At 11:51 AM 4/3/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>If this was my class, this would be the point where I would start calling
>on people who had not yet said anything. OK, all you lurkers our there,
>last name starting with A through L, we need to hear from you! M through
>Z, you're next!
>
>Seriously though, I assume lots of people are reading LBE and not saying
>much. What are you looking for? To what domains do you think this stuff
>might apply?
>
>djc
OK, here are some of my thoughts.
Yrjo outlines a grand plan:
"The central ideas of this book may be condensed into the following five
claims: (1) the object-oriented and artifact-mediated collective activity
system is the prime unit of analysis in cultural-historical studies of
human conduct; (2) historically evolving inner contradictions are the chief
sources of movement and change in activity systems; (3) expansive learning
is a historically new type of learning which emerges as practitioners
struggle through developmental transformations in their activity systems,
moving across collective zones of proximal development; (4) the dialectical
method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is a central tool for
mastering cycles of expansive learning; and (5) an interventionist research
methodology is needed which aims at pushing forward, mediating, recording
and analyzing cycles of expansive learning in local activity systems."
Some of the points have already been taken in this or that way. I would be
interested in developing a better understanding of the first point: (1) the
object-oriented and artifact-mediated collective activity system is the
prime unit of analysis in cultural-historical studies of human conduct;
It seems to me (from other parts of Yrjo's work here and elsewhere) that
the concept of OBJECT is rather fuzzy. It sometimes is a concrete thing,
but sometimes is more of a value or an idea, or even an objective (i.e.
goal). It sometimes is just an idea - and sometimes is the whole complex
situation.
If we want to take "collective activity system" for an analytic unit, then
I need more discussion of the notion of an "object" .
In my own work - regarding development of metaphors in children - that
particular point of the triangular relationship between an individual and
her communicative partners - I called a TOPIC. It seemed to me that as soon
as an "object" enters into a social relationship as a mediating artefact,
even if it is a focusing artefact, it becomes transformed into a "socially
relevant object", i.e. a TOPIC or - that "thing" what the social
relationship is about.
However, as soon as we make that transformation, the "object" becomes a
complex system in itself with all kinds of dynamic "properties" that depend
on every other relationship within the activity system. It may even not be
the same "thing" for different participants in the "same" activity...
This is more apparent if we think of an "object" as a topic, because we are
aware of the interpretative nature of the discourse (I think) and many
possibilities for misinterpretations and multi-interpretations. We are
maybe less aware of the interpretative nature of the activity systems, so
it may look like the "object" is something more stable and more definite
than it in fact is.
Eugene has this quite infective habit of closing each posting with:
"What do you think?", so
What do you think?
Ana
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