"Individual" Activity

HDCS6 who-is-at jetson.uh.edu
Fri, 27 Oct 1995 08:55:37 -0500 (CDT)

I have just read Yrjo Engestrom's message, and while I think I understand
his point, from reading some of his other work, I do take issue wity
some of what he is saying, especially from an evolutionary perspective.

First there are two general issues. First, I worry about saying that there
is a separation of activity and action. The way I read it, they are never
separate. There is actually a psychidistance between activity as
driven by a basic motive (need), and the goal oriented action taken
to meet that need. The greater the division of labor, the greater the
distance...but there is always some tie back to the original motive
(and therefore it is part and parcel of an activity). In early human
societies the tie was concrete, in later, more technological societies
it became conceptual. The way I read Leontiev, I also believe that
the actions are actually embedded activities. Meaning that they take
on their own proximal motives, so that there is both a conceptual tie
back to an original motive (which has long since melded into a
cooperative structure), and a concrete tie with a proximal motive.

Second, I think it is a mistake to say that human beings do things
in parallel. We are social creatures, with a social communication
system, and all our activities are either part of a cooperative,
or not part of a cooperative. What I worry about is the argument
that ants and bees engage in joint activity. Leontiev's argument
to that is that _they_ engage in parallel activity. That is they each
have their own separate, individual activity, and they act in unison
out of an instinctive structure hard wired into their central nervous
system.

But most of all I would like to question the idea that individual
activity _begins_ at the point of social historical development
(which is how I read Yrjo Engestrom's message). If this is true,
then how do you describe the activity of Kohlber's ape, certainly
not joint activity. I would agree with you if you claimed that a
different type of individual activity emerges...but I think it is
theoretically important that you not break this continuum of
activity, and therefore break the entire Darwinian (and Engels')
argument that is being made. Of course our cooperative activity
emerges out of our individual activity (I prefer individual to solo
because of the "sense" that the word solo seems to have in
English), and could not exist without individual activity. But
if it affects individual activity in a way that the individual
activity of no other species is affected, then it seems to me
you must isolate it and understand the part it plays in human
development through its dialectical interaction with the
isolated individual activity (I realize isolate may be
too strong a word...recognition might be better).

Michael Glassman
University of Houston