[Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Wed Jul 22 18:30:30 PDT 2015
That is exactly right, Larry, I am advocating a humanism, in
opposition to poststructuralism, structuralism Marxism, and
strands of Activity Theory which give everything to the Object.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 23/07/2015 2:24 AM, Lplarry wrote:
> Here is a quote from the introduction of "The Cambridge
> Handbook of Merleau-Ponty on the topic of the subject.
>
> "Foucault's archaeological studies of the early 1970's,
> most notably "The Order of Things" and "The Archaeology of
> Knowledge", did perhaps more than any other work of the
> period to LEGITIMIZE conceiving of processes without
> subjects."
>
> This is an "antihumanist" program as Foucault saw the
> failure of phenomenology and the residual links between
> subjectivism and anthropology.
>
> The force of Foucault's argument was tying the philosophy
> of the subject to what he saw as an outmoded humanism.
>
> It may be what Andy is highlighting is a new humanism.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Lubomir Savov Popov <mailto:lspopov@bgsu.edu>
> Sent: 2015-07-22 8:55 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>; Andy Blunden
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
>
> Hi Alfredo,
>
> The object doesn't carry in itself the motive and the
> purpose of activity. Actually, depending on the motive and
> purpose of activity, the object can be approached in many
> different ways.
>
> It is true that the relationship between the object and
> the subject caries the purpose/goal/objective/motive of
> activity. This type of relationship might has several
> aspects and the teleological aspect is one of them.
> Actually, in AT, the teleological aspect is central one
> among all aspects of Subject-Object relationships.
>
> The teleological aspect in AT is envisaged at several
> levels with distinctive teleological phenomena:
> motivation, goal, etc.
>
> It is difficult to find diagrams of the structure of
> activity with its three levels. I just tried to do that
> and in most cases I got the famous "triangle." The
> internet is dominated by English language texts where the
> authors evidently use that version of activity theory. The
> three structural levels of activity might be found in t
>
> Lubomir
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Alfredo Jornet Gil
> Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:25 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; Andy Blunden
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
>
> That was a very helpful entry, Andy. Thanks!
> I see that our treatment of object in the paper is very
> much in line with the notion of Arbeitsgegenstand as you
> describe it.
>
> I have many questions, most of which I should find in the
> literature rather than bother here. But I would like to
> ask one here. It concerns the quote that the object
> "carries in itself the purpose and motive of the
> activity." What does "in itself" mean here?
> Thanks again for a very informative post,
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From:
> xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> Sent: 22 July 2015 08:31
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
>
> If I could try to do my thing and draw attention to some
> distinctions in this field ... we have at least three
> different versions of Activity Theory involved here plus
> Leigh Star's theory and in addition the theories that have
> spun off from Leigh Star's initial idea. Each is using the
> word "object" in a different way, all of them legitimate
> uses of the English word, but all indexing different
> concepts. So for the sake of this discussion I will invent
> some different terms.
>
> The German word Arbeitsgegenstand means the object of
> labour, the material which is to be worked upon, the
> blacksmith's iron. It is objective, in that if may be a nail
> to a man with a hammer and waste material for a man with a
> broom, but it is all the same Arbeitsgegenstand. Engestrom
> use the word "Object" in the middle of the left side of the
> triangle to mean Arbeitsgegenstand, and when it has been
> worked upon it becomes "Outcome." The hammer that the
> blacksmith uses is called "Instruments" or now
> "instrumentality," and the Rules, whether implicit or
> explicit, these are respectively the base and apex of the
> triangle.
>
> Engestrom says " The object carries in itself the purpose
> and motive of the activity." So this "purpose or motive" is
> not shown on the triangle, but I will call it the OBJECT.
> This is what Leontyev meant by "object" when he talks about
> "object-oriented activity." The OBJECT is a complex notion,
> because it is only *implicit* in the actions of the
> subject(s); it is not a material thing or process as such.
> Behaviourists would exclude it altogether. But this is what
> is motivating all the members of the design team when they
> sit down to collaborate with one another. Bone one of the
> team thinks the OBJECT is to drive the nail into the wood
> and another thinks the OBJECT is to sweep the
> Arbeitsgegenstand into the wastebin. These OBJECTs change in
> the course of collaboration and in the End an OBJECT Is
> *realised* which is the "truth" of the collaboration, to use
> Hegel's apt terminology here.
