly. In this respect, the web tells the story of a general meaning relationship, which is an outcome of historical processes of species-specific becoming. In general, in nature these kinds of general meaning relations between the various organisms and the environment can be sought for. In other words, in nature there are meaning relations, which do not have anything to do with individual consciousness or cognition. In this sense, the general is to be understood as the lived relationships of the individual organisms with their species-specific environment. Auto-Kinesis and Psyche as Teleological Activity (Second Illustration)  In his theory of ‘auto-kinesis (which refers to the spontaneous activity of an organism not caused by specific environmental stimuli or ‘impressions’), Engelsted (1989) opposes the idea of defining psyche in terms of mental reflection caused by specific outer stimuli. Even though this kind of reflection is a reality, such as when an organism responds to available food in the immediate environment, Engelsted suggests that it does not define psyche as such. He argues that basic psychic activity is defined by the first instance of such activity in phylo-genesis. Evidently, psyche-­as-­mind does not live up to this criterion, no matter how commonly agreed upon the mind definition of psyche appears to be. So, what is the defining characteristic (first instance in phylo-genesis) of psychic activity? According to Engelsted, it is the first instance of the phenomenon of auto-kinesis (i.e., spontaneous activity) – an organism’s free exploration of its environment. This first instance situation of psychic activity appears in phylo-genesis when food is not immediately present in the environment of an organism, yet the organism must eat in order to survive. This situation implies that spontaneous ‘search’ activity and from this point, the mere principle of the active organism has emerged: the organism moves around spontaneously and at some point food becomes present. Hence, psyche as a phenomenon is not the reflection of immediate environmental stimuli (such as the presence of food or (in general) a present object to stimulate the organism). When food is absent, ‘search’ activity sets psyche as a non-mechanical activity mirroring the separation of the organism and the stimuli. In other words, auto-kinesis is displayed by an organism without any outer stimulation. However, the fact that activity can happen in organisms without any outer stimulation does not mean that the activity is without a cause. Engelsted argues: The object is the other-being of the subject. As long as the organism is living, and thus a subject, its biological relation to the food is always a very present reality. Environmentally,

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however, the subject can be, and often is, separated from its food. This absence of the food-­ object (and thereby the absence of the positive stimulus for the consummatory response) also confronts the organism as reality. The behavior of auto-kinesis as designed by natural selection serves to bridge the two realities, so the environmental reality does not refute the biological. Auto-kinesis is at the same time a behavioral expression of the connection and of the disconnection between subject and object. (1989: 40).

A general conclusion based on the analysis of auto-kinesis is, that psyche is teleological activity. Teleological activity is a lived relationship of an organism with the world into which the general relationship (organisms must eat to survive) is already embedded. As a phenomenon, psyche mirrors a real biological relationship of an organism with its environment. This implies that the general is not to be defined merely as a mind phenomenon; it is not to be understood merely as a result of cognitive reflections and generalizations based on ‘ideas.’ Psyche (teleological activity) is in itself a general worldly phenomenon which emerges long before cognition. Therefore, psychic activity is not bound to, and not defined by, the individual mind. This shift of view implies that (1) one cannot uphold the idea that an organism responds solely to the immediate stimuli from the surroundings (even though it also does so); (2) the organism is not passive but active and unfolds spontaneous activity; (3) the first instances of the general is not defined as an individual cognitive act. Rather, it is a worldly relationship not reducible to a single individual’s particular exchange with the particular present aspects of its environment. As argued above, the relationship of an individual with the world is a historical one, an outcome of the general changes of the conditions of life across of time. Meaning Relations in Human Life (Third Illustration)  From von Uexküll as well as from Engelsted we learn that there are reasons for theoretical optimism as for conceiving the general in terms of relational ontology. Does this kind of insight still make sense when it comes to humans who have the capacity of reflection and therefore seem to serve as good examples of representationalism’s approach to the general? Let us assume that the basic insights from relational ontology is continuous with human life. What might be the theoretical evidence to support such an assumption? Drawing on Marxist philosophy, one may suggest that the collaborative and creative processes by which humans create their own conditions of life construct rich and varied general relations and that these general relations appear in the shape of meaningful particulars. For example, a chair is a particular, which mirrors the general relationship of humans and their societal needs (sit and eat, sit and read, sit and play, sit and sew, etc.). From such a perspective one may suggest a certain kind of parallel between the general analyzed in the examples above and the general in terms of human cultural life. In the historical processes of human life, humans transform nature and give shape to various kinds of human praxis and values. All sorts of things (artifacts) are included into these processes and so are value based institutional arrangements, relationships, materiality, norms, activities, discourses, etc. This perspective has two theoretical implications: (1) the general is a collective, collaborative (historical) phenomenon produced and changed over time by humans;

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(2) individuals come to know about the historically produced general in practical terms by living it in their everyday practical life—they practice the general, they do not just cognize it. From this perspective it follows that it is not possible to conceive an individual person abstractly as isolated from his or her historical context. There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ act of the mind merely based on ‘ideas’ passively received from outside the individual. The individual lives in a historically constituted and pre-­ ordered practical world, which is loaded with other people and their relations in all possible (complex and contradictory) ways. A child ‘stumbles’ over the complexities of the practical world and begins the process of living the general. According to Aleksei N.  Leontjev (1977), human consciousness is not just determined by surrounding things and phenomena but rather by being, that is, by the actual life of people. He suggests the concept of ‘activity’ as the process of inter-traffic between opposite poles, the individual and the environment. By focusing on the practical activities of life, psychology does no longer limit itself to ‘inner’ activities. It is the practical activities as part of societal praxis, which link the individual with the world. Leontjev’s concept of ‘the Fifth Quasi-Dimension’ is helpful to illustrate this point. Leontjev (1982: 8) emphasizes that what we perceive is not just the form of an object but the system of meaning (System der Bedeutungen) that the object is (whether a cup, a clock, or other things). Systems of meaning may be thought of as the general relationships created historically by humans. For example, clocks can have different shapes and appearances. Despite these perceived differences, they all mirror the general meaning of a ‘clock’ being: an object produced for the purpose of measure time in a time-measuring society. This general meaning of ‘clock’ (regardless of its specific perceivable appearance) is its defining characteristic. In general, artifacts mirror and co-organize such general historically created human relationships. An object is what it is because it is involved into social praxis and is meaningful as part of this. The concept of the ‘fifth quasi-dimension’ grasps the humanly produced general, which lies behind any specific and particular object (e.g., the variety of clocks). Hence, Leontjev breaks off from what he calls ‘the axiom of immediacy’ and this break off is fully in line both with the ideas of von Uexküll and Engelsted. According to the axiom of immediacy, there is nothing more to the object than the sensual impression they make on a perceiver (a return to the passively receiving subject). Objects, in this sense, is but singular immediate ‘impressions’—a view strongly associated with empiricism as argued earlier. From the perspective of the axiom of immediacy, any clock seems different from any other clock because of their sensual differences. The general idea of what a clock is can only be described in limited ways as an outcome of individual cognizing activity leading to a generalization based on the connection of ideas and not as a lived general. Alternatively, Leontjev suggests that the general are lived phenomena, which originate in human creative processes and exists in terms of the artifacts and relationships which characterize the human world. Again, these ideas suggest that there is a continuation from the analysis of meaning relations in nature to meaning relations in human life. Within both realms, there is a lived general.

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Why Does the Conceiving of the General Matter? It would be wrong to conclude that a critique of empiricism and its way to approach the general is of theoretical interest only. On the contrary, just like other concepts in psychology have the potentials to influence how we think about humans, society, societal norms and standards, ethics, etc., so does the concept of the general. This part of the chapter will discuss why and how conceiving of the general matters. The first two parts of the present chapter discussed of the influence of empiricism on psychology and the theoretical controversies concerning definitions of the general. These kinds of controversies go back to the question of what is it that constitutes psychology as a discipline, what is its basic unit of analysis and, hence, what defines psyche: does psychology begin “in the head” of the single individual or does psychology begin with the interrelationship of individuals with the world—not just in an immediate sense but in the sense of history (phylo-, cultural, and ontogenesis)? The point is that the general is defined differently depending on how one defines, what psychology is about and what is its basic unit of analysis. Further, the point is that the empiricist approach falls short to include history and that this is less than helpful when it comes to overcoming dualism and its consequences. Therefore, in the next part, focus will be the potential (and problematic) and ethical (hence, human-political) consequences of adapting a dualist and empiricist position with regard to the concept of the general. Hopefully it will become clear that concepts— even words—are not value-free. Rather, they have the capacity to direct both attention and thinking in certain ways. In this sense, they co-contribute to the common ways in which to think about humans, political events, and ethics, all of which belong to the societal realities.

Does Enlightenment Have Anything to Do With It? With regard to societal realities, empiricist thought going out from John Locke has been very influential. Locke did not only outline his theory of human knowledge, identity, and selfhood from which the present chapter has quoted. He also contributed in fundamental ways to Enlightenment and to the development of liberalism, which grew out of a general critique of the power of the state and of the church. Enlightenment thinkers are commonly associated with the ideas of freedom and of freedom of thought (for a discussion, see Taylor 1999), and these are regarded essential in order to allow humanity to achieve progress in societal life. Therefore, it is no wonder that the next step in the present chapter is to discuss the association of the general with those ideas. Edward Said (2004) emphasizes that Enlightenment, with its idea of “the sovereignity of the subject,” made the cogito the center of all human knowledge and in this manner contributed to essentializing thought in itself. Several influential theorists, among them Karl Marx, challenged this idea and put a focus on the fact that humans are not individually free but co-contribute to, hence

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frame, their own conditions of life in society. This challenged the liberal idea of the “free individual” and framed the individual as a societal being. If we follow Said’s suggestion to think of humanism in terms of an ongoing practice which includes a critical humanistic stance (rather than in terms of rejecting humanism), it is possible to open up for an understanding of how the struggle about the general is associated with human-political, that is, ethical, issues. In order to discuss these possible ideological connections, it is relevant to look into the work of scholars, who discusses Enlightenment from a general humanistic and political perspective. In his book The Conditions of Postmodernity, David Harvey (1990) analyzes the project of modernity, which came into focus during the eighteenth century as an effort on the part of Enlightenment thinkers “to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic” (Habermas 1983, as cited in Harvey 1990: 12). Harvey emphasizes that Enlightenment thought embraced the idea of progress—it sought to actively break with history and tradition. In relation to this self-understanding of Enlightenment, he characterizes modernity as a secular movement, which aimed to demystify knowledge and social organization in order to liberate human beings from their chains. Harvey describes the ideas in this way: The scientific domination of nature promised freedom from scarcity, want, and the arbitrariness of natural calamity. The development of rational forms of social organization and rational modes of thought promised liberation from the irrationalities of myth, religion, superstition, release from the arbitrary use of power as well as from the dark side of our human natures. Only through such a project could the universal, eternal, and the immutable qualities of all of humanity be revealed. (1990: 12)

As Harvey describes, Enlightenment brings with it an overall idea of progress. This implies a faith in universal reason, powers of human intelligence and in values of liberty and equality. Despite of such a future-oriented stance, Richard Bernstein (1983) emphasizes that from a general perspective there is both an optimistic and a critical perspective on Enlightenment. The optimistic perspective takes departure in the self-understanding of the Enlightenment itself, as described above. However, the Enlightenment project seems contradictory and it does not seem possible to realize it without facing (perhaps unexpected and unintended) contradictory consequences. Harvey (1990) emphasizes the strong belief in linear progress, absolute truth, and rational planning as part of the eighteenth-century modernism. Planning was of ideal social order under the conditions of standardizing of knowledge and production. Such views influenced society broadly, including science. Harvey analyses that within the realm of esthetics, this belief created “radical subjectivism” (the emotional side of the Cartesian dualism), individualism and a search for self-realization. From Harvey’s perspective it seems that the Cartesian dichotomy of a mechanical world (on the one hand), and the rational mind (on the other hand), is mirrored in the modernism’s version of Enlightenment (and that mystification of mind and of emotions is one of the outcomes). He says: The modernism that emerged before the First World War was […] a reaction to the new conditions of production (the machine, the factory, urbanization), circulation (the new systems of transport and communications), and consumption (the rise of mass markets, advertising, mass fashion). (1990: 23)

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In line with this view, Dreyfus and Taylor (2015) suggest that the idea of the “idea” came under the influence of the mechanization of the worldview associated with the scientific revolution. This association implies that the subject–object relationship is viewed a mechanical one: “Perception, considered as a process in material nature, could best be conceived as the impression created in the mind by surrounding reality” (Dreyfus and Taylor 2015: 9). One can see how this kind of mechanization is not far away from Locke’s passively receiving individual. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944/1999) were concerned about the negative political consequences of Enlightenment as well. Writing not only under the overall influence of the nineteenth century and the scientific revolution but, more darkly, under the impression of World War II, of which they experienced the consequences, they likewise characterize the contradictory character of Enlightenment movements. They found that the ideal of Enlightenment (both in its rationalist and empiricist versions) is a system from which all and everything follows. They seem highly concerned about the totalitarian potentialities of the Enlightenment movements when they unfold under certain political-historical conditions. Because of these structural determinations, “the multiplicity of forms is reduced to position and arrangement, history to fact, things to matter.” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944/1999: 7). Further, formal logic, being the major school of a unified science, provided Enlightenment thinkers with tools for the calculability of the world. In their view, numbers are not a neutral means for counting; rather, numbers become the “canon of Enlightenment” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944/1999: 7). In a similar way, “numbering” the world is not an isolated and scientifically solid achievement based on which humanity and the world as such do progress. Quite on the contrary, numbering the world implies that what is dissimilar is made comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. From an overall perspective, this implies that the ideas of Enlightenment to set humans free from the abstract powers of dogma and religion turns into a negation once the “abstract quantities” take over as a general standard. It becomes a tool for domination of people in that general standards are being established as chains, which become the tools for ruling the everyday lives of people. When numbers rule, that which does not reduce to numbers becomes an illusion, a deviancy from the “normal.” The strong consequences of this movement are that there is no room for qualities, these are being destructed, variations and dynamic movements of people’s ordinary lives and the possibility of people to influence their lives are being neglected, and nature is shown no respect but is turned into mere objectivity and a tool. Adorno and Horkheimer raise a strong concern about the human and political consequences of these reductions of worldly qualities into numbers and quantities. They say: Men pay for the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves toward things as a dictator toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can make them. (1944/1999: 12)

Harvey follows the concern that the Enlightenment optimism turns upside down:

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The twentieth century – with its death camps and death squads, its militarism and two world wars, its threat of nuclear annihilation and its experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – has certainly shattered this optimism. Worse still, the suspicion lurks that the Enlightenment project was doomed to turn against itself and transform the quest for human emancipation into a system of universal oppression in the name of human liberation. (1990: 13)

Harvey follows up on the theme of oppression in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism from 2005 in which he argues that there are two kinds of freedom, a good one and a bad one. The good one is the one we like to associate with liberal freedom of the individual in a democratic society: the freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom to choose one’s own job, etc. The bad one, however, is an “evil” freedom of exploiting other human being, to achieve private gains with no service to society, etc. The point is that under the conditions of neoliberal utopian marked vision, the bad freedom is coproduced and challenges the good one in very serious ways. With a reference to Polanyi, Harvey emphasizes that neoliberal utopianism is doomed to be “frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright fascism” (Harvey 2005). This analysis exemplifies that Adorno and Horkheimer’s concern about the outcomes of Enlightenment are still relevant and should not be associated solely with the historical circumstances under which they lived and worked. According to this view, Enlightenment rationality is a logic of domination and oppression (like Adorno and Horkheimer would say). If describing extreme outcomes of the negation of the good intentions of Enlightenment, the analysis nevertheless provides potentials for analyzing also the present political-historical realities of neoliberalism and the phenomenon of self-­ governmentality presented in Rose’s (2007) Foucault-inspired analysis of “freedom.” As described, Harvey (2005) is also aware of the contradictory outcome of “freedom” and couples it with neoliberalism. He finds neoliberalism to be a utopian project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism; that it can be considered as a political project to reestablish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites. Under the conditions of creating the power of an economic elite, freedom becomes contradictory. Summing up, there is not much evidence that the issues identified by Adorno and Horkheimer during World War II describe just a special case, a distorted and deviant version of capitalism and its “interpretation” of Enlightenment ideas.

Historical Versus Ahistorical Approaches to the General Learning from these theorists, the combination of an ahistorical and dualistic view of the individual person and the general intrumentalization and “numbering” of society and of human relations under the conditions of current neoliberalism, requires of psychology to be aware of its own conceptual contributions to this state of things. If psychology defines itself on the ground of dualism and representationalism and considers this a value-free stance, psychology may end up contributing to the instrumentalization processes sketched by the above mentioned theorists.

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This may happen by singling out individuals to be the beginning and end of his or her own life—including his or her “own” problems and/or own “successes.” It may happen by offering reduced and individualistic analyses of the psychological issues that people experience even if, in fact, these seem epidemic. The current increase of psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem among young people (especially girls) in the Western world serves as an illustration of epidemic phenomena, which are dealt with individualistically. Consequently, a “blame the victim” approach may be one of the serious ethical issues following an ahistorical, non-dynamic, and dualistic approach to the individual in psychology. In opposition to this view, a historical and developmental approach (like the ones outlined earlier in the present chapter) suggests an integral level of understanding, which include dynamics (economic, political, and institutional), in order to understand individuals as societal beings. This will help understand epidemic psychological issues as a matter of individual opportunities to deal with shared (problematic) societal conditions of life. According to such an approach, focus is put on the dynamic relationship of individuals and the social realities of their everyday lives (Dreier 2016; Schraube and Højholt 2019, Chap. 1 in this volume). In this case, the general is part of systemic qualities of the environment, which opens up for treating psychological issues (also) at a systemic and societal level (political, institutional, and discursive). However, if taking departure in representationalism, the general supports an understanding of psychological issues as residing inside the head of an individual and consequently suggests individualistic approaches to be the most effective. To sum up, the general is in play as a core concept whenever someone (psychologists, other professionals, political decisionmakers, etc.) addresses psychological issues as well as issues concerning humans and the conditions of human life in general.

Epilogue: A “Revolt of Human Nature” It seems appropriate to finish the present chapter by referring to the work of Victor Klemperer, who rightly emphasized the importance of concepts and language use to societal practices in his book Language of the Third Reich. In order to illustrate how the struggle about concepts is also a struggle about practical life conditions, about power, humanism, and freedom, let me quote Klemperer’s analyses of the concept of “heroism.” In the first introductory chapter of the book he says: Only in the rarest cases am I convinced by heroism when it blows its own trumpet in public and makes sure that success is all-too-handsomely rewarded. Heroism is purer and more significant the quieter it is, the less audience it has, the less it furthers the hero himself, and the less it is decorated. My criticism of the Nazi concept of heroism is that it is always shackled to decoration and vainglorious. Officially Nazism didn’t recognize any kind of decent, real heroism. It thereby perverted the whole notion and brought it into dispute. [real heroism] led to the purest kind of heroism, but on the other side so to speak. I am thinking

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of the many brave people in the concentration camps, of all those people who recklessly committed illegal acts. (1957/2013: 6)

In the light of how conceptual struggles link with societal processes and the conditions of everyday life of people, today this re-actualizes for what Horkheimer (1947: 92) terms a “revolt of human nature” against the instrumental reason and its oppressive power. Even though the present chapter does not necessarily completely agree to take departure in Freudian thought of “human nature,” it agrees that a revolt is needed and that it is urgent for psychology to develop its concepts in close connection with life processes.

References Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (1944/1999). Dialectic of enlightenment. London and New York: Verso. Bang, J. (2007). An ecological approach to thinking. Journal of Anthropological Psychology, 18. Aarhus Universitet. Bang, J. (2009). Nothingness and the human Umwelt—A cultural-ecological approach to meaning. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 43(4), 374–392. Bernstein, R.  J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism. Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Costall, A. (2007). The windowless room: ‘Mediationism’ and how to get over it. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 109–123). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreier, O. (2016). Conduct of everyday life: Implications for critical psychology. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 15–33). London: Routledge. Dreyfus, H., & Taylor, C. (2015). Retrieving realism. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Engelsted, N. (1989). What is the psyche and how did it get into the world? In N.  Engelsted, L.  Hem, & J.  Mammen (Eds.), Essays in general psychology—Seven Danish contributions (pp. 13–48). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Favrholdt, D. (1965). John Locke. Indledning (pp. X–y). København: Berlingske Forlag. Gibson, J.  J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horkheimer, M. (1947). Eclipse of reason. New York: Oxford University Press. Klemperer, V. (1957/2013). Language of the Third Reich. London, New Delhi, New York, Sidney: Bloomsbury. Leontjev, A. N. (1977). Activity and consciousness. In Philosophy in the USSR: Problem of dialectical materialism (pp. 180–202). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Leontjev, A.  N. (1982). Psychologie des Abbilds. In B.  Grüter, F.  Haug, K.  Holzkamp, U.  H. Osterkamp, W.  Maiers, M.  Markard, & C.  Ohm (Eds.), Handlungstheorie, Anthropologie, Theorie-Praxis, Faschismus (pp. 5–19). Forum Kritischer Psychologie. Locke, J. (1961). An essay concerning human understanding (Vol. 1). London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Rose, N. (2007). Powers of freedom. Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Said, E. W. (2004). Humanism and democratic criticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schraube, E., & Højholt, C. (2019). Subjectivity and knowledge: The formation of situated generalization in psychological research. In C.  Højholt & E.  Schraube (Eds.), Subjectivity and

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knowledge: Generalization in the psychological study of everyday life (pp. 1–19). New York: Springer. Taylor, C. (1999). Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uexküll, J. V. (1940/1982). The theory of meaning. Semiotica, 42-1, 25–82. Wertsch, J.  (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 7

Generalizing Together with Children: The Significance of Children’s Concepts for Mutual Knowledge Creation Niklas Alexander Chimirri

Despite repeated attempts by childhood researchers and contextual developmental psychologists to promote the systematic integration of children’s knowledges into the scientific generalization process, and to thereby produce concepts that are of more relevance to children’s everyday life, their knowledges are still granted too little societal and pedagogical significance. Drawing on Vygotsky’s 1929 article “The fundamental problems of defectology” (Vygotsky 2004a), I suggest that children’s knowledges remain surrounded by an aura of defectiveness when contrasted with adult knowledges, and are first and foremost negatively defined as what they have not yet become. In his own article, Vygotsky couples his analyses of the defectological view to the study of mentally and physically differently developed children, of those children that would nowadays be labeled as “handicapped.” He criticizes that psychology and educational studies focus on these children’s negatively defined characteristics alone, i.e., they focus on that which they seem to be missing when contrasted with the developmental norm, and may thereby neglect what is constitutive of these children’s subjectivity: “But we still know nothing about [these children’s] positive characteristics, about the children’s uniqueness: such is the research of the future” (p. 173). From the vantage point of this chapter, Vygotsky’s critique and call for an alternative child research, a child research that empirically investigates how each child is different from any other, is unique, and on these grounds develops scientific concepts for creating better pedagogical praxis, is untimely. Moreover, it is of argumentative significance for every knowledge creation process that seeks to be of practical relevance for children’s everyday life. The idea that “defective” or “deviating” children do not live up to developmental or other societal norms, as other children supposedly do, can be applied to a more general attitude in our contemporary society N. A. Chimirri (*) Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_7

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toward ascribing little importance to children’s individually unique knowledges: they seemingly deviate from adult knowledges, and are thus not “normal” enough to be able to purposefully codevelop our societal institutions. This understanding is mirrored in current trends to start earlier and earlier with focusing early years education on the top-down programmatic teaching of children’s declarative knowledge and rational thinking, rather than on supporting children’s self-initiated activities on their own terms, as was for long the tradition among others in the Scandinavian welfare societies such as Denmark (see Juhl 2018) or Norway (see Otterstad and Braathe 2016). In contrast, learning that departs from children’s self-initiated activities and interests, and which thereby explicitly couples the development of declarative knowledge to children’s procedural knowledge development via action or praxis, is not trusted any longer. The political-educational emphasis is instead put on what John Hattie calls Visible Learning, supposedly objective and evidence-­ based, impact-focused teaching programs, in which learning is rationalistically understood as information processing, thus leaving no conceptual room for the creative, self-directed, and critical dimensions of learning (cf. Nielsen and Klitmøller 2017). The defectological view that focuses on children’s lack of knowledge alone, while shunning their knowledges’ positive characteristics, brings with it at least four problems that stand in the way of developing more relevant knowledge creation together with children: First, it creates an artificial separation of declarative and procedural knowledges, as well as of knowledge products and knowledge processes, while dialectical praxis psychologies and philosophies, pragmatist educational philosophies, and many others, have long argued that they closely depend on one another. Second, this dualistic separation contributes to hierarchizing knowledge, by prioritizing declarative over procedural knowledge, and in its wake, it also prioritizes its (rather explicable or declarative) products over (rather tacit and procedural) knowledge creation processes. It thereby thirdly hierarchizes human beings, by claiming that adults are in possession of the most relevant knowledge, namely the declarative knowledge that children need to learn about to codevelop future society. Fourth, the assumed possession of relevant knowledge becomes correlated with age, thus hypergeneralizing and superimposing a societally constructed differentiation between children and adults that reduces children to teaching objects, rather than understanding them as co-learning human subjects. As a result, the question of what there is to learn of children about the world and its doings, or rather of what there is to learn of each and every unique child about their respective perspectives on and knowledges of everyday life, in order to purposefully and sustainably develop society together across generations, is too easily rendered oblique or even superfluous. The chapter wishes to thwart these problematic understandings by highlighting how researchers and all other adults can learn from children for the purpose of developing more democratic knowledge creation processes in pedagogical institutions, as well as in other arenas of societal everyday life. This undertaking is crucial not only for the children’s development of subjectivity, but for the development of contemporary societies: children not only will be, but already are, an inextricably

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entangled part of safeguarding and developing human life. To move toward a more democratic, codevelopmental knowledge creation praxis that systematically includes children, the chapter builds on dialectical praxis psychologies to propose a number of necessary conceptual reconfigurations on the ontological, the epistemological, the methodological, and the ethical level: 1. The first reconfiguration regards the researcher’s own positioning in relation to the children, whom the researcher intends to engage in research together with. It departs from Childhood Studies’ methodological principle of ethical symmetry, and further expands it in terms of acknowledging ontological symmetry on epistemically asymmetric grounds across researchers and co-researchers, irrespective of whether they are adults or children. 2. Secondly, the notion of scientific generalization is reconfigured, as necessarily related to everyday knowledge. This reconfiguration is of relevance, as it destabilizes rationalistic forms of knowledge that are primarily associated to more declarative “adult” thinking, and shows how more tacit and procedural forms of knowledge are central to scientific knowledge creation. 3. In prolongation of this dialectical conceptual move, it is thereafter shown how scientific generalizations are always process- and context-bound and are constantly re-situated in everyday life in order to make sense of them and put them to work. At the same time, scientific generalizations also supersede the respective situation, and make it possible to imagine alternative means and ends. This is illustrated via an example from a theater project conducted together with preschool children at a Danish daycare institution, in which scientific generalizations framed all other generalizations, while also being transformed in the process via everyday experiences and knowledges of children, pedagogical staff, parents, and the researcher. 4. In conclusion, the praxis-philosophical concept of teleogenetic collaboration is suggested as a possibility to gather these conceptual reconfigurations and to thereby give both researchers and other adults working together with children an alternative self-understanding of their role in the mutual learning processes that they engage in alongside the children. It posits scientific research and generalizing as part of everyday life, rather than as aiming for the study of other people’s everyday life, and aims for its generalizations to become more immediately accessible and negotiable for everyone irrespective of age. Hence, the chapter problematizes that the presumed inferior relevance of children’s knowledges depends not only on what tends to be considered truly significant knowledge, for instance so-called “scientific generalizations” that appear detached from, and are therefore deemed superior to, everyday knowledge. It particularly problematizes that children’s generalizations are seen as largely insignificant to societal knowledge creation. On these grounds, the chapter gives an insight into how epistemological discourses (how is significant knowledge understood and created?) are entangled with ontological discourses (who or what is it that creates this significant knowledge, adults or children, majorities or minorities, etc.?), which in turn are deeply entangled with ethical-political discourses (whose knowledge is con-

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sidered valuable given the role children play in a specific context and practice, including the research practice?). Or to formulate the chapter’s research question in a more empirical-practical manner: What do we adults lose from sight and experience, if we continue neglecting children’s knowledges as significant part of maintaining and transforming human life?

 thical Symmetry as Starting Point for Knowledge E Co-Creation with Children The first conceptual reconfiguration needed in order to create meaningful knowledge together with children regards the foundational point of departure of the researcher–researched relationship: Who are we scientific researchers in relation to the children we wish to do research together with, and what do we hope to achieve by doing research together with children? Since the 1990s and particularly the 2000s, qualitative inquiry into children’s experiences and actions has increasingly drawn on participatory methodologies that explore children’s perspectives together with children from within praxis, thus placing the researcher’s investigation within children’s everyday lives. Aiming at full participation of children in research and herewith generalization processes builds on a relational conceptualization of agency, in which the latter is not regarded as an essence that children or adults possess, but as a distributed process that emerges from intergenerational collective actions, a networked practice to which everyone contributes differently (e.g., Eßer and Sitter 2018; Eßer 2016; Stith and Roth 2006). Such a relational understanding of agency, nowadays broadly acknowledged within childhood studies (e.g., Eßer et al. 2016; cf. also Spyrou 2018), also resonates well with contextual developmental psychological conceptualizations of children’s subjectivity (e.g., Aronsson et  al. 2018), among others that of a dialectic-materialist Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), in which every human being co-creates the societal conditions that she is dependent on together with others (Holzkamp 2013). It is this latter theoretical framework, including its relational and sociomaterial approach to subjectivity and herewith agency that serves as main theoretical backdrop for this chapter’s conceptual discussions. In the meantime, just because children are regarded as interrelated social actors and societal contributors, it does not automatically mean that society’s largely adult-­ centered, structural arrangements fundamentally account for children’s co-creation processes, for instance by having them actively codevelop institutional arrangements and practice. Instead, children’s contributions tend to remain overlooked, ignored, are belittled—even within participatory Childhood Studies (e.g., see the critiques by Tisdall and Punch 2012; Spyrou 2018). This social asymmetry of children’s participation possibilities in research was recognized by Christensen and Prout (2002) when they originally proposed their concept of ethical symmetry for social research with children:

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By this [ethical symmetry] we mean that the researcher takes as his or her starting point the view that the ethical relationship between researcher and informant is the same whether he or she conducts research with adults or with children. This has a number of implications. The first is that the researcher employs the same ethical principles whether they are researching children or adults. Second, that each right and ethical consideration in relation to adults in the research process has its counterpart for children. Third, the symmetrical treatment of children in research means that any differences between carrying out research with children or with adults should be allowed to arise from this starting point, according to the concrete situation of children, rather than being assumed in advance. Thus, from this point of view, researchers do not have to use particular methods or, indeed, work with a different set of ethical standards when working with children. Rather it means that the practices employed in the research have to be in line with children’s experiences, interests, values and everyday routines. (p. 482)

Striving for ethical symmetry does not deny that children may be participating in research differently than adults. But this approach explicitly acknowledges that these differences are societally arranged, and should not be presumed as natural given. Researchers should, therefore, not a priori decide to ethically relate to children in a different manner than they do to adults throughout their research engagements. Rather, the relational and processual emergence of these differences from within the research process, ergo how the adult researcher gradually starts relating to the participating children differently than to the participating adults, are a crucial source of knowledge in order to learn about the children’s everyday experiences, interests, values, and routines, and in particular about their possibilities of contributing to social life. It is via ethical symmetry as a study’s methodological point of departure that child(hood) researchers can draw on their own, critically self-­reflexive experiences of gradually treating children differently, in spite of their initially symmetrical grounding, in order to further generalize the inequality-propelling societal arrangements of children’s everyday lives that render a more participatory research with children impossible. Without being able to go into too much detail with this methodology (see, e.g., Salamon 2015, who shows how an ethical-symmetrical research project can be implemented even with infants), meanwhile, the most important questions to be posed in the context of this chapter on knowledge co-­ creation are: Who is the nominal knowledge producer in an ethical-symmetrical project à la Christensen and Prout (2002), and who benefits from the knowledge produced in this way? What status is granted to children’s knowledges in this approach? While strongly sympathizing with the central idea that the researcher is to position herself in an ethical-symmetrical way, by bracketing presumptions and expectations on how a participatory project with children should play out, including what knowledge should thereby be produced, one problem persists that obstructs meaningful knowledge co-creation with children: It is the researcher who, out of ethical and methodological considerations, decides on whether she wishes to implement her research with children based on this ethical-symmetrical strategy. Ethical symmetry is explicitly considered a methodological strategy in Christensen and Prout’s (2002) original conceptualization, and does thus not question the underlying ontological and epistemological presumption that researchers and their “co-researchers”

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(as the children are also termed in this approach) are two fundamentally different categories of people. In their quest of wanting to let the researchers and co-­ researchers critically inquire into the commonly taken-for-granted categories of adult/child in an ethical-symmetrical way, by showing that ontological and epistemological differences essentially emerge from within the research process in the context of its broader societal arrangements, Christensen and Prout do not sufficiently focus on questioning the researcher/researched binary alongside the adult/ child binary. It remains up to the academic researcher’s goodwill to choose whether or not her research gets grounded in an ethical-symmetrical starting point. Moreover, while the researcher may thereby—strategically—attain a different knowledge about the societal arrangements that propel difference between adults and children, it remains unclear what it is that the participating children get out of such explorations. What becomes of the children’s “differing” knowledges here? Instead of considering ethical symmetry a methodological-strategical decision that depends on the researcher’s goodwill, I will in the next subsection draw on Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS) in order to propose that knowledge co-creation, i.e., mutually learning together with children, is an ontological and epistemological necessity for human learning on a general level. A more symmetrical ethics follows from this premise. If not acknowledging this premise, research generalizations emerging from studying institutionalized contexts with children (including the less regulated in-between spaces; e.g., Eßer and Sitter 2018) continue foregrounding their epistemic and practical significance for adult researchers and/or other professionals, and at times parents. What relevance the thereby created knowledge has for children is, if at all, discussed in relation to how adults can improve their understandings of or conditions for acting on/with children. But should for instance, from an ethical-symmetrical co-researcher stance, generalizations not also be relevant for children in a more immediate manner, so that they can actually influence the knowledge products while they are being created in situ by participating in the research process—rather than regarding children’s research participation and scientific knowledge creation as two separate processes, where children contribute to the latter only by adult researcher proxy mediation, and thus in a tokenistic manner (cf. Mannion 2010)? As will be argued, a universalizing methodological principle such as Christensen and Prout’s ethical symmetry can, from a perspective grounded in PSS, really only be a starting point for situated processes of knowledge co-creation with children. In addition, these processes must systematically include children and their knowledges as equivalently significant and yet differently anchored contributions, i.e., differently situated in terms of unique life experiences, positionings, imaginations, etc., to understanding and tackling pressing societal issues in concrete everyday life practice. Dialogical knowledge exchange across generationed boundaries becomes key as the world we adults and children inhabit is the same but can be understood and lived in innumerably different ways. In order to further understand the potentiality (as well as the dangers) certain knowledges of the world point to, children’s knowledges ought to be taken more seriously and conceptually better grasped. This requires reconfiguring widely spread notions of generalization, which arrange and

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consolidate hierarchical, monolithically abstract and thus highly undemocratic (di) visions of labor and knowledges—not only between adults and children, but also between those we term “researchers” and all those other participants in a scientific research project, including children.

 rom Ethical Symmetry as Research Strategy to Mutual F Learning as Ontological Necessity Childhood Studies’ ambition to co-research children’s agency and knowledge creation as relational phenomena is also ingrained in the thoroughly conceptualized co-researcher concept that dialectical-critical Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS) proposes. Here, children’s and adults’ subjectivity and knowledge creation processes are mutually constitutive, and therefore call for ongoing dialog across adult and children’s perspectives on how to understand and meaningfully act together in everyday life. Mutual learning (Højholt and Kousholt 2019) is an ontologically and epistemologically unavoidable phenomenon, a constitutive process that makes it possible to tackle a general human condition that limits our respective knowledges, namely epistemic asymmetry: not only do we partake in knowledge creation from different positions in society, but also on the grounds of different first-­ person perspectives—and all of these are significant for learning about how the conditions we are dependent of are constituted. With explicit inspiration from phenomenology, Schraube (2013) connects epistemic asymmetry to the notion of ontological symmetry: In human relations the other has no direct access to any first-person mental phenomena except her/his own. Only I can know what I experience, think, feel, or why I have acted or act in such and such a way. From this epistemic asymmetry, … it follows that there is a fundamental ontological symmetry in human relations. As I experience myself and the world from my perspective, and act in the world from my perspective and standpoint, then logically the other also experiences her/himself and the world from her/his perspective and acts from her/his perspective and standpoint in the world. This reflexive reciprocity of the subjects’ first-person perspectives in human relations can be characterized as a symmetrical reciprocity of the first-person perspective or as intersubjective symmetry and is a fundamental distinguishing feature of human sociality. Human sociality builds on intersubjective symmetry and the reciprocal recognition of the other’s first-person perspective. Social thought is therefore actually symmetrical thought and has to be based on an understanding of the other as coequal center of intentionality and origin of her/his agency and on an inclusion of the other’s interests, perspectives and standpoint. (p. 26)

The epistemic asymmetry that Schraube refers to is already acknowledged in Greek political philosophy (cf. Arendt 2005: 128). It points to the insight that human beings need one another’s experiences of the world in order to make sense of them in a more general, or Arendt would say “objective,” light. Furthermore, as Schraube argues, this epistemic asymmetry is an ontological fact that human beings all have in common, and that in consequence constitutes a fundamental ontological symmetry within human relations: We are all the same in that we are aware that we

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cannot know it all on our own (see also Axel 2011). Understanding the other as a coequal center of intentionality and thereby creating an intersubjective symmetrical reciprocity among one another, is a prerequisite and distinguishing feature of human sociality, of being able to think socially and herewith act purposefully together. Opting for ethical symmetry in research with children, as Christensen and Prout (2002) call for, is on the grounds of Schraube’s propositions not merely a kind of strategic decision, or even worse a mere token gesture, that researchers offer to their co-researchers given their privileged position in society. From a subject-scientific, critical PSS viewpoint such as Schraube’s, researchers (or anyone else) are not able to engage in purposeful social thinking and acting on children’s everyday living conditions without presuming and departing from an intersubjectively symmetrical relationship with their co-researchers—by engaging in mutual learning processes and herein ontologically acknowledging them as coequal centers of intentionality and agency (cf. Højholt and Kousholt 2019). The consequence of not departing from this symmetrical understanding between researcher and researched, between adult and child, between me and you and you, between all of us, would be that epistemic asymmetry across children and adults could not be purposefully tackled via dialogical exploration and knowledge co-creation, and more general insights into child–adult relations and human living conditions would be rendered impossible. Human cross-generational sociality would gradually wither, as adults could not meaningfully communicate with and make sense of children, while irrespectively taking decisions on their behalf, and children could not make sense of adults, feeling left paternalized and without agency. Opting for ethical symmetry in child(hood) research, as well as in any other research involving human beings, thus becomes an ontological necessity, and arguably, a conditio sine qua non for human survival. In order to truly honor an ethically ontologically intersubjective symmetry that bridges the presumed child/adult binary as well as the researcher/researched binary, thus facilitating communication, mutual learning, reciprocal sensemaking and thereby knowledge co-creation across generational and other societal (di)visions of labor, research with children and any other human, being requires a conceptual reconfiguration of what scientific knowledge is and of what it is good for. Knowledge is not merely an abstract generalization, a product generated by researching scientists enclosed behind hermetic walls, only accessible via academic journals, or when digested and reinterpreted by journalists, policy-makers, etc. This form of knowledge creation is the absolute exception. Rather, knowledge is produced in everyday praxis, by everyone, all the time. Knowledge products are constantly put into action, applied, negotiated, reconfigured, in the process of everyday living by adults and by children. Paradoxically, however, and in spite of many pragmatist as well as praxis philosophers’ counterarguments, the creation and performance of everyday knowledges continue to appear as largely detached from the creation and performance of scientific knowledges in societal discourses: the generalizations that constitute everyday knowledges are somehow granted less significance than those that constitute scientific knowledges. But why is that so? Do all generalizations not only become societally significant if rendered relevant for everyday life? Are s­ cience

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and the generalizations it creates not just as much immanent to everyday life as any other knowledge?

 eneralization as Interplay Between Everyday Concepts G and Scientific Concepts For children and other research participants to have a say in creating scientific generalizations, and thus be symmetrically considered coequal centers of intentionality in co-research processes, the notion of scientific generalization needs to be reconfigured in a way that does not artificially detach it from everyday life, but that further clarifies its generalizations’ relevance for mutually learning together as concrete daily praxis. An important step in this process is to reconsider how generalizations relevant to children could be understood as co-creating scientifically relevant knowledge. As will be argued for, this requires us to analyze the relationship between scientific knowledges and everyday knowledges with a focus on the role of generalization in everyday life, and on these grounds pinpoint the dialectical ontology of generalization as product and process in everyday life, including the dialectical interplay between declarative and procedural knowledge. The upcoming theoretical discussion, which emphasizes the inner relatedness of scientific and everyday concepts, is based on my participation in a long-term pedagogical daycare project that gradually analyzed and generalized fellow learning processes in order to create a theater play—a project which, in its efforts to continuously interrelate scientific and everyday products in these processes, will be suggested as an initial prototype for future transgenerational knowledge co-creation.1 The interplay between scientific and everyday knowledge creation, as well as between generalizations as both product and process, has been of particular interest for the cultural-historical research tradition of psychology—a tradition that has strongly influenced Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), also given its fellow dialectical, praxis-philosophical roots. Since its inception in the 1920s, children’s development, knowledge creation, and learning processes have constituted the most important empirical focus of cultural-historical psychology. The tradition’s founder, Lev S. Vygotsky, extensively researched how children learn about and form concepts, as generalized and yet context-specific knowledge products. Drawing on Vygotsky’s work, Sikder and Fleer (2015) highlight the interrelation between everyday concepts and scientific concepts: A cultural-historical view of concept formation in young children foregrounds the importance of context, in conjunction with the dynamic and evolving nature of concept formation … There are two dimensions of concept development—everyday concepts and scientific concepts—which are related. (p. 447)

 I draw on Nissen’s (2009) understanding of a prototype in this chapter.

