Constructivism and Playfulness

Sure, it's mostly Papert's constructionism. But it led me to think about some of my favourite themes, including playfulness and constructivist approaches to learning.

Drori's presentation is quite effective in that it pushes members of the audience in the direction of their own thinking about those issues. A bit of the "don't think about pink elephants" thing. Plus a few taunts. Sounds more manipulative than planting landminds but the results may be similar.

I also like the fact that it's a far cry from the OLPC/MIT/Papert approach of "defending a worldview at all costs." Drori isn't defensive. He's not giving the impression that he holds The Key to open brains. He's not claiming that any of this is his own making, that he made a grand discovery. He just brings us on a very quick tour of some ideas about learning.

On the other hand, his approach is focused on science classics, not on broader philosophical themes. One might even guess that Drori's take is inscribed in good ol' positivism, that he has no qualms about reductionism, and that he may hold a journalist's deterministic view of technology.

I just like the fact that his TEDtalk is short and sweet.

Playful Performativity

Heard of dissertation-writing through email messages? ;-)
Was writing a message to Georgina Born based on the talk she gave at McGill yesterday. Willfully playing with diverse levels of informality.
Here's a slightly edited version of my message (as a placeholder for more of my craaaazy connections of ideas to serve in my research).

I get the impression that a concept of playfulness may help us connect different issues with which Born's work seems to be dealing. (Recovering from Bourdieu by showing Adorno's limits.)
It might be that I have been obsessed with play and playfulness. One of my crazier blog entries related to those concepts.
Yes, it's quite «touffu» (never found the perfect equivalent in English). But there are things which fit in nicely with my approach to "significance, language, music, culture, and society."

In my mind, there are clear parallels between:

• Huizinga's and Caillois's notions of play
• The dramatic dimensions of Turner's approach to ritual
• The well-known sacred/profane and public/private dichotomies
• Lévi-Strauss's bricolage and wild (not savage) mind
• Stone's version of Schutz's ideas about time
• Post-Lord orality
• Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome metaphor as applied to social network analysis
• Nachmanovitch's approach to "Free Play" improvisation in music
• Bauman's notion of performance
• Wilson and Sperber's model for relevance applied outside of ostensive-referential communicative processes
• Molino's "total musical fact"
• What's lacking in Bourdieu's conception of improvisation
• The contextual negotiation of social identity
• Trendier notions of agency and performativity in North American social sciences
• Microsocial interactions
• Tradition as the organic equivalent of institutional "canon" as "continuity through change"

Haven't packaged all of these together yet, but it should come up soon.

As anybody can guess, I'm a typical ethnographer (holist, culturalist, particularist and, yes, even relativist). These concepts all fit in my own fieldwork practises (dialogue with participants in Malian hunter music-verbal performance events). So maybe these connections don't fit in the late national era European cases with which Born works. Was just trying to bounce some ideas off her, see what sticks.