>
> Surely it is important to recognise that while everyone
> shares the same Arbeitsgegenstand, and ends up with Outcome
> as the same OBJECT, along the road they construe the object
> differently. This is what Vygotsky showed so clearly in
> Thinking and Speech. It is not the Arbeitsgegenstand or some
> problem carried within it alone which motivates action, but
> *the concept the subject makes of the Arbeitsgegenstand*!
>
> Then Leigh Star comes along and applies (as Lubomir astutely
> notices) postmodern ideology critique to the collaboration
> within an ostensibly neutral infrastructure - that is, in
> Engestrom's terms Rules and Instruments, which are naively
> supposed to be there just to aid collaboration. And Leigh
> Star shows that this is an illusion; the Rules and
> Instruments are in fact residues of past collaborations
> which carry within them the Outcomes, i.e., realised OBJECTs
> of past collaborations. It is these one-time OBJECTs,
> now-Instruments+Rules which are the Boundary Objects.
>
> But it seems that other have grasped the postmodern critique
> elements of this idea, that apparently ideologically neutral
> obJects (in the expanded sense of socially constructed
> entities, usually far more than OBJects - as things, or
> artefacts, including institutions - fossilised "systems of
> activity") and recognised the shared OBJECT as a Boundary
> Object, reflecting the fact not everyone has the same
> concept of the OBJECT, as Vygotsky proved.
>
> But what Engestrom has done, by placing the Boundary Object
> in the place of Object on his triangle, joining two "systems
> of activity," for the purpose of looking not at cooperation
> but rather the conflict within the broader collaboration.
> The reconstrual of the Arbeitsgegenstand is deliberate and
> aimed to change the relation between Subject and obJECT
> (here referring to the Hegelian "Object" usually rendered as
> "the Other.") thereby introducing yet a different strand of
> postmodern critique into the equation, namely Foucault's
> Poststructuralism, to mind mind, with great effect.
>
> OK, so we have Arbeitsgegenstand. OBJECT, Boundary Object,
> OBject, obJECT and obJect. And I might say, the situation is
> almost as bad in Russian and German,
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> On 22/07/2015 5:46 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
> > Thanks a lot for your appreciation, Lubomir.
> >
> > To clarify my question in the previous e-mail, I wish to
> add that I am a bit familiar with the distinction between
> object and tool in activity theory, though not enough yet.
> I can see, and we were aware through the process, that
> what we describe in the paper has to do with how the
> object of design emerged and developed for the team in and
> as they were dealing with, developing, and resorting to
> particular means or tools. But I guess we could say that
> in our analyses there is a lack of a historical account of
> the object that goes over and above the particular
> instances analyzed. Although we provide with some
> ethnographic contextualization of the team's developmental
> trajectories, all of our discussion is grounded on
> concrete events and their transactional unfolding. We did
> not resort to the distinction between object and means
> because it seemed to be the same thing in the there and
> then of the episodes analyzed, at least in what
> participants' orientations concerned. If they ori
> > ented towards anything beyond what was there in the
> meetings, it was in and through the meetings' means. How
> would then the distinction between means and object have
> added to our understanding of the events? (And this is not
> to doubt of the contribution from such a distinction, I
> really mean to ask this question for the purpose of
> growing and expanding; and as said before, part of the
> answer may be found in Engestrom et al. contribution).
> >
> > As to how we would position our contribution with regard
> to activity theory, I would reiterate what we said when
> introducing the paper for discussion: we begun with the
> purpose of working outside any particular framework and
> think, as we think Star did, broadly, drawing from several
> sources. These included cultural historical psychology,
> ethnomethodology, and discourse analysis. But also the
> ideas about Experience (in the Deweyan/Vygotskyan sense)
> that have been the topic in this discussion were in the
> background all the time, but we did not operationalize
> them in terms of any particular theory. This is not to say
> that we went for the "anything goes;" we tried our best to
> keep internal coherence between what we said about the
> data, and what the data was exhibiting for us. Perhaps
> Rolf would like to add to this.