1

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According to the authors, play activities become crucial for developing thinking and producing generalizations, understood here as concept formation. The authors cite Vygotsky (1966): The concepts are not simply a collection of associative connections learned with the aid of memory. The child’s concepts can be improved to a higher level through consciousness. So concepts develop. At any stage of its development, the concept is an act of generalization which is Elementary Generalization and higher forms of generalization. Direct instruction in concepts is impossible. Then the child does not learn the concept; only imitate the word through memory rather than thought. (pp. 169–170; cited in Sikder and Fleer 2015: 447)

In short, Vygotsky considered acts of elementary generalization to lead to everyday or spontaneous concepts.2 What he called “higher,” or rather more complex forms of generalization, result in scientific concepts. Scientific concepts emerge from an integration of everyday concepts into a concept system, in which everyday concepts become interrelated to one another through daily activities, such as play, and thereby restructured and changed, superseding the child’s immediate social situation. Scientific concepts thus become a form of theoretical, mediating filter, through which future and past everyday activities and concepts can subsequently be read and understood. While the immediate relevance of the learning process for a given situation is superseded in the transformation of spontaneous into mediating, highly generalized concepts, contextual relevance nevertheless remains key for initiating any learning process: without feeling the need to learn in a concrete everyday situation, without having any good reason to do so, no meaningful conceptual learning via generalization will take place.3 While the adults’ crucial role in assisting and (indirectly) instructing children in this transformational process is explicitly acknowledged and discussed by Vygotsky as well as by Sikder and Fleer, however, I consider the children’s role in transforming adults’ spontaneous concepts into scientific concepts—and thus their role in promoting mutual learning processes—to remain underdetermined, i.e. regarding the question of: What role do children’s knowledges play in developing adult knowledges? This shortcoming I will return to below. For now, it is important to pinpoint that Vygotsky’s contextual developmental understanding of generalization precisely bridges scientific and everyday concepts, in that scientific concepts emerge from their inner relationship to everyday concepts, and that they in turn must be re-­ situated in everyday (conceptual) activities in order to become relevant for learning. It is this theoretical and thus discursive bridge that, as I will argue later, is crucial in order to rethink the societal significance of children’s knowledges in scientific generalization processes. But before getting to that: What is anyway the role of ­scientific  According to Dafermos (2018: 161), Vygotsky preferred the term everyday concepts over Piaget’s term spontaneous concepts. I will henceforth draw on Vygotsky’s preferred term. 3  Meaningfulness is here related to a person’s development of knowledge: If one is instructed to learn, it could still be considered relevant for the person to learn in order to shirk reprimanding or other forms of punishment. But then the person will foremost learn something about social hierarchies and obedience, rather than learn about the content-knowledge that it is supposed to be instructed in. 2

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concepts, of mediating generalizations that supersede the immediacy of everyday practice? Must they not also be regarded as immediately essential for everyday life?

Problematizing the Separation of Theorizing and Everyday Life We do research for purposes of living, and theories of social and psychological life are just some of the tools we employ in the process (others are art and education). This also means that literally anything that we encounter in our lives can become material in and for our inquiries. (Brinkmann 2015: 412)

While in daily conversation with each other, we do not necessarily consider how we all the time draw on and potentially develop theoretical generalizations, or what we now, following Vygotsky’s notion that scientific concepts are syntheses of everyday concepts, else may call “scientific knowledge.” All generalizations are part of acting in everyday life, of praxis. And all of these generalizations can, in line with Brinkmann, become a matter worth analyzing, irrespective of how abstract or mundane they appear. Meanwhile, considering them as “tools,” as Brinkmann does in the above citation, may make it sound as if they were just “out there” in the world for our taking, as instruments for better controlling the world. In his chapter about using one’s own experiences as a subject matter of inquiry, however, Brinkmann is among others building on Tim Ingold’s (2011) sociomaterial anthropology of everyday life as well as pragmatist educational philosophy. His above statement therefore rather proposes that theoretical generalizations are an inextricable part of being human, of our bodies, our perception, our affects, that means: of our everyday lively doings. Read in this light, Brinkmann’s understanding of theoretical generalizations stands in stark opposition to positivist notions of theories as representational tools, tools that are expected to represent “truth” in as universally valid as possible ways: independent of the concrete environment they emerged from and are used in, and independent of the researcher, i.e., of the observing, analyzing, and writing knowledge creator. Such an epistemology tends to confound theoretical generalization with universalization, in that it aims at offering context-independent and thus detached-rationalist explanations of a phenomenon that can be imposed onto other phenomena that may sound or look familiar. This kind of “theoretical tools” is meant to represent and render manageable a relatively stable truth of the world that is out there for human instrumental scrutiny and taking, thereby excluding truths that are situated, dynamically changing, inherently contradictory, and in that sense complex. A fictitious example: say that a positivistically grounded study found a statistically significant positive correlation between using a specifically programmed teaching robot and boys’ learning acquisition, a study repeatedly reproduced over the course of a few weeks across a selected, supposedly representative number of preschools in Denmark. In the interpretation of this probabilistically generalized correlative result, the positive correlation suddenly becomes translated into a ­theoretical representation that can easily be read in a universalist manner (for

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instance: “artificial intelligence”), so that readers of the study, or of mediated translations of the study, may start deducing that robots are the more “intelligent” language teachers—irrespective of the specific robot’s model and function, of the specific preschool’s technical, care, and learning support structures, of the respective children’s interests and learning preferences, the role of family and peers, of the locale, the time of day or year, the weather, the socioeconomic background, as well as the history of the concept of “intelligence,” etc. This form of theoretical generalizations, understood as universally valid representations of a (apparently artificially intelligent?) “truth out there,” is powerfully present in many daily conversations, even though it creates a kind of knowledge that is most detached from everyday life and its intricate complexities and contradictions. In probabilistic correlation studies, most complexities as context variables tend to be regarded as “noise” (or “mess”; cf. Law 2007), and are as far as possible eliminated in order to control for involuntary side effects. Once trying to make such results relevant for everyday life praxis, however, the prior elimination of context variables effectuated in the original study is abstracted from and neglected. Its effect is that an authoritative, invalid and deeply unethical,4 universalizing representational generalization gets communicated to the world—creating knowledge that detaches scientific practice from contextual everyday life praxis. The danger lying in context elimination is to create an artificially abstracting, rationalistic understanding of a knowledge of the world that is not livable as it is not lovable; a merely representational vision of the world that, on the basis of David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest, can be compared to how the world must look to someone afflicted with an anhedonic state of depression, a state his fictional character Kate Gompert heavily suffers from: It’s kind of emotional novocaine, this form of depression, and while it’s not overtly painful its deadness is disconcerting and … well, depressing. Kate Gompert’s always thought of this anhedonic state as a kind of radical abstracting of everything, a hollowing out of stuff that used to have affective content. Terms the undepressed toss around and take for granted as full and fleshy – happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love – are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate but has no location. (Wallace 2006/1996: 693)

It is current societies’ educational focus on declarative and denotative knowledge, also described at the beginning of this chapter, a focus on the representational, rationalistic generalizations that are explicable, that in my view do not allow for children’s and other marginalized knowledges to become just as significant for human knowledge co-creation, for our tackling of epistemic asymmetry through dialogue, and thus for a more purposeful, transgenerational development of societal

 Unethical because it ignores the situative historicity of being human and circumvents any fellow exploration of knowledge. 4

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arrangements. What Wallace describes as the “anhedonic state” cannot make people thrive, as it hinders meaningful collaboration. And in Vygotsky’s sense, it is not truly scientific concepts or generalizations that this kind of detached knowledge is operating on, even though it comes close to what may often be deemed “scientific knowledge”: artificially abstracting ideas, universal and thus context-independent, denotation without connotation, schemata, maps, mere representations, detached from their affective content—and I would add: with a focus on the knowledge products alone, and not on its processes of (joint) sensemaking and creation. Wallace’s “anhedonic state” reciprocates the universalist fallacy, “the reduction of similarity to sameness” (Valsiner 2014: 241), of conceiving originally context-dependent knowledge as universally and thus context-independently valid.

 eneralization for Imagining a Better Everyday Life: G The Dialectical Inner Relation Between Scientific and Everyday Knowledge and Its Relevance To become truly scientific in Vygotsky’s understanding, instead, theoretical knowledge needs to be able to grasp its inner relatedness to everyday knowledge and thereby be rendered relevant for everyday life. Livable conceptual knowledge cannot be erected on representation alone and cannot merely opt for creating abstract and universal generalizations: We cannot and arguably neither want to fully eliminate generalizations’ noise and mess, their contradictoriness and complexity. In contrary, a livable everyday life feeds on its noise and mess, and remains, in contrast to the positivist ideal of scientific experimenting, largely unpredictable and uncontrollable. But precisely this defining characteristic of everyday life seldom plays a role in scientific research: its complex meaningfulness for conducting everyday life is sacrificed only to attain predictive control and, in this sense, maximum technical relevance. Generalizations that truly are of technical relevance to everyday life, that are practically-technically useful for conducting everyday life, however, require to be processually re-situated in the everyday life of those that co-created these generalizations. It is thereby they also attain emancipatory relevance: a relevance for bettering our life circumstances together, on the grounds of our diverse knowledges and capabilities, in order to best possibly embrace and societally arrange life’s complexity and unpredictability without mystifying them (for a more detailed conceptualization of emancipatory and technical relevance, see Chimirri 2015a). In order to understand and act from within everyday life, hence, it is the dialectical combination of knowledge generalizations’ technical and emancipatory relevance that is, I will argue, the most helpful for emphasizing the potentialities of knowledge co-creation with children. In the light of such a dialectical reformulation of generalizations’ relevance, generalizations are not mere stepping stones in the process of transforming social life. Generalization products are also that, but they are technically just as much always already present and in play in everyday life,

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although not necessarily actualized as such: They are virtually (Kontopodis 2012) or imaginatively (Sieland 2017) present at all times, and in consequence not necessarily in an explicit, articulated manner. Generalizations lead to a knowledge not only of what, for instance, an “arm” is, but also how an “arm” feels, or more precisely: of how my arm feels in relation to what I know about what an “arm” is and how an “arm” feels to others I have talked to about it, heard about, read about, etc. Most often, though, I do not explicitly think about and thereby consciously actualize the generalized “arm” concept that is imaginatively embodied in my theorizing. Usually I only explicitly actualize the concept once my experience of it changes its qualities. Most of the generalizations we draw on, instead, loom in the vague shadows of imagined future trajectories, of what we both explicitly and tacitly hope our knowledge may help us some day with doing, technically and/or emancipatorily. Generalizations are only seldom consciously presenced and explicitly actualized. Yet, I propose, even the more unconsciously, vaguely-imaginatively present generalizations orient our knowledge creation processes at any time, are thereby themselves constantly worked out and negotiated, actualizing our conceptual (everyday-scientific) knowledge. One could say that such imaginatively “present” generalizations act as a vague telic or action-orienting premise for acting (cf. Sieland and Chimirri in press), and with it, a vaguely present and yet action-orienting premise for developing knowledge. Subsequently, we most often learn about and develop generalizations without explicitly knowing that we are learning about them and for what reasons, and yet, these generalizations become constitutive of our actions, of how we contribute to knowledge creation. Vaguely present generalizations are thus constitutive of directing human mental activity and action processes, potentially in both technically and emancipatorily relevant ways: Such knowledge can be of technical relevance in that it may reveal possible practical-technical steps, or a method, of becoming able to consciously actualize imagined realities; and it can simultaneously be of emancipatory relevance, in that it may supersede the immediate circumstances of an actualization’s practical-technical feasibility and give an idea of whether and how these imagined realities may be or become livable. The potentiality of vaguely present generalizations, however, can only be enacted by acknowledging the societal significance of imagination, i.e., the dialectical relation of its technical and emancipatory relevance. This acknowledgment would render it possible to imagine the concrete, everyday improvement of present and future life circumstances and societal arrangements also by conceptually synthetizing means that cannot (yet) be fathomed.5 This latter, as I would term it, magical-realist aspect of imagination, as generalizing the not-­ yet-­present on the grounds of what we may not have directly experienced to know but can somehow vaguely grasp, given human collective knowledge co-creation and  It should be noted that imagination does not per definition lead to subjectively meaningful action. It can also hinder meaningful action and restrict one’s agency (cf. Sieland 2017; Sieland and Chimirri in press). It is therefore essential to conceptualize its societal significance also in collective terms. 5

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thus by relating to other person’s experiences and the sociomaterial world we are part of, is similarly described by Vygotsky: Imagination takes on a very important function in human behavior and human development. It becomes the means by which a person’s experience is broadened, because he can imagine what he has not seen, can conceptualize something from another person’s narration and description of what he himself has never directly experienced. He is not limited to the narrow circle and narrow boundaries of his own experience but can venture far beyond these boundaries, assimilating, with the help of his imagination someone else’s historical or social experience. In this form, imagination is a completely essential condition for almost all human mental activity. (2004b: 17)

By furthermore connecting this understanding of the societally significant imagination to cultural psychologist Jaan Valsiner’s (2014, 2015) mereological perspective, it can be inferred that everyday generalizations/concepts are at any time constitutive parts of the not-yet-graspable WHOLE that a scientific generalization seeks to articulate and somehow render graspable, explicable, and thus workable across individual knowledges—even if it involves what we could, under given circumstances, consider unfathomable, or perhaps even magical. But the WHOLE is also always already present in its parts, i.e., scientific generalization is always already present in everyday generalization: in everyday life, any learning process involving generalization already builds on an imagined, generalized knowledge product, which, however, remains mostly vague and moreover dynamic. Dialectic generalizations therefore equally supersede the differentiation between science and everyday life, between process and product, between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, between denotation and connotation, between apparently rational and irrational thinking, between realism and magic, between technical and emancipatory relevance, between action and imagination—as will be illustrated via an example of a pedagogical daycare project. Here, the final staging of the theater play, the product, was always already present as a generalized whole in its continuously developing parts, and yet remained vague and dynamic, according to context and according to whom was relating to this WHOLE in different ways.

 he Magical Realism of a Dragon Egg: Scientific-Everyday T Generalization and Its Significance for Pedagogical Praxis The following case example is intended to show that the pedagogical professionals that I have encountered during my long-term field studies in one German and two Danish daycare centers are constantly working with generalizations in order to create knowledge together with children. It is to show that the generalizations they created together with children, colleagues, parents, etc., are dialectical, in that the staff members work with them as internally related declarative knowledge products and simultaneously as procedural knowledge processes. The staff-initiated knowledge co-creation praxis highlighted in the example below builds on scientific as well as everyday concepts, which combine both magical and realist aspects of the

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WHOLE and which are of both emancipatory and technical relevance for the mutual learning processes across children and adults. Meanwhile, the pedagogical staff is primarily confronted with political, professional, and scientific discourses that primarily emphasize teaching for children’s declarative, anhedonic-rationalist and measurable knowledge acquisition as their work’s foremost goal, discourses that are based on the premise that children’s knowledges are somehow defective and inferior to that of the pedagogical staff. The knowledge co-creation that the staff in praxis often initiates and operates with, including its relative indeterminateness and openness to all participants’ diverse experiences, knowledges, and relevance structures, is gradually absenced in these societal discourses and in the documentation products the staff is to use. The consequence is that the indeterminateness or openness of mutual learning processes is gradually rendered unimaginable and marginalized in institutional everyday life—a trend further propelled by current digitalization initiatives in the early childhood sector, which tend to put a major emphasis on pre-defined, goal-oriented learning of rationalist and representational knowledge. Magical-realist projects like the one to be described now, which draw on digital devices and representations as support for (primarily analogue) learning from one another about the world we are together part of, may thereby become less imaginable in the future—if their societal significance remains conceptually-practically underdetermined. The shortly outlined case is a theatrical project that involved all preschool children from three different daycare groups in one Danish daycare center. On the grounds of their hitherto experiences with those children that were to transition to school in summer 2017, the pedagogical staff came up with the idea to organize and implement a theatrical stage play that was to be presented to the parents during the last days of their children’s daycare stay. The preparations took several months, given that the pedagogues arranged for a frame that allowed the process to unfold slowly and cooperatively by gradually adding details to the envisioned final product: the theater play. Also, they wanted to make use of the digital infrastructure at hand: the iPads each group had, as well as the media pedagogical support unit the municipality had founded in order to support the integration of digital devices into local pedagogical work and everyday life at the daycare centers. The preschool children were to be involved at every stage of the preparations: the play itself and its dialogues/script were developed together, and ended up with enmeshing Vikings, ninjas, knights, and a dragon egg; music clips were to be chosen and vocally reenacted by the children with assistance from the municipal IT pedagogue; excursions to the city and the countryside were organized in order for the children to take digital photographs that could be projected onto the stage as visual, locally situated backdrop; costumes and props were collected from the various homes, or newly “homemade” especially for this purpose, also with the help of some of the daycare parents; some of the props were photographed as well, animated, and integrated into the background projection (for instance the handcrafted dragon), in order to explicitly interrelate the digital background with the analogue staging. Some of the preparatory processes were

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also filmed by the pedagogues, who produced a short “behind-the-scenes” documentary as an add-on to the theatrical play. This highly creative, largely collaborative, and long-lasting process, that became part of the staff’s and the children’s pedagogical co-engagements a couple of days a week for around 2–3 months, drew on, developed, and created innumerable generalizations along its way. While children gradually gained conceptual-practical knowledge about what a “theater play” may be and about how it can be realized in this context, thus dialectically relating everyday concepts to scientific concepts and vice versa, the pedagogical staff did as well. Arguably, the staff had an experience-­ based, conceptually more widely interrelated, and thus “more general” imagination of what a theater play usually is to be and how it is to play out. But they constantly needed to adapt their scientific-everyday generalizations of what a theater play is and can become, negotiate it anew with the children, colleagues, and parents to render it meaningful for the others, by breaking it down into technically workable parts that nevertheless would purposefully contribute to the already somewhat differently envisioned knowledge product, the WHOLE of a theatrical play. The staff needed to relate the pedagogical-professional, emancipatory-technical relevance they started out with to the conceptual knowledge the children brought into the collaborations, thereby re-situating their generalized imaginative knowledge according to the transcontextual understanding and relevance of the various elements that the children experientially and imaginatively drew on; transcontextual because children conduct their everyday lives not only in the institution’s context, but also at home and other places. Hence, their knowledge is never only bound to one context but connects to the many experiences they make across spaces and places, positionings, and situations (cf. Chimirri 2013). Such knowledge is general knowledge, in that it supersedes its immediate contextual boundedness, drawing on and pointing to knowledge many places across its respective participants, though without abstracting it from its immediate relevance for acting together in the context-at-hand. Let us take the dragon egg as an example of general knowledge that dialectically draws on scientific and everyday concepts, is both magical and realist, imaginative and yet concrete, both mediated and immediately relevant. The dragon egg is a concept that conveys potentially generalized notions of a dragon, of an egg, of a dragon as an egg-laying and yet fantastic being, of how a dragon could look like and sound, of what its egg could look like, what size and color it could have, etc. It is a fantastic, not-(yet-)existing artifact, whose conceptualization therefore allows for a broad diversity of imaginative interpretations: a dragon egg is discursively and herewith also sociomaterially less solidified and graspable than, for instance, a chicken egg. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that the standardized chicken egg commonly offered at Northern or Central European supermarkets is a somewhat fantastic artifact as well: The standard white or brown, perfectly shaped M-XL supermarket eggs are rendered general as a prototype of an egg, a prototype which however disregards of a very broad variety of other egg colors, shapes, and sizes. Following Vygotsky, just because a more broadly universalized, more or less standardized understanding of a chicken egg exists, the “chicken egg” does not have to be a more scientific concept than a “dragon egg”: a concept’s scientificity emerges in relation to whether

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it can be rendered meaningful for technically-emancipatorily relevant, collaborative everyday praxis. So knowledge of a dragon egg can turn out to be just as, or even more, relevant than a chicken egg, thus becoming generalized knowledge—at least when re-situated in the context of collaborating on implementing a theatrical stage play. Generalizations that tend to be more vaguely present, such as the “dragon egg,” can furthermore be important to challenge largely accepted, hegemonized, or universalized concepts, for instance of an “egg” as a standardized M-XL chicken egg, and thereby potentially contribute to more general knowledge of an “egg.” But in order to be able to co-create more general knowledge, collaborators are required to allow for a situated openness to their vaguely present, generalizations or imaginations as meaningful premise for acting together. Let us say, for instance, that a young child grew up on a farm with non-standardized chickens, and one day came to tell her peers and the pedagogical daycare staff that all the eggs that she knew were rather small, almost ball-round and violet, rejecting the concept “egg” that denotes the white standardized chicken eggs laying in front of them at the daycare center: would the others allow for their experience-based, generalized conceptual understanding of a standard chicken egg to get troubled by the farm-child’s fantastic-­ sounding violet ball-eggs, that may perhaps rather remind of dragon eggs? Would they acknowledge that, in order to attain a more general understanding of an “egg” or of a “chicken egg,” the farm-child’s experiences could productively contribute to the fellow knowledge co-creation of this scientific-everyday concept that is potentially relevant for all their respective everyday lives?

 earning from Pedagogical Knowledge Co-Creation L for Academic Knowledge Co-Creation Via an Egg In the case of the theater play staged at the daycare center, the dragon egg played the role of the “MacGuffin”: an object that everybody, Vikings, ninjas, and knights, craves while it never is fully explained why this is so. But throughout the process of imagining and crafting this artifact, it has played many other roles as well: the knowledge that the pedagogical staff and children co-created in relation to the dragon egg as a potential generalization product was processually re-situated according to who was involved in discussing it, to what they found to be relevant to conceptually relate to, across everyday life contexts, including the production stage the dragon egg was in. Speculatively, it even triggered discussions about how it relates to a standardized chicken egg. What this knowledge-situating praxis across participants craved, meanwhile, was that the pedagogical staff, qua the authority entitled to them as pedagogically trained adults vis-à-vis the children they have the duty to take care of, decided to position themselves as symmetrically as they could fathom in the knowledge and play-production processes with the children, and to keep the imagined end product,

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the theater play, open for renegotiation with the children. This would point to the above introduced concept of ethical symmetry, in that the pedagogical staff “strategically” decided to depart from a symmetrical positioning, for the children to have an equal say in influencing the process’ outcome. Based on this strategical understanding of ethical symmetry, the “symmetrical” starting point would have been granted to the children qua the staff’s societal positioning, representing an instrumental token gesture to promote the (learning) agenda the staff is politically expected to increasingly pursue: for instance in order to make the “task” of implementing a theatrical play more attractive for the preschool children and nudge them to comply with staff instructions, or to minimize nerve-wrecking conflict, or to further democratic decision-taking at the daycare center so as to check it off on the municipality’s evaluation schema. Despite potentially good intentions, children’s knowledges would herewith have been implicitly reproduced as defective, as less significant for societal development than the staff’s, as the latter has the possibility to strategically grant a symmetrical positioning to the children, and not the other way around. Actually, however, the pedagogical staff members that I talked to primarily emphasized that their openness to the children’s influence on the theatrical play’s products and processes was due to their interest in learning from the children about their knowledges. The staff wanted to engage in an activity together with the children, in which the children’s knowledges could be articulated in many different ways, through handicraft, drawing, digital editing, programming, singing, acting, and of course: talking. Such multimodal dialogue made it possible for the pedagogical staff not only to learn about the children’s interests and capabilities, but also for the staff to get its own interests and capabilities, as well as their knowledges, challenged and diversified by the children. They were seeking ethical symmetry not for strategical reasons (at least not alone), but because, in my interpretation, they wanted to supersede epistemic asymmetry by acknowledging ontological symmetry, by acknowledging that they required the children’s alternative knowledges for developing as human beings by developing their conceptual understandings of everyday life. In such a light, then, the dragon egg’s technical-emancipatory relevance for knowledge co-creation, for the sake of producing the theatrical play in a pedagogical context, but in particular for mutually learning for everyday life across ages, across generationed thresholds, only emerges once acknowledging ethical symmetry as ontological necessity: The emergence of epistemic asymmetry in the encounter of whatever kind of egg is neither mere “noise” or “mess” in the knowledge creation process, it should thus never be eliminated from a generalization process; rather, the concept of a differently shaped and colored, seemingly singular chicken or dragon egg contributes as a relevant part to the WHOLE, and thus to a more nuanced, complex, dialectically intrarelated generalization of an egg. This expanded knowledge may help all of us understand our respective everyday lives better, and to more purposefully act together on changing everyday life’s societal arrangements. Neither the dragon egg, nor the violet, ball-shaped chicken egg, merely falsify previous understandings of an egg, but they co-create a potentially productive,

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developmental knowledge crisis: superseding “scientific” knowledge praxis always already builds on a conflictual and yet highly productive struggle between seemingly contradictory everyday understandings and related epistemic-ontological crises. Asserting the scientific and thus societal significance of any generalized concept, no matter how mundane it may seem, such as that of an odd-looking, only vaguely definite egg, is thus also a political-ethical endeavor: by emphasizing the technical-emancipatory relevance of such a scientific-everyday concept, daily struggles regarding the contradictoriness and conflictual potentiality of any generalization can be acknowledged as societally purposeful, inherent to ongoing democratic negotiation and collaboration processes trying to continuously supersede the partiality and particularity of knowledge, its singularity and uniqueness, while at the same time feeding on these.

 eleogenetic Collaboration for Co-Creating Knowledge T with Children: Research as Everyday Life, Everyday Life as Research The dragon egg example and the pedagogical staff’s openness to letting their own scientific and everyday knowledges get troubled by the children, described in the case, is relevant to academically anchored co-research and knowledge co-creation processes with children and anyone else as well. “Scientific” knowledge creation also always builds on the researcher’s conduct of everyday life across contexts: the researcher’s actions and knowledge creation are “part of the weave” (Slunecko 2019; Chimirri et al. 2015), of the conjointly created fabric of everyday life, of relating everyday concepts and scientific concepts in order to make them relevant to the researcher himself/herself, as well as to other researchers and all other human beings. Schraube’s proposed concept of intersubjective, ontological symmetry for the sake of seeking the general in epistemic asymmetry implies continuously inquiring into one’s own role in the knowledge co-creation process—and of how not only the researcher, but also of how the research participants including children benefit from this process and the knowledge products that emerge from it. The researcher may initiate an inquiry on the grounds of her own respective epistemic ambition and knowledge interests, and of an imagined, temporary end product to the inquiry (an article, a monograph, a conference presentation, etc.). But these must remain open to processual renegotiation with the participants’ knowledges, their ambitions and interests, their vaguely generalized end products. Research that truly acknowledges ethical-ontological symmetry in order to embrace and mutually learn from epistemic asymmetry requires, I propose, teleogenetic collaboration (Chimirri 2015b, 2016, 2019)6: an ongoing dialogue about  The concept of teleogenetic collaboration is strongly inspired by Axel’s (2011) concept of conflictual cooperation, as well as by Valsiner’s (2014) following proposition: “Human beings are not 6

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where our knowledge co-creation processes may be taking us, about what we deem relevant to pursue according to our diversely imagined, temporary end products of the generalization processes we engage together in. This process necessarily challenges the researcher’s own pre-understandings, his ideological worldview (Teo 2009: 42), including the researcher’s potential view of science and scientific concepts as detached from everyday concepts. What we consider to be “real” must be able to get troubled by what we consider “magical” or fantastic, of what we may consider to be “defective” at first glance: the magical aspects of everyday life are just as much a significant part of reality, of the WHOLE, as other generalizations are, and must therefore be made an explicit part of any research process, of its knowledge co-creation, be it academically institutionalized or not. This proposition is itself a generalization, a knowledge product that emerged from the knowledge co-creation processes that I experienced together with the children and the pedagogical staff at the daycare centers I participated in. It describes a single case that will be re-situated in relation to the reader’s knowledge creation processes, if conceptually deemed of technical and emancipatory relevance to her. It can thereby contribute to other generalizations as parts of the WHOLE, though without knowing for sure how it will be generalized by the reader, who is in turn part of the knowledge co-creation that may follow from writing this chapter. Any single case is thus significant in order to more meaningfully conceive of everyday life beyond the single case, as Valsiner explains: Not only is generalization from the single case possible – but it is the only possible base for generalization. And even more – generalization necessarily happens on the basis of a single instance—each and every new experience – within the life space of the single case. This claim follows from the biological limit of all living systems functioning in irreversible time. We live through encountering ever-new unique instances of relating with our environments. We take singular risks – here and now – once – yet with consequences for the whole of the life course that follows. While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we operate through general principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments. Generalization is possible from any single instance of our encounters with the environment. Generality is in singularity. (2015: 233–234)

Scientific research and all other forms of generating generalized knowledge serve living and its experienced uniqueness, its singularity—and not mere survival. Acknowledging an ethical-ontological symmetry across human beings, irrespective of age, can be regarded as a precondition for being able to co-explore epistemic asymmetry and thus inquire into different generalized conceptualizations of what it may mean to live. To approach a more generally relevant understanding of a purposeful directedness for living in the world together, meanwhile, everyone must be willing to listen, stay curious, receptive, and responsible—also to the non-verbal sociomaterial aspects of communication (Chimirri 2016). Otherwise, it all comes down to “who can yell the loudest” or “strike hardest” in order to establish a fellow,

acting teleologically—by orientation to some future goals, but teleogenetically. They create their own goal-orientations for the future as they move toward their immediate future states, turning those into the passing presents” (p. 15x).

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temporarily prototypical course for action. Such teleogenetic collaboration requires an ethically ontologically symmetrical relationship to one another, including to children, in order to engage in a meaningful transformative-activist co-exploration of the world (cf. Chimirri and Pedersen 2019). The chapter proposed reconfiguring some of the concepts that seek to grasp the importance of co-creating generalizations, together with children and all other beings, without considering any of their knowledges as defective. Understanding knowledge co-creation processes as teleogenetic collaboration, i.e., a purposeful, ongoing renegotiation of concepts as knowledge products, would allow for mutual learning processes (Højholt and Kousholt 2019) that render aware of different communication and relevance modalities, of different perspectives, that nevertheless constitute the social WHOLE that requires to be transformed together across generationed thresholds, across ages, across societally arranged and maintained binaries between child and adult, as well as between researcher and researched. Generalizations and concepts of emancipatory relevance can only be developed if co-researchers also dialogue about what technical relevance or feasibilities they operate with given the contexts they conduct their everyday lives through, thus understanding their social interdependency by collectively discovering generalizations that are of broader societal significance, relevant to more than just the scientific researcher, or the pedagogue, or the parent, or the single child. To return the concept of teleogenetic collaboration on co-creatively generalizing knowledge to Sikder and Fleer’s (2015) initially presented reading of Vygotsky’s interplay of scientific and everyday concepts: concepts are not merely abstracted symbolic representations, they are, following Vygotsky (1966), Wartofsky (1979) and other praxis theorists, also ways of doing and knowing, praxis, from which generalizations or “concept systems” can be inferred (Derry 2013). They are acts of generalization, and they develop in contextual ways. Arguably, a methodology for learning generalization processes (from one another!) is what the pedagogical efforts of the daycare staff on co-creating the theatrical stage play implicitly proposed. Crucially, here, the pedagogues were also explicitly receptive to learning about the children’s relevance modalities in order to be able to teach about the general knowledge inherent to developing a theater play. If such an approach to one another gets to be considered ontologically necessary in order to meaningfully embrace human epistemic asymmetry, generalization becomes not only relevant in terms of ethical-practical implications for scientific research, but in terms of any fellow, analytic-pedagogical process: this methodology implies analyzing the world with one another from a variety of perspectives, thereby dialogically reflecting on living conditions together and learn from one another about how to change them in an ongoing fashion. This is what we anyway constantly do in everyday life, and also what pedagogues do in their daily work—so why should this not be a prototype for scientific research with children and everyone else as well? There is still much to learn from one another about how a better world could look like, about our different and yet internally related imaginations, and thereby about how humanity could on these grounds further generalize the world it is part of together.

