Paul,
Thank you for so delicately suggesting that our work is not, in your
interpretation, being informed by the fundamental theoretical insights and
advances of activity theory. As one who is personally appalled at the way
such insights are appropriated by various fads, you cannot know how close to
my own bones you cut!
1. You wrote:
"Although there can be no doubt that the individuals who carry out the
different actions in any activity system do indeed directly experience the
contradicitons of the system, this in no way means that what they experience
can be directly used to explain their the processes and events they
experience. The primary contradiction in any activity system, according to
LBE, is that between individual and collective aspects, and in capitalist
society this assumes the form of the contradiction betwen use value and
exchange value, which is the same thing as saying, the primary
contradictions is the constant process of commodification. Taking direct
experience as capable of providing definitions overlooks totally the
dialectic of essence and appearance fundamental to all theoretical thought.
How an individual or a group of individuals experience that contradiction
can assume any number of forms depending on specific cultural and historical
contexts."
I do not think that this refutes what I suggested. Perhaps I was not clear
enough when I said that we find ourselves constantly dealing with our own
contradictions of use value and exchange value when we shift between
consultancy work and research work (work which LOOKS like the same thing,
but which is fundamentally modified by the expectations of the funding
provider), and that we find that working as consultants leads us to think in
different ways about the questions we ask as researchers.
I feel that the relationship between essence and appearance manifests itself
in the experience of contradictions as implict and explicit. Yrjo is
currently using the term 'visibilisation', and this seems to be very
powerful. Having directly observed Yrjo and his colleagues working in
Knowledge Lab contexts - and in its descendants - it seems to me that one
starts with the explicit contradictions which the actors are able to
articulate - which are not usually primary contradictions - and that through
analysis the actors themselves may come to make the primary contradictions
explicit. They have always 'experienced' those contradictions, but they were
not initially able to make them visible. I agree that in any given situation
it is the cultural and historical context that determines what is
experienced explicitly, what is experienced invisibly, and how that
experience feels to the actors.
My original point was that the researcher/consultant needs to facilitate
this process - educant - rather than direct it - educamus. If the actors in
a system simply do not accept that the process of commodification is a
contradiction, then I may go away and analyse why it is that we have
different models, but it is not our right to lead them to a predetermined
understanding.
2. You wrote:
"I find the term "reified" (which carries most of the disapprobative weight
in your second point) is often bandied about without much precision and I
think that's the case here as well."
You are right. I was sloppy.
3. You wrote:
" It [use of terms such as 'community'] is simply a matter of being clear
that we are talking about the same thing. If this isn't the case then there
is in fact no theory at all, simply a collection of particular experiences."
I agree, but I also suggest that the terms 'tool', 'rule', 'community', and
so on, are not static. We may find a phenomenon about which it is legitimate
to say "this phenomenon has all the functional characteristics of a tool,
but we never quite thought of a tool that way before. Perhaps we need to
expand our understanding of the term in order to embrace the phenomenon."
4. You wrote:
" I cannot see how "the whole international sales
force" can be characterized as an activity system. The levels you invoke
here are institutional categories but an activity system, in and of itself,
is not an institution. When one talks about "the international sales
force" one is certainly talking about a hierarchical system composed of
particular "sales offices" located in different places, each of which might
be an activity system (more likely a composite of multiple activity systems)
that have link to other activity systems (e.g., order processing units at
different plants") and are administered by one or more central offices that
themselves constitute a separate activity system pursuing
administrative/coordinative object-motives with respect to the particular,
geographically distributed sales offices. You say, "At any level below the
whole of humanity an
activity system is always nested within another larger system" but this is
only true in the very recent past . Here the distinction between the
all-embracing unity of the planet, or even the universe, as a whole must
clearly be distinguished from the unities made up from activity systems that
are composed of subjects using tools for different motives. That key
element is the historical-cultural dimension and only in so far as that
element is linked can one talk about a necessary linkage between activity
systems. Before 1492, the activity systems in the Western hemisphere could
not be said to be nested within the activity systems in Europe. One could
easily expand this to various activity systems that exist with no necessity
of the existence of others for their own continued existence.
The key issue concerning the integration of activity systems into
institutions concerns the necessity that different activity systems have for
each others reproduction. Without adopting a totally
functionalist/organismic orientation I think that we can identify linked
activity systems (assuming we can identify any) that depend on each other
for their own continued existence. It is clearly insufficient to simply
talk about some neutral, indifferent nesting."
I have considerable difficulty with your point here. I agree that it is not
possible to talk about indifferent, neutral nesting and I agree with your
example of pre 1492 western hemisphere (while disagreeing with the actual
date!). But you seem to be agreeing with my original point when you say
that being able to argue that ther whole of humanity is an acitvity system
is something that has only become possible in the very recent past.
But it HAS become possible so to do. What I cannot understand from what you
have written is why the conditions you propose exclude a large insititution,
such as a corporation or a university, from being considered as an activity
system. It seems to me that such institutions meet all of your conditions. I
did not argue that an activity system is in, and of itself, an institution,
but I would argue that an institution is in, and of itself, an activity
system.
I would also argue that there is a qualitative difference that needs to be
made (through the concepts of 'nesting' on the one hand, and 'linking' on
the other) between systems which exist only because of the existence of
another (e.g. a soecific classroom in a school exists only because the
school exists), and systems which are interdependent in respect of their
essential nature, but not for their very existence (e.g. between two
different classrooms within a school).
5. You wrote:
" In activity theory, as I understand it, "actions" are definitely not
smaller
units of analysis. The smallest unit of analysis that retains the
characteristics of the whole (one of the desideratum YE states at the
outset) is the activity system itself. That is, without an activity system
there are no actions at all."
I agree, I must have misunderstood - I thought that this was what you were
arguing. My apologies. But I was suggesting that, if a nested view of
activity systems is accepted, then 'actions' taken by the larger unit in
pursuit of its objects, may create social groupings which become activity sy
stems whose own internal motives may be in tension with the objects of the
larger unit. For example a university (which I argue is an activity system,
but which I understand Paul argues is not) may set up a research institute
as an action with the goal of attracting research funding. But the people
inside that institute may see their internal activity as motivated by
intellectual aspirations which are not consistent with the university's
desire to maximise funding.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
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