> >
> > I think the questions you are rising about activity
> theory are very much in the spirit of what I am after, and
> I am not the best to answer them; but this xmca list may
> be one of the best places to be asking those questions.
> >
> > Alfredo
> > ________________________________________
> > From:
> xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
> > Sent: 21 July 2015 21:16
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
> >
> > Dear Alfredo and Rolf,
> >
> > There are also a few other things that I would like to
> bring to this discussion.
> >
> > First, you have a wonderful project and a great article.
> It is a great example of an interpretativist approach to
> everyday life phenomena. Really interesting and
> fascinating. It is all about our minds, culture, and activity.
> >
> > However, how is your approach related to classic
> Activity Theory? Some people might find that it is a
> Symbolic Interactionist approach; others might say it one
> of the Deconstructivist approaches that emerge right now
> or have emerged in the last decades; still other people
> might look for connections to ethnomethodology, discourse
> analysis, etc. I am not trying here to impose a template
> or categorize your methodology -- just raising a question
> about its connection to Activity Theory. And again, I am
> not saying that this is a shortcoming -- I would like to
> clarify certain things for myself.
> >
> > For example: What are the limits and boundaries of
> Activity Theory? How much we can fuse Activity Theory and
> Postmodernist approaches? What do we gain when we infuse
> new methodological, epistemological, and ontological
> realities into Activity Theory? What do we lose? What is
> the threshold when it is not Activity Theory anymore? (I
> mean here Activity Theory as research methodology.) Do we
> need to call something Activity Theory if it is not? If we
> create a new approach starting with Activity Theory, do we
> need to call it Activity Theory?
> >
> > Activity Theory is a product of Modern thinking, Late
> Modernism. The discourse you use in your paper borrows
> strongly from Postmodern discourses and approaches. I am
> not sure that Modernist and Postmodernist discourses can
> be fused. We can borrow ideas across the range of
> discourses, but after we assimilate them for use in our
> project, they will "change hands" and will change their
> particular discourse affiliation and will become
> completely different components of a completely different
> discourse. Mostly because the epistemologies and
> ontologies are different; and the concepts are very
> different despite of the similarities in ideas and words
> used to name these ideas.
> >
> > Just a few questions that I hope will help me understand
> better what is going on in the realm of CHAT.
> >
> > Thank you very much for this exciting discussion,
> >
> > Lubomir
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Alfredo Jornet Gil
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 11:36 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; Andy Blunden
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
> >
> > Andy, all,
> > I just recently begun to read Engeström and cols.
> contribution to the special issue, which is very
> interesting. I have particular interest in the difference
> that they point out between boundary object on the one
> hand, and object and instrumentality as different aspects
> of activity theory on the other. Rolf and I came across
> this distinction while writing our own paper. We noticed
> that the museum space, through multiple forms of
> presentations (e.g., the room itself, a floor plan,
> performances of being in the room while not being there,
> etc), was a means, an instrument for achieving a final
> design product.
> >
> > At the same time, the museum space begun to become the
> object of the designers' activity. Since this were
> interdisciplinary designs, and the partners had multiple,
> sometimes opposite interests, what seemed to be a common
> object for all them was the museum as place. Thus, most
> representations of it begun to be made in terms of
> narratives about being there. That was the orientation
> that seemed to stick them together.
> >
> > Thus, the museum space was both object and instrument.
> We wondered whether we should do connections to notions of
> object of activity and tools, but we felt that that road
> would take us away from the focus on body and experience.
> We ended up drawing from Binder et al (2011), who
> differentiate between object of design, the design thing
> that work delivers, and the object's constituents (or
> means of presentation before the design thing is finished).
> >
> > When bringing the notion of boundary object into the
> picture, we could discuss the history of development of
> these relations between the different forms of
> presentations of the museum means towards the object
> without necessarily articulating the differences between
> the two. One advantage was that boundary objects focus on
> the materiality, which, as already mentioned, is not about
> materials in themselves, but about consequences in action.
> From the point of view of the persons implicated in the
> process, the museum space as object of design was an issue
> in and through the working with some material, some form
> of presenting it or changing it. Both object and
> instrument seemed to be moments of a same experience. But
> I still want to learn what we may get out of making the
> distinction between object and tool, as Engeström and
> colleagues do (so I should perhaps read more carefully
> their study rather than be here thinking aloud).
