18 october 2000
from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
victor wrote:
>
>Leontiev elaborates on the idea you mention in the paragraph next to the
>one from which the citation is taken. In my view, what he is saying is that
>essentially internal activities may contain external components, but these
>components are always whole actions or operations, not incomplete fragments
>("splinters") of actions or operations. The same applies to internal
>components of essentially external activities. Therefore, according to
>Leontiev, the line separating internal and external components of an
>activity goes along the "seams" between units of the activity (actions or
>operations) and does not cut across the units.
>
>Personally, I find this idea very questionable, to say the least. In my
>opinion, there are reasons to believe that actions and operations can
>consist of both internal and external components. Also, I do not recall the
>above idea of Leontiev's got any attention in further theoretical
>discussions and empirical studies.
this is a very helpful comment indeed, thank you. i am also very interested in
your sceptical proposal and would pose a question to colleagues related to your
last point: is there anyone out there who has done detailed empirical work on
activity in which they used in analysis the concepts of
activity-action-operation, of internal and external activity and of the common
structure of these? i've done my own studies of group practical activity which
raised a number of imponderables for me, although i found the overall ideas (to
the extent that i understood them) fruitful and productive. of course, when you
have a group you have discourse (communicative 'obshchenie' among other things)
which adds to the complexity of the picture and which is difficult to fit into
the framework leontyev describes it seems to me.
all best wishes
P
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