For me one of the most significant challenges presented by Rose in his
paper, comes when he writes:
" activity theory, at times, can be pretty abstract about the role of
individual agency and could better conceptualize the role of feeling and
emotion in activity systems."
In his own paper, Rose demonstrates superbly the relationship between his
mother's behaviour at work and the underlying patterns of her whole life.
Too often I find myself guilty of building models of the workplace or
classroom systems that I work in that assume that everything that is
happening is generated from within the workplace activity system itself.
Having had the good fortune to work with one group of people over a long
period of time, and not feeling an obligation to maintain some sort of
scientific detachment because we were working as consultants rather than as
researchers, we built up quite good understanding of the factors in people's
personal lives that influenced their emotional responses at work. As that
understanding became richer and more diverse we found ourselves much better
able to understand what was happening at work.
Gradually we found ourselves thinking of networks of activity systems that
included the activity systems of workers' families and personal lives - and
so we began to see, in a very small way, the kinds of relationships that
Rose so beautifully and movingly expresses. In all this emotions and
feelings became very clearly signals of the presence of contradictions and
frustrations, not necessarily within the workplace activity system itself,
but between the workplace system and a range of personal systems. Is this
just blindingly obvious common sense? Maybe, but if so, why do so many
practices in both workplace management, and workplace research, seem to
totally ignore or discount these factors?
But for me Rose goes another step beyond even his own critique quoted above.
What he does so well is to link his mother's personal life story back to the
broad social, political and economic forces that shaped it. Thus I am able
to read his paper fully satisfied that his single 'case study' can lead us
to some profound and useful generalisations.
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:11 PDT