RE: what collective ... theory?

From: Cunningham, Donald (cunningh@indiana.edu)
Date: Fri May 11 2001 - 09:38:14 PDT


Phillip, thanks for your input. It really helps me think this through. Your
approach is very ecumenical and mirrors my own. I characterize myself as a
scavenger, collecting ideas and tools like CHAT to help me solve whatever
problem I happen to be working on (I have sometimes used the metaphor of the
dung beetle, but no one whose ideas I am using seems happy with that
characterization of their work). But that also means that I can adapt (even
misuse) the tool to suit me. I wonder if YE would agree that it is possible
to use CHAT without adopting the Marxist frame?

Undoubtedly it is a part of the genre of major theoretical works such as LBE
that the author should state her/his view forthrightly and confidently. As I
read the account, the identification of springboards, for example, seemed
relatively unproblematic. If we look again at the five central ideas YE
identified in his new introduction, CHAT is being put forward as the best
available option:

"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."

I too have found the "triangles" (Fig 2.6) VERY helpful in helping me think
through a particular situation, but have also had a hard time working out
some aspects of it, particularly "community". After reading and working with
a number of conceptions of "community". I'm convinced we should get rid of
the word entirely and start over!

Well, this is enough of a rant for now. Cheers............djc

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Capper [mailto:phillip.capper@webresearch.co.nz]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 6:55 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: what collective ... theory?

Donald wrote:

" Springboards, models, microcosms seem to me to be in the eye of the
beholder
(YE?) and not some sort of verifiable "object" (if I dare use that word).
Different points of view, even cultures, might identify different
springboards (or question the concept entirely). Different analyses of the
"double bind" might likewise produce much different readings (what is
subject, artifact, division of labor, etc.), different contradictions, or,
again, might highlight something quite different (efficacy, for example,
instead of contradiction)."

YE himself has made this point many times, for example in 'Non Scolae Sed
Vitae Disciumus'(1991). The notion of multivoicedness becomes important
here - that different people within a system might define the elements
differently - or even define the boundaries of the system differently. As
Judy indicated this can include, for example, gendered differences. Is this
not exactly the point? - that much of what we personally experience as
contradiction is, in fact, the result of our different cultural and
historical trajectories into a current system, and is not necessarily
experienced in the same way by people with a different trajectory. If you (a
woman) experience a certain set of phenomena as a contradiction, and I (a
man) do not, that difference in perception becomes the significant
contradiction.

Perhaps I am way off beam here, but isn't the rootedness of AT in Marxist
theories of social development itself such a contradiction? I have been a
political science student working within a Marxist frame, but all of that
does not compel me to think only of the principles of AT in the context of
that body of theory. I can explore concepts to do with the cultural,
historical and social nature of thinking and learning without being bound
to interpret what I find solely within the boundaries of Marxist thought. I
am free to cross the boundaries of other theoretical traditions, carrying my
little bag of CHAT concepts with me, and perhaps expand my understanding as
a consequence.

"All of the examples seem to lead to "expansion"
as if that were the default. Is it?"

No. In many cultural and historical contexts the experience of contradiction
is a signal for closing down on expansive learning and creative thinking.
Contradictions are often to be eliminated, not used as springboards. In
totalitarian states, for example. I certainly have never understood YE as
assuming expansion as a default outcome.

 "And is expansion always good?"

No - and this is a tricky one in our work. I do not want a flight crew to
routinely learn expansively as they guide my 747 from Auckland to Los
Angeles. I want them to know EXACTLY what to do before they take off, and to
do it. If they encounter the 'unexpected', I expect the situation to be
'expected' and covered by a known procedure in the flight manuals.

But, just occasionally, maybe only once in 20 professional lifetimes, for
example with the United Airlines DC 10 at Sioux City, or the United Airlines
747 on Honolulu-Auckland, I absolutely need them to throw all the manuals
away and work creatively from their deeply grounded professional knowledge.
One aspect of our work consists of figuring out how pilots can know if a
specific critical incident is the moment for this counter-cultural
behaviour - especially when the decision time to avoid death for all
involved between the trigger incident, the assessment that this is a
situation not in any manual, and figuring out an appropriate solution is 13
seconds, as was the case with the United 747. (An interesting contradiction
in that incident was that one of the reasons the plane was saved was that
the captain was still flying the plane manually at a time when standard
procedures would have had the autopilot engaged. He was doing this because
he 'enjoyed the feel of the plane responding to his fingers').

We have found time and time again that the conceptual models of CHAT (rather
than the underpinning theory) provides a superior analytical frame for
working on such problems. In other words for us the theory is shown to be
robust by its proven utility. For this I need know nothing about Marx or
Hegel.

However, even in the airline example, when one comes to draw the
implications of the operational problem for the nature of the social system
on the flight deck and the company, one comes face to face with theories of
social and cultural development. The (almost always) tacit theories held by
airline management, and many pilots, are often at odds with what proves to
be the safest practice. There are currently major tensions, or
contradictions, about this issue in many airlines, and including the
practices of the American FAA. At this meta level, one hopes that the
existence of a contradiction does lead to expansion.

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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