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Acknowledgments  I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues from the research group Subject, Technology and Social Practice at Roskilde University, who gave valuable feedback on an early draft of this chapter. Furthermore, the editors of this anthology have continuously and substantially contributed to further developing the chapter’s argumentation via their feedback, which I am deeply thankful for. Parts of the empirical material were generated in the context of a project supported by the Center for Daginstitutionsforskning (The Danish Center for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care).

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Chapter 8

Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art of Generalization Luca Tateo

The problem of generalization in psychology is of course a relevant issue, as far as it concerns the relationship between the uniqueness of each and every human experience and the need for finding similarities between humans: assumptions about communalities and differences are the necessary grounds for both scientific knowledge and for collective life (Tateo 2013, 2015). A third way to approach the topic from a different angle is the method of art. A closer look at it, I suggest, can illuminate the understanding of the psyche and innovate the methodology of psychological sciences (Tateo 2016, 2018). Both art and psychology work through a distanced immersion in reality, producing a shift between direct and “mediated” experience. Such a zone of potential estrangement creates an emptiness from which new meanings can emerge (Tateo 2014; Tateo and Marsico 2013). The method of art also constitutes a link between individual and collective action, taking a critical ethical stance: an ongoing dialogue between innovation and cultural continuity (Tateo 2016). To elaborate this line of argumentation, I will try to discuss the topic of generalization by analyzing the method of a well-known baroque Italian artist, acknowledged as the main innovator in “realism”: Caravaggio. He was renowned for his “naturalistic” style. He used to depict scenes and people taken directly from everyday life, even in his religious paintings. However, this is not a mere realism. I argue that behind his apparent naturalism, there is a process of reflection and generalization about the human condition. I will discuss the process of generalization in the painting “The Seven Works of Mercy,” trying to identify the conceptual elements that make this work a specimen of the everyday human condition of suffering and relieving. I will argue that the process of generalization is neither an inductive-­ based extension nor the formulation of a context-independent and abstract list of

L. Tateo (*) Pós-graduação em Ensino, Filosofia e História das Ciências, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_8

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traits. The process of generalization starts from everyday experiencing and, through what I call a zone of potential estrangement, it must be able to return to experience improving our understanding of it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paintings, we must be able to create specimen by abductively distancing from the single case, and be able to find back the single case using the specimen to understand.

Caravaggio in Naples Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio (born 1571  in Milan, dead 1610  in Porto Ercole) was actually a fugitive when he arrived in Naples during the autumn of 1606. Just few month before, he was living in Rome as one of the most sought-after emerging artists, working in the massive renewal of the town started by Pope Sixtus V. Caravaggio used to spend his free time from painting in the brothels, taverns, and alleys around the (in)famous Campo De’ Fiori, where he frequented the prostitutes, gamblers, ordinary laborers, and beggars that he would later cast as saints and witnesses in his most religious paintings. But the night of May 28, 1606, in Campo Marzio, Caravaggio was involved in a street fight over a wager on a tennis match, during which he was wounded, but stabbed and killed in return a man known as captain Ranuccio Tomassoni. Merisi had to start a long wandering to avoid the arrest and the following sentence to death by default. The first stop was actually Naples, where he was courted by the Neapolitan aristocracy and welcomed by the local painters, as his fame was already Europe-wide. Soon after his arrival, he executed an altarpiece for the Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, a painting that would depict the Seven Works (or Acts) of Mercy: clothing the naked, visiting the ill and imprisoned, giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, sheltering the traveler and burying the dead (Fig. 8.1). Let’s try to take for a while the perspective of the painter in the moment he created this masterpiece. Caravaggio was going through one of the most tragic periods of his life. Just few months before he was one of the most celebrated artists in Rome. Cardinals, religious orders, and nobles where fascinated by his creativity, though keeping a very ambivalent feeling towards his art (Christiansen 1977). Caravaggio was an innovator, as he started to practice painting from live models (in Italian: “dal naturale ritratto”) in resemblance to the studio photography at the beginning of this art form (Christiansen 1977; Sontag 1977). From time to time, some of his works were eventually rejected by the religious buyers because his peculiar way of representing saints and gods using live laypeople models. For instance, his Madonna and Child with St. Anne (so called in Italian Dei Palafrenieri) (Fig. 8.2), painted right before leaving Rome, was initially destined to the altar of confraternity of the Papal Grooms (Italian: Arciconfraternita di Sant’Anna de Parafrenieri) (Bologna 2005). The naturalistic and humble representation of the figures—including the Virgin Mary who looks like a woman of the people, St. Anne like an old woman of humble origins and the “natural” appearance of the young Christ—eventually shocked and scandalized the buyers. The painting was in fact soon removed from the chapel and

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Fig. 8.1 Caravaggio— Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:The_Seven_Works_ of_Mercy-Caravaggio_ (1607).jpg. All images in this chapter fall under fair use commons license (see https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ Commons:Reusing_ content_outside_ Wikimedia))

subsequently sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a pragmatic art amateur, who hanged the canvas in his mansion (Bologna 2005), that later became the museum of Galleria Borghese. Caravaggio thus arrived in Naples escaping death penalty, hardly recovering from the wounds and becoming aware of entering the old age. His vision of the world was becoming more pessimistic and his future was looking obscure. In this context, he was confronted with the swarming atmosphere of the Spanish-ruled city of Naples. Prose (2007) vividly describes the influence of the town on Caravaggio’s technique: Indeed, the relationship between Caravaggio and the atmosphere of Naples (which can make Rome appear quiet and orderly) seems so complex and synergistic that looking at Caravaggio’s paintings makes you see the city in a new way—and vice versa. The heavy blacks that appear so frequently in his late works make a different kind of sense after you’ve experienced the city’s inky shadows, and the drapery that floats near the top of some of his canvases begins to remind you of the laundry strung across its narrow alleys. (Prose 2007: 86)

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Fig. 8.2 Caravaggio— Madonna and Child with St. Anne (1605–1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index. php?curid=509486)

Indeed, the action of the painting appears to be set in a “vicolo” at night. Caravaggio chose to represent the classical theme of the works of mercy in a quite unconventional way, far beyond any allegorical representation. In particular, he created a crowded and jumbled night scene, without a clear focus of attention. The action takes place in a narrow alley that could easily remind the vicoli of Naples. We can read the composition from right to left, following the direction of the light. The only illumination of the whole scene is indeed provided by a candle lifted by a priest (Fig. 8.3), who is turning the street corner with two other persons carrying a dead body half-wrapped in a shroud. We can see only the feet of the body while it is disappearing around the corner. This group represents the act of burying the dead. The light of the candle provides the whole painting with the peculiar atmosphere and the sad mood. Interestingly enough, it illuminates also the heavenly figures from below, creating a striking effect with another source of light that seems to come from the sky above the Virgin outside the canvas. The illumination projects the shadows of the heavenly creatures on the wall in a way that could be interpreted both as mystic and threatening. As we will see later on, this illustrates also the spiritual condition of Caravaggio at that moment and perfectly combines with the location of the canvas into the church. According to Prose (2007), the canvas constitutes

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Fig. 8.3  Detail: burying the dead, Caravaggio— Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Sette_opere_di_ Misericordia_-_ Seppellire_i_morti.jpg)

a continuum with the outside everyday life and the church. The large canvas is indeed hanging beyond the main altar: With its teeming composition set in a nocturnal streetscape, the altarpiece may make you feel as if the cyclonic street life of the city has somehow followed you inside the church. (Prose 2007: 86)

Entering the main church door, one can see the large canvas in front, mirroring the outside alley. Moving down right the canvas, we can see a second group of two figures that illustrates two themes in one: visiting imprisoned and giving food to the hungry (Fig. 8.4). We can see a young woman visiting an imprisoned old man and giving him milk from her own breast through the prison’s bars. Also in this case, Caravaggio chose to represent Christian virtues in an unusual way, by alluding to a classical pagan ancient Roman story of Caritas (Charity): the legend of Pero, a plebeian woman, who secretly breastfed her father, Cimon, as he was incarcerated and sentenced to

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Fig. 8.4  Detail: visiting imprisoned, giving food to the hungry, Caravaggio— Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Sette_opere_di_ Misericordia_-_Visitare_i_ carcerati.jpg)

death by starvation. The story says that when Pero was found out by a jailer, her act of piety and selflessness impressed officials and won her father’s release. Also in this scene, the painter chose a stunning realism, almost incestuous as in the Baroque tradition, enhanced by some details like the drop of milk fallen on Cimon’s beard. Moving to the left of the canvas, we can see another group of figures, which represents three acts: clothing the naked, visiting the ill, and sheltering the traveler (Fig. 8.5). Caravaggio interprets the legend of Saint Martin, who is represented with the clothes of a rich Spanish gentleman of the seventeenth century in the act of sharing his coat with a poor beggar, who is also the sick to be visited. Right beyond the couple, we can see two other male figures: one is a pilgrim, as indicated by the shell of the Camino de Santiago on his dress, while the other is pointing somewhere on the left outside the canvas, probably in direction of a hostel. As we move little up on the left, we can see the act of drinking to the thirsty (Fig.  8.6). The artist chose another unusual representation: Samson drinks water from the jawbone of an ass, referring to a story contained into the Book of Judges of the Hebrew Bible. The final group of figures occupies the central top part of the canvas. Caravaggio portraits the Virgin Mary with young Jesus Christ and two angels (black and white).

8 Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and the Art of Generalization Fig. 8.5  Detail: clothing the naked, visiting the ill and sheltering the traveler, Caravaggio—Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Sette_opere_di_ Misericordia_-_ Ospitare_i_pellegrini.jpg)

Fig. 8.6  Detail: drink to the thirsty, Caravaggio— Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Sette_opere_di_ Misericordia_-_Dar_da_ bere_agli_assetati.jpg)

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It is the most ambiguous representation of the whole composition, as it does not carry the usual serene, sacred, and heavenly character of these types of images (Fig. 8.7). Caravaggio seems to ask: where is the divinity when people on earth are going everyday through suffering and are enacting their piety? We can see the two angels looking downwards, apparently gripping each other while falling. The angel with the black wings is stretching out his hand towards the group of people below. One cannot really discern whether the angel is blessing the suffering ones, or he is trying to drive away humanity from the gates of heaven. On the top of the group, Virgin Mary is looking down at the crowd with a mix of compassion and distance. She seems to keep the young Christ from turning to the people or going down to help. In the middle of Counter-­Reformation, Caravaggio expresses all the bewilderment of a human being in between hope for salvation and fear of a violent and chaotic society. While experiencing a moment of despair in his life, the artist is questioning the nature of divinity and reflecting his vicinity to the everyday life struggle of laypeople. I think that the Seven Works of Mercy is a very complex sociological, theological, and philosophical analysis of the historical period, as well as a rich introspection of the artist. It could superficially be understood as an allegory of charity, but I will argue that Caravaggio is able to produce a reflective process of linking theory and observation, producing a very interesting form of generalization. For the psychology of everyday life, for instance, it could provide a useful suggestion about how to see the society in the person as well as the person in the society. What else can we learn from it?

Fig. 8.7  Detail: Mary, Christ, and the angels, Caravaggio—Seven works of Mercy (1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples) (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sette_opere_di_ Misericordia_-_Madonna_col_Bambino_e_angeli.jpg)

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Everyday Life? The interest of the psychology of everyday life is in the interplay between the ordinary and the extraordinary, production and reproduction, and between continuity and discontinuity (Højholt and Schraube 2016). My first question is: in this sense, does Caravaggio represent everyday life? In the Seven Works of Mercy, it is quite evident how the artist used the direct observation of everyday life in the streets of Naples to depict the very abstract concepts of the seven Catholic precepts. His beggars, priests, saints, even the angels and the Christ have the faces and the bodies of everyday people, caught in the context of street life. Their attitude is even more realistic, as it betrays the astonishment, the ambivalence, the suffering, and the affectivity of everyday human experience. Such a poetic was quite unusual at that time, to the extent that it “humanizes” the religious iconography, and takes the opposite direction of to Catholic Counter Reformation, which promoted a different ideal fo divinity. It is not a case, indeed, that Caravaggio strongly influenced the Flemish painters who lived in the Spanish Naples at the time of the Thirty years’ War. Those painters were in fact closer to the way of understanding the relationship between divinity and everyday life that characterized North European culture affected by Lutheran Reformation. So let’s assume that Caravaggio was trying to grasp the “human nature,” a perfectly suitable quest at his time, being able to use his method of painting live models that allowed him to produce a deep analysis of everyday experience by direct observation. Caravaggio’s portraits are the equivalent of “thick” descriptions in ethnomethodology, in which the totality and uniqueness of the painted subject emerge in all their liveliness. In this sense, they can be considered ancestors of portraiture in qualitative inquiry (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis 1997). However, those portraits become at the same time “types,” to the extent that one can find the very same faces, attitudes, and gestures in every street of that time. On the other hand, Caravaggio does not limit himself to depict “psychological” (por)traits in the Seven Works of Mercy. He created a collective scene in which everyday life meets divinity. The issue that he was facing was not just how to generalize the uniqueness of human psyche, but to understand it in its context. Christiansen (1977), in his discussion about naturalism, comments: It goes without saying that this approach to painting directly from a model was applicable only to pictures of a few figures that could be viewed in isolation against a simple background. Difficulties arose as soon as Caravaggio took up more complicated allegorical subjects of the sort that could not be resolved by putting a few vine leaves in his or another model’s hair, a sheet around one shoulder, and a few pieces of fruit on a ledge—as in the Bacchino Malato (Borghese Gallery). Mancini’s caveat about the inapplicability of painting large scale compositions from a group of posed models is amply documented in the massive revisions in the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio’s first truly large-scale narrative. How did Caravaggio proceed when confronted with this sort of elaborate composition? That he had a method, or rather, that he evolved one, is indubitable. (Christiansen 1977: 422)

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Apparently, Caravaggio seemed to paint from live models in a live environment, but the solution that the painter adopted was completely different. He used to paint the live models in different poses, and then he organized the scene by putting the figures in the composition. Thus, what looks like a real-life, real-time scene is an “artificial” reconstruction of a context with which Caravaggio was eventually very familiar. He introduces a new understanding of “objectivity,” as Pacelli (1977) describes, the technique produces a back and forth movement between observation and construction”: It is not with Caravaggio a question verisimilitude, of mere imitation, thing seen, but a dogged and aimed at encompassing all aspects (here reaching sublime heights) to visualize the world quite a new way. The painting seen from close reveals in specific details a deliberate simplification and ‘impressionistic’ shorthand which in certain instances take the form of pure blobs of colour and luminous touches: the painter does not produce the facts themselves by describing them prosaically, but only provides what the eye would perceive from a certain distance; thus when we retreat from the canvas, the vision recomposes itself out of the separate elements which were never rendered in a minute or pedantically analytical manner. From a distance everything becomes natural again, but it is a deeper and richer kind of truthfulness that is achieved, than it would have been, had too much attention been paid to the naturalistic details. (Pacelli 1977: 826)

In other words, Caravaggio’s naturalism is not inductive, rather abductive (Tateo 2015). Instead of “pedantically” reproducing reality, he does not hide his gaze and rather becomes a “participant observer.” He grasps the richness and uniqueness of people’s everyday lives, representing their affective states and ambivalent acting. But to do this, he needs to distance from realism and reproduce a narration that turns real people into abductive specimen of humanity: the person in the society as well as the society in the person. Only in this way everyday life experience can be generalized, without falling into the illusion of inductive accumulation. Caravaggio indeed did not create his figures by inductively reproducing summative traits of real models. He rather uses single case observations to which the observer can affectively relate and immediately grasp the wholeness of their experience. When we look at the figures, we can immediately recognize familiar aspects, and we can as immediately find persons that look like those figures when we go out of the church (Fig. 8.8). The operation that Caravaggio makes through his way of painting is to create a specimen of human experience by abductive generalization, that is, a thick affective representation of human experience. Once this specimen has been created, it serves to better understand everyday life experience in return. The creation of new knowledge does not occur in the first moment (as it is supposed to happen in inductive generalization), but takes place in the moment in which we return to everyday life to understand by the light of the specimen. The emergence of the new knowledge occurs in what I call zone of potential estrangement (ZPE), that is, the dialogical gaining of mutual awareness between the actors involved in the research interaction that knowledge is not representation rather interpretation. This idea has been nicely expressed by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (2005) recalling her first intuitions about the methodology of portraiture:

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Enhanced theoretical understanding and observation skills Specimen

Abductive generalization

zone of potential estrangement Understanding Everyday experience

Single case observation

Fig. 8.8  Abductive generalization, understanding and zone of potential estrangement I learned, for example, that these portraits did not capture me as I saw myself, that they were not like looking in the mirror at my reflection. Instead, they seemed to capture my “essence”; qualities of character and history, some of which I was unaware, some of which I resisted mightily, some of which felt deeply familiar. But the translation of image was anything but literal. It was probing, layered, and interpretive. In addition to portraying my image, the piece expressed the perspective of the artist and was shaped by the evolving relationship between the artist and me. I also recognized that in searching for the essence, in moving beyond the surface image, the artist was both generous and tough, skeptical and receptive. I was never treated or seen as object but always as a person of strength and vulnerability, beauty and imperfection, mystery and openness. The artist needed to be vigilant in capturing the image but always watchful of my feelings, perspective, and experience. I learned, as well, that the portraits expressed a haunting paradox of a moment in time and of timelessness. (Lawrence-Lightfoot 2005: 5)

In this quotation, Lawrence-Lightfoot (2005) describes very nicely the ZPE: a field of open meanings that emerges in between the act of exploring everyday experience and the act of telling everyday experience. This movement of reading-telling-­ estrangement-understanding (ZPE) does not occur through inductive accumulation, rather through single case observation. New insights and understandings can come from finding potentially “strange” everyday life, opening a ZPE, in which distancing goes together with empathizing. Differently from epoché (Christensen and Brumfield 2010), the ZPE is systematically constructed through the method of art in order to generalize a single case (e.g., a portrait) into a specimen (e.g., a universal image of human experience). Susan Sontag (1977) notes a similar process about photography: potential estrangement emerges in the implicit desire of knowledge as capturing and the disillusion of identity. Taking a picture is not an inductive recording. It is experiencing a unique moment: a single case in everyday experience. On the other hand, any capturing is a form of violence and it is transformational. In the pure inductive mode of thought, one can believe that it is just a matter of precision: the more my picture-­ measuring is accurate, the more my understanding. Yet it is a matter of transformation and creation (Tateo 2013): portrait cannot be inductive. It is necessarily abductive and abstractive (Tateo 2015). It is the only way in which generalization

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can capture the paradoxical nature of human experience (Lawrence-Lightfoot 2005). Rather than thinking about generalization as incompatible with everyday life, individual and critical knowledge (to the extent that generalizing is bounded by internal logic consistency), Caravaggio seems to illustrate how the zone of potential estrangement, evoked by the method of art, can help us to build generalizations that embrace the full ambivalence and paradoxical nature of human beings, in both personal and collective forms. Yet acknowledging the role of sensitivity and esthetics in knowledge building (Tateo 2018) does not have to mislead us towards a naïve poeticizing or professed aestheticism: art has a method of knowing. The Seven Works of Mercy has also the purpose of illustrating some very abstract and complex Catholic values. Thus, in this painting there is also a vertical conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract. The painting is about several concepts: suffering, charity, mercy, salvation, etc. The work was meant to illustrate these concepts and to provide a specific social guidance to the emergence of feelings in the observer. Furthermore, Caravaggio conveys also his personal point of view with respect to those concepts and his personal theological view. How is this possible? How Caravaggio can express abstract concepts through the representation of live models? It is probably a bidirectional process. On the one hand, he uses concrete figures to represent the abstract concepts (e.g., the woman’s breast), while on the other hand the abstract concepts provide an affective orientation to the interpretation of the figures (e.g., understanding the breastfeeding instead of a lustful scene). The emergence of the generalization process depends upon the relationship between the individual figures, the context, and the concepts. Differently from allegory, in which the abstract concepts are symbolically and metonymically embodied by images (e.g., a blindfolded woman figure to represent the concept of justice or fortune); in this case, the meaning is that everybody potentially can embody the mercy, the mercy can affect everyone and everybody in everyday life are bounded by the concept of mercy (Fig. 8.9). The process of generalization cannot be separated from the context and the subject. It means that every generalization is never context-independent or subject-­ independent (Tateo 2015). At the same time, the understanding of the relationship between context and subject cannot be attained without the tools of abstract concepts. Thus, naïve empiricism does not work neither in the ethnographic nor in the experimental sense. The conduct of everyday life is not a “given,” that the researcher can observe “out there”. It is rather a concept, a construction that psychology can elaborate on the basis of specimen. In return, people’s experience acquires a specific meaning to the extent that is understood by the concept of “conduct of everyday life.” So far, we can draw the following lessons from Caravaggio’s work, with respect to the psychology of everyday life: • The starting point for the process of generalization is not an inductive accumulation of empirical instances. Generalization works as an abductive process of grasping the complexities of experience. Abductive generalization means the

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Fig. 8.9  Person, context, and concept

creation of a specimen of the phenomenon that will guide the understanding process. In the case of Caravaggio, the live model becomes a specimen that helps the observer to understand the experience back in real life. This implies a continuous movement of approaching and distancing the phenomenon. • Every action of approaching and distancing implies a different understanding. In this sense, Caravaggio’s work is neither naturalistic nor reproductive. He “abducts” his models, brings them into his personal perspective, and restitutes them as new forms of understanding. • Subject, context, and concept cannot be separated, as they mutually feed into each other. In Caravaggio’s painting, the concept of mercy can be understood only referring to the specimen, and the scattered figures are bounded by both the context and the concept of mercy. On the other hand, it is possible to understand the figures and the concept because there is a common cultural context that binds them together. So, generalizing is not context-independent. • The perspective of the artist is not a bias, rather a key to understanding. The painting is neither a mere representation nor just an expression of feelings. The work is a reflection upon the world and the human condition. At the same time, the psychological and the theological are contextualized in the contemporary society of Caravaggio, suggesting that the human condition can be generalized.

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Generalization as a Creative and Reflective Act My initial question was: what can we learn from Caravaggio’s art? I have tried to analyze the process of generalization in the Seven Works of Mercy, trying to identify the conceptual elements that make this work a specimen of the human condition of suffering and relieving. From this analysis, I argue that the process of generalization is not an inductive-based extension of some features to a larger portion of the universe we observe (Tateo 2015). It is neither the formulation of a ­context-­independent and abstract list of traits. If the process of generalization starts from experiencing, either in everyday life or in exceptional circumstances, once distanced by it must be able to return to experience improving our understanding of it. In other words, as Caravaggio does in his paintings, we must be able to create specimen by abductively distancing from the single case and be able to find back the single case using the specimen to understand it. This movement of back and forth, I argue, takes place in the ZPE. Generalizing is neither grouping, selecting, or extending, but is creating a new form of knowledge. Generalization “is a conceptual abstraction, establishing meaningful relationships between the parts of a whole” (Tateo 2013: 534). Generalizing is a reflective act because it distances from the everyday experience and accesses a higher level of abstraction. It builds a representation of a process, not of the outcomes, from the existing knowledge and from the observation of psychological phenomena. Generalizing is also a creative act because it builds something that was not there before: it constructs a new theory about the world. Generalizing constitutes an act of interpretation because it implies a perspective-­taking by the observer and a sense-making process. Finally, generalizing is a mediated process. There is no direct relationship between the phenomenological data and the conceptual abstraction. This relationship is mediated by a scientific apparatus and a set of cultural and personal values that affect both the construction of phenomenological data and the observer’s position. In the case of art, the mediation is carried out with different means, but the characteristics of the generalizing movement are similar. In the case of Caravaggio, the apparatus consists of his technique “dal naturale” and his theological perspective. In the case of psychology, it consists of the set of shared practices and concepts, as well as the ethical perspective that every scholar must be aware of. Generalization is a creation of reflective knowledge that helps to reflect in return. Once we have identified this process, we can find example of the ZPE in other contexts and in different times. For instance, we can find similar processes in photography (Fig. 8.10). Almost three centuries later, this very famous photograph by the Dorothea Lange works on the same process of Caravaggio’s naturalism. The author starts from a live model, apparently adopting a naturalistic and documentary approach, while turning the figure into a specimen of a generalizable experience: the migrant mother. At the same time, this images is historically contextualized in the crisis of the “dust bowl” of the 1920s in the United States, allowing us in return to better understand the condition of the real person in that situation. Yet would be naïve to believe that this

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Fig. 8.10  Migrant Mother, (Dorothea Lange, 1936, United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division) (https://upload.wikimedia. org/wikipedia/ commons/5/54/LangeMigrantMother02.jpg)

is a portrait photography. While Lange was traveling in Nipomo, California, as employee of the Farm Security Administration, documenting the life of poor pickers’ migrating families, she stopped at some shelters. She saw the woman, 32 years old, and agreed with her to take some pictures. She listened to her story of famine and migration, despair and fear for the future of her children (Meltzer 2000). So, Lange decided to use photography to turn that single everyday life experience into a specimen of the human condition of a whole community of people in a given socio-historical moment and she succeeded. As Dorothea Lange puts it: “I knew I had recorded the essence of my assignment” (Meltzer 2000: 133). This is a creative generalization in which the photographer was looking for “the precise expression on the subject’s face that supported their own notions about poverty, light, dignity, texture, exploitation, and geometry” (Sontag 1977: 6): from the concrete bodies to the concepts. I have tried to provide some hints in order to reflect upon the meaning of generalization. Generalizing is not opposite to psychology of everyday life or qualitative inquiry. On the one hand, I have proposed the concept of zone of potential estrangement, in which the person uses instruments and methods to observe single cases, elaborate them to stress the complexities of the person-context whole, and give them back to us as specimen of a generalizable human experience: that is as concept. On the other hand, the concept will help us to better understand further single cases in return. The examples that I have discussed so far with respect to art can help us to use this process in our own work. The challenge that Caravaggio gives us,

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since five centuries, is that of being able to understand our fellow human beings as unique persons in a collectivity, but also to build knowledge about human condition as a common endeavor. Acknowledgments  This article has been possible, thanks to the project “The administration of fear: using art to study psycho-social phenomena,” funded by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, 2016 International Network Programme.

References Bologna, F. (2005). Caravaggio, the final years (1606-1610). In N. Spinosa (Ed.), Caravaggio: The final years (pp. 16–47). Naples: Electa Napoli. Christensen, T.  M., & Brumfield, K.  A. (2010). Phenomenological designs: The philosophy of phenomenological research. In C. J. Sheperis, J. S. Young, & M. H. Daniels (Eds.), Counseling research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods (pp.  135–150). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education. Christiansen, K. (1977). Caravaggio and “L’esempio davanti del naturale”. The Art Bulletin, 68(3), 421–445. Højholt, C., & Schraube, E. (2016). Introduction: Toward a psychology of everyday living. In E.  Schraube & C.  Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp.  1–14). London: Routledge. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2005). Reflections on portraiture: A dialogue between art and science. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800404270955. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Davis, J. H. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Meltzer, M. (2000). Dorothea Lange: A photographer’s life. New York: Syracuse University Press. Pacelli, V. (1977). New Documents concerning Caravaggio in Naples. The Burlington Magazine, 119(897), 819–827 and 829. Prose, F. (2007). On the trail of Caravaggio. Smithsonian, 37(12), 80–92. Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. New York: Macmillan. Tateo, L. (2013). Generalization as creative and reflective act: Revisiting Lewin’s conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 23(4), 518–536. Tateo, L. (2014). Beyond the self and the environment: The psychological horizon. In K.  R. Cabell & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The catalyzing mind: Beyond models of causality (pp. 223–237). New York: Springer. Tateo, L. (2015). The nature of generalization in psychology. In G.  Marsico, R.  Andrisano Ruggieri, & S. Salvatore (Eds.), Reflexivity and psychology (pp. 45–64). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Tateo, L. (2016). Towards a new (psychological) science. In L. Tateo (Ed.), Giambattista Vico and the new psychological science (pp. 205–218). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Tateo, L. (Ed.). (2018). An old melody in a new song: Aesthetics and the art of psychology. New York: Springer. Tateo, L., & Marsico, G. (2013). The self as tension of wholeness and emptiness. Interacções, 24, 1–19.

Chapter 9

Reproducing the General Through the Local: Lessons from Poverty Research Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte, Pita King, and Shiloh Groot

Throughout our disciplinary history, psychologists have responded to general issues of poverty through engagements with particular community settings (Hodgetts et al. 2010; Hodgetts and O’Doherty 2018). Accompanying an early focus on everyday poverty were concerns regarding the consequences of inequitable social arrangements on everyday life (Jahoda et al. 1933; Jahoda 1992). Today, poverty researchers continue to document how the general (including political-economic systems that generate poverty) is reproduced through the particular (persons and communities). Scholarship in this area speaks to the [dis]functioning of societal structures in local settings. It draws on a dialectical understanding of society to explore how the general becomes entangled within the particular. Articulating such a societal perspective on the quotidian, Simmel (1900/1978: 99) writes: …society is a structure that transcends the individual, but that is not abstract. Historical life thus escapes the alternative of taking place either in individuals or in abstract generalities. Society is the universal which, at the same time, is concretely alive.

Building on Simmel’s insight, our understanding of the quotidian does not require a choice between the particular/personal and the general/abstract. Both are entangled in each other. As Simmel argues, each historic moment contains aspects of personal lived experience and society at large. This orientation enables us to

D. Hodgetts (*) · P. King School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] O. Stolte School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] S. Groot Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_9

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move out beyond everyday experiences of hardship and into consideration of the ways in which broader societal formations take form in everyday lives in adversity. Accordingly, we approach everyday life as a domain of human interaction where dynamic facets of people’s lives come together, often in concert with those of people around them in ways that reproduce social structures (Hodgetts et  al. 2018). Everyday life is where human experience and action exists simultaneously in personal and societal life (Holzkamp 1995/2016). The quotidian constitutes a social realm through which small acts are cumulatively combined to forge inhabited social environments that manifest broader societal structures. As Dreier (2016: 21) notes: ‘Persons include simple routines in more extensive personal arrangements of their conduct of everyday life that they establish in relation to the societal arrangements of everyday social practice’. Personal acts such as turning off a heater to save power, eating rotten food, or sleeping on the streets take on significance as social practices through which societal inequalities and marginality are reproduced (Halkier 2011; Halkier and Jensen 2011). Such practices often enact phronetic or practically oriented, tacit, provisional, malleable, and experiential knowledge that people develop in response to their own situations of poverty (cf., Flyvbjerg et  al. 2012). These everyday acts can appear insignificant and unremarkable on the surface. It is when we consider such practices in the context of broader relational configurations that their societal significance comes to light. Concisely, supporting the philosophical position that the specific resembles the general, but is not reducible to it (Simmel 1903/1997), we work to extract general insights out of detailed considerations of local practices and objects (Davis 1973; Frisby 1981). Because the general is already entangled within the particular, our approach is anchored in lived experiences of adversity whilst speaking to the broader societal aetiology of everyday poverty (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Central is a conceptual shift from the specific out towards what Goffman (1963) refers to as the backstage of social phenomenon. This backstage is populated by intergroup relationships that drive wealth concentration into the hands of the few at the expense of growing numbers of people in countries such as New Zealand (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). We seek to convey insights into particular scenes featuring our participants in a manner that enables readers to recognise the societal forces at play. In many respects, we have come to understand this approach as similar to that of early impressionist painters and earlier impressionist social scientists such as Georg Simmel (Davis 1973; Frisby 1981). These artists focused on everyday subject matter and worked to move our gaze with broad strokes from local scenes out to the social universe at play in situated happenstance. As we work our way out from experiences of hardship to the broader social structures at play, we also move out beyond the tendency in ruling psychology to individualise social problems, such as poverty as magically the product of personal inadequacies. Instead, we locate the aetiology of poverty primarily in broader dysfunctional intergroup relations that have been shaped by greed rather than need (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Rather than trying to capture or duplicate a frozen moment plucked from ‘real’ lives, like impressionist painters we aim to offer readers an overall impression of the dynamics of everyday poverty. The value of such impressions is not whether or not they

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r­epresent an actual stable reality (assuming for a moment that this might is even possible). Value resides in offering more affluent audiences who have not experienced poverty themselves, but whose collective actions shape poverty for others, understandings and insights that enable them to understand and empathise with people who are living in poverty. In producing such impressions, we move constantly between specific descriptions of a local scene and theoretical abstractions that afford a means of invoking more general deliberations regarding the impoverished situations in which our participants find themselves. The result is an intensified picture of actuality that is comprised, at least metaphorically of incomplete brush strokes that hint at, rather than capture everyday poverty. This chapter exemplifies our developing impressionist orientation in relation to the use of visual exercises designed to aid our participants in sharing their experiences of poverty with us. These activities are designed to allow participants to ‘show’ and ‘tell’ us about their everyday lives (Hodgetts et al. 2007). Instead, of viewing the resulting drawings or photographs as hard ‘data’ that conveys set, concrete evidence of reality, we view these materials as offering incomplete insights that often hint at, but never fully capture what everyday poverty is like for people. We will demonstrate how the mimetic objects produced by our research participants can be understood as empirically valuable agentive efforts to re-assemble, mimic, imitate, approximate, partially express and render more tangible their experiences of hardship and the material ramifications of inequitable social structures (Hodgetts et  al. 2018). In extending our account of impressionistic scholarship, we set out three interrelated aspects of generalisation. In this chapter, we approach generalisation as a multi-faceted process made up of various elements, forms, or dimensions. As such, we present an account of three forms of generalisation that are central to our research and advocacy work around issues of societal inequalities and everyday urban poverty. These three forms of generalisation are not exhaustive. These three are elements of core relevance to our work that are evident within broader processes of generalisation in research into everyday life. First, our efforts involve theoretical generalisation or bringing conceptual abstractions to bear as we interpret what participants’ show and tell us about their experiences of poverty. Second, we explore the broader societal structures and relationships that shape personal experiences of hardship or what we term referential generalisation. Third, empathetic generalisation is central to our efforts to cultivate compassion among people whose decisions impact the lives of our participants. All three forms are part of a greater whole that is generalisation.

Theoretical Generalisation Theoretical generalisation has been considered at some length in scholarly discussions regarding qualitative research (Fine 2006; Halkier 2011) and is central to approaches such as grounded theory that seek to generate theory from research (Strauss and Corbin 1994). For us, efforts to generalise through theory are less about

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developing new theory from qualitative data and are more about bridging the space between everyday human experience and broader and existing theoretical debates and abstractions that populate the academy (cf., Simmel 1903/1997). We draw on scholarly theory in order to situate and interpret systemically the everyday experiences of poverty with which we are grappling through research. As we recount below, theoretical generalisation involves bringing images produced by participants into conversation with existing theoretical abstractions in order to crack these artefacts open and to develop our interpretations of depicted events and relationships (Halkier 2011). For example, such an approach enables us to better comprehend how neoliberalism, which has been theorised to increase poverty and reduce societal supports for people in need is reproduced everyday when people try to access welfare services. We also draw on theoretical generalisation to make sense of what research participants are doing when they attempt to reconstruct and communicate their experiences of hardship visually during research by drawing on philosophical concepts such as mimesis (Benjamin 1933/1978, 1982). Whether focused on content (neoliberalism) or processes of picturing (mimesis), theoretical generalisation involves (methodologically) adopting the position of the researcher as bricoleur (Lévi-Strauss 1962) by bringing together insights from everyday experiences with insights from theory to create new impressions of poverty and its lived implications. To demonstrate our orientation towards theoretical generalisation, we refer to an example from a previous research project on urban poverty in Auckland. As part of the Family100 project (Hodgetts et al. 2014), we asked participants to draw and talk about the social services they came into contact with over the previous 2 weeks. Many of the participants drew cluttered service maps. For example, Fig. 9.1 depicts numerous agencies this participant engaged with, whilst the jagged lines represent stressful or discordance interactions with many of these organisations. For us, this image is not simply a dispassionate chart of the everyday interactions of an individual in need. The significance of Fig. 9.1 extends beyond the page, as a depiction of a chaotic and dysfunctional welfare sector, which Wacquant (2009) has theorised as ‘penal welfare’. This service map illustrates how welfare no longer functions as a coherent ‘system’. Instead, when positioned as denizens (Bauman 2004), people facing poverty must navigate a raft of loosely connected agencies that are overly bureaucratic, punitive, and demanding in orientation towards them (Hodgetts et al. 2014). This often results in a high degree of time wasting and experiences of futility that add to the stress of poverty (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). As Hayley states: It’s the run around. I’m pretty organised and even if you do have…the paperwork that’s required, there is still one thing they will demand you get… So you’ve got to rebook your appointment, use up more gas to go and run around, or more money for the buses.

