Re: Different motives

From: Charles Nelson (c.nelson@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2001 - 14:56:42 PST


Ricardo,

Thanks for your answers. On my last question, you wrote:

>Given the difficulty of determining motive(s), how do we identify
>the "real" activity?
>
>If the "real" activity of a couple is, for example, "to have a
>dinner" in a very "in" restaurant, the motive of each partner to be
>engaged in it could be very different one another: Maybe for one of
>them the motive could be "eat and bannish hungry", to the other,
>"watch" and "be watched" in company. Even so, the "real" activity
>still be "having dinner". Don't you think so?

I think my difficulty is not in not being able to apply a label to an
activity, but how the motives of individuals fit into Leontev's
tripartite division of activity/motive, action/goal, and
operation/automaticity. As Paul P. said, "Technically then,
individuals have no motives." But it seems to me that any analysis
that leaves out individual motives is an incomplete picture.

I like what Phillip had to say about motive: "In an AS the collective
motive is a motive of greater worth than the sum of the individual
motives of the members of the system." And like Phillip, I've read
too many good postings to digest thoroughly, but here are some of my
thoughts I'd like others' thoughts on:

With respect to Leontev's tripartite division of activity, action,
and operation, instead of placing activity on the top tier alone, and
individuals (or groups) only on the bottom two tiers, activity and
individual(s) engage at all three levels of motive, goal, and
automaticity.

Motives, goals, and operations (of activity systems and individuals)
emerge out of interactions among individuals, activity systems,
artifacts, sociohistorical processes, and environment.

Contradictions exist not only among the various nodes of Engestrom's
model and between interacting activity systems, but also among the
motives, goals, and operations of activity systems and subjects (both
collective and individual), including contradictions within/among a
single individual's motives, goals, and operations.

Charles Nelson



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