Unauthorized and Unfinalized Constitution of the Cultural Historical SIG

This page is dedicated to:
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) -- Soviet Marxist psychologist,  a founder of the cultural-historical approach. He argued that psychological development is shaped by history, culture, and society. Vygotsky introduced the notion of the zone of proximal development.

hits since January 8th, 2004

[Here is space for info about more scholars who highly influenced the Cultural-Historical SIG. Please send this info (name, photo, link, and brief info) to Eugene Matusov]

In January 2004, the first draft of the SIG Constitution has been developed by our SIG President Bill Barowy in collaboration with current and past SIG officers. In our view, this is a very solid, well-written, and long-needed legal document that helps to stabilize a transition from one SIG government body to another every two years. It sets procedural traditions by making them transparent and guides how to solve possible problems. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

However, we found that this document written in a traditional legalese/bureaucratese language does not fully fit the spirit and conceptual framework of our SIG. The legalese style of the document sounds monologic, unwelcoming, adversarial, cold, manipulative, and unexciting (see James Gee, 1996, for more discussion of the social and political functions of legalese/bureaucratese language). Judy Diamondstone, the SIG Program officer, wrote in response to the document's language, "Is bureaucratese functional in some way other than distancing the reader (formalizing the message)? Do we want to encase the (idealized) SIG in this discourse? ... I'm wondering how the same commitments & principles would sound addressed to a certain kind of feminist, or to a Latina graduate student. I realize that some will appreciate the formality. I'm reminded here of Pat Williams' argument that legalese is important to minorities as a means to ensure rights that they can't otherwise count on. Maybe we can make our by-laws bi-dialectal... there is also reason to be skeptical of such rational schemes designed to "fix" communication among individuals/groups with different vested interests. Not everyone has access to the rules... bureaucratese is designed to eliminate perspective -- that's the problem that I proposed we might address with a bi-dialectal or tri-dialectal [or N-dialectal] version of the document."

Bill Barowy, the President of the SIG, replied, "I think feminists, Latinas, everyone, will have a chance to make contributions when the document is released to the full SIG, so we can find the answer to your question through direct experience....Dialectics refers more to process than products, and it is the process of making a constitution that is dialectical. So your antithesis is the next step what i would hope is a never ending story."

With this wonderful suggestion and blessing, we decided to try to develop an alternative BUT complementary text for our SIG Constitution. Our initial principles of writing Constitution are very simple: everyone should has opportunity to add her or his voice to the Constitution that should be an alive never ending and never finalizing document. To facilitate this process, we designed this website (please let us know how to improve it!) and propose questions based on Bill's document (thank you, thank you, thank you!). Read the question on each following page and try to reply-react to it. You should not feel obligated to reply to the question: you can make comments about what has been already written, raise concerns, share a joke, and so on. The response's tone, style, language are of your choice. Я не шучу! Please participate do not let our SIG stagnate: go to other pages of the site and please write what you think (to write use a template form at the very bottom of each page).

Truly yours,

Judy Diamondstone, Program Officer
Eugene Matusov, former SIG officer
Bill Barowy, President of the SIG
January 2004, Cyberspace

This is how our legal Constitution defines itself:

"Article I. Name

The name of the special interest group is Cultural-Historical Research Special Interest Group hereafter referred to as CHSIG, an integral organization of the American Educational Research Association."

"Article III. Constitution

The purpose of this Constitution is to promote the mission of the CHSIG through democratic participation in governance and the amendment of governance. Its form makes manifest the CHSIG history and its function is to guide democratic participation. The articles of ratification and amendment aim to ensure that the constitution will function as a living document to address continuing CHSIG developments and emergent needs."

Official draft of the CH-SIG Constitution

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