Above, Hayley invokes time wasting as a core activity in everyday scenes where people attempt to access welfare supports. Typically, in order to access welfare payments from a government agency people must obtain certification from a budgeter, even though the government agency already knows what their income is because they are the one’s paying it. Once this task is completed, a person is then often asked for additional documentation from sources such as power companies to further

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Fig. 9.1  Welfare service map

prove their need for financial assistance. Such tasks all take time, and no money is forthcoming until all of the required documentation is obtained. It is no surprise then that participants, such as Hayley, emphasise the emotional strain and futility of trying to access welfare supports to which they are legally entitled (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). They draw and talk openly about the stress, frustration, futility, and anger they experience in having to weave the various agencies depicted in Fig. 9.1 together to create some semblance of a service landscape for themselves. In a previous publication, we theorised such relationships between welfare recipients and agencies using the concept of structural violence (Hodgetts et al. 2014). Psychological researchers frequently pride themselves on being more objective than other social science disciplines, by offering a supposedly unbiased account of the pictures and associated accounts produced by our participants. Yet, such an approach can limit analyses to description or partitioned cause–effect occurrences. Instead, we advocate for the need to ‘go beyond your data’ in order develop interpretations of artefacts such as the one featured in Fig. 9.1, which uncover the traces of the general buried within a particular image or account. Theoretical generalisation enables us to situate this service map as a starting point for moving beyond a description of dysfunctional relationships between Hayley and services to interpreting what is going on at an institutional societal level. We can use theoretical abstractions to cultivate our impressions of the reasons why the welfare system has become dysfunctional, inhumane, and brutal to people

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such as Hayley. We begin by thinking creatively and by bringing various abstractions to bear in order to take us beyond the frame of Fig. 9.1. This aids us in situating this map societally and ideologically. Folding scholarship on neoliberalism, structural violence, and penal welfare into our developing impression of the map and Hayley’s associated account enables us to speak to broader societal issues of welfare retrenchment that extends beyond our shores. We can consider what Hayley’s engagements with services tell us about the implications of contemporary welfare policies and practices that emphasise conditional support, rather than citizenship and rights (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). The broader relevance of the service map in Fig. 9.1 is highlighted by drawing on a wide palette of theoretical constructs. In this case, we connect the interactions evident in Fig. 9.1 to the institutionalisation of ‘penal welfare’ (Wacquant 2009) and structural violence (Hodgetts et al. 2014), and the rise of denizens (Bauman 2004) and the new precariat class (Standing 2011). These overlapping theoretical concepts help to paint a picture of international socio-­ economic and political developments that shape personal experiences of poverty and welfare (Flyvbjerg 2006). In this way, theoretical concepts, which originate in North America and Europe are used to inform our understanding of why people in New Zealand must work within a chaotic and fragmented service landscape in order to gain access to the basic necessities of life. Conversely, the exemplars (including Fig. 9.1) we use from New Zealand inform international debates regarding these theories. Through theoretical generalisation, we can relate the experiences of our participants in New Zealand at the abstract level to those in other OECD nations also experiencing the rise of penal welfare and the denizenising of people living in poverty. The resulting enhanced theorising of poverty can then be redeployed in further research across a range of contexts. Theoretical generalisation from artefacts such as Fig. 9.1 can also be purposed to extending efforts to conceptualise the psychological processes via which participants produce such artefacts to share their everyday experiences to us. In our case, this process is enabled through our theorising of Benjamin’s concepts (1933/1978, 1982) such as ‘mimesis’ and the ‘dialogical image’. These concepts speak to the human propensity to create objects and pictures that approximate, reproduce, and mimic aspects of their circumstances, experiences, and practices (Hodgetts et  al. 2018). When combined with notions of phronesis, these concepts can enable us to think more directly about how, through the production of meaningful objects people can work to share insights into their own lifeworlds. Using such concepts enables us to open up vantage points on participant drawings, for example, via which we can recognise the efforts of human beings to make sense of, picture and communicate what it is like to live in poverty and have to engage with welfare services. Using such concepts can extend our reflexive understandings of what we are doing methodologically in research into everyday life. As a result of our theoretical generalisation efforts in the methodology space, we have become particularly interested in picturing as a communicative practice that is used by participants to invoke the aspects of hardship that are hard to put into words alone (Hodgetts et al. 2018).

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Consideration of their efforts to let us know what is going on also leads to further abstract and concrete considerations of the increased difficulties surrounding intergroup communication between people in the city (Hodgetts et al. 2018). This conceptual orientation is crucial for impressionistic analysis because memetic objects such as that depicted in Fig. 9.1 remain incomplete and merely hint at, rather than fully capture what everyday life in poverty is like for someone. It also enables us to better understand participant difficulties in showing and telling us about hardship in a society that often blames them for their situations. This, in turn has led us to consider the dialogical potential of images (Benjamin 1940, 1982), and how participant picturing practices can render their hardships more tangible for audiences living very different and more privileged lives. In grappling with similar theoretical concerns, Benjamin (1940) states: For what do we know of street corners, curb-stones, the architecture of the pavement - we who have never felt heat, filth, and the edges of stones beneath our naked soles, and have never scrutinized the uneven placement of the paving stones with an eye toward bedding down on them.

In adopting an impressionist approach, we do not seek to produce a definitive interpretation of Fig. 9.1 or associated participant experiences. Rather, we seek to theorise with such memetic snippets in order to conceptualise poverty in ways that embrace and situate participant experiences systemically. We can engage intellectually with participant’s agentive efforts to make sense of and communicate deeply felt experiences of hardship and futility, which are hard to put into words alone. This theoretical and practical orientation is important because comprehending the pictures our participants create to ‘show’ and ‘tell’ us about their situations requires dialogue through which we move outwards beyond such data (pictures and accounts) to consider the more general societal significance of what they choose to depict (Hodgetts et al. 2007). Engaging in such dialogical processes of meaning making, we are looking from within and out beyond the frames of their pictures with them. Finally, our use of the theoretical construct of the conduct of everyday life in the beginning of this chapter reflects how seamlessly we can bring general theoretical abstractions to bear on moments of the particular, and in doing so speak from the particular to the general. Maps such as that depicted in Fig. 9.1 elicit commentary about the phronetic practices our participants employ to try and piece a workable welfare system together for themselves (Hodgetts et al. 2014). Ultimately, theoretical generalisation is extremely useful in providing analytic tools that facilitate our thinking about and evolving understandings of particular objects and accounts produced by research participants. From the standpoint of praxis, theory helps us understand the broader intergroup relations at play in ‘still objects’ such as pictures created and employed by our participants. Correspondingly, our approach to generalisation does not begin or end with theoretical abstractions. As we will demonstrate, processes of generalisation are also of fundamental importance to action, and efforts to not only understand, but to also address issues of poverty. This brings related forms of referential and empathetic generalisation into focus.

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Referential Generalisation Our approach to referential generalisation is, in many respects, based on the assertion that poverty is created within a social world that features dysfunctional intergroup relations and institutional practices. We also propose that it is important that we do not detach experiences of poverty from this socio-economic context. To do so is to risk individualising poverty and engaging in the age-old practice of victim blaming (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). As such, referential generalisation involves efforts to engage with the social universe at play in the situations, people, practices, and objects the populate participant pictures and accounts of everyday life. Such generalisation work often begins with engagements with specific artefacts such as the service diagram in Fig. 9.1. It also involves working with images that participants may have plucked from other sources such as the internet in order to convey aspects of their experiences or to render these material and therefore real (see Fig.  9.2). Such seemingly inanimate objects carry aspects of the broader social milieu from which they emerge and need to be analysed as such. Referential generalisation enables us to ground structurally orientated explanations for poverty. We can implicate neoliberal socio-economic systems that have been set up to service selfish wealth extraction among elites as core causes of societal inequalities and poverty. The focus here can be on problems such as elite greed shaping economic and institutional practices in ways that benefit wealthy people, and at the cost of increased inequalities in society and the resulting hardships experienced by our participants (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). In this way, referential generalisation involves seeking the societal through the local. This is appropriate if one accepts that: ‘The general content is thus not dissolved into a multitude of empirical facts but is concretised in a theoretical analysis of a given social configuration and related to the whole of the historical process of which it is an insolvable part’ (Horkheimer 1941: 22). Through referential generalisation objects such as Figs. 9.1 and 9.2 can be rendered as situational representations (Delmar 2010), which are useful in grappling with the double articulation of the general in the particular. Practically, this requires a series of interpretive shifts out from particular artefacts,

Fig. 9.2 GLOW-BUG power meter

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such as a ‘GLOW-BUG’ household electrical usage meter (Fig. 9.2), through which such objects are positioned as artefacts of broader inequitable socio-economic relations. In making these shifts, we are able to bring into sharper view the often less visible ways in which intergroup power relations texture poverty at the personal level in everyday life. In considering such shifts, let us consider Greg’s account of the GLOW-BUG and how this device regulates electricity usage in his household. By way of further context, the GLOW-BUG is a prepaid electricity device intended as a last resort for consumers with a bad credit history. The prepay costs of power are higher than the rates charged to post-pay electricity users. Greg’s use of the image in Fig. 9.2 when talking about his use of electricity positions the device as a metonym for hardships he endures. Inadequate funds mean that Greg must practice restraint in his everyday use of electricity, which then results in him having to choose between darkness or living in a cold, damp dwelling. Initially, Greg begins by talking about how: It’s just too expensive with running a 2000 watt heater for a few hours. You’re paying near to 30 bucks a week… If you’re not keeping an eye on it, it could be 35 bucks a week… Make sure you don’t have the heater on because you can use a 2000 watt heater for an hour and that will be all your light usage for 24 hours…

Greg then invokes the GLOW-BUG to exemplify how his practices of rationing and vigilance reflect the exacerbation of constants that have come into his home with this device. The GLOW-BUG is presented as an unwelcome and overly controlling addition to the household: You know that you can’t deal with it on GLOW-BUG… It’s just a pre-pay phone card type of thing… And you put a minimum of 20 bucks, it costs $1.50 to put in every time… If you get below $11.00 they cut you off… They’ll give you a warning and some stupid lights... When it’s green, it’s fine. When it’s orange, you’re power’s low. It’s going to be off in two days. When it turns red your power’s going to be cut off at 12 o’clock… It drives you a little bit nutty...

Greg pitches his account at the level of everyday experience. He anchors his situation in relation to the electrical meter, his need for restraint, and the stressful and unhealthy circumstances in which he resides. Through this account, we can see how his use of the GLOW-BUG involves much more than a simple consumption practice. The extent to which this object intrudes on his everyday life is dehumanising in that the GLOW-BUG regulates lighting, heating, and when householders go to bed. This household object has become an unwelcome companion that constantly reminds Greg of the hardships, stress, and anxieties of poverty. Greg’s account also offers an everyday reference point to step out from in our analysis to consider further how his situation came to be. Our orientation towards referential generalisation attunes us to the GLOW-BUG being more than an isolated inanimate object in Greg’s home. To understand how this object and Greg’s practices of restraint came into being, we need to look at the underlying intergroup and institutional relationships that manifest in his home with this device. This focus is important because the GLOW-BUG is part of a larger societal whole. The very existence of the GLOW-BUG comprises more than some

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objective effort to meet a specific consumer demand. There is a direct relationship between Greg’s everyday experiences of restrained power use, the partial privatisation of New Zealand state-owned electricity companies, and the investment practices of more affluent groups seeking financial returns from such devices. Also implicated is the rise of penal welfare, which has resulted in reduced welfare support to pay for increased electricity prices. In this context, the GLOW-BUG is knowable and takes form through exploitative relationships between more well-­ heeled investors, the partially privatised electricity company, and consumers such as Greg. We read the meter as an artefact of extractive social hierarchies through which investors demand financial returns from power companies that extract these returns from people such as Greg. These relationships are central to the network of involvements or ‘referential whole’ within which the meter has emerged as a socio-political object (Heidegger 1927/1973). In presenting and talking about such objects, participants also locate themselves within the context of broader social structures, intergroup relations, and their agentive everyday practices of survival. A focus on referential generalisation exemplifies the importance of not simply moving from a consideration of specific experiences and objects to theoretical abstractions. Scholars can also resituate everyday objects (GLOW-BUG) and associated practices (turning off the heater) by considering the inequitable intergroup and socio-economic relations that give birth and utility to such phenomena. Working referentially, we can interrogate the social milieu through a focus on everyday experiences, objects, and restraints that inhabit society today. We can explore how depictions of, and references to, such objects and practices work to invoke socio-economic hierarchies that texture the lives of people in need. The re-telling of the relational origins and significance of such everyday objects invoke a labyrinth of social formations and practices that stretches out beyond the specific object (Miller 2010). As Fine (2006: 94) writes, …exemplars of social research that both sharpen and stretch across levels of analysis, interrogating the movements of power across history, structure, social relations and lives, and the theoretical understandings of the webbing that connects… In these works, no unit is too small to see the fingerprints of the world.

In the present context, the GLOW-BUG is a material fingerprint that comes to solidify or materialise aspects of an inequitable social order currently shaping everyday lives in poverty. The GLOW-BUG exemplifies how, in inequitable and exploitative societies, wealthy people become implicated in the hardships of less fortunate citizens. Ultimately, referential generalisation involves efforts to bridge the personal and societal in the conduct of everyday life. This approach involves efforts to extend present knowledge of how the everyday objects and practices that populate people’s lives reflect broader intergroup relationships in society. This is important because everyday hardship does not occur in a relational vacuum separate from the rest of society. Everyday lives in poverty are shaped by the actions of more affluent groups. As such, we would argue that referential generalisation from artefacts such as the GLOW-Bug meter allow us to demonstrate how the poverty experienced personally

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by our participants is inherently relational in nature (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Further, through referential processes of generalisation we do not seek to establish cause and effect relationships. Rather, we seek to resituate our participants’ everyday lives historically and socio-economically so that we can understand how such situations of adversity came to be (Becker 1998). This is about taking seriously the idea that artefacts from everyday life are products of history and the intergroup relationships that forge it. Briefly, objects such as those considered in this chapter can be understood in relation to the context of their invention and use within particular lifeworlds. Further, by immersing ourselves within the perspectives of our participants and their accounts of everyday practices of restraint that take form around particular objects, we can develop substantive knowledge about the implications of broader socio-economic relations in shaping everyday poverty (Jahoda 1992). We can also highlight targets for change such as the operation of New Zealand’s partially privatised power companies, and how these entities exacerbate hardship for people like Greg. Such exemplars afford resources for proactive change activities such as lobbying people in positions to influence such intergroup relationships. This raises the importance of empathetic generalisation as a basis for advocacy and social change.

Empathetic Generalisation Referentially, we live in a world where Arnold Abbott, a 90-year-old WWII veteran can be arrested in Fort Lauderdale twice in a week for feeding homeless people. You might think, surely this is a case of isolated lunacy. Well no. Across the USA, over 70 cities have passed ordinances that criminalise feeding homeless people. You might ask if this is just an American initiative. Again, no such policies have spread out from the USA like a pandemic and have infected city authorities around the world (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). For example, in New Zealand conservative politicians regularly try to introduce ordinances to ban homeless people from city spaces and to stop others from helping them. Some New Zealand business owners even hose homeless people down with cold water in the dead of winter as a means of moving them on. What we refer to as empathetic generalisation is central to our efforts to challenge such denizenising practices by lobbying decision-makers using images produced by our participants. As such, central to processes of generalisation for us are issues of praxis that reflect our desire to not simply engage in poverty tourism (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Getting involved and trying to help people at risk of further displacement is also necessary in order for us to avoid perpetuating the extractive and exploitive relations central to the ‘ruling psychology’ of our times (Seedat 2017). Many of our efforts at empathetic generalisation are designed to reduce the social distance between groups and to promote more humane responses to poverty and homelessness (Hodgetts et al. 2011). What we refer to as empathetic generalisation

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also resembles aspects of what Fine (2006) has termed provocative generalisability and Seedat (2017) terms witnessing. For us, this work involves provoking domiciled readers, for example, to recognise and feel some affinity with the everyday experiences of homeless people, to consider issues of fairness and inequality, and to imagine different responses to homelessness. In this context, we engage in referential generalisation is a dynamic and engaged research practice. In one sense, referential generalisation occurs when participants create memetic objects that establish some recognition of the general common ground we share as human beings (Delmar 2010) despite our positioning as homeless participants and domiciled researchers. Through being presented with participants images of their everyday lives we can come to empathise with them as fellow human beings with their own stresses and frustrations. As scholar activists, we also utilise processes of empathetic generalisation in presenting participant images to decision-makers as part of broader efforts to stimulate the emotional intelligence of decision-makers. Such action requires a reduction in the social distance between homeless people and decision-makers through the establishment of some common ground from which the in-humanity of many punitive responses to homelessness can be recognised, challenged, and changed. Let us provide a more concrete example of such work. Reflecting the overlapping nature of our three forms of generalisation, we drew on aspects of theoretical and referential generalisation in our efforts to promote empathetic generalisation. By way of background to the example to follow, two of us were asked to speak to a city council about proposed measures to ban homeless people and regulate how people rendered assistance to them. We wanted to reframe the conversation by ensuring that our dialogue was informed by the experiences of participants in our research. This involved presenting simple questions related to the everyday practices that populate homeless lifeworlds and then showing homeless people doing these ‘normal’ things in extraordinary situations (see Fig. 9.3). The point of this exercise was to disrupt a punitive mind-set that was dominating official narratives at the time and to enable these decision-makers to recognise homeless people as human beings. We did this through depictions of them doing the very things we all do each day, which the audience would likely recognise. Our effort as scholar activists involved the use of the materials presented in Fig. 9.3 to lobby city councillors when they considered a ban on homeless people from the Auckland CBD. The questions and pictures in Fig. 9.3 worked together much like music and lyrics to promote a shared emotional experience that is somewhat unique to each member of the audience. More broadly, these materials functioned to retexture the meeting space from a setting for planned exclusion to a setting for human inclusion in response to homelessness. The use of these questions and images worked to build a sense of familiarity and recognition that reduced the social distance between the city council audience and the homeless people depicted. This involved using participant pictures of homeless people engaging in the same everyday practices of sleeping, eating, and socialising as members of the city council audience. The difference is that homeless people engage in these domestic practices in public spaces.

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Fig. 9.3  Questions and images from a workshop with city councillors

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Presenting participant pictures in this way functioned to opened up a liminal space (Watkins and Shulman 2008) in which we could encourage councillors and their staff to pause for a moment, witness homelessness more from the perspective of homeless people, and then to reflect and think differently about how they might respond. We encouraged the audience to share in the everyday practices of street life, however vicariously, and in doing so to recognise the difficulties faced by homeless people (Watkins and Shulman 2008). We worked not only to promote the recognition (Delmar 2010) among decision-makers of the humanity of homeless people, but also to cultivate recognition that more humane responses to homelessness are warranted. As a result, initial plans to ban homeless people from the central business district and to regulate domiciled people who support homeless people were put on hold. The current English meaning of the term ‘sonder’ is relevant to understanding what went on in this liminal space. Sonder is central to our understanding of empathetic generalisation. Sonder refers to the personal realisation of the richness of the existence of other people. It invokes the insight that like each of us, other people are living lives as rich and complex as our own. We all share a complex humanity. Sonder also invokes the idea that all of our lives are occurring all at once, often oblivious of each other. It is this obliviousness to the realities of homelessness that we sought to rupture in the minds of our city council audience. As noted in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Koenig 2014), Sonder is: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness - an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

To sonder requires a person slowing down and take more time to think about people affected by issues such as homelessness, and in ways that render homeless people more familiar and socially close. In cultivating sonder, we worked to promote in our city council audience a sense of shared humanity towards urban strangers, from which humane responses could be developed. In the context of scholarly considerations of generalisation, our promotion of Sonder epitomises the centrality of issues of praxis and action, and efforts to improve the everyday circumstances of people living in poverty. This exemplar also demonstrates how small acts that cultivate empathy, recognition, and witnessing through the creative use of visual research artefacts can have larger and positive consequences for people on the margins of society. To be clear, we do not see such efforts at promoting sonder and empathy building as solely individual level interventions. We also engage in efforts to build empathy through a range of media advocacy activities (Hodgetts and Chamberlain 2014) designed to contribute to the reshaping of the broader structure of feeling (Williams 1977) in society that shape institutional responses to poverty and homelessness. This broader focused work also involves using participant pictures to re-humanise people in need and to increase understandings of the structural causes of poverty

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among more affluent groups in society. This is important because how populations and governmental organizations understand poverty often shapes how they respond. For example, if poverty is seen as resulting from personal laziness then responses often adopt a penal approach to welfare that targets laziness using a raft of punitive technologies of control (Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). Conversely, when poverty is seen as the result of structural inequalities that benefit a few affluent people at the expense of many other people of more modest means, then the targets of change can be shifted to social structures. Our efforts to promote sonder and empathy at individual, institutional, and societal levels have synergies with recent work by Seedat (2017) on the centrality of a dialectical humanistic ethos in South African psychology and society. This involves embracing notions of witnessing, emotional immediacy, consciousness raising, and social justice. Also central to Seedat’s (2017) approach to developing more humane and engaged approaches is the enabling of people to see themselves again “…as caring and compassionate social actors…” (p. 523). For us, such work also involves developing human-centred ways of knowing poverty and homelessness that seek to challenge the inequitable social structures that shape the everyday lives of people affected.

Conclusion This chapter has drawn on insights from several research projects exploring urban poverty and homelessness in partnership with the people concerned (Hodgetts et al. 2011, 2014, 2016a, b; Hodgetts and Stolte 2017). A core goal in this chapter has been to exemplify our evolving approach to researching poverty in everyday life and beyond. Our impressionistic orientation is designed to enable us to link structural changes in society with the hurt and hardships experienced in a growing number of daily lives. Central to this approach is the assemblage of a series of fleeting glimpses produced by research participants into an impression of a larger social totality. Drawing insights from seminal scholars of social life, including Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Marie Jahoda, and Max Horkheimer, we have explored the broader societal significance of the scenes, experiences, and relationships invoked by our participants through careful reflections on these fragments of everyday life. Like impressionist painters, we explore the general or societal through the particular or everyday (Davis 1973; Horkheimer 1941; Simmel 1903/1997). This approach enables us to see hardship and homelessness as fundamentally relational elements of history and the present social milieu. In adopting an impressionist orientation, we are intentionally breaking from rule governed approaches to qualitative research such as discourse analysis, grounded theory, and thematic analysis. Proponents of these approaches have dominated discussions of qualitative research in psychology. Such qualitative approaches have also become very popular, in part, because they offer the illusion of certainty through procedure that is very familiar to psychologists. These approaches do offer a set of

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procedures for beginning scholars to ‘learn how to do analysis’ and to develop less tangible tricks of the trade (Becker 1998). However, such approaches can also stifle creativity and reduce social analysis to a highly governed set of procedures. Central to these more established approaches—which in many respects constitute a salon of qualitative research in psychology—is the assumption that if one follows set procedures rigorously and employs ‘the correct steps’ then one can generate a plausible and in some cases even replicable analysis. We do not share this worldview. Rather than conducting micro-analyses of specific visual or verbal texts following a rigid set of coding strategies, our impressionistic analyses rely on our own experiences, creativity, instincts, and humanity of scholars. Our approach embraces the need for scholars to develop as virtuosos who are less rule governed (Flyvbjerg 2006). It necessitates following hunches more than someone else’s recipe for analysis. This is why we have not outlined detailed procedures for producing an impressionistic analysis. We have also resisted offering a recipe for analysis because far from constituting a set result, the impressions we construct of everyday poverty remain incomplete, partial, and open to further interpretation and development. In addition to focusing on the substantive issue of poverty, we have also focused on issues relating to the communicability of everyday experiences of adversity. We have illustrated how research participants experiencing poverty actively reconstruct and invoke hard and emotionally textured everyday experiences that remain entangled within the grim actuality of being homeless or without sufficient funds to heat and dry one’s modest dwelling. In order to help us understand what poverty is like, our participants provide creatively adulterated metonymic artefacts that come to resemble and stand in for their situations and experiences in general (cf., Benjiman 1933/1978, 1940/2002, 1982). These objects offer selected slithers of everyday lifeworlds that point to, but can never fully capture experiences of poverty. Correspondingly, we must go beyond viewing these artefacts as discrete units of data that hold set meanings in order to explore the structural and intergroup elements of poverty today. We move from these artefacts to consider the influence of more affluent groups in society in intensifying hardships enacted by people living in poverty. Along the way, our approach to such materials positions our participants as artisans in their own right who create memetic objects to render their experiences a little more tangible to us. This is also because for us poverty research is not simply a spectator sport. Central to efforts to generalise from what participants’ show and tell us are our efforts to encourage different audiences to recognise the appropriateness of humane, understanding and inclusive responses to the human misery that comes with societal inequalities, poverty and homelessness. Briefly, our approach involves developing impressions that gain broader relevance when we shift our gaze out beyond the experiential level of daily living and onto the socio-economic relations that suffuse local settings. This is a crucial interpretive shift that can reveal the threads of inequitable relations that are entangled within the everyday lives of our participants (Hodgetts et al. 2014). Such an approach is particularly applicable to psychological scholarship on the conduct of everyday life, which asserts that human action exists simultaneously in both personal and communal life (Hodgetts et al. 2018). As scholars of the quotidian, we see our role

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as one of developing impressions of the underlying societal significance of local events for a society in motion (Simmel 1900/1978/2004). We do this by capturing fleeting moments through the use of visual methods in order to consider the social formations and structures at play in shaping these particular scenes. Often fleeting memetic images of everyday situations afford anchor points for developing impressions of the broader phenomenon of poverty and homelessness that are reproduced in  local scenes. The resulting analysis is a play on the taken-for-granted, which documents and interprets as a means of de-familiarising harmful societal arrangements that are often normalised and taken-for-granted in society today.

References Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted lives. Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge: Polity. Becker, H. (1998). Tricks of the trade. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benjamin, W. (1933/1978). On the mimetic faculty. In Reflections: Essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (E. Jephcott, Trans.) (pp. 333–336). New York: Schocken. Benjamin, W. (1940/2002). The arcades project (H. Eiland & K. McLaughlan, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. (1982). Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans.). London: Fontana. Davis, M. (1973). Georg Simmel and the aesthetics of social reality. Social Forces, 51(3), 320–329. Delmar, C. (2010). “Generalizability” as recognition: Reflections on a foundational problem in qualitative research. Qualitative Studies, 1, 115–128. Dreier, O. (2016). Conduct of everyday life: Implications for critical psychology. In E. Schraube & C. Hojholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 15–33). London: Routledge. Fine, M. (2006). Bearing witness: Methods for researching oppression and resistance—A textbook for critical research. Social Justice Research, 19(1), 83–108. Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12, 219–145. Flyvbjerg, B., Landman, T., & Schram, S. (2012). Real social science: Applied phronesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frisby, D. (1981). Sociological impressionism: A reassessment of Georg Simmel’s social theory. London: Heinemann. Goffman, I. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organisation of gatherings. New York: Free Press. Halkier, B. (2011). Methodological practices in analytical generalisation. Qualitative Inquiry, 17, 787–797. Halkier, B., & Jensen, I. (2011). Methodological challenges in using practice theory in consumption research. Journal of Consumer Culture, 11, 101–123. Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). London: SCM Press. Hodgetts, D., & Chamberlain, K. (2014). Chapter 26: Analysing news media. In U. Flick (Ed.), Sage handbook of qualitative data analysis. London: Sage. Hodgetts, D., & O’Doherty, K. (2018). Introduction to applied social psychology. In K. O’Doherty & D. Hodgetts (Eds.), Sage handbook of applied social psychology. London: Sage. Hodgetts, D., & Stolte, O. (2017). Urban poverty and health inequalities: A relational approach. London/New York: Routledge. Hodgetts, D., Chamberlain, K., & Radley, A. (2007). Considering photographs never taken during photo-production project. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4, 263–280.

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Hodgetts, D., Drew, N., Stoltie, O., Sonn, C., Nikora, N., & Curtis, C. (2010). Social psychology and everyday life. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hodgetts, D., Stolte, O., Radley, A., Groot, S., Chamberlain, K., & Leggatt-Cook, C. (2011). ‘Near and far’: Social distancing in domiciled characterizations of homeless people. Urban Studies, 48, 1739–1753. Hodgetts, D., Chamberlain, K., Groot, S., & Tankel, Y. (2014). Urban poverty, structural violence & welfare provision for 100 families in Auckland. Urban Studies, 51, 2036–2051. Hodgetts, D., Groot, S., Garden, E., & Chamberlain, K. (2016a). The precariat, everyday life & objects of despair. In C. Howarth & E. Andreouli (Eds.), Everyday politics. London: Palgrave. Hodgetts, D., Groot, S., Chamberlain, K., & Gardener, E. (2016b). Debt in the everyday lives of 100 families experiencing urban poverty in New Zealand. In C. Walker & S. Degirmencioglu (Eds.), Social and psychological dimensions of personal debt and the debt industry. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hodgetts, D., Stolte, O., Groot, S., & Drew, N. (2018). Homelessness, mimesis and the flânerie. International Perspectives in Psychology, 7, 91–106. Holzkamp, K. (1995/2016). Conduct of everyday life as a basic concept of critical psychology. In E. Schraube & C. Hojholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 65–98). London: Routledge. Horkheimer, M. (1941). Notes on institute activities. Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9, 121–123. Jahoda, M. (1992). Reflections on Marienthal and after. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 65, 355–358. Jahoda, M., Lazarsfeld, P., & Zeisel, H. (1933/1971). Marienthal: A sociography of an unemployed community. London: Tavistock. Koenig, J.  (2014). The dictionary of obscure sorrows. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkoML0_FiV4 Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago. Miller, D. (2010). Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press. Seedat, M. (2017). Psychology and humanism in the democratic South African Imagination. South Africa Journal of Psychology, 47, 520–530. Simmel, G. (1900/1978/2004). The philosophy of money (D. Frisby, Trans.). London: Routledge. Simmel, G. (1903/1997). The metropolis and mental life. In D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (pp.174–187). London: Sage. Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 217–285). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Wacquant, L. (2009). The body, the ghetto and the penal state. Qualitative Sociology, 32, 101–129. Watkins, M., & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward psychologies of liberation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford.

Part III

Transformative Lines of Situated Generalization

Chapter 10

Generalizations in Situated Practices Ole Dreier

The chapter addresses basic issues about generalization from the perspective of Critical Psychology. It is framed by a critical analysis of the mainstream notion of generalization in psychology because psychologists are educated in this notion and constantly confronted with it in the research literature and in discussions, reviews, and evaluations of their work. This complicates the development of an alternative notion of generalization which does not, implicitly or explicitly, take over key features of the mainstream notion. The purpose of the chapter is to present such an alternative conception of generalization in Critical Psychology by focusing on its key characteristics, accomplishments, issues, and revisions. Human beings are theorized as participants in structurally arranged, situated social practices. Their psychological processes unfold in, and hang together with, their participation and conduct of everyday life in such social practices. So, their psychological processes are always affected by being directed at and part of situated nexuses in subjects’ lives in social practices. We must, therefore, generalize about subjects’ psychological functioning in situated nexuses. But, while it is necessary to establish generalizations in capturing concrete nexuses, it cannot be the sole purpose of research. We must capture how general and particular aspects hang together dynamically in nexuses and how their situated composition affects the qualities and status of the aspect or problem we study. Case studies offer unique possibilities for accomplishing this which is briefly illustrated by an example. It is, finally, argued that grasping phenomena and problems in situated nexuses of social practice is necessary in basic theorizing as well as in knowledge-based expertise and professional interventions in subjects’ problems in the nexuses of their everyday lives. Like most discussions on generalization, this chapter focuses on empirical generalization though critical issues about conceptual and theoretical generalization also need to be addressed.

O. Dreier (*) Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_10

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Generalization in Mainstream Psychology Mainstream psychology is a science of variables (Holzkamp 1983, 2013a). Its knowledge rests on isolating and defining a set of independent and dependent variables and on examining whether the independent variable produces the dependent variable. For instance, whether being exposed to certain stimuli produces depression, anxiety, or what have you, or whether being exposed to a certain therapy is a cure of depression, anxiety, or what have you. Variables must be well defined in the sense of clearly delimited from other variables and phenomena—though some variables are so broad that they really are ill-defined, e.g., depression, anxiety, and cure. The ordering of variables in a study, hence, separates and isolates them from other variables and phenomena. Thus abstracted, the causal relation between independent and dependent variables is examined. The findings from such studies are fixed, causal relationships between abstracted variables. They display an isolated generality of fixed causal links between independent and dependent variables which is immutable and even unaffected by the changes it may be claimed to cause. A complex set of such well-defined variables is construed by carrying out many studies on different variables. The causal scheme of variables is also elaborated by introducing moderator and intervening variables. Findings are generalized by calculating the response frequencies in the study population of being exposed to the independent variable. A mean response is constructed which, strictly speaking, represents no particular person. It is given a name and treated as the general result. Variations in responses from the mean value are considered random. We are, thus, offered an abstract generalization of variables in relation to which individual responses in the sample population are seen as random variations. These variations are viewed as inessential particularities though further studies may turn some into subtypes of a similar abstract kind, e.g., different types of anxiety or depression susceptible to different treatments. The generalization of a finding also depends on the representativity of the research population in relation to the population at large so that the study may be claimed to represent what could be found in the population at large. The generalization is thus claimed to hold for the population at large as the most widespread response, phenomenon, state of affairs, etc. Yet, what is most frequent and widespread may be a passing, historically shifting and superficial affair while other crucial phenomena, now found infrequently or singularly, may hold the potential to become a better or more adequate response or state of affairs (Haug 1981). Moreover, the current frequency of a response or state of affairs does not tell us how other, better or worse, responses or states of affairs may be brought about. Smith (1990) argues that the isolated, experimental setup creates a special kind of extra-local knowledge which appears less doubtful because it seemingly stays clear of all the bracketed influences and is supported by the power of the institutional epistemology and standpoint of science. Subjects confronted with such extra-­ local knowledge experience it as a reified expression of their own powers. They are held to be subsumed under these reifications or to subsume themselves by

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i­nterpreting themselves with these abstractions. Such knowledge is tailored to govern and control populations (Holzkamp 1983). General, empirical concepts in mainstream psychology are constructed by assigning names to generalized, abstract variables. Such empirical concepts, thus, refer to abstract elements containing their own essential properties. This introduces an elementarism and essentialism in the conceptual vocabulary of mainstream psychology. The functioning of the human psyche is then conceived as a causal interplay between mutually independent, elementary essences. Mainstream psychology’s conception of the environment is also elementarist because it studies how isolated stimuli affect dependent variables while other properties of the environment are bracketed. However, generalized relations between many concepts—that is, theories—are too complex to investigate directly with a methodology of isolated, well-defined variables. Instead, researchers must make them up in their interpretations (Holzkamp 1981) or stipulate them as their beliefs. The foundation of theories, hence, remains arbitrary and not historically founded (Holzkamp 1983). There are many reasons to move beyond such an impersonal and decontextualized notion of knowledge. Instead of variables and their interrelations, we must grasp concrete phenomena and their interrelations as aspects of the lives of individual persons, e.g., not as a specimen of an abstract category of disease or anxiety but as the diseases or anxieties of persons in their lives. General mainstream findings and concepts offer an abstract and reduced grasp of concrete issues and phenomena deprived of their individual and situated qualities and dynamics. Particular individuals and local practices are relegated to the background and must subsume themselves under these generalizations. Individuality and locality are then turned into arbitrary variations in a playing field of general, causal variables. This is especially problematic in psychology which, in theory and practice, primarily deals with concrete individuals and local practices. Becoming a recognized mainstream science with general laws about general variables stands in the way of psychology becoming a truly concrete science.

