llbe ch2

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 07:37:00 PDT


 Deer people,

I've been making the attempt to post about LBE ch2 since Monday and it seems
a very difficult thing to do although the chapter puts forward the basic
model that typifies the current state of activity theory and also includes
the central discussion of contradiction, with its implicit relationship to
dialectics, as the dynamic of all activity systems. But I haven't been able
to develop the detailed post I have been envisioning so here's the gist of
what's on my mind.

There are two basic criticisms I have been trying to formulate coherently.
(1) The "expanded" triangle is developed in a somewhat aribtrary fashion
which is not to say that it's not intuitively compelling, which it clearly
is. It is developed out of an depiction of the evolution of activity
systems comprised of three simultaneous evolutionary processes: tool
mediation, division of labor, and the development of collective
rules/rituals/normative traditions. However, the interrelationship between
these three processes themselves are not discussed which is perhaps the root
of a lot of the arbitrariness seen in the application of the model to real
life situations, the problem of "boundaries", the confusion of "activity
system" as a model with concretely existing social networks, institutions,
organizations, etc. (2) Perhaps as a consequence of the first weakness, ie,
the failure to adequately look at the relationship between the three
processes leading to the formation of an activity system, the discussion of
contradiction also seems arbitrary. As result we see them same kind of
arbitrariness when contradictions are identified in the arbitrarily
identified activity systems that are discussed in research applying the
model--here I am thinking in particular of the studies presented at the
Friday AERA session.

Consider the relationship, for example, between rules, tools and division of
labor in the transition between paleolithic hunting gathering and
agriculture. Prior to that it is doubtful that there was a deep structural
relationship between AGENCY and SUBJECTIVITY (as per evidence briefly
discussed in prior post). In this sense, the individual of the "animal
adaptation" triangle, is sublated and transformed (destroyed and recombined
in a higher synthesis); the subject of the activity system triangle being
totally a product of the activity system mediated by the tools of
agriculture. It would be easy to show how, rules, normative rituals, and
division of labor change as a result of the change of tools for relating to
the environment (including particularly property relations which as such
certainly didn't exist as private property of means of production prior to
the ag revolution--and even for a long time after). Or moving closer to the
present, the intoduction of the tools of the industrial age certainly
transformed property relations (see Thompson's "The Web of Inheritance" for
an excellent discussion), the division of labor, and the symbolic matrices
that constitute "community".

The problem with contradiction in YE's proposal needs further discussion.
It's a weak link. YE introduces a metaphysical principle of contradiction,
exterior to any activity system, in the individual/collective. This is then
applied to each vertex (including the midpoints). But this very act
presupposes a group that stands outside the activity system and this can
only be the case analytically. As such the contradiction is abstraact and
not one that inheres in any activity system as such. The
individual/collective contradiction becomes something that is like a little
engine that gets plugged into any activity system to make it GO. It is hard
to see how the contradiction of use value/exchange value can be reduced to
one of individual/collective. Both seem to be collective and individual at
the same time.

YE puts marx's fundamental categories of political economy:
production-distribution-exchange-consumption in the interior of the basic
activity triangle but doesn't apply Marx's analysis of the priority of
production (certainly the heart of the analysis of "Intro to a Critique of
Political Economy). If this principle were followed, what difference would
it make to the approach taken in the application of the model?

Somehow it would be great to bring the extensive discussion of the idea and
dialectical unities that came up during the discussions of Ilyenkov and
Leont'ev last summer and fall to bear on the role of contradiction in YE's
proposals. Somehow I keep wanting to do it but I just haven't been able to
pull the trigger on that one. Maybe some jogging of interest or critique or
backlash will help get the flow started.

somewhere between rambling, meandering and serendipity picking,.

Paul H. Dillon

Paul H. Dillon

 "It seems ridiculous to me to attempt to study society as a mere observer.
He who wishes only to observe will observe nothing, for as he is useless in
actual work and a nuisance in recreations, he is admitted to neither. We
observe the actions of others only to the extent to which we ourselves
act." - Jean Jacque Rousseau



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