What Constitutes ‘Context’ in Sociocultural Research? How the Mongolian Experience Challenges Theory
Sociocultural theory is a Western construct, an explanatory framework for cultural patterns associated with settled, largely urban, lifestyles. In Mongolia the majority of people are mobile pastoralists. The Mongolian situation challenges some fundamental premises of Western theory. In Western educa...
Shranjeno v:
| izdano v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts, |
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
| Izdano: |
Transtext(e)s Transcultures
2009
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| Online dostop: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Izvleček: | Sociocultural theory is a Western construct, an explanatory framework for cultural patterns associated with settled, largely urban, lifestyles. In Mongolia the majority of people are mobile pastoralists. The Mongolian situation challenges some fundamental premises of Western theory. In Western educational situations, structures, contexts and schemata are substantially pre-defined, and we talk about things as ‘context-dependent’, since context is something that can be described as the backdrop to behaviour. In Mongolia both meaning and context emerge from people’s interactions with their environments and may subsequently be described. These are respectively relational and co-constitutional interpretations of situations. The interpretations are different, not oppositional or mutually exclusive. In this paper we present an ecological framework in an attempt to simultaneously embrace both interpretations. The purpose is: first, to foreground some co-constitutional interpretations and, where possible, to compare and contrast them with relational interpretations; second, to re-frame them though a cultural ecological lens; and third, to use these comparisons and re-framings as a basis for discussing some of the issues arising from current Western involvement in development and education in Mongolia. |
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