Generalization in Critical Psychology Holzkamp developed a basic approach to generalization in Critical Psychology which he published between 1973 and 83 and which draws on his previous work on theory and experiment in psychology (Holzkamp 1981/1964). This approach replaces the study of causal relations between delimited variables in an isolated situation, which are generalized to a population, by something radically different. The basic methodology of a research discipline must capture the crucial characteristics, relations, and dynamics of its subject matter. On the background of a collaborative reconstruction of the psycho-phylogeny of the emergence of the human species, he insists that psychology must acknowledge the basic fact that human beings live in a society by re-producing and changing their social conditions as their possibilities of

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living. Their potentials for doing so constitute a species-specific, societal nature of human beings with psychological potentials for understanding and handling their social conditions by taking part in social practices. Psychology must, accordingly, grasp how the scope of action possibilities of individual subjects in their immediate life situation is mediated by the structure of meaningful conditions in the society they live in. It must comprehend how subjects grasp and handle their mediated scope of possibilities from their first-person perspective in their immediate, local situation (Holzkamp 1983). Mainstream psychology is bound to miss such social qualities of individual psychological functioning because it studies variable-shaped response frequencies of populations to isolated conditions. This conception aims at grasping individual subjects. They are not regarded as causally determined by their conditions as independent variables and their individual characteristics and differences are not seen as random variations on mean values. The conditions of individual subjects constitute a scope of possibilities which they may relate to and realize in various ways. How they do so, depends on the needs, interests, abilities, and reasons which they develop in relation to their scopes of possibilities. From the perspective of individual subjects, their experience of their scope of possibilities highlights the meaning of these possibilities and their reasons for realizing them given the abilities, needs, and interests they develop by living in relation to them. Relations between social conditions and individual activities are not causal but relations of possibilities and reasons. We must, therefore, generalize about the scopes of possibilities and reasons of individual subjects. Subjects sharing important social conditions exhibit important commonalities in their scopes of possibilities and reasons. They may be grouped into an empirically generalized type of scope of possibilities and reasons. This approach to generalization is inspired by Lewin’s (1981) view on generalizing from this case to that typical case. When a generalized, typical scope rests on its members having common possibilities for realizing general societal conditions, commonality between members as opposed to inequality between them becomes the core issue. This corresponds with a socialist view on the distribution and differences between members’ scopes of possibilities. Individual differences are grasped and valued in relation to the societal structure of possibilities rather than to the population. Differences between individuals are then not random variations in a population but linked with social differences in their scopes of possibilities which may be changed in the course of increasing their joint command over societal processes and resources. Their mental processes are also not only grasped as potentials for their way of living but as affected by it. It is a social conception of individuality, of the social lives and functioning of individual subjects. Comparisons between them are grounded in the structure of possibilities in a society instead of in attributing different, fixed individual properties to them which are claimed to cause their peculiar behavior such as mainstream notions of personality traits. This conception implies a social critique geared at reducing inequalities and strengthening commonalities. Established types of scopes of possibilities may be examined in research projects on exemplary practices. A type may be contested or revised if subjects do not fit into it as assumed. Individual subjects may also consider themselves members of a type

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or not by comparing their scopes and reasons with those captured in the type. Such comparisons may broaden and develop their knowledge of self and others and guide their ways of living and dealing with various issues. Still, individual members of a type are not identical. They are more or less similar cases of a typical scope of possibilities grouped due to widespread commonalities but different in other respects. The generalization of a type is an approximation and our knowledge of individual subjects is skewed and abstract if we only consider the commonalities but not the differences. Any kind of generalization requires a basic frame of comparison. In mainstream psychology, it is a population with general means on isolated variables whereas, to Holzkamp, the overall social structure is the general frame in relation to which commonalities and differences are defined. Individual subjects on similar positions in the overall structure then face similar scopes of possibilities mediated by it. And individual subjects in similar local situations associated with a social position face similar scopes of possibilities mediated by it. Holzkamp holds a nested view of social structure in which individual subjects are grasped as affected by and addressing the overall social structure in position-specific and locally mediated ways. But, as we move closer to individual subjects in particular situations, the analysis becomes more complex and the approximation becomes looser or holds fewer members. In his early work on sensory knowledge, Holzkamp (1973: 268) states that individual subjects may perceive phenomena as they appear in their immediate situation or comprehend how these phenomena are mediated by the social structure. Individual knowledge then involves a crucial move beyond the appearances in the immediate situation and critical reflection—in comprehending the essential connections and totality—is a necessary step towards knowledge. The immediacy of situated perception is superficial, illusory, and uncritical and distance is a requirement for comprehension. But comprehending the overall structure is a wide-ranging affair and hard to define in its totality—especially as an individual accomplishment. To Holzkamp, any local grasp of the overall structure is partial because it is afforded by a particular location and perspective on the social structure. The particular aspects visible in the situated perspective on the social structure refer to a comprehensive totality beyond the situated grasp. The situated perspective must then be complemented by other views from other locations. In passing, Holzkamp mentions that changes of location—through the subject’s activities and/or movements of the objects of knowledge—may increase the adequacy of knowledge. While Holzkamp insists on grasping a local situation by capturing its mediation through common features in a social structure, its other local sources and aspects and its particular composition fall out of focus. This is the drawback of the requirement for distancing in obtaining knowledge. But if the local sources are not involved in obtaining knowledge, it becomes, strictly speaking, impossible to show that the overall mediated aspects are most important in local situations. They must be assumed to be so. And their particular, local status and meaning cannot be determined without studying their situated meaning in the composition of the local situation. A generalized type then offers individuals a basis for comparing

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commonalities and differences between their scopes, but not their concrete composition and dynamics. After 1983, Holzkamp elaborates his notion of generalization in two respects which expand his view on individual subjectivity while maintaining that individual lives primarily are mediated by the overall social structure. In the first elaboration, he argues that we must define the pattern of individual subjects’ reasons for action in relation to their scope of possibilities in a particular position/situation (e.g., 1986; see also Markard 2010). Subjects hold patterns of reasons because they relate to their complexly structured scope of possibilities as well as to their complex set of needs and interests, abilities, and cognitive and emotional processes in relation hereto. A typified general pattern of reasons in relation to a general scope of possibilities for subjects in a similar position/situation offers individual subjects a richer, more valuable knowledge. But establishing such a type is more complex because we must capture and match the complex structure of meaningful societal scopes of possibilities with the complex pattern of subjective reasons. It becomes less likely that we can define a generalized type of scopes/reasons precisely and with a close fit between individual members. While subjects already relate to their scopes of possibilities in varied ways, adding their patterns of reasons increases the variability and complexity. A subject’s pattern of reasons may not even be so stable, unvarying, and general. Holzkamp’s last elaboration and revision of his conception (2013b) is triggered by the insufficiency of anchoring subjects in an immediate situation within a social structure. Subjects are involved in conducting their everyday life and phenomena and problems must be studied as they appear in particular scenes of their conduct of everyday life. Scenes are, so to speak, situations anchored in subjects’ concrete conduct of their everyday lives. Subjects’ localities and activities then come more to the fore. Studying common problems in particular scenes may establish links to other subjects through typification. Holzkamp views scenes and the conduct of everyday life as affected by the mediated influence of the social structure therein. He also suggests studying how a problem—say, about learning in school—is affected by a subject’s conduct of everyday life in other social contexts. But he did not manage to complete his work on the conduct of everyday life. Thus, he did not go much into a subject’s conduct of everyday life as a complex whole or into how the composition, dynamics, and issues of the conduct of everyday life are embedded in the social structure of everyday life.

Comprehending Subjects in Situated Nexuses of Practice This section presents how I continued developing the conceptual approach of Critical Psychology including the approach to generalization arguing that generalizations are part of complex, concrete nexuses of practice (e.g., Dreier 2007, 2008, 2015, 2016, in press).

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Picking up the argument where Holzkamp’s work ended, concrete situations and scenes are part of a social practice in a local social context and affected by it. They must be grasped accordingly. And these social practices in social contexts are part of the overall social practice of a society through which this society and the life of its members are re-produced and changed. Indeed, the complex practice of a society is divided into many social practices in different social contexts which hang together in that way. This hanging-togetherness constitutes the structure of practice of a society. How they hang together, rests on the socio-material arrangement of the structure of practice of a society which also involves arrangements of pathways and links and access or exclusion between contextual social practices as well as arrangements of the practices in these contexts. We can, hence, not comprehend an aspect of a societal practice, context, scene, and situation as an isolated element or stimulus. Instead, we must grasp how it is involved in a particular social practice that hangs together in a particular way. Its qualities and meaning do not adhere to it as an isolated element but are affected by the composition of the social practice it is involved in and its particular status in it. Likewise, aspects of the overall social structure gain a particular meaning for participants in the practice of a local social context depending on how these aspects are involved in its arrangements and composition. To assist us analytically, we, therefore, need a concept about such hanging-togetherness. I call it the nexus of a society, a social practice, a social context, etc. Other related concepts are insufficient because it is too ambiguous whether they merely stipulate that certain aspects are linked, connected, related, or that they also hang together, in the sense that they always are aspects of a nexus of social practice and cannot exist and go on outside any nexus. Moreover, nexuses of social practice are dynamic because they are re-produced and changed in practice and because they hold internal tensions and contradictions. Their composition and the status and power of particular aspects then fluctuate, vary, and change and some aspects cease to matter while others emerge. As embodied beings, individual subjects always are situated in the nexus of a local social context (cf. Valsiner 2015: 235) and live by taking part in re-producing and changing social practices. A person’s life and psychological functioning then always hangs together with the world and in the world with its arrangements of social practice. Persons survive and develop by hanging together with the world in contextual social practices. They must, therefore, be theorized as participants in social practices. A basic approach to persons cannot focus only on persons and situations as usually seen in psychology. Their activity as ongoing participation in the social practice of a local social context must be added as a third dimension. Moreover, their psychological processes are not linked with an isolated stimulus but directed at their ongoing participation in the nexus of social practice of this context. And their psychological processes do not function as mutually separate elements but are combined and configured as aspects of their participation in the situated nexus of this ongoing social practice. The anti-elementarist and anti-essentialist critique of the methodology of mainstream psychology is, thus, founded in a matching view on individual psychological functioning. Furthermore, as a participant, what a person can do and does is rarely only up to, or only matters to, him- or herself but

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also, though not in the same way, to the other involved participants. Participants’ possibilities, and the cooperation and conflicts between them, thus depend on each other and hang together with the contextual arrangements and structures (Højholt 2016). When we study persons in a local social context—and in its situations and scenes—we must, hence, consider the purposes and socio-material arrangements of the social practice of this context with the distribution of positions, responsibilities, and tasks between the participants. In doing so, we take the nexus of this contextual social practice as our starting point and important source of knowing the participating subjects and we contextualize their different powers and scopes of possibilities. On this background, we can study subjects’ experiences, states of mind, concerns, stakes, understandings, and stances in relation to a situation/scene in the social practice of this context. We can analyze how subjects configure their experiences and participation and what their concerns and stakes, understandings and stances hang together with in the social practice of this context. We can also investigate how the nexus of practice in this context affects the meaning of a particular phenomenon or problem for a subject, how he or she experiences it as well as his or her possibilities in relation to it. In doing so, we grasp subjects in the dynamic nexus of a local, contextual practice. By taking the typical arrangement of certain contextual, social practices—e.g., therapy sessions, classrooms, work places, families—as our starting point, we can identify similarities and differences between the concrete practices we study, establish typified generalizations of the subjective phenomena and problems therein and analyze how and why they differ in certain respects. We can also grasp whether and how subjects are aware of and relate to the general aspects of the typical arrangements. But subjects do not live by all conditions around them. They pick out and realize some possibilities—not all and not the same. Individual life is a selective affair. Social practice is so rich and complex that individual subjects must respond and live in selective ways. Because their conditions hang together, they must pick up other possibilities later. Individual knowledge is also selective. It highlights, extracts and configures some aspects while setting aside others—even when subjects seek to grasp the connections between partial knowledges in a more comprehensive grasp of the nexus of historical practice (Holzkamp 1973: 373). In fact, knowledge is not a part–whole relationship because knowing everything is a contradiction in terms. We can always ask what is not attended to, set aside, or ignored. Some of these aspects may be picked up later and this may lead to reconsiderations and changes in a person’s knowledge and participation. But individual knowledge is marked by degrees of uncertainty, obscurity, by not quite understanding and being aware of understanding only to some degree and in some respects. Critical questions must, therefore, be asked about what is not attended to and ignored. Moreover, in complex social structures of practice, subjects live by taking part in more than one social practice and context. In the course of their activities, they move into other contexts to take part in other practices. What was said above about their participation in the social practice of a context must then be considered again.

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But taking part in other social practices/contexts has other meanings and involves other possibilities for subjects. They do so for other reasons and it involves other problems. If a common problem is involved, it is a similar problem and not an identical one. It is affected by being part of another nexus so that it emerges and passes in other ways with other possibilities and stakes of dealing with it and another meaning to the subject. Problems are part of different nexuses in diverse contexts. Furthermore, in other social practices/contexts, persons often take part with other co-participants. Subjects’ participations in different social practices/contexts affect their generalizations. They get to know other things and other aspects of a phenomenon/problem in other practices/contexts, including what it hangs together with in these other practices/contexts which creates other possibilities for dealing with it. They may learn why a problem is similar or different in other nexuses and which aspects of these nexuses are particularly important in this respect. They are, in short, afforded a more differentiated and diverse basis for generalizing about it. When different social practices/contexts afford diverse sources of knowing, persons must find out which sources they trust, appropriate, and use to reconsider their understandings or let pass them by and disregard. They may also seek to grasp the connections between various partial knowledges in a more encompassing comprehension. The more comprehensive and differentiated basis of knowing and generalizing confirms, revises, and expands their knowledge from former contexts and their understanding of what is common/general. This view on developing a more substantial knowledge contrasts with the notion that we must gain distance from immediate situations to rise above the superficial appearances of what is taken for granted and acquire deep knowledge. Rather than simply being at a distance, subjects are somewhere else with other arrangements and sources of knowing which matter precisely because they offer other possibilities of knowing. These other sources must then be compared, confronted, and combined into a revised, more comprehensive understanding. Finally, subjects may try to find out how a certain phenomenon or problem unfolds and is dealt with in other similar social practices, say, in other families than their own. How and why does it unfold, and is dealt with, differently in similar practices? What can a participant in such a local practice learn from other similar practices? Is a way of dealing with a phenomenon or problem typical of a certain social practice? What do the various instances then have in common? And how do these commonalities hang together with other aspects of the nexuses of this typical social practice? Because persons live by taking part in several social practices/contexts, it is insufficient to consider how their experiences, concerns, reasons, etc. in the social practice of their present context are mediated by the overall social structure. Their experiences, concerns, reasons, and participation here are also mediated by their experiences, concerns, reasons, and participation in other contexts. In fact, persons living by taking part in several social contexts/practices must pursue many concerns in their personal trajectories of participation across several social contexts/practices. These pursuits depend on the structural arrangement of access or exclusion, ­available

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positions as well as the places and time intervals of social practices are part of the structural arrangements of social practices. Persons also take advantage of relevant differences between the purposes and scopes of those practices for their pursuit of a certain concern. Such pursuits in trajectories of participation offer important opportunities for learning and generalizing. But their pursuits in trajectories are involved in a more general personal effort. Living in a complex structure of social practice, subjects must seek to conduct their everyday life in order to get done what they must do and what matters most to them, take care that their life does not fall apart in the complexities and contradictions of social practices, and establish an everyday life with the qualities which suit them best and which they treasure most (Dreier 2008, 2016; Holzkamp 2013b). They must also arrange their conduct of life in relation to the socio-structural arrangements for how everyday lives may be lived across times and places. Individual subjects’ participations in various contexts are, thus, involved in their conduct of everyday life across them and so are the various situations and scenes. Subjects’ participations in various contexts, scenes, and situations, hence, gain a particular status and meaning for them. Their concerns, stakes, reasons, and problems in relation to various contexts hang together in their conduct of everyday life and must be grasped on the background of their status in its dynamic and contradictory nexus. How they deal with them in particular social contexts is, thus, mediated by their conduct of everyday life and its pursuits across contexts. In short, the way individual subjects conduct their everyday life frames how they address possibilities and problems, learn and generalize. When social practices change, subjects encounter these changes in their everyday life and may be challenged to maintain their present conduct of everyday life or change it in some respects. In changes of social practice, some aspects lose, increase, or change their significance while others arise or replace them and their composition changes (cf. Juul Jensen 2013: 188). They then hang together in other ways with a changing dynamic of re-production and further changes. In the process, participants’ possibilities change and so do their understandings of these practices and of themselves, their problems, concerns, and reasons in them. Changes of social practice may be brought about by mediated influences from elsewhere, by events impinging on this practice, by the accumulated effects of many minor alterations, by participants’ pursuits or by a mixture or sequence thereof. It, therefore, varies to what degree participants see these changes as outcomes of their purposeful efforts or as occurring without their doing so that they are exposed to them and must accommodate their participation. Like the dynamics of re-production of social practices, their dynamics of change is characterized by tensions, ruptures, and contradictions and by ensuing conflicts between the participants. This affects participants’ understandings, concerns, and pursuits so that the course of changes may become more erratic. Issues of change may become objects of struggle between participants, including struggles to find each other again in more concerted pursuits and understandings. Furthermore, changes in social practices and in participants’ lives therein are open-ended. Their processes, phenomena, and problems reach no finite end-­ point and complete definition and participants’ understandings and knowledge

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about them remain incomplete. In analyzing change processes, we must, therefore, consider what is not drawn on, set aside, sidestepped, avoided, or ignored—as well as the consequences thereof for what takes place.

Generalizations in Situated Nexuses of Practice A core claim in this chapter is that whichever phenomenon or problem we study, it always exists in situated, dynamic nexuses of practice where it hangs together with varying other aspects. These nexuses are its everyday realities and their situated composition and dynamics affect its qualities and meaning and the subject’s experiences, concerns, and possibilities in relation to it. Concepts guide us in capturing nexuses and certain aspects thereof by identifying general aspects as non-identical commonalities between nexuses. However, the purpose of our work is not just to sum up generalities but to capture how general and particular aspects hang together concretely in a nexus and how this affects their meaning and dynamic. In doing so, we seek to comprehend nexuses regardless of how widespread or frequent they are. Qualitative case-studies possess obvious advantages in acquiring such knowledge. Cases represent different, concrete nexuses with different qualities, meanings, dynamics, and possibilities of an investigated phenomenon or problem. If we make it our purpose to capture only what these cases have in common (Valsiner 2015: 237), our analysis illuminates generalities but discards differences between them. We then miss the chance of coming to know how a general phenomenon or problem hangs together with varying other aspects in nexuses and how these varying nexuses affect the general phenomenon or problem and subjects’ possibilities of dealing with it and changing it. By studying these nexuses, we also gain a richer conception of the commonalities of the phenomenon or problem which is not identical in different nexuses and cases. Indeed, cases show how the phenomenon or problem may vary and why. They provide different exemplars of a common phenomenon or problem and of what may affect its qualities and the possibilities of addressing it and changing it. The singularity of cases, nexuses, phenomena, and problems is then not erased but grasped as a varying dynamic composition of general and particular aspects across cases. In my book Psychotherapy in Everyday Life (2008), I presented, in detail and at length, a case study of a family referred to therapy with a 12-year-old daughter suffering from anxiety attacks. Guided by the general conception of anxiety as an anticipated—but sometimes displaced—response to losing control and being unable to handle situations and events (Holzkamp 1983), the girl’s anxiety attacks are analyzed in the nexuses of the social contexts/practices where they occurred. There are obvious differences between how her anxiety attacks emerge and pass off in these different nexuses. Her experiences and feelings of anxiety also differ as do her challenges and possibilities of addressing and overcoming these attacks, say, at home, in school, in sessions, and when she is out and about in other places. In these contexts, her anxieties hang together with different other aspects and there are different things

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at stake for her in dealing with being terrified and seeking to overcome the attacks. In school, she is, for instance, terrified of being harassed by the other children if they find out that she suffers from anxieties. So, she seeks to avoid attacks by not going to the toilet because she cannot stay behind its closed door, by withdrawing socially to avoid other children witnessing her attacks, etc. This conflicts with the increasing importance to her, and to her developing conduct of everyday life, of having friends and being part of communities of children and this conflict affects her self-understanding and how she sees herself able to deal with her anxieties. As a consequence, she increasingly withdraws and spends her time after school at home. Her parents find it difficult to practice indirect care for her and her anxieties when she is in other places without them. They then concentrate on their direct care for her and her anxieties at home. Here they do what they can for her to avoid attacks, for instance, by accompanying her to the toilet, to the basement and in the lift and by bringing and fetching her when she is going places. But none of this helps her overcome her anxiety attacks. She, rather, becomes more dependent of her parents and hangs around more at home in a docile, self-depreciating, and dissatisfied manner. How do the girl’s experiences and understandings of her anxieties and the ways in which she tries to overcome having attacks change in her participation in and across her situated nexuses of practice? At the beginning of therapy, she experiences her anxiety attacks as gushing forth in her unpredictably and uncontrollably due to an incomprehensible personal weakness so that she finds it difficult to do anything other than to try to forestall and avoid them. She gradually realizes that her anxiety attacks hang together with what she may run into, how she can handle and get out of difficulties, and how others may help her or make them worse in the nexuses of her social practices. She also pays more attention to how her attacks limit important possibilities and pursuits for her and considers what it may take to re-open them. Her understanding of her anxiety attacks, thus, changes from a personalized notion of an internal characteristic, operating as an uncontrollable cause of her behavior, to realizing that her anxiety points beyond herself into her participation in various nexuses and arises for more or less understandable reasons therein. This understanding is consolidated by her attempts to do something about her anxiety attacks by finding out what they hang together with, finding other ways of addressing these problematic nexuses and finding and becoming able to seize suitable opportunities and events for overcoming having attacks. This gradually evolves into becoming able to make situated analyses of her anxiety attacks, their varying nexuses, and what it may take to avert and overcome them. These situated analyses are guided by her understanding of what her various anxiety attacks have in common. This change process is promoted by what the girl learns about her anxiety problem by comparing its situated occurrences and qualities so that their commonalities as well as why they differ in different nexuses stand out more clearly. That leads to a richer and more coherent understanding of her anxiety which is more explicit about what she must consider and take advantage of in dealing with it and overcoming it in various nexuses. So, her understanding of her problem changes as she changes her awareness of how and where she may change it and reappreciates and

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discovers possibilities for overcoming it without getting stuck in insurmountable challenges and conflicts. Her motivation to overcome her anxiety attacks also develops along with her understanding of her concerns and possibilities. She directs her pursuit of these changes at the practices she is most concerned to participate in and these pursuits are guided by the challenges and conflicts these practices hold for overcoming them. Still, like all knowledge of persons in social practice, her understanding of her anxieties remains marked by degrees of uncertainty and obscurity. And, although she gradually overcomes her crippling attacks, she will, like any human subject, always be able to respond with anxiety in future situations. But mostly anxieties do not stand in the way of living and developing. They assist subjects in identifying what they need to address in order to get on with and develop their life. Finally, other similar cases reveal other concrete nexuses of such anxieties than those sketched above. By comparing such cases, we may gradually map various nexuses which are important in generating and overcoming such anxiety problems.

The Status of Generalizations Like many other disciplines, mainstream psychology is based on a procedure of separating and isolating variables—but not of connecting aspects and capturing how they hang together in concrete nexuses of practice. The systematic procedure of abstraction and isolation leads to an abstract elementarist and essentialist grasp of phenomena and their properties. It promotes a particular view on general knowledge. We may call it a culture of extracted generalization. Because this procedure cannot investigate complex topics and nexuses directly, it must gather piecemeal knowledge of relations between abstracted variables from separate studies as mutually independent pieces to a puzzle, or the pieces must be combined arbitrarily in the researcher’s interpretation. Such mainstream knowledge is geared for use in governing populations. The generalization of a variable rests on its calculated mean value in the normal distribution of the research population, and it is taken to hold in general in the population as whole. A similar downsized knowledge is assumed to hold in governing a sub-population with specific conditions, problems, etc. or as the general response of a particular individual to a certain independent variable. Science is, indeed, mostly conceived as addressing and characterizing what is general. It is work in general terms on a general subject matter (Ruben 1978). Particularities and singularities are of little concern or discarded. Even researchers insisting on the need to analyze cases argue that the purpose of case analyses is to identify and extract a general attribute (Valsiner 2015) or a general set of attributes (Tateo 2015) from these cases. But, it is unlikely that different cases hold a completely identical attribute or set of attributes. Valsiner (2015) and Holzkamp (1983), hence, focus on close similarities as non-identical commonalities but do not pay much attention to the co-existing differences and to what produces the varying constellations of similarities and differences. Some attributes may also be missing in

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some cases, or replaced by others, and “attributes” really are aspects of nexuses in contexts of practice where they are affected by being linked in varying and changing ways. That is why we must study concrete nexuses and how aspects thereof hang together in varying and changing ways. Because mainstream generalizations are not conceived in this way, we face difficult reconsiderations of whether a particular generalization can be upheld or how it must be modified to hold as a common aspect of concrete nexuses. Wittgenstein even warns against putting all stakes on strict generalizations because clearly delimited generalizations are thin or not always evident. In our language, he argues, concepts represent co-existing similarities and differences of heterogeneous elements displaying family resemblances (1953: § 66 and 67). Common aspects are then not identical but similar and co-exist with differences so that concepts refer to non-identical cases of resemblances in “a complicated network of overlapping and criss-crossing similarities” and differences (ibid.: § 66). No fixed set of necessary and sufficient conditions then determines membership of a concept. Rather, as Medina (2003: 660) puts it, “we treat all kinds of different things as the same although they are not strictly identical in any respect; that is, in our categorizations different things are treated as instances of the same category even though there is no aspect (or set of aspects) that they all have in common: many different kinds of activities are called games and many different kinds of artifacts are called chairs; and we can always add new items to the list of things that fall under these concepts (we can always invent new kinds of game and produce new kinds of chairs).” The abstract variable-based knowledge affords a thin grasp of concrete phenomena because it discards particulars, concrete nexuses, and what matters therein for the allegedly general aspect. As a result, we find a loss of worldliness in psychology because it does not conceive phenomena through their links with the historical structures of the world with their structures of meaning and possibilities (Holzkamp 2013a). The state, institutions, and companies delimit what they hold themselves accountable for, and responsible for in relation to the population, by referring to knowledge about abstract means in a normal distribution of general variables. Research-based expert practices also rely on such knowledge to legitimize their expertise and its conduct in practice. The abstract knowledge then delimits what experts focus on and are held accountable for in the expert systems. It particularizes their notion of problems and their responsibilities to particular, abstract general issues as opposed to concrete problems in nexuses of everyday life. The new public management systems accentuate this by delimiting the accountability of particular service units and dividing accountabilities between units more strictly and, thus, leaving more to people themselves. Furthermore, this form of knowledge and expertise does not include what produces variety and singularity in the problems which subjects present. How subjects conduct their everyday lives with others in their nexuses of social practice and how their problem is involved therein and affected thereby also fall outside this form of knowledge as do the ambiguities of everyday living. Consequently, experts must apply pieces of abstract, variable-based knowledge on subjects’ complex problems in the nexuses of their lives—or subjects must

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i­nternalize and apply this knowledge on themselves. This creates uncertainties, doubts, and a need for personal reinterpretations as well as for bending knowledge and procedures and adding additional personal hunches, ideas, and typifications. The, rarely addressed, problem of a blurred or, strictly speaking, absent transfer and application of such expert knowledge and advice calls the officially assumed mode of working into question. But this state of affairs is easily taken for granted when the general knowledge base offers a constructed, non-personal mean value in a normal distribution where the positions of particular individuals are reduced to arbitrary variations. That an intervention sometimes does not work as prescribed, or that it only works poorly, is then to be expected and lies beyond the accountability of the expert. Such differences are then not used to learn more about the concrete nexuses and qualities of the problem for subjects. What is more, variety and singularity must not only be considered between individual subjects in a population. Non-arbitrary differences and variations are also seen when the same subject moves into other social contexts/practices with other nexuses and when these nexuses and the subject and his or her conduct of everyday life change. The same notion of abstract knowledge and expertise is applied on the conduct of expert interventions which are seen as strictly specified, generalized procedures to be adhered to in dealing with a generalized problem regardless of the targeted concrete subjects and nexuses. But experts, actually, intervene in subjects’ conduct of life in the nexuses of their everyday lives (Dreier 2011, 2015). Knowledge about the compositions and dynamics and the meanings and possibilities of the nexuses and conducts of everyday life are, hence, crucial for interventions and for how subjects use them in their everyday lives. Such knowledge informs subjects about which nexuses matter for how they experience a problem and deal with it. It assists them more comprehensively in identifying which aspects of concrete nexuses offer possibilities for changing a problem or for sustaining a particular state of affairs. Indeed, because problems are part of subjects’ conduct of everyday life in concrete nexuses, this conduct and these nexuses must often be changed in order to resolve a problem. Such analyses and change processes are open-ended because subjects’ concrete nexuses and problems change, with or without their contribution. In short, we need knowledge about the everyday realities of living, experiencing, and changing in social practice and about how general aspects are present and matter in varying ways therein. This is clearly different from a map of variables in a population. Knowledge about how things hang together in nexuses and about their varying and changing dynamics and composition lets subjects learn from commonalities as well as differences between them in their nexuses of social practices. They may learn about their common practice and problems from their different perspectives, understandings, possibilities, concerns, etc. And they may learn how their differences and commonalities hang together in their respective scopes of possibilities in the nexuses of social practice and, thereby, establish a basis for changing their joint practice. It may also become clear how the singularity of individual subjects, and of their problems, is grounded in the complexity of their lives in their nexuses of social practice (González Rey et al. 2018).

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References Dreier, O. (2007). The generality and particularity of knowledge. In V. van Deventer, M.  Terre Blanche, E.  Fourier, & P.  Segalo (Eds.), Citizen city: Between constructed agent and constructed agency (pp. 188–196). Concord: Captus Press. Dreier, O. (2008). Psychotherapy in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dreier, O. (2011). Intervention, evidence-based research and everyday life. In P. Stenner, J. Cromby, J. Motzkau, J. Yen, & Y. Haosheng (Eds.), Theoretical psychology: Global transformations and challenges (pp. 260–269). Concord: Captus Press. Dreier, O. (2015). Interventions in everyday lives: How clients use psychotherapy outside their sessions. European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 17(2), 114–128. https://doi.org /10.1080/13642537.2015.1027781. Dreier, O. (2016). Conduct of everyday life: Implications for critical psychology. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 15–33). London: Routledge. Dreier, O. (in press). Critical psychology—Subjects in situated social practices. In M.  Fleer, F.  González Rey, & P.  Jones (Eds.), Cultural-historical and critical psychology: Common ground, divergences and future pathways (pp. xx–xx). New York: Springer. González Rey, F., Mitjáns Martínez, A., & Goulart, D.  M. (Eds.). (2018). Subjectivity within cultural-­historical approach: Theory, methodology and research. New York: Springer. Haug, F. (1981). Dialektisk teori og empirisk metodik. Udkast, 9, 8–26. Højholt, C. (2016). Situated inequality and the conflictuality of children’s conduct of life. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (Eds.), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life (pp. 145–163). London: Routledge. Holzkamp, K. (1973). Sinnliche Erkenntnis. Historischer Ursprung und gesellschaftliche Funktion der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt/M: Fischer Athenäum. Holzkamp, K. (1981/1964). Theorie und Experiment in der Psychologie. Eine grundlagenkritische Untersuchung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt/M: Campus Verlag. Holzkamp, K. (1986). Die Verkennung von Handlungsbegründungen als empirische Zusammenhangsannahmen in sozialpsychologischen Theorien. Methodologische Fehlorientierung infolge von Begriffsverwirrung. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 17, 216–238. Holzkamp, K. (2013a/1994). Missing the point: Variable psychology’s blindness to the problem’s inherent coherences. In E. Schraube & U. Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Writings of Klaus Holzkamp (pp. 60–74). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Holzkamp, K. (2013b/1995). Psychology: Social self-understanding on the reasons for action in the conduct of everyday life. In E.  Schraube & U.  Osterkamp (Eds.), Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Writings of Klaus Holzkamp (pp. 233–341). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jensen, U. J. (2013). Resistance against experiments: Positioning and rationality in medicine. In M. W. Bauer, R. Harré, & C. Jensen (Eds.), Resistance and practice of rationality (pp. 182– 205). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Lewin, K. (1981). Wissenschaftstheorie 1. Kurt-Lewin-Werkausgabe. Band. 1. Bern: Hans Huber. Markard, M. (2010). Einführung in die kritische Psychologie. Hamburg: Argument. Medina, J. (2003). Identity trouble: Disidentification and the problem of difference. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 29, 657–682. Ruben, P. (1978). Wissenschaft als allgemeine Arbeit. In P. Ruben (Ed.), Dialektik und Arbeit der Philosophie (pp. 9–51). Köln: Pahl Rugenstein. Smith, D.  S. (1990). The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tateo, L. (2015). The nature of generalization in psychology. In G. Marsico, R. A. Ruggeri, & S.  Salvatore (Eds.), Reflexivity and psychology (pp.  45–64). Charlotte: Information Age Publication.

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Valsiner, J. (2015). Generalization is possible only from a single case (and from a single instance): The value of a personal diary. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, & P. Hviid (Eds.), Integrating experience: Body and mind moving between contexts (pp. 233–243). Charlotte: Information Age Publication. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.

Chapter 11

Situated Generalization with Prototypes in Dialogical Teaching Morten Nissen and Line Lerche Mørck

Introduction This chapter theorizes situated generalization through discussing the practical case of a PhD course we held in 2017 called “The Psycho-Politics of Self-Exposure.” The course is seen as performing generalizations, and our rendering of it is itself an attempt to generalize, that is, to model it as prototypical of dialogical teaching. We are among the many researchers who try to integrate research and teaching. The ideal goes back to Plato and to various degrees, all university administrations pay lipservice to it. Often it is simply the demand that the most recent textbooks are used in teaching, and the experience that researchers learn, in a vague sense, from engaging with students. More ambitious versions, however, point to possibilities for teaching to be (seen as) part of the broad range of practices that perform research, especially when research is about education, or more widely, human development (e.g., Davies and Gannon 2006; Haug 2003; Liberali 2009). Our aim is to continue this more challenging route. We explore concrete processes of production and generalization of scientific knowledge across contexts of research, teaching, and other practices, which are partly overlapping, and partly engaged in exchange. In these, participants from multiple positions adopt standards and standpoints derived from and referring to multiple practices and are invited “to speak, to think, to matter, to care”—as one participant put it, quoting another—in ways that allow for generalities to emerge, which are at once findings and lessons learned. This text models the PhD course as prototypical, that is, represents it and suggests it as relevant for a (thus) generalized kind of practice called “dialogical ­teaching.” The construction of a prototype (as situated generalization) is a process with different (nonlinear) steps or actions. Among these are comparing and relating.

M. Nissen (*) · L. L. Mørck Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_11

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We rearticulate dialogical teaching by relating it to other “types” of practice, with which our readers are (hopefully) already familiar. We aim to show, too, how this comparative articulation was already part of how the involved participants reflected, framed, and performed it. On the one hand, the prototype emerges as different from other, more conventional kinds of teaching. On the other hand, also through similarities and differences to models that have inspired it and are taken as legacies. In our case, through a series of PhD courses, we have developed a dialogical method that, at first, took inspiration from the “reflecting team” method in psychotherapy (Andersen 1991). As we will unfold below, the reflecting team is a special way of orchestrating conversations. It was developed in a strand of psychotherapy that sought to move away from “clinical” standards and notions of pathology, and it has later been used in other practices such as teaching, supervision, and staff meetings. What is special about our case is not the application of “this method,” the “standard” itself, but our rearticulation of it as prototypical of dialogical teaching, and as a way to generalize that fuses and connects research with teaching and self-presentation. Our empirical prototype of dialogical teaching involves challenging hierarchical distributions between teachers and students and between theory and practice, and it involves overstepping and problematizing disciplinary boundaries. It also involves reflecting how standards are instituted, collectives constituted, and participants interpellated. Since this was, obviously, connected to the topic of the PhD course: self-representation and self-exposure, the course helps us highlight a reflexivity which is, however, more generally pertinent to dialogical teaching. Reflecting generalization includes reflecting who “we” are and how “we” are constituted through processes of self-representation. So: who, "we" ? Would the conventions of Academia require that we acknowledge, here, up front, the participation at our course of the famous researchers Emily Martin and Frigga Haug? Ought we then categorize the two, as it is typically done, as “feminists”? Or is the point in our prototype, rather, that we highlight the participation of Kristian Holte Kofod, psychologist at the Copenhagen U-turn facility for young drug users (with whom Morten collaborates), and even more of his former client Sebastian, as well as of Martin Celosse-Andersen, former gang member and now apprentice in Line’s research into gang exit processes? (But is that research still Line’s, then?) Then again, what comes from thus categorizing those participants? Should we rather, as would be also relevant, describe Kristian as film photographer, Sebastian as poet, and Martin as co-researcher (and perhaps Frigga as cancer patient1 and Emily as “bipolar”2)—and all of them as guest teachers at our PhD course? And in either case, would that already imply the misrecognition of the students, who are usually, at most, referred to (as we just did above) as “participants”? Is that problem solved or aggravated if we mention by names Ana Đorđević, Mille K.B.  Keis, and Ida B.  Lundgaard because they were the ones who contributed with dialogical

 Cf. Haug (2004).  Cf. Martin (2007).

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p­ resentations at the course, as well as provided “data” to this text by writing the “Letters to Us” which became the final teaching-learning-research activity of our course?3 There is no end to such questions—we mention just a few of them to illustrate the point that, with this text, we are at once performing and modelling the self-­ representation that our course was about and which we wish to highlight here as an aspect of generalization.