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> > Alfredo
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From:
> xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> > Sent: 21 July 2015 14:38
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Emergence of Boundary Objects
> >
> > Henry, anything. But the point is objects which play some
> > role in mediating the relation between subjects, probably a
> > symbolic role, but possibly an instrumental role, too, and
> > one subject challenges that role and turns the object into
> > its opposite, and changes the terms of collaboration.
> > A number of examples spring to mind.
> >
> > * Loaded, especially pejorative words, such as Queer, are
> > embraced by a despised group who take control of the
> > word and assertively embrace it;
> > * The post-WW2 women's peace movement who deployed their
> > stereotype as housewives and mothers to magnificant
> effect;
> > * ISIS's hatred and fear of women turned into a weapon
> > against them by Kurdish women fighters (ISIS flee
> before
> > them rather than in shame);
> > * The Chartists who turned the British govt's stamp which
> > put newspapers out of reach of workers against them by
> > printing the Northern Star as a stamped newspaper and
> > obliging workers to club together in groups to buy and
> > read it, thus making the paper into a glorious
> > organising tool;
> > * the naming of Palestine and the Occupied Territory /
> > Israel is the struggle over the meaning of a shared
> > object (the land);
> > * Gandhi's use of the landloom as both a weapon and tool
> > for Indian independence and self-sufficiency,
> raising it
> > from the status of obsolete and inferior technology
> to a
> > symbol of India.
> >
> > In think this is not what Susan Leigh Star had in mind when
> > she introduced the term, but core point is that the
> > ideological construction placed upon an object is subject to
> > contestation, and if successful, the re-marking of an
> > artefact is a tremendously powerful spur to subjectivity.
> >
> > Yrjo raises the question: is the"boundary object" a
> > mediating artefact or the object of work
> > (/Arbeitsgegenstand/)? I think the answer is that in these
> > cases it is a mediating artefact, tool or symbols according
> > to context. In principle it is not the Object in the
> > Engestromian sense, though it might happen to be.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> > On 21/07/2015 12:27 PM, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
> >> Rolf, Alfredo, Andy,
> >> I got to thinking about the photographs as boundary
> objects. What about video?
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Jul 20, 2015, at 6:07 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Yes, thinking about this overnight, I came to see that
> it was the photographs that Thomas was endeavouring to
> turn to use to recover his humanity. This is consonant
> with how Yrjo was using the idea in relation to the
> subsistence farmers' movement in Mexico and their corn.
> >>> Thanks Rolf!
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>> On 21/07/2015 3:04 AM, Rolf Steier wrote:
> >>>> This makes sense to me, Andy. I could also interpret
> the photographs as boundary objects as they support the
> coordination of therapy activities between Thomas and the
> nurse. I think it depends on the aspect of activity one is
> attempting to explore as opposed to the definite
> identification of what may or may not be a boundary
> object. This is only my opinion though!
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Or alternatively, the boundary object in question is
> >>>> Thomas's aged body, which is subject to an
> >>>> interpretation which Thomas contests by showing
> >>>> photographs of far away places and explaining how
> >>>> well-travelled he is, seeking an interpretation of
> >>>> himself as a well-travelled and experiences
> >>>> man-of-the-world.
> >>>> Does that make better sense?
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >>>> On 20/07/2015 11:27 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, I agree. My own interest is in social
> theory
> >>>> and I'd never heard of "boundary objects." It
> >>>> seems to me that what BOs do is introduce some
> >>>> social theory into domains of activity
> (scientific
> >>>> and work collaborations for example) where the
> >>>> participants naively think they are
> collaborating
> >>>> on neutral ground. So it is not just
> granularity,
> >>>> but also the ideological context.
> >>>>
> >>>> In Yjro Engestrom's article, the home care
> workers
> >>>> collaborate with the old couple according to
> rules
> >>>> and regulations, communications resources,
> >>>> technology, finance and so on, which in the
> >>>> unnamed country, the old couple are apparently
> >>>> cast as "patients". Isn't it the case that
> here it
> >>>> is those rules and regulations, etc., which are
> >>>> the "boundary objects"?
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >>>> On 20/07/2015 11:1
>
> [The entire original message is not included.]
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