>Thus, I present to you a live and very compelling case of the
>contradiction between an activity theory approach and an existential
>social practice approach. As the analyst, I can sit atop my activity
>system (software) and watch the flow of students in and out, but I lose
>direct access to their existential properties, I don't know why they whose
>to be there at that time, I have no clue of they are trying to become (nor
>do they, "coming to be" is not a conscious phenomenon.) Alternatively, I
>can choose to "ride" a community of practice as I did in my dissertation.
>From that view, I see the community in multiple activity settings,
>classroom, beach, restaurant, etc, and still view the community as a
>whole, coping with the world as any existential object does: by "being in
>the world."
--If Edouard is trying to say that activity theory asks you to "sit atop
your activity system", he has a very strange reading of activity theory. At
least in my version of AT, the researcher needs to alternate between the
involved position of ethnographically "riding the community of practice"
and the distanced position of trying to make theoretical sense of the
practice. There is nothing particularly impossible about that - we do it
every day (never perfectly).
Edouard continued:
>If researchers were cheap, you could I suppose try to combine both types
>of analysis: monitor the site with the "usual tools" and then have
>ethnographers "riding" on each community as it weaves its way in and out
>of your activity system ....
--This statement seems to indicate that Edouard equates activity system
with a fixed "site". That would be a misunderstanding. An activity (in the
sense Leont'ev wrote about it) is not defined by its location but by its
object. Thus, I am certainly a member of the activity system called LCHC in
that I am involved in constructing its object - even though I am physically
thousands of miles away from San Diego.
Edouard continued:
>Also the project could be impossible due to the sheer number of possible
>communities. My analysis of communities of practice suggests that there
>are many "micro-communities" that are born, exist for as little as 1/2
>hour, and disappear - their "project" accomplished. Even a hardcore
>Ethnomethodology approach might not detect such existential "ripples," and
>such a project would require 3 to 5 researchers per participant!
--I cannot help feeling that we have a severe inflation of the concept of
community here. For me, community is a theoretical concept that has to be
problematized, not taken for granted and attached to any arbitrary group or
interaction. For activity theory, the emergence of a shared object and
motive is the key to community formation. In other words, WHY would
Edouard's students want to work or study in the first place? What would be
their object(s) and motive(s)? The fact 150 students are taking the same
course is no indication of community formation to me. Each student is
probably taking the course simply for his or her individual credit and
couldn't care less about "community" in the course. As long as object and
motive are not problematized, talk about community seems rather empty to me.
Yrjo Engestrom