Prototypes We authors have a long-standing yet recently revived collaboration on the methodology of prototypes (Langemeier and Nissen 2004; Mørck and Nissen 2005; Mørck 2006; Nissen 2004, 2009a, b, 2012, 2015). Prototype is a key term in the theoretical approach that binds together the different aspects of generalization, which we discuss on the following pages. The approach builds on an epistemology of practice that has evolved in many forms and places since Kant, Hegel, and Marx. We have learned about it mostly through such partly overlapping traditions as: (a) the German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology (GSCP) that continued the socio-­ cultural-­historical psychology which began with Vygotsky, radicalizing its ideology critique; (b) the philosophy of practice proposed by Uffe Juul Jensen; (c) the “social practice theory” articulated by Stuart Hall, Jean Lave, and others. However, we take up these traditions recognizing that (like all cultural traditions) they emerged and continue to evolve in dialogue with other traditions. Thus, pragmatism, interactionism, post-structuralism, actor-network theory, and phenomenology are all visible and important references. In particular, the whole field of science and technology studies becomes relevant as we seek to understand research and teaching as practices. The concept of prototype itself is borrowed from the Danish philosopher Uffe Juul Jensen (1987, 1999). Jensen continued the Marxist tradition of an epistemology of practice, from the Theses on Feuerbach, through Bachelard’s work on abstractions as industrial process and Bloch’s concepts of hope and concrete utopia, and on to Wartofsky’s theory of tools and models as artifacts embodying concepts (1979). But he took inspiration also from Wittgenstein on the practices of language (in which a concrete instance may work to signify a generality), and Latour’s discussion of prototypes and inscription devices for scientific theories (1987). Our main agenda with the concept of prototype, as we shall unfold below, is to situate and temporalize generalities as aspects of, tools for, and models of and for practices; to think the situatedness of proto (“not yet” or “ultimately preceding”) along with the abstraction and generalizing relevance of type.  We decided that all participants write a text to “us” all in which he/she reflected on his/her experience and what he/she took from it. This idea was derived from narrative counselling and taught us by Mille Keis. 3

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As Dreier (2008) argues, qualitative studies need a different conception of generality than the one that dominates psychology and most social sciences; we must elaborate how we produce a different kind of knowledge and show which conception of generality and role for generality this knowledge involves. Dreier conceptualizes the relation between the particularity and generality of knowledge in relation to his empirical research about learning and psychotherapy in everyday life. He articulates how a conception of generality can be an integrated part of a situated approach to the study of persons in social practice, arguing that we need to consider the uses and users of research in our conception of research, knowledge production, and generalization (Dreier 2008: 188). This was part of an effort to develop GSCP as a “science of the subject,” that is, a science of and for, rather than about, the subject. Before Dreier, Holzkamp suggested that critical psychology as a subject science generalizes from single cases and the subject’s perspective in the “first person” (Holzkamp 1983a; Schraube et al. 2013). But how is that done, more specifically? Too often, this methodology is read as a version of traditional qualitative hermeneutics that remains within the dichotomy of idiographic and nomothetic sciences since generalization and objectivity are only viewed as the (more or less justified) sanctioning of perception and communication within research. We suggest reading instead Holzkamp’s methodology of generalization as continuous with the Vygotskian theory of generality in human practice as based on artifact-mediation: the artifact is the primary practical form of abstraction that generalizes action possibilities (cf. Holzkamp 1973). In GSCP, it becomes clear that this is not merely a “technical” issue, but part of a wider project of transforming not only understanding, but also, in the same process, practices, and everyday life. Here, verallgemeinern means both generalizing and expanding since it is a reflection of the mediatedness of our lives through the social conditions, the cultural artifacts, and thus the forms of meaning that we have in common—a reflection which becomes relevant as we set out to change them.4 Understanding this identity of generality with social change requires a deeper appreciation of the epistemology of practice. The first part of this argument we can trace on Marxist territory, beginning with Jean Lave (2011). Lave argues for an alternative to conventional beliefs about abstraction, the vehicle of generalization. From a social practice theory position, she conceptualizes the processes of “rising to the concrete” with a reference to Stuart Hall (2003): That this apparently paradoxical phrase stands in contrast to conventional belief in the value of ever-greater abstraction is no doubt intentional. The notion “rising to the concrete” acknowledges the historical, relational character of changing social life, and hence the need for efforts to craft historical, relational understandings that are at once empirical and theoretical. (Lave 2011: 155)

Lave’s use of this term echoes not only Stuart Hall’s but also Ilyenkov’s reconstruction of Marx’ dialectics (Ilyenkov, 1977, 1982), which has been widely taken up in the socio-cultural-historical tradition.5 Abstractions are not endpoints but tools,  Similarly “political” reading of the Vygotskian legacy can be found in Stetsenko (2017).  Thus not only by Holzkamp, but, notably and most famously, in Dawydow (1973).

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whose utility and implications are realized as, rising to the concrete, they provide possibilities of thinking and doing that had not been immediately reflected in the “sensuously concrete” everyday experience. Through this process, concepts mediate and reconfigure experience into the “thought concrete” (Gedankenkonkretum), which Lave—again building on Hall’s reading of the Marxian tradition (through Althusser)—calls a “practice problematic.” Exploring a practice problematic is reconstructing theory by rising to the concrete to understand contradictions and conflicts in practices undergoing or calling for change—a change that is radical enough for theory to be relevant. This is one way to read the epistemological concept of “revolutionary practice” in Marx’ Feuerbach Theses (2018): III. The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

We quote Marx’ Feuerbach Theses because it is probably the most important single text in philosophies of practice. Written at the watershed that asserted dialectics as a reflection on practice, its few pages contain important resources for anyone who wishes to educate educators and reflect on self-change. But of course we should not restrict ourselves to the Marxian legacy. Among the many issues that have been taken up in what is sometimes dubbed “post-Marxism” are two which have informed our ways of thinking about generalization. Both issues are also present, if not always prominent, in the development of GSCP and social practice theory.

Praxis, Standards, and the Singular The first issue is with the singularity of practices and their agent-subjects, the “I”s and the “We”s. Our way of working with situated generalization involves many different people, participating from different positions, and contributing to, applying and recontextualizing prototypes in and across very different research projects and interdisciplinary research practices, which, in turn, seek relevance in different practices that are not designated as “research,” and even beyond any preexisting practice. This implies an onto-epistemology of practice, which not only suggests an (ever contested) notion of a universal practice, or “praxis” in the terminology of Bernstein (1971), but also a plurality of “practices” that can and should be distinguished both as kinds (i.e., as enacting different standards) and as singulars, situated in time and space, performed by (thus recognized) singular collectives. In this article, dialogical teaching is conceptualized as a kind of practice, articulating ­standards of democratic dialogue, thinking, listening and care, situated and performed in a singular collective, our PhD course. In each practice, praxis forms a crucial ethical horizon: the overall process in which we humans reproduce and develop our conditions and the forms of our lives and activities. This horizon is important here, not only as the ethical yardstick of

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generalization (which is itself continuously developed and contested, not least when singular practices and collectives are struggling for recognition), but also as the “universal labor” (allgemeine Arbeit) which, since Marx (1999—revising Hegel’s concept of “spirit”), has been a way to determine what research is about. Research is itself a kind of practice, and, just as with other kinds of practice, our ethical and theoretical goal here is to think about the relations between the particular kind of practice, i.e., the particular standards, and the overall praxis, which is not just an abstract category (not just “practice”), but itself a living process. This part of our argument remains within a Hegelian articulation of the Marxist tradition. But the opposite movement, that of designating, delimiting, and recognizing singular practices, as performed by singular collectives, requires a more thoroughgoing development of Marx’ social theory. Singular collectives were never theorized properly in the Marxist classics, keen as they were to overcome Hegel’s “statism.” Right from the beginning, Marxism struggled with the often disastrous implications of how singular collectives (such as states, parties, or families) were constituted, including, not least, those constituted by Marxists. Only very gradually, a strand of theory emerged that would suggest concepts to grasp such processes of constitution, mostly by going back to Hegel’s concept of recognition, and using it to rethink “ideology.”6 In research, this implies that (a) “rising to the concrete” is not only the meeting of “theory” with (revolutionary) “practice,” but also the collaboration or “joint venture” of one (more or less institutionalized but) singular practice (one of research) with another (one of, e.g., teaching or social work); this “joint venture” is then itself a singular, dialogical, or hybrid practice that takes up standards (generalizations) as “references” and transforms them by so doing; and (b) individual and collective agent-subjects are engaged in struggles for recognition through which they are constituted as self-reflecting subjects, mediated by the standards or generalities that are referenced and transformed in these “ideological” processes to which research contributes.

 exts and Model Artifacts as Technology and References T in Situated Generalization The second issue concerns how to think of texts and other artifacts as mediators and co-constructors of knowledge. It is the “new materialism” and “actor-network” approaches in science studies that have generally explored the implications of technologies as not simply means to the ends given by human agents, but as carrying material constraints and as co-configuring ends. Although this materialism was  For example, Žižek (2004), Balibar (2016), and Højrup (2003). In GSCP, the problem was addressed to some extent in Dreier’s work on local action contexts (Dreier 2008), and the works of Wolf Haug and colleagues on ideology (Haug 1979). 6

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already implied in Hegel’s “cunning of reason” and Marx’ dialectics of the forces and relations of production, the Modernism inherent to Marxism often occluded the most radical implications, especially when these apply to social science itself. These were not least pertinent to the understanding of text. Reflecting text as a technology implies a historically situated conception of meaning as continuously reconstructed with signs or signifying artifacts. This means taking seriously the genealogies of discourse, and it means working on texts in an affirmative or immanent critique that deconstructs them and rearticulates their contradictory tendencies as relevant to contemporary problematics. It also means widening the field of “discourse” to all those model artifacts that embody meaning. This includes of course those that are specialized as signs and thus require but also potentially transform conventions, the “tertiary artifacts” in Wartofsky’s term (1979), such as text or money. But it also includes the more general interchange of enactment and display in performance, as this evolves into and mediates through the processes of subjectification and objectification that characterize human practices. These aspects of texts (and other inscription devices or technologies) are often ignored in the traditional methodologies that standardize (even qualitative) research; but they become relevant the moment we endeavor to develop our research through dialogue or “joint ventures” with other practices. Dialogue calls forth the intertextuality of our texts with a multitude of other texts written in other genres, as well as with other media of modelling, e.g., aesthetic or performative, etc.7 The “industrial” concept of prototype points our attention to how a thing may be produced as a model for practices of production and practices of use, working in conjunction with historically emerging infrastructures of blueprints, texts, etc. At the stage of “prototype,” it is not yet “black-boxed” and separated from the historical situation of its emergence. It is singular; yet it visibly carries the contested hope for a wider relevance in a world to come. The singular model artifact suggests a standard, a generality that is specific, yet ethically deserves a place in the world, in praxis. At the same time, it thereby mediates and shapes the precarious recognition of the individuals and collectives who produce it and use it. Thus, the concept of prototype points to generality as the standards of situated singular practices and collectives, objectified and recognized with model artifacts that suggest a wider relevance for other practices and collectives—and on the horizon of praxis. And it points to how such prototypes, mediated by such models, are taken up as references in other situated singular practices, and reflected and transformed in the process (rather than taken as rules and regulations for reproducing the practices as putatively identical, as in standardization; cf. Nissen 2016).  Cf. e.g., Bakhtin (1988), Martin (2007), Rancière (2013), Smith (2005), Stiegler (2013). In GSCP, this is first of all taken up in the “memory work” of Frigga Haug and her colleagues (Haug 1999, 2012)—as we shall see. 7

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Rearticulating Teaching as Dialogical A university post-graduate teaching experiment provides a useful and challenging case to consider since it is at once (a) a particular kind of practice, a standard realized—and problematized and perhaps transformed—in a singular collective (modelled here for a general relevance), and (b) the performance of research itself. The problematization of “teaching” standards constituted the collaboration at our PhD course. Thus, Ana Đorđević, one of the participating PhD students, reflected about the difference between our dialogical way of teaching and the standards of teaching she knew from Serbia, in her “Letter to Us”: How often research is done within the community, where participants’ sayings (suggestions, comments, reflections) are treated equally legitimate? My professors [in Serbia] have never taken a note while I or other students were speaking. This has left a remark on our education and our practice as psychologists; we have learned to ask for instructions rather than think on our own.

By contrast, This course has given me the opportunity to speak and to think. Because, it matters what do I have to say, and it matters what everybody says. It matters to “us,” it matters to our research, to people we are doing research for and for the practice we want to improve or develop. It is astonishingly liberating to speak and to listen without being evaluated for what you said or how you understood something. Everything matters.

Ana’s praise is of course welcome, but our reason for quoting it here is that the rupture she identifies articulates the hope that defines our dialogical teaching experiment as prototypical: that it matters what everybody says, teachers make note of students’ utterances, and this is related to identifying the community of teachers and students as one of “research.” In particular, this “astonishing liberation,” this recognition, is connected with no longer asking for instructions, and no longer “being evaluated.” Now, this emancipation could be identified as simply “non-scholastic,” as the emancipation that comes from simply rejecting teaching. In our theoretical traditions, we have famous examples that many readers take to confirm such a complete anti- or non-teaching as ideal. Holzkamp used the Pink Floyd song-title “We don’t need no education” for a provocative critique of the idea of “teaching for peace” (Holzkamp 1983b); Lave’s “situated learning” ignores teaching almost completely as relevant to understanding learning; Rancière’s “Ignorant Schoolmaster” (1991); and Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1996) seem to reject any preexisting knowledge to be transmitted. Doing away with teaching could then be either thought as a general utopia (as in Christie 1971), or—more cynically—it could be viewed as the elitist, scholarly but non-scholastic practices that, for a tiny minority (e.g., at PhD courses: “master classes”), may become accessible after decades at school. But that is not how we suggest to see it—and it would not be a very deep or productive way to read those theories. Rather, what we propose is a rearticulation and a reconfiguration of teaching as a version of “the education of educators.” More precisely, inspired by these references and others we can articulate dialogical teach-

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ing as the democratic reappropriation of standards that have been institutionalized as knowledge: their reassertion, resituation, and development as prototypes. In this way of thinking, a recognition of participants is attempted, at two levels. The first and easiest is the acknowledgement of the learning subject who does not simply copy or assimilate knowledge but appropriates it as relevant to her own activities and the sense it makes to her. This level is easy, because, although it contradicts assumptions made almost universally in the institutions of education, in which we routinely sanction the correct mimicking of knowledge by students, the psychological recognition of the learning subject has been mainstream educational psychology at least since Piaget; and the abstract utopia (Bloch 1995) of adapting teaching to learning is ubiquitous. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this abstraction. But it is when we rise from this abstraction to the concrete “practice problematic” constituted on the contradiction of this recognition with that sanctioning of knowledge, that it becomes a richer and more challenging generalization. This is what addresses the contradictory “practice problematic” of dialogical teaching. And it takes us to the second level of recognition, and thus to what really distinguishes the theories mentioned from mainstream cognitive psychologies. Why do Ana’s teachers never take notes when she and her fellow students speak? Should they not—having read Piaget or his followers, and doing their job as professionals—be interested in their speech as expressions of student’s processes of learning? One way to answer could be to point to the assumptions underlying the authoritarian structure of educational institutions. Ana’s teachers are only interested in so far as students’ speech confirms or deviates from the “knowledge” that defines the teaching as an institutional practice, and it is the students who are responsible for representing their appropriation of knowledge as if it were a mimicking. Teaching is usually divided between the examinations in which that responsibility is assumed and confirmed ritually, as a visible process of submission and subjectification, and the teaching sessions in which it is then implicitly assumed to be sufficient for teachers (even teachers who have read Piaget) to present “knowledge.” Yet, that same division also opens to a tragic utopia to emerge in teaching. For as long as the “moment of truth” of the examination can be ignored, repressed, or bracketed, it is possible for the democratic assumption that is also underlying teaching to become visible. The conversations in the classroom can be seen to assume (ever since Socrates) a certain “equality of intelligence” (Ranciere 1991) between teachers and students, as students are invited as partners in a dialogue that aims for everybody to make sense of “knowledge” (cf. also Davies 1990; Haug 2003). This spark of equality is usually extinguished in the “harsh reality” of the examination. But this is where our theorists of democratic learning can help us. Not so much as the suggestion to simply get rid of examinations, but more fundamentally as the question of how the underlying institutionalization of “knowledge” may be problematized so that the utopia of a more democratic, dialogic teaching may be generalized in a situated way; with Lave’s words rise from the abstract and be concretized in a more substantial recognition of participants. First, the Freirean legacy is to resituate teaching in processes of sociocultural change and political struggles. This generalizes the issue of relevance, of making

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sense of meaning, as common to all participants since co-constitutive of new theories and new practices. Teachers learn from students because students’ work of resituating and recontextualizing is not only their individual learning, but at the same time the production of prototypes. This implies that the “other” practices in which those prototypes claim a relevance—those other practices in which the students participate—are included into the field of vision. This is a crucial point for constructing a prototype of dialogical teaching: not only for challenging the authoritarian structures of the dominant system of teaching, but also for revealing the creative potential of human relationships in a dialogical space. Second, resituating knowledge is deconstructing texts; it is unfreezing texts from their status as documents that objectify the “ruling relations” of sanctioned knowledge (cf. Smith 2005). Certainly, reading them is to reproduce their theories, thus to raise their abstractions, their germ cell concepts, to the concreteness of practice problematics (as Dawydow 1973, would have it); but it is also thereby to identify the contradictions implied in those concepts, to reconstruct their precarious relevance, and to rearticulate their meaning. Third, these are processes in which we are all participants, as “apprentices to our own changing practice” (Lave 2011: 2), learning through being granted positions that are recognized, perhaps as legitimately peripheral. In these hybrid processes, we all meet on neutral ground and in movement (Nissen 2015) and create a “boundary community” across different overlapping communities of practice (Mørck 2006), even if we also keep reenacting positions that can and should be problematized. Fourth, our performances and products become the artifacts that objectify and mediate ourselves, that is, our recognition as individuals and as collectives, partly on yardsticks that are already institutionalized (e.g., this text counts as a peer-reviewed international publication; the students received diplomas), but partly also as wagers of new standards. And finally, fifth, this highlights the performance and the ongoing reconceptualization of care that is involved, as human cultures and lives are addressed and created anew in the converging ethics of education and of generalization. In the following, we will attempt to show how these aspects of the prototype of dialogical teaching, and of situated generalization, play out in our experiment with “reflecting team” as a way of doing a PhD course.

“ To Think with”: The “Reflecting Team” as Dialogical Teaching It is quite common at PhD courses to arrange, in addition to teachers’ lectures, presentations by students, either of texts that form the syllabus, or of students’ own projects. The “reflecting team” format led us to revise this form in favor of interviews. We have not (yet?) gone as far as to cancel teachers’ lectures altogether— especially since this is one of the most obvious expectations shared by students as well as guest teachers—although we have moved in the direction of using the inter-

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view format for teacher presentations, too. But the students who present their research all do it in the format of an interview. More specifically: one teacher has communicated in advance with the student about her project and possible ways of presenting it. They decide together roughly which issues will be discussed, and which materials may be relevant for participants to study in preparation for the session, some of which may be useful to present live at the session (e.g., video material). At the session, the teacher interviews the student. At certain points, the interview is interrupted as we shift to the reflecting team, which is the rest of the participants (students, teachers, and co-researchers). These then discuss the interview among each other, while interviewee and interviewer listen silently. When the interview is then resumed, it may reflect on issues raised by the reflecting team, but not address the team directly. No questions and answers! In our experience, it takes some insistent moderation to discipline this unconventional format. But the interview has the advantages that: (a) the student does not build up so much anxiety about presenting; (b) the interviewer can modify the presentation to be more accessible (as representative of the audience), and (c) the questions represent and perform the theoretical approach as well as its relevance to lived researcher experience. Further, the point of orchestrating the session on two separate discussions (interview and reflecting team) is to highlight reflection and to avoid the attack-defense sequence of the traditional Q&A.

The Collective Work of Reference Transformation In the first instance, the process of reference transformation can be said to be clearly represented. The interview format de-textualizes, resituates, and collectivizes presentations, that is, it highlights the ways in which the interviewee’s utterances are continuously reflected as relevant, or in need of clarification, explanation, etc., and it also performs and demonstrates their double contextualization in the experience, activities, and projects of both interlocutors. The reflecting team stages and highlights the distance of speaking from listening: listeners’ reflections are emphasized as such and contextualized: it becomes acceptable—in fact, it is encouraged—to “witness” the interview through one’s own interests.8 Thereby, conversely, the interview is externalized and “exotisized” (e.g., “is that how what I said was heard!”). This redistribution of responsibilities for what is said and heard works—especially when it stands out as an unusual conversation format—as a collectivization of accountability. This, in turn, allows for the collective work of reference transformation to appear and to be prioritized, the co-construction of models and the various ways in which it transforms statements taken from the experience in one practice or from certain texts. Mille B. Keis, another PhD student participant, explains in her “Letter to Us”:

 This is discussed in White’s notion of outsider witnessing (2007).

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One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the course was the “hacking” of the usual project presentation format with inspiration from the reflecting team, and it made a difference to me in several ways in relation to presenting my project. (…) In preparing my presentation and the accompanying paper, I felt more able to experiment with the format and purpose. Instead of (the more usual way of) having to present an argument, which would then be “tested” and discussed, the purpose of this paper felt different. I wanted this particular paper to provide a starting point for joint conversations, to be an invitation to collaborative thinking instead of a performance of the strength of my approach and argument, and this shift in purpose created a different kind of space for the exploration of my own questions, interest and concerns.

Notably, the collectivization of thinking as collaborative does not foreclose Mille’s intended learning; in her own account, it is in fact quite the opposite: shifting to collaborative thinking is what opens the space for her to explore her own questions, interests, and concerns. This could be because this self-reflection is no longer standardized, that is, no longer monopolized by the standards of institutional knowledge, no longer preoccupied with being “tested,” with showing “strength,” etc. This is not because Mille is not worried about academic recognition, but because what is being “presented,” the models that we create through the conversation and the ways they relate to the data (Mille showed us a YouTube video) are not models that speak of her “academic achievements” so much as shared models, and models of how her academic self could become part of our collaborative research. Similarly, the distance of the listeners can be seen to have paradoxically facilitated a closer encounter: Listening to the listeners’ thoughts and comments without having to respond directly or provide an answer enabled me to attend more carefully and think about their comments—it felt more like a ‘thinking with’, as opposed to a ‘thinking against’ each other. This kind of response, the ‘thinking with’, created a different atmosphere and made it more possible to share questions about my project where I feel unsure or worry about something. I think this ‘thinking with’ requires a sense of care or of being cared for, which in turn makes it possible to expose some of the sore, soft spots in my process (a care I experienced as being present at the course). A process organized around a ‘thinking against’ would have made a covering of these soft spots more likely and invited different kinds of responses, maybe resembling the spiky, defensive encounter between a hedgehog and a dog.

And, in general, Mille concludes: I experienced the creation of a collective process and a sharing of authority, leaving a more hierarchical organization. I also just read Ana’s letter to us, and her highlighted words ‘To speak, to think, to matter, to care’ also really resonated with my sense of what took place at the course.

Of course, we are not suggesting that simply applying the “reflecting team” as standard method constitutes a wonderfully democratic revolution of teaching. What we are doing here is rearticulating the reflective team method as a collective process of sharing authority, of creating dialogical spaces to listen, to speak, and to think with each other (as opposed to thinking against each other). Our claim is that such dialogical spaces can produce feelings of mattering, of collective care, precisely by highlighting how the learning of each person unfolds as contributions to a collective practice of research; in other words, by facilitating a reflective witnessing and co-­

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configuring of the ongoing processes of objectification and subjectification, which at once produce research and learning. With this rearticulation, we perform as well as illustrate the processes of situated generalization, as “teaching” and “reflecting team” are conceptualized with reference to our theories and to this singular practice appointed prototypical of a kind of dialogical teaching.

Generalization Through Widening Relevance and Deconstructing Texts Generalization is a movement of expansion carried by model artifacts. In dialogical teaching, this means deconstructing texts and widening their relevance. Let us discuss a particularly acute issue of relevance that we encountered at our PhD course. Ana Đorđević’s experience of emancipation at the course cannot be separated from the Serbian Vergangenheitsbewältigung9 and the struggle to overcome identitarian ideologies in former Yugoslavia in which her research was situated. When her research was presented and discussed through interview and reflecting team, our main focus was not the theories and methods of the teachers’ research (the curriculum), nor was it to monitor and guide Ana’s ability to represent that knowledge, or her application of it. Our focus was Ana’s research as this formed part of understanding and transforming the ways that collective and individual identities were constructed and recent history was written and rewritten in Serbia. We were hoping that some of the questions and concepts we could derive from references such as Frigga Haug’s collective memory work, or our own work on collective subjectivity, might prove relevant; but we also knew that these would be recontextualized and revised in the process. The Balkan Wars of the 1990s is a challenge to any work on collective remembering or collective identity, as well as a strong nodal point of its relevance. After more than two decades, it is still crucial to understand what ­happened and how we may learn from it. Further, Ana presented us with the very contemporary issue of the practices of remembering, for which her own personal narrative was relevant. She had sent us a document called “Meeting with Sarajevo,” in which she “walked us through” her first visit to the city, which “turned out to be the most important personal experience in shaping [her] professional identity.” The best description of my first impression of Sarajevo is “the city of memory,” “the city of history.” It took me by surprise to realize how many places in Sarajevo have significance related to the siege that happened 20 years ago. (…) It was deeply touching and insightful. The history of Sarajevo, the trauma that the city had survived, has become the core of its identity. (…) This was also my first experience with the terrors that a group which I belong to had provoked (I visited this gallery: http://galerija110795.ba/). Even though I have had some general knowledge about the war in Bosnia, nothing could have prepared me enough

 German term for the movement of “dealing with the past,” which grew and became significant from the 1980s and on. 9

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for this meeting.10 It was something between me and my group, something I could not explain, that goes beyond empathy with the victims. I felt guilt. The insight hit me hard, when I realized that belonging to a group of Serbs was deeply embedded in my identity, so deeply that I felt collective guilt for the crimes that were committed by criminals, but in the name of Serbia, my homeland.

The guilt professed in the document—itself as a feeling of the past, belonging to a decisive moment in Ana’s development—appears as a problem to be explained. Ana’s guilt was at once part of the impetus and the object since it seemed to be itself another expression of the Serbian collective identity that had played such a serious part in the atrocities. But, although, obviously, Ana did not herself participate in these atrocities, it was far from obvious that the point was to finally purge her of that guilt, as an irrational remnant of a tribal part of her identity, in order to welcome her as a citizen of a universal multicultural community of scholars. The relevance of our analysis of Ana’s guilt formed part of the Serbian Vergangenheitsbewältigung, in which it is indeed an option to construct such an opposition; but it is not the only option, and not the most fruitful one. The point, rather, was to understand “collective identity” in ways that might help a different kind of self-construction to emerge, in which Ana’s guilt could be rearticulated as reasonable and as part of a struggle for constituting political community in new ways. By sharing it as part of her research and dialogical teaching, personal experiences and feelings matter; they become legitimate parts of reflective dialogical teaching and research that we all can learn from, just like when Frigga and Emily performed their personal and lived experiences, and self-representations in their dialogical presentations of their research (Fig. 11.1). Ana’s guilt pointed to an urgent current issue that, as such, highlights a universal aspect of praxis, present in any particular practice, and, thus, an aspect of generalization: its situated and contentious historicity. When conventional forms of (university) teaching neglect this aspect in the interest of reproducing knowledge, it becomes a problem of “transfer.” But situated generalization is never simply transfer. It is a reflection of the fact that we are engaged in (“micro”) practices that always already form part of (“macro”) movements and struggles. With the “reflecting team” format of dialogical teaching, it became easier to see, in this case, that we were and are all, through or self-presentations—even if only for a while—participants in developing prototypes for engaging with the burning contemporary issue of identity politics. Ana had forwarded an article from her field using concepts from Moscovici’s social representation theory, Tajfel’s social identity, Middleton’s collective remembering, and Bruner’s narrative psychology (Kuzmanic 2008)—references that were more or less known to teachers and other participants, and which seemed well-­ chosen for the issue. The intertextual relations between those theories, and the theories that we read together at the course, were only reflected and developed in  For example, see (October, 2018): https://www.google.rs/search?q=Ron+Haviv&espv=2&sourc e=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW3ui9xLXTAhXGnBoKHbeMATgQ_AUIBigB&bi w=1600&bih=721#tbm=isch&q=Ron+Haviv+Bosnia. 10

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Fig. 11.1  Watch the Sniper

glimpses. It may well have been useful to pursue this more than we did. But, in any case, from the beginning, the widening of relevance which resulted from engaging with Ana’s project as something more than a case of application of the course syllabus, also revealed the limitations of that syllabus. The question was not so much whether Ana was able to use our texts for her case, but rather, whether and how our texts could contribute to Ana’s project. This meant that they were inserted into a landscape of other relevant texts. Of course, the syllabus was the sanctioned set of textual artifacts carrying and signifying the knowledge that institutionally defined our course. We teachers were accountable as custodians of that knowledge, overseers of the correct reading of the syllabus. It might then seem a reasonable expectation that our “teaching” should inform students how we intended to sanction their reading as correct. By contrast, the reflecting team stages conversations in which the interlocutors are all positioned at a distance to syllabus and other texts. What participants say may refer to texts (among other artifacts, experiences, etc.), but the interview and the reflections situate those texts as references deployed when relevant; and referencing does not assume an identity but designate tools and objects for a collective understanding in which we are equally participants. The widening of relevance, however, does not mean that texts are endlessly malleable to diverse purposes. Far from it, when we refer to “deconstruction”—suggesting a continuity of (this version of) dialectics with Derrida’s approach to theory11—we assert the (at least potential) relevance of theoretical work.  Derrida’s objections to dialectics were primarily to its institutionalized form and the sanctification of certain teleologies it seemed to him to imply. Cf. Jameson (2009). Incidentally, Haug (1999) also referred to deconstruction, albeit without explicitly mentioning Derrida. 11

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Deconstruction can be taken as a term to signify that theoretical texts construct contradictions—différances—even as they build coherence and define unitary meaning. In order to harvest their potentials, they must be deconstructed. This means, on the one hand, a “symptomal reading” of their timeliness, their intertextual position, their projects and ideological workings, and how these various “functions” are realized in textual form. On the other hand, it means teasing out how their terms and arguments signify conceptual contradictions to address those “functions,” and how they displace, multiply, and transform them by so doing. Thus, the problem of Ana’s guilt pointed to issues of belonging that could raise questions to aspects of Haug’s texts on memory work. If the concept of “groups” in Ana’s social psychology references seemed strangely abstracted from concrete institutions and collectives, this abstractness also casts a light on how Haug (1999) and her coworkers report on their memory work using the pronoun “we.” The “we” performs the subject-position of their research as the self-representation and self-­ overcoming of a collective of feminists doing “subject-science.” In distinction from the late Holzkamp’s emphasis on “je Ich”—“each I”—Haug’s “we” insists on a collective subject of knowing; in that sense, it concurs with the “we” and the epistemological position of this text. But it also remains curiously vague in terms of how it is situated and constituted in relations to the institutions, movements, etc. of its time, let alone its internal power structures. For instance, can Haug’s references to Gramsci’s notion of the “organic intellectual” be taken to suggest a relevance for German feminism in the 1980s of a prototype from the Italian labor movement of the 1920s—even though the memory workers were all intellectuals, whose main project was in fact a major expansion of the Marxism of (pre-WW2) labor movements? If they can, how does this imply a transformation of the concept itself? Thus, in short, generalization can be said to be achieved through the contradictory unity of widening relevance and deconstructing texts.

Movements and Artifacts on Neutral Grounds In her “Letter to us,” Frigga explained how much the individual cases touched me, even if I had no experience in the same field, how committed everyone listened and composed new and without difficulty formed a reflecting team, that is, turned from listeners of everyday questions into research companions for a generally better result, thus turning an individual into a collective problem […] that then loses its boring or irresolvable character, because together we realize that they are ours and that what matters is that we move together to change something.

Moving together to change things is, however, itself a complex, contradictory, mediated, and mobile process. At the course, most—if at no single point all—of us were gathered and present in a room, focusing on matters of self-representation and self-­ exposure in research, matters which were present in the form of verbal utterances, power point slides, videos, texts (and even in one case as tattoo and tight muscles). The distribution of positions—central or peripheral, or simply talking or listening,

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etc.—could, to some extent, be witnessed directly as immediate presence. The reflecting team was a form we used to orchestrate and modify that immediate activity and the collective we made of it. This helped us both see and perform the “educating of the educators” as research companions, for instance, when Frigga Haug learned about—and contributed to rearticulating—the problems of gang exit in Mørck and Celosse-Andersen’s case (Mørck and Celosse-Andersen in press), or when Mille Keis, on the background of her experience with narrative counselling, changed her role from student to instructor for the writing of “Letters to Us.” Yet for the real movement of generalization to be detectable, we must zoom out. Not by imagining people transferring and applying mental schemata or standard procedures, nor simply by acknowledging that people move between places, but by reinserting our small and momentary—if itself complex—collective of conversations into wide and long-standing landscapes of practices (within praxis). Emily Martin was interviewed on (the background of) her Bipolar Expeditions (2007) and her more recent ethnography of experimental cognitive psychology. We had emailed her some questions about the distribution of the ir-/rational between (the social uses of) psychiatry and psychology, and about the relevance of Wittgenstein’s critique of psychology, which she drew on in her current work. As Emily had found, this discussion reaches back to the bifurcation of psychology from anthropology in the early twentieth century. Now it was reconfigured by serving as reference in the encounter with GSCP—which, in continuity with the Vygotskian tradition, had kept the same discussion alive in other forms—and also by the emphasis on self-presentation at our course. That recontextualization opened to new questions. In her “Letter to us,” she writes: When I got the advance questions from Morten and Line it really made me think. The questions were so challenging I didn’t come with answers, but with questions for them.

Again, the point is not to boast of our “good questions,” but to highlight the ways that our generalizations established and reflected connections to a collaborative work on questions that we have in common—a work that stretches far back in time and have wide implications, but which also constituted our interactions at the course, reconfigured our positions, and, in turn, transformed those questions and references. We are not sure how these questions have evolved in Emily’s work since then, but one good place to look is probably her forthcoming book. A little further down, she goes on: As I continue to work on my next book, somehow the course gave me a new procedure, which is actually a very old-fashioned one. I now have a large cork bulletin board and stick pins. I am going to think of what I write as ‘snippets’ without worrying about how they fit together. Then I will print them out on different colors of paper and cut them up and pin them on the board—just like the cops on TV crime shows do it. Somehow, this feels very liberating—non-linear production of text where the connections emerge when presented in another medium. […] [The] course made me appreciate the value of combining different media and the power of seeing your thoughts materialized in something tangible.

What “somehow” inspired Emily’s way of working on her book was probably not just our reshuffling of the constellations of artifacts and activities of teaching, but

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also our discussions of aesthetics, affectivity, and identity in the projects of Ida B Lundgaard and Tiyasha Sengupta. Again, our argument is not that Emily was helped discovering “the great new method” of writing with stick-pins, boards, and colors. But if we zoom out, we can locate these discussions as part of a broader movement to which Emily had already contributed, of acknowledging the various materializations of thought in something tangible (e.g., Martin 2014) as mattering, and as powerful. Prompted by Ida Lundgaard and others, we would emphasize that, in the process of generalization, tangible materials matter beyond embodying a pre-formed thought. When standards are materialized as models, rather than as thought, they are challenged, constrained, and expanded by the material and sensuous qualities and requirements of the model itself. Ida writes in her “Letter to Us”: I am thinking of how I write, and that I find it difficult to make a linear structure. That I prefer to think of my writing as a lump of clay I form with my hands. That I start throwing a casual raw lump at the table and then I start to model and shape; that this is the way I prefer to work on shaping new thoughts.

Her metaphor at once performs and addresses the way that even text, as material artifact, carries this aesthetic quality of speaking to us sensuously, more than what we thought we had written. Using Rancière’s concept of the “aesthetic regime” (2013), we can thus appreciate how prototyping is a work on “distributions of the sensible,” of shaping neutral ground as “dissensus” between clashing regimes of sense, and thus forming “boundary community” (Mørck 2010), through the relational aesthetics of artworks that work as “invitations to live in a shared world” (Bourriaud et al. 2002).

