Rules and artifacts

(no name) ((no email))
Mon, 17 Nov 1997 20:10:18 +0200

Phillip wrote:

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> As I understand Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, it would not
> accommodate the view that scripts reside strictly within the head. Mike
> takes this up in Cultural Psychology--see pp. 124-131 where he develops th=
e
> idea that scripts and schemas are secondary cultural artifacts that
> "partake of both the ideal and the material; they are materialized and
> idealized (reified) in the artifacts that mediate peoples' joint
> activities."

When I contrast this to Yrgo's expanded activity system model on
page 284 I get confused. One of the points of the triad is 'rules' and I
don't understand the difference between that point, and the rules explicit
that would be found in scripts and schemas. How is it that they become
separated, so that scripts and schemas, as Peter notes, are secondary
cultural artifacts? What about the 'rules' regarding gendered
beliefs and behavior, social-economic-status beliefs and behaviors, or
rules about how a teacher is to behave, a parent, a student, a principal?
Or, to place this question in the context of our present on-going
discussion about quantitative / qualitative research - a deep cultural
rule that different activites are framed in perceptions of dichotomies?
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Here is my comment:

=46or Wartofsky, secondary artifacts are those that tell one how to use or
produce primary artifacts. In that sense, a script that tells you how to
make a long-distance phone call, for example, may be viewed as a secondary
cultural artifact - a tool that helps you use a tool.

On the other hand, scripts commonly function as rule that dictate and
constrain our behavior, just as Phillip noted. There is nothing in the
script itself that would tell you whether it is a tool or a rule. It
depends on how it is constructed in the particular activity in which it is
embedded, at any given historical moment. The "place" of the script in the
activity system is not fixed. (I've discussed this in the following paper:
Engestr=F6m, Y. (1996) Interobjectivity, ideality, and dialectics. Mind,
Culture and Activity: An International Journal, 3 (4), 259-265.)

How do we know that something is functioning as a tool rather than as a
rule? One indicator is often the type of awareness or purposiveness
involved. When you use the script for making a long-distance phone call,
you typically relate to it in a fairly conscious, even goal-directed
manner. But you are not often aware of the rules (scripts) that tell you
how to behave like a parent, to use Phillip's example. This difference is
not a strict rule, however!

Yrjo Engestrom