I always thought that when you was talking about a physician and a patien=
t
having different objects of their activity during the patent's visit to t=
he
doctor in your 1990 book (Learning, working, and imagining) you meant
similar concept to Leigh's. The visit itself is a "boundary object."
I think what makes the notion concrete is that the goal-defining processe=
s
of the two participants (or communities) are coordinated only through the
"boundary object" while the participants themselves are excluded from eac=
h
other's goal-defining processes.
Actually, when I think about Leigh notion of "boundary objects" I always
think about your research as nice illustration for it. But maybe I'm wro=
ng.
Yes, it would be very nice to hear what Leigh thinks.
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: Yrj=F6 Engestr=F6m <yrjo.engestrom who-is-at helsinki.fi>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, October 27, 1997 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: Boundary object
My colleagues and I have tried hard to make use of Leigh Star's notion of
'boundary object' in concrete analyses of different activity systems. The
more we tried, the more it seems to me that this notion is still mainly a
provocative idea, or perhaps a metaphor, not so much an elaborated
theoretical concept. What does it add to simply talking about an object o=
f
activity shared by multiple participants, or multiple activity systems, f=
or
that matter?