Recognizing Ourselves Are the power differentials in academia present when, in the previous section, we make sure to quote the most famous participants as reporting how they, too, learnt from this? Of course they are. We can’t dream away power differences and structures; but we can work on them. Part of how we do this is through constructing ourselves collectively and individually. Above, you can directly see these power flows in play since this text is itself among the artifacts that mediate and co-­ construct them. Our main point is democratic in the Rancièrian sense (1999) that we are trying to rearticulate teaching in a way that recognizes students as equals in the premises and processes, and not just the end results, of the practice. Those who were before counted in as learners to be monitored and assessed, but counted out as co-­producers and assessors of knowledge, are now re-articulated as the “true people,” the agent-­ subjects of “moving together to change things.” Nous sommes tou(te)s étudiant(e)

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s12: we all identify as “students” (or, with Lave 2011, as “apprentices”). As such, we are all emancipators of this more general and more promising collective practice of prototyping. This text is itself written as a bid for such recognition. If it is not just another fetishized bit of knowledge, neither is it simply an expression of an emancipation already accomplished. It is an argument, a move in a negotiation, a political intervention: “Politics is the art of warped deductions and mixed identities. It is the art of the local and singular construction of cases of universality” (Rancière 1999: 139). What we want to accomplish through your reading is thus a Verallgemeinerung, generalizing in the above-mentioned, at once epistemological and ethical sense. That is a precarious struggle, since we are doing this within the academic institutions, which are still—and, with New Public Management, even increasingly— largely structured in the ideology of reproducing sanctioned knowledge. In her “Letter to Us”, Mille Keis described how this distributed sense of knowledge and shared authority resonated …with a more general concern about the importance of care and mattering, which has grown out of various encounters, where I have sensed or felt the effects of the presence/ absence of care and mattering. Some of these experiences have been vicarious, e.g. through reading the works of Annemarie Mol, Carol Gilligan and Sara Ahmed, whose works all contain a contagious curiosity about people, practices and power relations. At the same time, their works contain a sensitivity to what might “dull” this curiosity, to what might make it more difficult to see, listen and learn from ourselves and each other, and how we might resist this process of “dulling”, both in our research processes and in life. An example of this is the Listening guide developed by Carol Gilligan, which “…tunes our ear to the multiplicity of voices that speak within and around us, including voices that speak at the margins and those which in the absence of resonance or response, tend to be held in silence” (Gilligan 2011).

Quoting Mille Keis quoting Gilligan is a way of recognizing her as academic participant. Our writing of letters—on Mille’ suggestion and under her instructions— was a deliberate form of self-presentation. Like in auto-ethnography (Ellis 2004) and feminist standpoint theory (Harding 2003), presenting (and thus “objectifying”) the individual self, even with its flaws and dullnesses, does not generalize by diagnosing pathology, but by struggling for a more inclusive recognition of human lives. The individual case is then an expansion of the prototype, rather than idiosyncrasies to be weeded out. Thus, our own (the authors’) Letters to Us were both concerned with our bad conscience about not being quite able to appreciate the richness of the course we were supposed to run. Morten complained of “not knowing people well enough” and even: “I always scratch surfaces”; Line wrote of her “feeling of stress [that] was mainly connected to the chronic feeling of being behind in [her] academic research life.” But our main narratives were both of excitement and relief. The superficial generalizing transfer, which always threatens to substitute for a proper process of  That is “We are all students.” Nowadays people know this move from the “Je suis Charlie” and later “Me Too” movements. Rancière (1999) discusses the call “We are all German Jews” in the student movement of May 1968 in France.

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prototyping, could have been held up as personal shortcomings or errors (inducing further stress). Instead, they were recognized as pressures on how academic everyday life is presently organized. The self-presenting narratives of the other Letters to Us revealed in similar ways this process of generalizing by objectifying feelings as expressions of the recognition of participants as the students that we all are. However, beyond Rancière’s focus we should note how such a recognition is also an interpellation and thus a subjectification as participant of an emerging collective. This text models and seeks recognition also of “us,” of the singular collective constructed at our PhD course, in a specific form which is not least characterized by the power differentials implied in authorship. Although of course this collective is—and here recognizes itself as—complex, emergent, and contradictory, it inevitably also constructs a unity. If nothing else, you, the reader, must approach this text hermeneutically, by moving between the whole and the parts of the argument, assuming some coherence here to be found (even if you then go on to deconstruct). To the extent that this text still, or again, works to model and revive “us,” it both performs and designates “us”—the singular “we” who move together as a way of teaching— in a way that should be reflected and problematized. Rancière moves beyond Foucault’s negative ethics of “refusing what we are,” since, although such dis-­ identification is crucial (we are no longer traditional teachers, we are all “students”), it is itself a particular construction of a generality that is both a (negative) form of the empty equality of “the people” and given a particular (positive) form in the struggle. We then propose one more step in which we seek to identify the place of that form in the constitution of an emancipatory collective. The point is, this should itself be reflected as an “ideological” form, as a form of discourse that reproduces collectives and participants by making their “common sense”—even if it sees itself as ever so emancipatory and ethical. Reflecting is already problematizing, deconstructing. It assumes the form of open-ended questions. Thus, are we proposing a sense in which Mille’s preoccupation with Mol, Gilligan, and Ahmed should be subsumed to our project of articulating Derrida as contributing to dialectics as an epistemology of practice? If so, how does this interpellation of Mille also challenge and expand our project and thus our collective?

Generalization as Ethics: The Presence of Care This takes us to the conclusion of our argument. Echoing and referencing Ana’s letter, Mille writes of sensing or feeling the effects of the presence/absence of care and mattering. Listening to marginal voices within and around us is a struggle for recognition in which self-presentation forms a part; but this is also a rearticulation and a performance of care that can be felt. In our reading, care is the core concern of the “reflecting team” we have tried to learn from, much more than the technicalities of conversation formats. In general, we suggest this as an important ethical aspect of how to read and rearticulate methods of social work.

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The concept of care itself is complex and rich. The idea that we all basically strive and struggle for agency through participation in praxis (Handlungsfähigkeit) derived ultimately from the Spinozan legacy in the Marxist tradition taken up in GSCP. This implied a notion of praxis as “Vor-Sorge,” a proactive care for our conditions of life. It is quite possible that the phenomenological influence (on the late Holzkamp and thus many of his followers) has tended later to push GSCP ethics in the direction of an emphasis on individual autonomy, and that this is connected with thinking of generalization more narrowly as communicative representations of the “first person perspectives” of individual subjects. Our emphasis rather on generalization as prototypes is connected with an emphasis on care and ethics as collectively and politically, contentiously constructed (cf. also Mørck in press, Nissen 2009b). Mørck (in press) argues for a social practice ethics, where we as researchers reflect the implications of research practice for the involved and reflect how it makes a difference in the world, especially in relation to processes of humanization of people from the margins. Recent scholars such as Mol (2008), Stengers (2010), Raffnsøe (2017), and Stiegler (2010) are also useful references here, not least when we include the ecological dimensions of the relations of mutual presupposition between praxis and life more broadly. In the school, care (for “well-being,” moral education, etc.) has always been present as concern, even if increasingly external to the core practice of teaching. The more knowledge is decontextualized, the less it appears integrated in cultures and ways of living. A certain style of writing, posture, etc. is no longer as integral to performing the habitus of an educated class as when Bourdieu wrote his famous “Distinction” (1984). This development has formed part of a precarious democratization of education, but it has also marginalized and psychologized care, separated it from learning. Rearticulating teaching as dialogical is reconnecting it to praxis and to lives, thereby generalizing its scope beyond the growing gap between technology and existence. The institutionalized ethics of research, which we know from university ethical boards, also suffer from the same externality. The various formalized procedures in which the rights of its various stakeholders (authors, sponsors, subjects, users) are inscribed have little to do with the content of research and its generalizations, as if that were itself without implications. A more substantial kind of research ethics evolves from aligning with social movements that challenge and co-create knowledge itself by involving (recruiting, recognizing, interpellating, and caring for) marginalized voices (Thorgaard 2010). We tried to perform this at the course by involving our multi-positioned co-researchers in the sessions that dealt with our own research projects, in order to display, enact, and problematize them as joint ventures. The view of situated generalization that we propose implies that to generalize is to assume and perform ethical standpoints. Each time a prototype suggests its expanded relevance, on the horizon of praxis, new marginal voices are heard, new communities imagined, and participants from the margins are invited to change position. By the same token, ethics is situated, meaning it must be reconstructed each time. The dialectics we take up as an epistemology of practice only arrives at

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the teleology of its self-overcoming movement by reflecting on itself (as “revolutionary practice”), in what Jensen (1999) calls a “philosophy just in time.” Perhaps the most radical generalization is the one that urges us to recognize non-human “voices” (Stengers 2010), not—in our reading, at least—as the claim that all things should be granted subjectivity, but rather as the care that reflects how things matter beyond who we think we are. Ecological sustainability requires us to include in our cosmopolitics the ways in which our reconstitutions of “us,” our “self-changes,” are mediated through matters and concerns that situate our lives in a material world we wish to sustain. This ecological expansion is thus a key aspect of situated generalization: the ongoing movements between practice and life, between articulating standard and standpoint (Nissen 2016), that can lead to a re-cultivation of the social technologies implied in or performed through our (even ever so “humanistic”) concepts. Such cultivation does not elevate concerns and care to abstract-universal principles; it is itself a sociocultural individuation, a construction of singular-but-generalizing prototypes, and with it, “we” care for “us” and for each other in ways and by routes we explore by walking them.13 This is why it can be felt—as the open-ended affectivity of a liminal encounter (Stenner 2018)—in the same moment that it reaches beyond the concerns of the particular practice and its specific standards. It is our—deeply felt—hope that our experiment with the “reflecting team” as a way of doing a PhD course, through the prototypical model of dialogical teaching we have made of it here, may not only inspire readers to do something similar, but help you reflect on the singular circumstances and traditions that situated what we did with countless differences from your situation; and even that it may become one small path per aspera ad astra, one more venue for the blues hope of recultivation of a university that currently suffers so greatly from governance by meaningless standards (Stiegler 2015).

References Andersen, T. (1991). The reflecting team: Dialogues and dialogues about the dialogues. New York: W.W. Norton. Bakhtin, M. M. (1988). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Balibar, É. (2016). Citizen subject: Foundations for philosophical anthropology. London: Oxford University Press. Bernstein, R.  J. (1971). Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies of human activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bloch, E. (1995). The principle of hope. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bourriaud, N., Pleasance, S., Woods, F., & Copeland, M. (2002). Relational aesthetics. Dijon: Les presses du reel.  Apart from Jensen, Stengers, and Gilligan, these ideas can be further unfolded with the philosophies of technology and care of Bernard Stiegler (2013) and Annemarie Mol (2008). 13

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Christie, N. (1971). Hvis skolen ikke fantes. [If there were no such thing as school]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Davies, B. (1990). Agency as a form of discursive practice: A classroom scene observed. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(3), 341–361. Davies, B. and S. Gannon (2006). Doing collective biography: Investigating the production of subjectivity, Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill Education Dawydow, V. V. (1973). Arten der Verallgemeinerung im Unterricht. Berlin: Volk & Wissen. Dreier, O. (2008). Psychotherapy in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek: Rowman Altamira. Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books. Gilligan, C. (2011). Joining the resistance: Psychology, politics, girls and women. Cambridge: Polity Press Harvard Graduate School of Education. Harding, S. G. (2003). The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. London: Routledge. Haug, W.  F. (1979). Umrisse zu einer Theorie des Ideologischen. In Projekt Ideologie Theorie (Ed.), Theorien über Ideologie (pp. 178–205). Hamburg: Argument. Haug, F. (1999). Female sexualisation: A collective work of memory. London: Verso. Haug, F. (2003). Lernverhältnisse. Selbstbewegungen und Selbstblockierungen. Hamburg: Argument. Haug, F. (2004). Patientin im neoliberalen Krankenhaus. In S.  Graumann & K.  Grüber (Eds.), Patient–Bürger–Kunde. Soziale und ethische Aspekte des Gesundheitswesens (pp.  9–48). Münster: LIT Verlag. Haug, F. (2012). Memory-work as a method of social science research: A detailed rendering of memory-work method. Retrieved from http://www.friggahaug.inkrit.de/documents/memorywork-researchguidei7.pdf Højrup, T. (2003). State, culture and life-modes. The foundations of life-mode analysis. Aldershot: Ashgate. Holzkamp, K. (1973). Sinnliche Erkenntnis: Historischer Ursprung und gesellschaftliche Funktion der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt/M: Athenäum. Holzkamp, K. (1983a). Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt/M: Campus-Verlag. Holzkamp, K. (1983b). We don’t need no education. Forum Kritische Psychologie, 11, 113–125. Ilyenkov, E.  V. (1977). Dialectical logic. Essays on its history and theory. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Ilyenkov, E. V. (1982). The dialectics of the abstract and the concrete in Marx’s Capital. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Jameson, F. (2009). Valences of the dialectic. London: Verso. Jensen, U. J. (1987). Practice and progress: A theory for the modern health care system. Oxford: Blackwell. Jensen, U. J. (1999). Categories in activity theory: Marx’ philosophy just-in-time. In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard, & U. J. Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social practice: Cultural-historical approaches (pp. 79–99). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Kuzmanic, M. (2008). Collective memory and social identity: A social psychological exploration of the memories of the disintegration of former Yugoslavia. Psiholoska Obzorja/Horizons of Psychology, 17(2), 5–26. Langemeier, I., & Nissen, M. (2004). Research methods: Cultural-historical activity theory. In B. Somekh & C. Lewin (Eds.), Research methods in the social sciences. London: Sage. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lave, J. (2011). Apprenticeship in critical ethnographic practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Liberali, F.  C. (2009). Researchers learning by intervention research: The “Acting-as-Citizens” program as a joint production between researchers and deprived communities in São Paulo. In Culture and emerging educational challenges: A dialogue with Brazil/Latin America . International Cultural-Historical Human Sciences, 30, 75–93.

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Martin, E. (2007). Bipolar expeditions: Mania and depression in American culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martin, E. (2014). Table. Somatosphere. Retrieved from http://somatosphere.net/2014/03/table. html Marx, K. (2018 [1845]). Theses on Feuerbach. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm Mol, A. (2008). The logic of care. Health and the problem of patient choice. New York: Routledge. Mørck, L. L. (2006). Grænsefællesskaber: Læring og overskridelse af marginalisering [Boundary communities. Learning and transcending marginalization]. Frederiksberg: Roskilde Universitets Forlag. Mørck, L.  L. (2010). Expansive learning as production of community. NSSE Yearbook, 109(1), 1–21. Mørck, L. L. (in press). New standards for social practice ethics? Researching gang exit with former gang members. In Critical criminology. Mørck, L. L., & Celosse-Andersen, C. M. (in press). Mo(ve)ment methodology—Identity formation moving beyond gang involvement. Annual Review of Critical Psychology. Mørck, L. L., & Nissen, M. (2005). Praksisforskning: Deltagende kritik mellem mikrofonholderi og akademisk bedreviden [Practice research: Participatory critique between holding the microphone and playing the academic know-it-all]. I: T. B. Jensen & G. Christensen, (red.), Psykologiske og pædagogiske metoder: Kvalitative og kvantitative forskningsmetoder i praksis (s. 123–154). Frederiksberg: Roskilde Universitets Forlag. Nissen, M. (2004). Wild objectification: Social work as object. Outlines, 6(1), 73–89. Nissen, M. (2009a). Objectification and prototype. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 6(1), 67–87. Nissen, M. (2009b). Prototypes for the ethics of a democratic social engineering. In T.  Teo, P. Stenner, A. Rutherford, E. Park, & C. Baerveldt (Eds.), Varieties of theoretical psychology. International philosophical and practical concerns (pp. 146–154). Concord: Captus Press. Nissen, M. (2012). The Subjectivity of Participation: Articulating Social Work with Youth in Copenhagen. London: Palgrave/Macmillan Nissen, M. (2015). Meeting youth in movement and on neutral ground. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 3. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2015.34. Nissen, M. (2016). Standards and standpoints. Why standards, and studying them, imply critique. Theory & Psychology, 26(2), 163. Raffnsøe, S. (2017). What is critique? Critical turns in the age of criticism. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 18(1), 28–60. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/26261. Ranciere, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster. Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, J. (2013). Aisthesis: Scenes from the aesthetic regime of art. London: Verso. Schraube, E., & Osterkamp, U. (2013). Psychology from the standpoint of the subject: Selected writings of Klaus Holzkamp. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional ethnography. A sociology for people. New York: Altamira Press. Stengers, I. (2010). Cosmopolitics I. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stenner, P. (2018). Liminality and experience. A transdisciplinary approach to the psychosocial. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Stetsenko, A. (2017). The transformative mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s approach to development and education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Stiegler, B. (2013). What makes life worth living: On pharmacology. London: Wiley. Stiegler, B. (2015). States of shock: Stupidity and knowledge in the 21st century. London: Wiley.

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Chapter 12

Zooming In Zooming Out: Analytical Strategies of Situated Generalization in Psychological Research Peter Busch-Jensen and Ernst Schraube

Generalization is a key process of any scientific activity. It turns explorative activities into scientific investigations by engaging in overcoming one-sided, distorted ways of thinking and enables us to develop sound knowledge. However, it is not just a process within the sciences. It can be found anywhere in human life. Generalization is a process which permeates the entire practice of everyday living. Although so all around, it seems to be a quite mysterious process. The writings on the topic are often heavy reading; abstract, hard to follow, moving around in their own epistemic universe and not long after the first strenuous sentences, one does not feel like reading on. That is a pity because generalization is a crucial activity for any viable human life and can be a fascinating process. Generalization is about discovering, imagining, understanding, and transforming the world and, within psychological science, it refers to oneself and others, and to the world of our experiences, actions, and their implications. To a certain extent, the difficulty lies in the nature of things. Generalization is not a fixed procedure, but an ongoing process you have to rethink continuously, depending on the phenomenon, the content, and subject matter of the investigation. There is no one-way, solid path of scientific generalization. Again and again, we are entering unknown territory in which we have to find our own new path. That is difficult and challenging. However, there are also a few basic principles, analytical strategies, which can guide the process of generalization so that we may find the path easier and more secure. This is what this chapter is about, with focus on psychological research. Since the process of generalization depends on the problem and subject matter of the investigation, generalization works quite differently in psychology than for

P. Busch-Jensen · E. Schraube (*) Social Psychology of Everyday Life, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 C. Højholt, E. Schraube (eds.), Subjectivity and Knowledge, Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29977-4_12

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example in biology, physics, sociology, or anthropology, even if there are definitely similarities. Generalization is a human act. More precisely, an act of thought and transformation. It is about thinking things through their internal relations, a process of gaining knowledge and elucidating the world, including human life. Generalization is concerned not just with itself. It is not just a question of how to achieve to work scientifically, but it is related to the questions and problems in the world and to understanding and dealing with them in a more accurate, careful, and deliberate way. It is a process engaged in expanding human agency and forming future society. Generalization in psychology refers to the world of the psyche, to phenomena such as experience, emotion, thought, and action. Psychology is quite a new discipline and up to now, it does not agree on a common scientific conception of the psyche. However, there are good arguments in favor of understanding psychological processes as characterized by a few common distinctive features. Each human being is unique. In psychological research, we are irrefutably confronted with the singularity of each human being which distinguishes him/her from all others. Furthermore, human beings live their lives in the world, a life which is in constant change. A convincing conception of the psychological processes therefore builds on the subjectivity, contextuality, and processuality of psychological phenomena. As Jaan Valsiner emphasizes: “We need to come to terms with the uneasy recognition that it is the personally unique subjectivity that is objective in psychology” (2014: 6). The central question of psychological generalization is therefore: How can we achieve generalization, objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the uniqueness, individuality, and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena? This question is at the center of this chapter and we want to show in particular how psychological generalization on the basis of the subjective givenness of psychological phenomena can be done. At first view, the question may sound like an unsolvable contradiction. However, as soon as we realize that humans are social beings, living together with others in a shared, common world, a possible way to work with the contradiction emerges. The general world is part of the particular human being and the particular human being is part of the general world. Accordingly, the world resonates in the individual subject. As the philosopher Günther Anders explains: As everybody else, I am a barometer, from which I can read, in fact permanently, the weather condition of our time. I repeat: Everybody is such a barometer. Everybody carries, by the fact of her/his existence, around a piece of the present world, free available material, from which she/he can always draw, not so much to recognize him/herself, but rather the world of today and the world she/he is together with . . . All yours, all what can happen to all of you, can also happen to me; all your possible reactions or deficits of reactions can be read from me – in short: who is looking into oneself is also finding the others and the world. (1965: 75, translation by the authors)

We build on a notion of psychological generalization which does not abstract away human subjectivity and difference but understands it as different manifestations of the same relationship. Based on such a conception of situated generalization, we present a variety of basic analytical strategies of zooming in to zoom out, and of

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zooming out to zoom in. Before we elaborate on these strategies, we take a critical look at different forms of scientific generalization and describe in more detail common features of psychological processes and the specific challenges of situated generalization within psychological research.

 rom Thinking in Frequency to Situated Knowledge: Typical F Forms of Scientific Generalization Because we live our everyday life together with others in a shared world, generalization and the internal relationship between the subjective and objective, the particular and general, are inherent aspects of everyday life: talking, thinking, acting, living. Cooking for a group of friends, for example, involves a generalized way of thinking about our friends. Such as, how many will come? What might they enjoy eating? Is there something we should talk about? However, not only the everyday activities and social relations are entangled in processes of generalization, also the material objects and technologies in our everyday life are a result of processes of generalization and embody generalizations. A bicycle, for example, embodies quite detailed generalized knowledge about the human body and its specific characteristics including general notions about the cyclist as a person and the environment she/ he will bicycle in. In the practice of everyday living, we do not notice our generalization activities much. In a way, they are secondary, they only matter if they do not work. If we cook fish for our friends, for example, and one of our friends does not like fish, we are confronted with our neglect, the fact that we have not thought carefully enough about the general food preferences of our friends. The dilemma may be resolved quite easily by apologizing and, if possible, by changing the practice and trying to expand the general so that it integrates the particular. The crucial issue of everyday generalizations is that they work. Whether they build on correct and sound knowledge might be relevant, but it is secondary. Within scientific generalizations, it is the other way around. Its central aim is to move from opinions, preconceptions, and prior knowledge to correct, sound, and socially relevant knowledge. The societal trust in science builds on the premise that scientific research is taking care of developing not one-sided, knowledge driven by particular interests, but accurate, reliable, and general knowledge for the common good. To achieve this purpose, major forms of scientific generalization build on quantitative approaches of generalization in frequencies and the questions of how often an instance occurs in a given context. Such an approach seems to make perfect sense because numbers promise accuracy and secure knowledge. The methodological strategies of frequency generalization build on measuring the phenomena in their relations and on the idea that generalization is not possible from a single case. This latter principle refers to the problem of induction and the notion that it is logically untenable to conclude from a single case to many or all cases (or from unknown to

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known, or from particular to general propositions). If, for example, one student in an educational program suffers from stress, we cannot conclude from the single student that many or all students in the program suffer from stress as well. Therefore, the research design is usually based on representative samples which aim to adequately reflect the population as a whole so that the findings of the sample can be “generalized” to the population. Within the vision of generalizing in frequencies, this form of concluding from a representative sample to a more general population, category, or class is understood as generalization. Major traditions of psychological research build on frequency generalization as the basis of evidence and the central practice of developing knowledge and apply it in various forms especially in classical experimental settings as well as surveys with questionnaires. The exploration of frequencies can definitely help develop relevant and societally important knowledge (for instance, about the frequency of stress in a certain population). However, as a general epistemic approach in psychological research, it would be too narrow and one-sided. Usually, the results require further and more in-depth psychological investigation to explore the phenomenon in its relevant contexts (e.g., why and how persons of a certain population develop stress). An issue which refers to a fundamental problem of generalization in frequencies: the methodological strategies do not really fit the nature of psychological phenomena. Psychological processes are only in a very limited way accessible via numbers. In fact, epistemic strategies of measuring can reduce and even distort psychological phenomena beyond recognition and the possibility of grasping human subjectivity, experience, and action dissolves in thin air. Since the 1960s, the problem of a too narrow, particular, and fixed conception of generalization and ways of developing scientific knowledge has been widely discussed in psychology, including the need for a fundamental epistemic renewal of psychological research practice (Chimirri and Schraube 2019; Gergen 2015; Holzkamp 2013b, c; Teo 2009; Valsiner 2019). In response, an epistemological shift from a god’s eye view toward situated knowledge has crystallized in psychological theory of science and the understanding of the practice of developing scientific knowledge. A major line of modern science builds on the assumption that the researcher, as Svend Brinkmann explains, “is an isolated knower, who stands outside the world and aims to represent it correctly. True knowledge, on this account, means correct representation” (2012: 32). Such a representational notion of the production of knowledge from an external, abstract, and universalist perspective, disconnected from specific historical and societal relations, is challenged today. Scholars realize that their research activities and practices of developing knowledge do not occur in a social vacuum, but are rooted in the world, a world involving other human beings as well as societal relations, culture, technology, politics, and nature. They realize that, through their research and production of knowledge, they not only participate in the creation of the social world, but also view the social world in turn as affecting their research practices, including their theories, concepts, methodologies as well as their own thoughts, ideas, and conduct of everyday life (O’Doherty et al. 2019; Schraube 2015; Schraube and Højholt 2019, Chap. 1 in this volume). In the words of Brinkmann:

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Knowing is not something that simply happens – as if we were able to magically represent the world ‘as it is’ – but rather . . . an activity. Knowing is something people do, as part of their lives. . . . We need to desacralize knowledge and admit that if knowing is a human activity, it is always already situated somewhere – in some cultural, historical and social situation. (2012: 32)

Science studies substantiate this epistemological shift and argue for an understanding of scientific research and the production of knowledge as an inherently worldly situated, embodied, and socially and culturally constructed process (Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Hess 1997). As historian of science Donna Haraway explains: The “view from above,” the isolated, disconnected, and infinitive vision is no longer convincing: “Only partial perspective promises objective vision” (1991: 190). With the term situated generalization, we refer to such an embodied conception of scientific research practice which roots itself in its internal relations to the world and in the particular socio-historical contexts, everyday practices and subjectivities in which the production of knowledge actually unfolds. If we assume generalization not as a fixed procedure, but as a situated process dependent on the particular problem, content and subject matter of research, the question concerning the particular psychological subject matter emerges. Even if psychology as a science still does not agree on a shared vocabulary of what psychology is actually about, there are, as mentioned above, well-founded arguments for a few basic general characteristics of psychological phenomena: they are given subjectively, exist in context and are in constant change. Since these assumptions about the general texture of psychological processes are crucial for elaborating analytical strategies of generalization, we will now take a closer look at them.

 eneral Dimensions of Human Subjectivity and Challenges G of Situated Generalization Psychological phenomena, such as experience, emotion, thought, and action, are given in a specific form of existence: subjective and first-person. On the one hand, human experiencing, feeling, thinking, acting with and in the world are always socially and materially mediated processes (through language, others and the social, cultural, and technological world); on the other hand, they are always someone’s processes. They exist only from the point of view of a subject that has them, and in this sense in a subjective, first-person mode (for a detailed discussion of the concept of subjectivity, see, e.g., Holzkamp 2013c; Schraube 2013; Teo 2017; Zahavi 2008). Therefore, the personally unique subjectivity is objective in psychology, and we have to come to terms with it as the foundation of our processes of generalization and developing knowledge. The conception of persons and their psychological processes as active subjects is not new in psychology. From the very beginning as an academic discipline, we can find lines of thought describing the active human subject and its experience in relation to other human subjects in the world as the basic subject matter of

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psychology (e.g., John Dewey, William Stern, Wilhelm Wundt). During the twentieth century, psychologists increasingly realized that persons as active subjects are not just experiencing subjects, living in a world, but also acting subjects, making their own world on the basis of their experience and action, who in turn are re-making themselves. They realized that human subjects live in a society created by humans and, based on systematic analyses, they described how psychological processes unfold in everyday context and how the investigation of the various layers of the internal relationship between subjectivity and society is crucial for developing psychological knowledge and for understanding human experience and action, including its implications (e.g., Gergen 2009; Harré 1979; Holzkamp 1983, 2013a; Leontyev 1981; Vygotzky 1978). Generalization in this perspective involves both a reflection on how we as active human subjects participate in creating the world as well as a reflection on what this world means for us, for our subjectivity and agency. Furthermore, they realized that human subjects are situated not only in space but also in time. They are societal, but also historical beings. As living beings, human subjects and psychological phenomena are in constant change. “I” am never the same. For instance, “my” experience of something in this moment is different from “my” experience 5 min ago. As Valsiner emphasizes: Psychological phenomena are transient. A thought crosses my mind (and vanishes), I feel happy at the sight of a beautiful scene, and so on. Here is the problem – which is also the solution – the psyche is profoundly constructive. It cannot simply repeat what has been experienced before – it necessarily adds a new nuance of the novel moment. Consequently, it created many different forms of thinking and feeling, all of which may disappear. (2014: 8)

Because psychological processes are constantly in flux, we are confronted in our research with the challenge to grasp the phenomena not only in their unique, subjective givenness as well as their internal relationship to others and the social world, but also in their constant socio-historical processes of change. Acknowledging the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of both the researcher and the research persons entails that the researcher is not separated from the research process. On the contrary, the researcher as a subject is affected by his/her own research. The intersubjective mode of psychological inquiry implies that not only the subjectivity of the others, but also the subjectivity of the researcher has to be involved and can be seen as part of the empirical material to be examined. In this sense, psychology as a science of subjectivity develops theories and methodologies not about others, but for “us” in the sense of the “common good.” The aim is to clarify and constructively work with conflictual experience, agency, and the practice of everyday living. Since psychological phenomena are given subjectively, psychological generalization is only possible from and through single cases. Hence, we must expand the conception of generalization toward a qualitative stance. As Valsiner explains: Not only is generalization from the single case possible – but it is the only possible base for generalization. And even more – generalization necessarily happens on the basis of a single instance – each and every new experience – within the life space of the single case. . . . While being led by the uniqueness of each moment in life, we operate through general

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principles that transcend the uniqueness of any of these moments . . . Generality is in singularity. (2015: 233)

Psychological processes are subjective, particular, and unique, but at the same time recognizable. Through my personal experience, I am connected with other people in real terms because experiences relate in their general dimensions to the objective world and its fabric of possibilities, limits, and problems for our actions  (Dreier 2007). In such an intersubjective context of experience, subjective experience becomes objectifiable and generalizable as individual ways of participating, dealing with and realizing societal possibilities and limits of experience and action. However, since we are not able to see immediately how subjective everyday experiences relate to general societal possibilities and limits of action, the task of psychology as a science is precisely to analyze this internal relationship and to carefully trace the phenomena in their connections. Taking point of departure in specific problems, questions, and dilemmas in everyday experience, situated generalization is a world-oriented way of reflection. It is an ongoing process of shedding light on human experience and actions (and their implications) in their connections as a way of analyzing, working with, and bringing movement into the problems and practices. It is a process not just oriented to persons but to the world, and what the world in its relevant aspects means for human experience, action, and conduct of everyday life. We are now prepared to return to our question of how to achieve generalization, objectivity, and sound knowledge without reducing the uniqueness, individuality, and subjective givenness of psychological phenomena. Situated psychological generalization attains scientific objectivity not by disarticulating the subjective dimension of human life, but rather through the generalization of the subjective.

Zooming In to Zoom Out: Zooming Out to Zoom In Situated generalization is a scientific activity which permeates the whole research process. Starting from the questions, concerns, and problem-formulation of the research project, it includes the development of the theoretical and methodological framework, the concepts, methods, and collection of material the investigation is based on the empirical exploration, analysis, and interpretation as well as the presentation and discussion of the produced knowledge and insight. In all these elements, the question concerning the particular and the general is at stake including the concern to overcome one-sided and distorted ways of thinking. The epistemological principles and analytical strategies of the generalization activity depend on the specific content and element of the research process. However, we can identify a basic two-sided analytical movement relevant for the whole process of psychological inquiry: Zooming in to zoom out and zooming out to zoom in. This methodological imagery refers to two fundamental analytical dimensions of the research process. First, a phenographic dimension which includes a detailed

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description of the phenomenon (therefore phenographic) and second, a phenoconstructive dimension which includes a critical, constructive, and trans-­ descriptive analysis of the phenomenon. The imagery does not point to separate ontological entities, but articulates analytical movements, both based on a notion of the particular and the general (such as subjectivity and context, agency, and structure) as inextricably interwoven. Thus, the difference between zooming out to zoom in and zooming in to zoom out merely concerns differences in what aspects are analytically foregrounded and/or bracketed. Zooming in zooming out intends to transcend separating, detaching, isolating, and dividing scientific research practices and aims to understand the psychological phenomena in its relevant connections. It is an imagery which invites us to consider the generated knowledge as sound and trustworthy, but always as partial, as valid, but never as final or universal.

