Original version
Mind, Culture, and Activity. 2020, 27 (2), 185-200, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2020.1768271
Abstract
In this article, we explore the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) as a living, distributed bio-geography—that is, as the diversity of ways in which the lab exists today in and through research-practice work and experiences across multiple locations and generations of scholars. Taking a genetic perspective, we ground our discussion in two moments in the history of LCHC, embodied in two international meetings that took place in San Diego, the institutional home of LCHC —one in 2003 and the other, part of Re-generating CHAT project, in 2019. Taking as our point of departure the empty room depicted in Section 6 of LCHC’s Polyphonic Autobiography, “The Future,” we examine these two meetings as two moments where that metaphorical empty room is enlivened and populated. In our discussion, we identify LCHC’s progressive and critical orientation toward social justice through scholarly praxis, and discuss how this orientation evolves throughout changing circumstances and configurations. Most characteristic of LCHC’s particular way of life, we discuss a degree of dis/coordination in its organization, which creates imaginative opportunities—open gaps—between the diverse voices, ideas, and identities in its collaborative research-practice activities.