Saturday, October 21, 2006

Engeström, "Activity Theory and Individual and Social Transformation"

Engeström, Yrjö. "Activity Theory and Individual and Social Transformation." Engeström, Yrjö, et al., eds. Perspectives on Activity Theory: Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive & Computational Perspectives. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999. 19-39.

The introduction to this collection, Perspectives on Activity Theory, and Engestrom's opening chapter, "Activity Theory and Individual and Social Transformation" together offer a reasonably thorough, if condensed, introduction to some of the central tenets of activity theory. Basically, activity theory grows out of Marx-influenced researchers in sociology and psychology who found limited explanatory power in the traditional frameworks for making sense of socioeconomic structures (typically top-down and "stable, all-powerful, and self-sufficient" (19)). In many of the contemporary, interdisciplinary applications of AT, Marx recedes from center stage, while activity theory continues to pursue a kind of "radical localism" (36) as a departure from mechanical materialism or idealism (mentation as its own domain detached from physical substance).

In an effort to explain what he means by a "dynamically evolving cell concept of activity," Engestrom identifies and defines six dichotomous themes related to activity theory.

1. Psychic processes versus object-related activity (21)
2. Goal-directed action versus object-related activity (22)
   Analysis across levels (scales) risks an "individualist and ahistorical" orientation/bias (23)
3. Instrumental tool-mediated production versus expressive sign-mediated communication (23)
   Risks (as in Leont'ev) "prototypical forms of activity" (23)
4. Relativism versus historicism (25)
   "Any conceptual framework that postulates a predetermined sequence of stages of sociohistorical development will easily entail suspicious notions of what is 'primitive' and what is 'advanced,' what is backward and what is good" (25).
5. Internalization versus creation and externalization (26)
6. Principle of explanation versus object of study (27)

Next, Engestrom synthesizes three questions that draw together the six themes:

1. "First, how can we depict the cell of activity theory or, more specifically, what would be a viable way of modeling the structure and dynamic relations of an activity system?"
2. "Second, how can we incorporate historicity and developmental judgment into activity-theoretical analyses, yet take fully into account the diversity and multiplicity inherent in human activities?"
3. "And third, what kind of a methodology is appropriate for activity-theoretical research--one that could bridge the gaps between the basic and the applied, between conceptualization and intervention?"

Engestrom goes on to attempt to answer each of these questions after he strongly emphasizes mediation as a pivotal term/concept for activity theory. Gaining control of artifacts, he explains, is akin to gaining control of one's future (29). In the next section, "Modeling the Activity System," Engestrom presents two variations of a triadic model (subject-object-mediating artifacts) also a systemic model (see Spinuzzi for application), calling attention to the value in being able to move across scales from individual action to large-scale or organization-level activity.

Key terms: [From the Introduction: activity theory (1), idealism (3), mechanical materialism (3), distributed cognition (8), monocausal (9), interactive system model (9), mediating artifacts (9), Wertsch's mediated action (11), Lave & Wenger's community of practice (12), mediation as "germ cell" (13)], psychic process (21), object-related activity (21), goal-directed activity (22), activity prototypes (23), relativism (25), historicism (25), internalization (26), externalization (27).

[From the Introduction: "In the post-World War II decades, activity theory was mostly developed within the psychology of play, learning, and child development. It was applied in research on language acquisition and experimental development of instruction, mainly in the context of schools and other educational institutions. Although these domains continue to be central, activity-theoretical research has become broader in the 1980s and 1990s. It now encompasses such topics as development of work activities, implementation of new cultural tools such as computer technologies, and issues of therapy" (2).

"Activity theory has a strong candidate for such a unit of analysis in the concept of object-oriented, collective, and culturally mediated human activity, or activity system. Minimum elements of this system include the object, subject, mediating artifacts (signs and tools), rules, community, and division of labor (Engestrom, 1987; Cole & Engestrom, 1993)" (9).

"Activity system as a unit of analysis calls for complementarity of the system view and the subject's view. The analyst constructs the activity system as if looking at it from above" (10).

"Activity theory recognizes two basic processes operating continuously at every level of human activities: internalization and externalization. Internalization is related to reproduction of culture; externalization as creation of new artifacts makes possible its transformation" (10).]

"If anything, the current societal transformations should teach us that closed systems of thought do not work. But monism does not have to be interpreted that way. Human activity is endlessly multifaceted, mobile, and rich in variations of form and content" (20).

"In most of these [goal-directed] theories, individual action is regarded as the unit of analysis and as the key to understanding human functioning. The orienting function of goals and plans, the sequential structure, and the levels of regulation of actions have received a lot of attention. But these theories seem to have difficulties in accounting for the socially distributed or collective aspects as well as the artifact-mediated or cultural aspects of purposeful human behavior" (22).

"Mediation by tools and signs is not merely a psychological idea. It is an idea that breaks down the Cartesian walls that isolate the individual mind from the culture and society" (29).

"The idea is that humans can control their own behavior--not 'from the inside,' on the basis of biological urges, but 'from the outside,' using and creating artifacts" (29). i.e., Vygotsky's auxiliary stimulus

"In this sense, it might be useful to try to look at the society more as a multilayered network of interconnected activity systems and less as a pyramid of rigid structures dependent on a single center of power" (36).

Related sources:

Engestrom, Yrjo. Learning, Working, and Imagining: Twelve Studies in Activity Theory. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsulit, 1990.

Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

Hutchins, Edwin. "The Technology of Team Navigation." Intellectual Teamwork: Social and Technological Foundations of Cooperative Work. Galegher, Kraut, Edigo, eds. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990.

Posted by Derek Mueller at October 21, 2006 10:35 AM to Tools-in-use