Zooming Out to Zoom In on Human Subjectivity and Agency Based on an understanding of human subjectivity as contextual and situated in the world, the imagery zooming out to zoom in transgresses individualistic narratives such as “subjectivity-is-inside” and corresponding visions of looking inside people and suggests to investigate psychological phenomena by looking with people and around them. We will explain this analytical movement now in more detail. Imagine you are reading the local newspaper. On the front page is a story about a local school teacher, who has just been caught producing and selling hard drugs in your neighborhood. If for a moment you were to feel a sense of outrage and mumble “Good thing they caught the bastard,” it would not raise many eyebrows. Even so, that very same evening you might watch an episode of the TV series, Breaking Bad, and hold your breath, when Walter White, a chemistry teacher producing and distributing hard drugs in his neighborhood, is almost caught by the police, and gives a sigh of relief, when he escapes. The difference between these radically different responses to a relatively similar phenomenon is not only remarkable, it is also highly interesting. And even though you might not have seen Breaking Bad, the point of the example is surely familiar. TV series, movies, stage plays, novels, etc. invite us to perceive the actions portrayed from the perspective of the acting subjects, and somehow this tend to make a huge difference in the way we perceive things: our judgments, sympathies, worries, and excitements. This is also why a movie might end with a seemingly trivial action like someone doing the dishes. However, this particular dishwashing incident provoke a tear in our eye. From watching the movie, we know that it is saturated with meaning and communicate a complex story of, for example, personal redemption and self-­ recovery, a chance to return to life after a great loss, sorrow, tragedy, or illness. Social phenomena that might seem trivial, strange, or even indefensible from an isolated and detached perspective, often transform into something more complex, important, recognizable, and understandable, when we are invited to see how it is actually lived, felt, made sense of, and accomplished by three-dimensional human

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beings engaged in their everyday life. Therefore, whether law-abiding hero or hardened criminal, the protagonist of stories usually gains our sympathy. We can see here how engaging in first-person experience and action embodies a quality that in radical ways differs from more detached observational perspectives. This quality seems to be related to a basic theoretical principle in the creation of art: the art of mimesis. The origin Greek term means “imitation” (though in the sense of re-presentation rather than of copying). Plato and Aristotle mainly spoke of mimesis as the re-presentation of nature. TV series, movies, stage plays, novels, etc. allow us to do the same with human existence: they provide us with an opportunity to “imitate” the life of others, by walking, for a while, in someone else’s shoes. Interestingly, this opportunity—to see the world from other people’s perspectives— tends to enable understanding and even affection with people, whose life we do not know about, and whose actions we might otherwise find strange or wrong. The active ingredient, in fact, is the opportunity to see likeness in the otherness. Within the relationship of likeness and otherness, we can find a central dimension of the question of how the particular is related to the general. Even though most of us cannot imagine ever marrying our mother, or killing our beloved, Shakespeare and Homer offered literary journeys that slowly turned such incomprehensible deeds into comprehensible outcomes of reasonable human activity. The tragic fates of Othello and Oedipus were thus stories of a wider human tragedy; namely the fact that the intent to do right and good is not a safeguard to wrongdoing. As Zach Beckstead, Kenneth Cabell, and Jaan Valsiner note: “Great novelists who describe the dramas in the lives of their invented characters – always particular single cases! – are appreciated precisely because they intuitively trigger generalization tendencies in their readers” (2009: 66). Like numerous works of art, Shakespeare and Homer turned something apparently inhuman into parts of human reality by making the reader suddenly contemplate if—in the same situation and life circumstances—he or she might not, in fact, have done the same. The underlying story is about human subjectivity and how, even in its most particular forms, it relates to more general dimensions of human existence, namely generally recognizable reasons for action, pertaining to recognizable human dilemmas and concerns. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once elaborated on this argument when he posed the question Who thinks abstractly? and noticed: “A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace, he is nothing but a murderer . . . This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality” (1808/1966: 116). According to Hegel, abstraction from the concrete is in fact an abstraction from knowledge since most tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. Real thinking, Hegel therefore argued, is the movement from the abstract to the concrete. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze presented a similar argument. “The true opposite of the concrete is not the abstract, it’s the discrete,” he explained (1978) drawing on the etymology of these concepts, where the concrete comes from the Latin for “grown together,” while the discrete comes from the Latin for “separated” (see

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Adkins 2016: 353). The point is that to identify the general in the particular, likeness in the otherness, we must synthesize and connect events and actions, not isolate, separate, and disconnect them. And to do so, we need to look with people and around them, rather than on people and inside them.  he Key of Understanding Likeness in Otherness: The Concrete Life T in Common The ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives, experiences, and actions is crucial. Not only because it tends to turn judgment of persons’ actions into something less straightforward and thus challenges our propensity to pass easy judgment and suggest oversimplified solutions to complex problems. But more importantly, because the ability to relate people’s actions to lived circumstances, concrete contexts, and recognizable concerns helps us see the situated intelligibility of human experience and action. Understanding this situated intelligibility enhances our ability to identify the socio-cultural genesis of problems and the diverse forms of meaningfulness afforded by our shared reality. It is therefore a key to better political and scientific solutions, interventions, forms of collaboration, and peaceful coexistence. With the concept of the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt describes how our ability to experience otherness as likeness embodies invaluable qualities for life in common. When reporting and contemplating the war crime trial against Adolf Eichmann, Arendt concluded that Eichmann was not an amoral monster. Instead, he seemed to perform evil deeds without evil intentions, simply because of his “thoughtlessness.” A thoughtlessness connected precisely to an inability to see the world from other people’s perspective and its resulting disengagement from the reality of his own acts. Eichmann “never realized what he was doing,” Arendt wrote, due to an “inability . . . to think from the standpoint of somebody else” (1963: 56). Following this argument, one can wonder that it is usually not psychology or scientific inquiry that challenges us to put ourselves in someone else’s place: to see, feel, and think about the lived reality of psychological phenomena. Psychological traditions that focus on individual mental faculties simply have very little to say about what it is like to be a human being living with specific dilemmas, relationships, necessities, challenges, and pleasures. Therefore, most of us have learned more about other cultures, life situations, and the meaning of specific life circumstances (e.g., what it means to have another age, gender, ethnicity, job, belief, economy, upbringing, body) from movies and literature, than we have from scientific psychology. We need to recognize the depth of this illogicality, its vast social implications and the importance of correcting it (Busch-Jensen 2015b). The art of mimesis demonstrates that to understand likeness in the otherness, it is important to contextualize people’s actual sayings, doings, and relations in their worldly lived reality since doing so enables us to relate human subjectivity in even its most particular forms to more general dimensions of recognizably human concerns. These concerns provide reasons for actions and hence make up the

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building blocks of the intelligibility of psychological phenomena. It is therefore a key task and obligation for psychology to identify these concerns and their lived reality. However, this requires knowledge which is simply not methodologically obtainable by abstracting away the situated aspects and contextual dimensions of peoples’ actions in order to excavate a hidden a-contextual essence inside. Instead, we need a genuine interest in peoples’ own perspectives, experiences, and actions in relation to the phenomenon under scrutiny and a methodology of differentiation, contextualization, and synthesis. In order to zoom in on human agency and subjectivity, we therefore have to zoom out on the situations, contexts, and relationships people participate in. We have to study the contexts and situations in which the phenomena emerge, including people’s engagements, concerns, and aspirations, in short: we have to zooming out to zoom in. The Phenographic and Phenoconstructive Dimension of Analysis To study human subjectivity in its lived reality, the movement of zooming out to zoom in includes, as mentioned above, a phenographic dimension of the analysis and a detailed description of the phenomena under investigation. On the basis of a person’s articulations of their particular standpoints and perspectives, phenography engages in describing as precisely and completely as possible the particular subject matter the research project is dealing with. It articulates the composition and relevant dimensions of the issues at stake in a way so that anybody intensively concerned with the topic will approve them as appropriate. Since one cannot immediately see how the subjective, everyday experiences relate to general societal possibilities and limits of action, dialogue and conversation represents an essential medium of phenography and route to knowledge in psychological research. With the words of Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann: “If you want to know how people understand their world and their lives, why not talk with them?” (2009: xvii). Talking with people and listening to what they are saying are crucial preconditions of phenographic formulations. Phenography helps us to develop a common ground for reflection and provides the material and substance for the further analysis. It creates the basis for situated generalization by gathering and accumulating pre-­ understandings and already familiar knowledge and by explicating relevant constituents, connections, and contradictions of the phenomenon. With the concept of phenography, we draw on the work of Klaus Holzkamp. He explains: Phenography is . . . first and foremost concerned with clarifying and accentuating the relevant dimensions of the subject matter for the purpose of improving intersubjective understanding of what we are talking about . . . The phenographic approach is to be distinguished from the phenomenological approach as a philosophical method. While in “phenomenology” – as inaugurated by Husserl and Scheler – philosophical statements . . . are accomplished by bracketing the natural worldview and by abstracting gradually and reductively from everyday contexts, phenography refers to the unreduced reality of human life and follows no wider objectives than just its descriptive clarification. (1978: 21f, translation by the authors)

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[Phenography] determines to what extent the material will be meagre and trivial or comprises the wealth of experience and knowledge characterizing the conduct of everyday life in its manifold relations to the world. Thus, “phenography” is a determining factor in subject science self-understanding, and the extensive exchange of experiences within the team of researchers and co-researchers is an indispensable basis for any productive subject science research. (2013c: 340, translation by the authors)

While the emphasis of the phenographic dimension is on gathering and describing everyday experience, thought, and action, the emphasis of the phenoconstructive dimension is on reflexivity and on expanding and deepening the analysis and process of generalization. It critically reflects on the descriptions, relates relevant theories and concepts to it and explores more extensively, how the phenomena are connected and are hanging together in everyday practice. Because of its systematic search for connections, it refers in particular, as we will describe in a moment, to the movement of zooming in to zoom out. Understanding and Hanging-Togetherness No understanding is just an accidental private happening, it is simultaneously an expression of an actual worldly phenomena. That is to say, it is simultaneously a gendered understanding, an economically formed perspective, a culturally embedded perspective, an understanding from a particular social angle, etc. Furthermore, it is the understanding of a particular epoch, of “my epoch” (Slunecko 2019: 5). Hence, a subjective account and perspective does not simply amount to something subjective. Rather, it constitutes a distinguished observational starting point. It is “part of the world” in the sense that when people talk about their lives, they are also talking about the world they and all of us live in. Peoples’ thoughts, actions, and feelings are grounded in their everyday lived reality. These reasons are human reasons and thus embody more general qualities. However, to investigate them, the challenge we face lies in what we understand by generalization and our inclination to apply the notion that generalization relates to knowledge about fixed connections between isolated variables. The crucial challenge and Archimedes point of research into general aspects of human subjectivity are that the particular in the general, likeness in otherness, does not reveal itself as more or less fixed connections between isolated variables. It relates to how things hang together in social practice. As Theodore Schatzki explains: “Sociality . . . designates the context-forming hanging-togetherness that constitutes human coexistence.” Participation in such hanging-togetherness is thus what it is for a person to exist in a condition of sociality (Schatzki 1996: 15). Therefore, the building blocks of psychological generalization are not information or categorization but understanding and connectivity. To return to our initial example with the TV series Breaking Bad. The information that Walter White is a man or a chemistry teacher does not explain his choices and actions. Nor does the information that he is diagnosed with cancer, that he loves his kids, or that he has no life insurance. There is no generalizable causality between

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either of these isolated facts and the actions under scrutiny. Rather, it is the journey into how these and other particular circumstances hang together in a particular way; how they make up a particular life situation that makes Walter Whites’ actions generally recognizable as intelligible and human. To understand human subjectivity, experience and action therefore requires developing knowledge of the hanging-­ togetherness of psychological phenomena (Dreier 2019; Schatzki 2002). What this means is that psychological generalization is not simply about identifying or categorizing phenomena as for instance gendered, ethnic, or in other ways structural by constitution. It is not simply about measuring or listing informational components, even of highly sophisticated theoretical nature. It is about situating actions in their complex lived reality. To make psychological questions, problems, and concerns understandable, we continuously have to relate to human subjectivity by disclosing the meanings ascribed by participants to the practice under scrutiny. We have to examine the relevant details of the practices associated with the problems and qualify our understanding of what these details and practices are, the dynamics of them and the actions they are comprised of. And we need to examine the unknown terrains within the details of social practices and people’s everyday life. Depending on what problem we are studying, we might focus on tacit knowledge, passions, and practical concerns that guide and affect peoples’ participation in the practices under scrutiny; or the mastery, knowledge, creativity, reason-discourses, coordination, and engagement afforded by the practice. What matter is that we try to grasp the aspects of the phenomena that are hidden, unknown, silenced, black-­boxed, or just difficult to appreciate when seen from an immediate perspective (Busch-Jensen 2015a).

 ooming In to Zoom Out: Unveiling Practice-Scapes Z and the Structural Zooming in to zoom out engages in describing and understanding the intelligibility of human action we might otherwise find strange or even despicable. As argued, this incorporates indispensable qualities for life in common and establishes a vital basis for psychological research and practice. However, zooming in on the situated intelligibility of actions also carries some risks. Firstly, there is the potential manipulative force of an enhanced organization of a stand-alone narrator-perspective on social reality, which should always be addressed and confronted, since, otherwise, it might invite us to overlook or ignore the experiences and perspectives of others. Here, art and science must certainly differ. If not, the ambition to “see from the perspective of the participants” risks being translated into a methodological individualism, which finds no relevance of studying social facts and the particular qualities of more collective phenomena such as groups, organizations, social forces, or structural dimensions. Examining the details of a particular practice is a significant

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part of psychological research. However, situated generalization requires an analytical sensitivity to the fact that no activity happens in isolation. Neither practically, socially, culturally, or politically. Therefore, the lived meaning of a particular practice can remain undertheorized if viewed in isolation or just from a single perspective. Secondly, there is a risk that the ambition to “see from the perspective of the participants” is translated into a primary focus to describe and understand, rather than critically analyze and discuss. However, the things we encounter and the practices we engage in, in our everyday life, are always part of a wider social reality of which we are partially unaware. This “unawareness” reduces our agency and are furthermore part of the societal distribution of action privileges and power relations. It is therefore vital to examine and address how situated practice relates to its wider realities. To grapple with the unavoidable partiality of perspectives, engagements, and approaches, and to deepen the analysis, we have to extend our frame of zooming out to zoom in with a complementary analytical movement of zooming in to zoom out. The difference simply involves a shift of focus and a move toward social practice as the concrete space in which human subjectivity and agency is lived. Social practice connects the individual and collective, agency and structure, the particular and the general. We will now present a few methodological strategies of unveiling social practice, in particular multi-perspectival and cross-contextual analysis as spaces of critical analytical work and reflection. The Space of Critique As a number of practice-studies have shown, everyday practice is rich with complex situated processes of for example learning, development, collaboration, power relations, or identity work. Even though these are vital dimensions of human practice, many aspects of their dynamics are not directly visible. Hence, we need sophisticated theories and concepts as tools that help us see, feel, and engage in how people are continually shaping and re-shaping each other and the world, and in so many ways learn and learn together in and about the world (Lave and Wenger 1991; Busch-Jensen 2015a). This includes conceptions and analytical strategies for tracing connections between the here-and-now of the immediate situation and the elsewhere-­ and-­then of other situations. Since through these movements, broader relations of power, politics, and structure are made visible. Zooming in on situated practice constitutes simultaneous movements of zooming out, that is empirical-analytical movements, that bring us closer not only to the situated intelligibility of human action, but also to how situated actions relate to a conflictual terrain of multiple connections, concerns, relationships, and perspectives, in which people participate in inter-related contexts with distributed consequences for and contributions from others. Hence, out of the movements of zooming emerge the contours of a composite shared reality of connections and differences of perspectives, abilities, and opportunities, which opens up a space of critique.

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 ulti-perspectival Practice Research as Intersubjective Tracing M of Connections All activities and practices are involved in relationships and associations that extend in both space and time and form a texture of social relations, dependencies, and references. Our social world constitutes a terrain of multiple connections, concerns, and perspectives, which again relate to wider societal configurations, for example, divisions of labor, knowledge hierarchies, and distributions of resources. The study of subjectivity in situated practices is also a study of more structural dimensions of social life. Therefore, the question arises how to critically examine the more structural aspects of the problem under investigation. We suggest multi-perspectival practice research as a constructive epistemic frame for the situated study of structure in the sense of explorative movements between perspectives and practices in a horizon-widening fashion. Tracing the connections between people and practices allows us to see the connections between the here-and-now of the situated practicing and the elsewhere-­ and-­ then of other practices. We need to uncover and examine this hanging-­ togetherness in and between people and social practices to understand better how the trans-contextual elements, relevant for our study, come into being, gain meaning, are kept in place and/or are being transformed. In doings so, we are in fact engaged in unveiling not only the conditions of the local accomplishment of practice, but also the ways in which it connects to broader social landscapes, or more precisely: practice-scapes. Tracing the connections in practice-scapes is a form of zooming. However, it does not imply putting the practice under the microscope. Rather, it relates to a careful work of tracing how a given practice in numerous ways relate to other practice as well. This work invites a form of mobile multi-perspectival practice research that involves efforts of sequential re-positioning and ongoing dialogue with empirical observations and theory, which help us carefully unveil relevant dimensions and central constituents of the practice-scape the problem under investigation is weaved into. The Inter-connectivity of Practice Just as any action in one way or another constitutes the resource for the accomplishment of other actions, one practice constitutes the resource for the accomplishment of other practices, forming complex nexuses of practices in space and time. These nexuses stretch out more or less visible webs of connections, with both spatial and temporal fabric, between people, contexts, and activities. Accordingly, human subjectivity, experience, and action are rooted in complex fields of nexuses of practice, both established by it and establishing it. This is why zooming in on a practice simultaneously constitute movements of zooming out, demonstrating for example how a “local,” “particular,” or “individual” problem relate also to more structural

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dimensions of how practices are connected to each other in more general arrangements (Chaiklin and Lave 1993; Nicolini 2013; Schatzki et al. 2001). When we talk of structural phenomena as for example the state, inequality, capitalism, climate change, or new public management, we are, in fact, referring to how certain practices and forms of action and organization have gained a durability through complex forms of inter-connectivity. Their inter-connectivity gives them an “object-like” quality; since they become weaved into aspect of our lives, we have gradually learned to take for granted and thus find it difficult to imagine to be without. This particular quality, however, is precisely an implication of how practices become resources in the accomplishment of other practices and vice versa. It is this aspect of social coexistence we refer to, when we talk of “social problems.” The tightness connections may acquire through dispersion can make practices hard to change since changing one practice might require changing numerous practices as well. Structural phenomena are therefore always dynamic and ambiguous since redirecting, adding, or cutting connections always involve change: new possibilities, challenges, and risks. Hence, no structural phenomenon transcends fully the local and particular. It is made, transformed, and kept in place in a texture of ongoing situated actions and everyday practices. Tracing Connections and the Question of the Structural Methodological strategies for tracing connections between the particular and the general can be found in various traditions of thought (e.g., Foucault 1997; Holzkamp 2013c; Højholt and Kousholt 2018; Latour 2005; Marcus 1995). In multi-perspectival practice research, tracing connections refer to the fact that psychological phenomena are processual and transient. The strategies of tracing are defined by the particular problem the investigation is dealing with and can take heterogenous forms as well as departures. The traced connections might be problem-based or task-related, cultural, social, or political. They can be mediated by documents, feelings, technologies, laws, politics, metaphors, job-tasks, commodities, etc. Furthermore, they can be enabling or restrictive, more or less hierarchical or symmetrical. Precisely because human subjectivity, experience, and action do not relate to isolated parts but to how things relate to each other, the study of structure does not have a bounded object of study nor a distinct perspective attached to it. We should therefore refrain from thinking about the structural as a sort of overarching framework or general law that give overall context to the study of a particular psychological phenomenon. Rather, we should think about the structural as integral to dynamic arrangements of situated practices. Through empirical and theoretically movements of re-positioning, we see how actions, practices, things, and understandings find different meaning and use in various contexts and situations. Thus, the production of structural dimensions of social life, emerge through a multiplication of manifestations. This is significant. Firstly, because it invites us to imagine that similarity and connectedness to some extent is demonstrated also in differences. Secondly, because it invites us to rethink

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a number of frequently evoked analytical contrasts, e.g., between local-global, agent-structure, and see them rather as emerging inter-connected qualities of dynamic connections between subjectivity and social practice. What is required in psychological research is therefore not an abstract theoretical awareness or an overarching social framework. Rather, it is a sharpened sensitivity to and often partially articulated awareness of (not always tangible) connections between specific experiences, actions, sites, contexts, and people. Of course, depending on what we are interested in, tracing these connections can be done in many ways. We can trace a conflict, for example at a workplace, by tracing its history and manifestations, the dilemmas of coordination it relates to and its multi-perspectival stakes and meanings. We can trace things and technological artifacts and examine the politics and materialized actions they embody and what they do with human subjectivity; how they help connect and/or disconnect people, knowledge, and practices; what divisions of labor they afford and how opportunities, risks, and challenges are socially distributed in the process? We can trace concepts, narratives, or metaphors to examine, for example, how and why certain dispositions of action and thinking seem to saturate “the said as well as the unsaid” in or across particular contexts. Or, returning to our initial example of Breaking Bad, we might trace the situated hanging-togetherness and connections between a personal problem (being diagnosed with cancer), socio-political arrangements (no free healthcare, low teacher pay), private economy (no savings or private health insurance) everyday concerns (wanting to support one’s family), specific skills and forms of knowledge (knowledge of chemistry and how to produce hard drugs), specific cultural circumstances (a widespread market for producing and selling hard drugs with high profit and low risk), and the formation of a specific action-trajectory (becoming a producer and seller of drugs). What is important is the effort to see connections as anchored in dynamic arrangements (also referred to by others as, e.g., assembles, nexuses, bundles, figurations, networks) of situated actions and practices.

 cientific Generalization as Critical Understanding S and Future Forming Zooming in zooming out offers a frame for situated generalization in psychological research to explore human subjectivity and how everyday experience and action are related to general societal possibilities and limits of action. It goes beyond separating, individualizing, and dichotomizing modes of scientific inquiry and critically investigates the intelligibility of human subjectivity and persons’ conduct of everyday life. The analytical movement builds on the notion that people’s expressions are true in the sense that we can consider their activities and actions as intentional and intelligible from his or her point of view and as, in principle, understandable. Here, we can draw on the methodological principle of hermeneutics of faith (Ricoeur

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1970), charity (Davidson 1984), or restoration (Josselson 2004) in contrast to hermeneutics of suspicion. We can build on these notions not only to insist on an inseparable inter-connectedness between human agency and societal relations, but also because it relates to the methodological concern, to take people’s perspectives seriously, to not subsume and push data into predefined categories, nor to let theoretical preconceptions determine our analysis. That said, tracing the intelligibility of human action does not mean to abandon critical analysis. Just as working with hermeneutics of faith, charity, or restoration does not exclude hermeneutics of suspicion. The question is how to combine them. Recognizing the partiality of human knowledge turns critical thinking into a necessity—and adds the researcher to the equation. It is a way of taking our own limitations as well as the otherness of others seriously. However, relating critically to empirical data is not the same as relating critically to the participants of the research. On the contrary, the critical approach toward data forces the researcher to reflect on statements and their meaning: their lived reality, intelligibility, and implications. Not by evaluating their truthfulness by a reference to numbers, frequencies, theory or methods, but by examining how they partake in making actions, circumstances, and practices run together in ways that form particular situations, problems, and opportunities. Tracing the practice-scapes of possibilities and restrictions our data are part of allows us to discuss not if they are true, but rather for whom and for what ends. The way forward, in maintaining this space for critical reflection, is to decenter the practice of critique and reposition the researcher. Mapping out social landscapes of multi-perspectival experiences, understandings, concerns, and aspirations invite critical analysis. It invites reflexive journeys of inquiry into how human perspectives, actions, and practices connect to multiple contexts and arrangements of practices that embody differences, dilemmas, and unequal possibilities for action. Critical work is about carefully examining such landscapes and the concerns, needs, and dilemmas participants ascribe to them: how action possibilities and restrictions are distributed among its participants and what forms of intelligibility are recognized and ignored, silenced, or privileged. This work is not grounded in subjugating empirical data to theoretical conceptions, nor is it grounded in simply evaluating the truth value of different knowledge claims, flanking our analysis with concepts such as falsification, illusion, frequency, or ideology. Such an evaluative approach to knowledge, not only constructs a questionable separation of questions of knowledge from questions of power (Foucault 1997), it also spills into an evaluative approach to differences of perspectives that is rarely productive, if we want to understand and address political, social, and psychological problems. All knowledge “speaks” from a particular engagement in the world. Neither from nowhere nor from everywhere, but always from somewhere. Therefore, analytical strategies of situated generalization have to denounce any claim to an innocent epistemological identity and instead commit both to critique and self-­ critique, and to a mobile positioning and decentered analytical standpoint. Equally important, we must recognize that the truth about social affairs is not so much a thing to be acquired as it is a way of keeping intersubjective inquiry going, which

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make us better at recognizing connections, links, complexities, and differences that matter to people. In this way, zooming in zooming out contributes to critical inquiry in psychological research by informing and mobilizing human participation, agency and the possibilities of forming future society.

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Index

A Abduction irreversible time, 95 process of, 90 Absolutization, 63 Abstracted variables, 178 Abstraction, 32–34, 56 abduction in irreversible time, 95 AS-IF structures, 83 distinctions made, 94 risk, 94 selection, 82 theory building, 89, 90 theory construction level, 94 Abstractive generalization, 83 Action research, 42, 45, 48, 51 Activity theory, 67 Actor-network, 200 Adult knowledge, 116 Agency, 42, 57 Analysis–synthesis process, 62 Analytical generalization, 6 Applied psychology, 51 Argumentation, 141 Aristotelian mode, 53 Art and psychology work, 141 Artificial concepts, 65 Artificial intelligence, 126 Artificial reconstruction, 150 Astrophysics, 79 Autocracy, 47 Auto-kinesis theory, 105, 106

B Baroque tradition, 146 Biological organisms, 87 Brand schools, 31 C Caravaggio creative and reflective act, 154–156 everyday life, 149–153 in Naples, 142–148 Cassirer’s model, 52 Childhood studies, 117, 118, 121 Children’s generalization characteristics, 115 declarative knowledge, 116 defectological view, 116 democratic knowledge, 116 ethical-symmetrical co-research, 121–123 knowledge co-creation (see Knowledge co-creation) political-educational emphasis, 116 procedural knowledge, 116 researcher’s own positioning, 117 scientific concepts, 115 scientific-everyday concepts (see Scientific-everyday concepts) teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136 Citizenship, 31 Clouds, 86, 87 Collective memory work, 207 Commensurability, 46

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243

244 Commission on Community Interrelations (CCI), 48–50 Common causes compound aspects, 27 concept, 28 construction projects, 27 contradictions, 27–29 families, 27 general points, 26 historical, 26 participation, 26 political activities, 27 practice comprises specific activities, 27 preliminary account, 26 schools, 27 social, 26 subjective, 26 Communicative contradiction, 31 Complex statistical models, 42 Complexive thinking, 65 Concept formation, 65, 124 Conceptual abstraction, 47 Conceptual thinking, 65 Conduct of everyday life, 9 Conflictual cooperation, 35 Construction, 83 Contradictions common causes, 27–29 concept, 28 in school life, 29–32 theory and praxis, 35–37 Cooperation, 35 Creative and reflective act Caravaggio, 154–156 Critical psychology, 24, 198 generalization activities, 182 approach, 179 conception of, 177 individual differences, 180 issues, 177, 181 local status, 181 notion of, 182 phenomena, 181 possibilities, 180 scopes, 180 social position, 181 social structure, 182 variable-shaped response, 180 nexuses of practice, 182 anti-essentialist critique, 183 composition, 183 concrete practices, 184

Index conduct of life, 186 degrees of uncertainty, 184 efforts, 186 historical practice, 184 knowledge, 185 personal trajectories, 185 phenomenon/problem, 185 possibilities, 184, 186 problem, 185 pursuits and understandings, 186 social context, 183 social practice, 183 societal practice, 183 subject participation, 185 subjects conduct, 186 Critical Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), 118, 120–123 Cultural Historical Activity Theory, 10 Cultural-historical research, 123 Cultural psychology, 11, 141, 153, 154 D Davydov, V., 62, 67–73, 75 Declarative knowledge, 116 Declarative knowledge products, 129 Defectological view, 115 Democratic education, 48 Democratic knowledge, 116 Democratic majority dominance, 56 Destruction, 83 Development, 24, 27, 31, 32, 37, 38 Dialectic generalizations, 129 Dialectical content, 32 Dialectical ontology of generalization, 123 Dialectical synthesis, 70 Dialectics analysis–synthesis process, 62 empiricism, 61 fragmentation, 61 human consciousness, 63–67 nomothetic approach, 62 nomothetic discipline, 61 promotion, 70–73 quantitative research, 61 rationalism, 61 societal practice, 74–75 theoretical generalization, 67–70 Dialogical knowledge, 120 Dialogical teaching generalization artifacts, 207, 209 as ethics, 214–216

Index collective identity, 208 deconstruction, 210 interview and reflecting team, 207 memory work, 210 praxis, 208 movements and artifacts, neutral ground constellations, artifacts and activities, 211 distribution of positions, 210 experimental cognitive psychology, 211 material artifact, 212 self-exposure, 210 self-representation, 210 (see also Prototypes) rearticulating (see Rearticulating teaching) recognition academic participant, 213 ideological form, 214 rearticulate teaching, 212 self-presentation, 214 reflecting generalization, 196, 197 reflecting team (see Reflecting team) self-exposure, 196 self-representation, 196 Direct and mediated experience, 141 Documentary approach, 154 Dogmatism, 72 Double negation, 83, 84 E Ecological expansion, 216 Ecological sustainability, 216 Elementaristic analytic conceptual instruments, 85 Elementary generalization, 124 Emancipation, 61 Empathetic generalisation decision-makers, 167, 168 efforts, 167 empathy building, 170 memetic objects, 168 Empirical-analytical movements, 234 Empirical and mathematical rigor, 51 Empirical generalization, 3 Enlightenment, 108–111 Epigenetic principles, 93 Epigenetic variability, 87 Epistemic asymmetry, 121 Epistemic strategies, 4 Epistemology, 52 Ethical-symmetrical co-research, 117 knowledge co-creation, 118–121 mutual learning, 121–123

245 Ethical symmetry, 118, 119 Everyday life, 9 Caravaggio, 149–153 Everyday lives societal formation, 158 Everyday/spontaneous concepts, 124 Evidence-based empirical work, 90 Evidence-based teaching, 35, 37 External similarities, 66 F Field theory, 51 Field/topological psychology, 45 Flexibility, 29, 35, 38 Focus abstraction, 32–34 and be flexible, 34–35 concepts, 33 flexibly, 38 Frederick Taylor’s concept, 43 Frequency of occurrence, 54 G Ganzheit cell division processes, 89 central role, 87, 88 clouds, 86, 87 eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, 87 Gegenstand, 87–89 and origins, 88 self-transforming, 87, 88 variability amplification, 87 Generalisation forms, 159 overlapping of forms, 168 Generalizable knowledge, 82 Generalization, 207 action research (see Action research) analysis, 23 analytical strategies, 222 Caravaggio (see Caravaggio) children’s (see Children’s generalization) concept, 42, 44 conceptual approach, 24 dialectics (see Dialectics) exploration of frequencies, 224 general and processes, 1 human act, 222 irreversible time (see also Irreversible time) knowledge contemporary psychology, 91

Index

246 Generalization (cont.) individual-based research tactics, 91 individual-centered research tactics, 92 Pavlov’s abstraction, 93 single instances over irreversible time, 93 William Stern’s view, 91 knowledge hierarchies, 1 Kurt Lewin (see Kurt Lewin) numerical, 3–5 of possibilities, 12 post-generalizing approaches, 5–6 process of, 82, 83 psychological phenomena, 222 psychological research, 2 shift and argue, 225 simplifications, 23 single case axiomatic presentations, 81 (see Single case) situated, 6–7 social praxis (see Praxis) status compositions and dynamics, 191 concrete nexuses, 190 differences and variations, 191 elementarist and essentialist, 189 general terms, 189 variable-based knowledge, 190 strategies of frequency, 223 unsolvable contradiction, 222 Generalization process, 152, 154 Germ cell, 68 German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology (GSCP), 197 Gestalt level, 83 GLOW-BUG power meter, 164, 165 Grounded Theory research, 89 Group dynamics, 48 H Hegel’s conceptualization, 71 Historical vs. ahistorical approaches, 111, 112 History of psychology, 41 Homogeneous corpus, 64 Hormic psychology, 85 Human conduct, 90 Human consciousness, 63–67 Human subjectivity, 5 I Idiographic science, 80 Imagination, 83 Immigrants, 45

Impressionist painters, 158 Impressionist social scientists, 158 Impressionistic analysis, 163 Incompatibilities, 29 Independent/dependent variables, 178 Individual-based research tactics, 91, 92 Intelligent language teachers, 126 Inter-connectivity of practice, 235 public management, 236 Internal relations, 66 Internal social relations, 28, 29 Intersubjective generalization, 11 Irregular cases, 81 Irreversible time abstractions, 89, 90 breakthroughs and stagnation domains, 79 conditions of, 92 elementaristic analytic conceptual instruments, 85 flow of, 79 Ganzheit (see Ganzheit) human conduct, 85 human existence, 80 human lives, 90 movement, 87 reality of research, 94 traditional scheme of abduction, 94 J Joint venture, 200, 201 K Knowledge co-creation ethical-symmetrical co-research, 118–121 pedagogical for academic, 132–134 teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136 Knowledge hierarchies, 1 Kurt Lewin action research (see Action research) community work, 47–50 development, 42–44 empirical projects, 47–50 epistemology, 41 generalization, 50–56 history of psychology, 41 methodology and politics, 44–47 minorities, 56–57 philosophy, 41 political action, 47–50 politics of research, 42 theoretical psychologist, 42 theoretical works, 41

Index L Language, 1, 10 Lenin’s Philosophical Notebook, 66 Life space, 46 Limit of movement, 36 Live laypeople models, 142 Local contexts, 93 Longer school days, 30 M Magical-realist projects, 130 Mainstream psychology generalization arbitrary variations, 179 disease/anxiety, 179 elementarism and essentialism, 179 empirical concepts, 179 phenomena, 178 variables and phenomena, 178 variations, 178 Marx’s concept, 68 Meaning-carrier, 105 Meaning-user, 105 Measurement error, 85 Methodological strategy, 119 Methodology cycle, 89, 90 Mimesis, 229 Mimetic objects, 159 Multi-perspectival practice research, 235 practice-scapes, 235 Mutual learning, 121–123 N Nanopsychology, 80 Naples, 142–148 National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), 48 Naturalistic approach, 154 Naturalistic style, 141 Neapolitan aristocracy, 142 Negation, 83–85 Neoliberal socio-economic systems, 164 Newtonian physics, 61 “No action without research, no research without action” principle, 41 Nomological generalization, 3 Nomothetic approach, 62 Numerical generalization, 3–5

247 O Objective connection, 65 Ontological symmetry, 121 Operationalism, 62 P Particularism, 74 Penal welfare, 160 Person–environment relationship, 104 Phenography, 231, 232 Phenomenology, 51 Philosophical thinking, 71 Photography, 151, 155 Political-educational emphasis, 116 Positive publicity, 30 Post-generalizing approaches, 5–6 Poverty artefacts, 172 dynamics, 158 focus on everyday, 157 homeless people, 170 human-centred ways, 171 personal experiences, 162 personal inadequacies, 158 personal laziness, 171 philosophical position, 158 qualitative approaches, 171 qualitative research, 171 questions and images, 169 social practices, 158 societal aetiology, 158 stress of, 160 substantive issue, 172 theoretical abstractions, 159 visual exercise, 159 visual/verbal texts, 172 Practice research, 13–16 Praxis, 51 abstraction, 32–34 as common causes (see Common causes) concept, 26 contradictions, 29–32, 35–37 experienced and systematic development, 24 generalization, 25, 26 historical social practice, 23 human activity, 27 social activity, 27 subjective aspects, 24 subjective matter, 36 Preschool children, 130

Index

248 Procedural knowledge processes, 129 Prototypes abstractions, 198 concepts, 197 dialogical teaching, 195 GSCP, 198 post-Marxism, 199 practice problematic, 199 praxis, 199 singular practices, 200 situated generalization, 200, 201 standards, 199, 200 theoretical approach, 197 Psychoanalysis, 63 Psychography, 10, 91, 92 Psychological epistemology, 3, 5–7, 9, 16 Psychological generalization, 7 Psychological knowledge, 2 Psychological laws, 44 psychological life space, 56 Psychological production of knowledge, 13 Psychology, 108 Psychology’s methodology, 84 Psycho-phylogeny, 179 Public debate, 48 Pure theoretician, 51 Q Qualitative methods, 89 Qualitative nature, 90 Quantitative research, 61 R Radical subjectivism, 109 Radio channel, 30 Realism vs. nominalism debate, 68 Realistic policy, 50 Real-life concepts, 65 Rearticulating teaching boundary community, 204 deconstructing texts, 204 education of educators, 202 institutional practice, 203 non-scholastic, 202 practice problematic, 203 prototypical, 202 reconceptualization of care, 204 situated learning, 202 standards, 202 Reference transformation, 205–207 Referential generalisation, 159 accepts, 164

dysfunctional intergroup, 164 focus on, 166 GLOW-BUG, 165 intergroup relationships, 166 orientation, 165 problems, 164 socio-economic hierarchies, 166 socio-economic relations, 167 Reflecting generalization, 196, 197 Reflecting team, 196 interviews, 204, 205 reference transformation, 205–207 Reflecting text, 201 Reflection of the fly, 105 Reflexivity, 12 Reflexology, 63 Representational vision, 5 Representationalism, 102–104 S Science-as-action perspective, 6 Scientific concepts, 69, 124 Scientific development, 52 Scientific-everyday concepts characteristics, 127 dialectic generalizations, 129 emancipatory relevance, 127 generalization, 123–125 imaginatively, 128 magical-realist, 128 mereological perspective, 129 pedagogical praxis, 129–132 problematization, 125–127 technical relevance, 127 vaguely present generalizations, 128 virtually, 128 Scientific generalizations, 24, 117 Scientific knowledge, 4, 125, 127 Scientific management, 43 Scientific maturity, 52 Scientific objectivity, 5 Scientific practices, 6 Scientific progress, 52 Scientific researcher, 37 Secularized society, 36 Self-generated goal orientations, 90 Situated generalization, 6–7, 222, 225 analytical movement, 228 challenges, 225–227 conduct of everyday life, 9 critical personalism, 9 Cultural Historical Activity Theory, 10 cultural psychology, 11

Index dialogical teaching (see Dialogical teaching) empirical-analytical movements, 234 epistemological principles, 227 etymology of concepts, 229 general qualities, 232 generalization of possibilities, 12 hanging-togetherness, 233 human experience and agency, 12 human subjectivity, 233 intelligibility, 231, 238 interpretation, 227 intersubjective generalization, 11 language, 10 likeness and otherness, 229 likeness in otherness, 230 material objects, 11 observational perspectives, 229 ontologically subjective reality, 9 phenoconstructive dimension, 232 phenographic dimension, 231 phenography, 231, 232 practice, 13–16 practice-scapes, 238 psychography, 10 psychological inquiry, 227 psychological phenomena, 8, 228 psychological research, 237 psychological traditions, 230, 231 Psycho-Politics of Self-Exposure, 195 reflexivity, 12 responses, 228 social practice, 234 space of critique, 234 stand-alone narrator-perspective, 233 subjectivity, 8, 9 subject-less psychology, 9 subject-psychology, 9 synthetic investigation, 10 technology and references, 200, 201 theoretical conceptions, 238 topological psychology, 10 unawareness, 234 Situated knowledge, 5 Situated learning, 74 Situated nexuses of practice advantage in dealing, 188 anxieties, 188 conception of anxiety, 187 motivation, 189 phenomenon or problem, 187 possibilities, 188 qualitative, 187 qualities, 187 Social asymmetry, 118

249 Social change, 48 Social life of children, 30 Social practice, 24 Social practice theory, 197–199 Social process, 34 Social science, 42 Social science research, 41 Social space, 46, 56 Societal aetiology, 158 Societal practice, 74–75 Societal structures, 157, 158 Sociological meta-theory, 51 Sociometry, 49 Sonder, 170 Specimen of humanity, 150 Spontaneous (everyday) concepts, 69 Spontaneous activity, 105 Standard cognitive theory, 102 Statistical inference, 4 Structural generalization, 6 Subject matter of psychology, 106, 107 Subjective behavior, 56 Subjective connection, 65 Subjectivity generalization (see Generalization) human, 4, 5 social context, 2 topography, 5 Subject-less psychology, 9 Subject–object relationship, 110 Subject-psychology, 9 Substantial generalization, 6 Synchronic profile, 92 Systematic scientific approach, 49 T Technical rationality, 37 Teleogenetic collaboration, 134–136 Teleological activity, 105, 106 Tertiary artifacts, 201 Theater play, 131 Theoretical abstractions, 159, 161 Theoretical concepts, 69 Theoretical generalisation, 6, 62, 65–73, 126 abstractions, 162 artefacts, 162 debates and abstractions, 160 events and relationships, 160 everyday life, 163 government agency, 160 impressionist approach, 163 interpretations of artefacts, 161 methodology space, 162 OECD nations, 162

Index

250 Theoretical generalisation (cont.) philosophical concepts, 160 policies and practices, 162 Theoretical security, 36 Theoretical tools, 125 Topological psychology, 10, 44, 51 Tracing connections, 236, 237 Transcendental illusions, 63 Tripartite system, 51 U Units of analysis, 65, 71, 72 Universalization, 125 Urban poverty, 160

V Vector psychology, 45, 51 Visual exercises, 159 Volition measurement, 43 Von Uexküll’s theory, 104 Vygotsky, L., 62–67, 69–73, 75 W Welfare service map, 161 Z Zone of potential estrangement (ZPE), 141, 142, 150–152, 154, 155