17.-19. September 2003
Ph.D. / Young researcher course

Organized by
Seth Chaiklin, Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet, Danmark
Bernd Fichtner, Siegen Universität, Deutschland
Wolfgang Wörster, Haus Frühe Hilfen, Wiehl, Deutschland
17 – 19 september 2003, Bergneustadt, Germany

The course is directed toward all persons who are working actively with projects that involve the description of a practice (e.g., schooling, health care, professional work), and are interested in problems of describing praxis, especially as a basis for making interventions into that praxis. Problems in the description of practice will be introduced, and a theoretical concept of praxis will be developed. Activity theory, both in its classical and contemporary forms, will be interpreted for its possibilities to describe praxis, and central concepts in dialectical logic (especially as found in Hegel’s Science of Logic, and further developed by Marx, Ilyenkov, and others) will be interpreted for conceptual resources and methodological implications for investigating specific instances of praxis.

The main goals of the course are to clarify what it means to describe praxis and why it should be a central focus within cultural-historical science, and to provide a way to understand how to use theoretical concepts from dialectical logic in concrete empirical research.

Teachers
Seth Chaiklin and Bernd Fichtner
Readings
Gould, C. (1978). Marx’s social ontology: Individuality and community in Marx’s theory of social reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Chapters 1, 2, and 4)
Smith, T. (1990). The logic of Marx’s Capital. Albany: State University of New York Press. (Chapter 1: Hegel’s theory of the syllogism and its relevance for marxism)