Helena,
I personally think that it is too glib to say that there are different
activity systems which 'bump into each other'. I can see that the idea of
"nesting" has some capacity to cope with the reality, but I am not convinced.
It seems to me that it is one of the great illusions of our times to
believe that people are engaged in separate activity systems and
consequently have concepts which *in principle* are incommensurable. Of
course to propose against this a monolithic consciousness would be an
absurdity, and a monolithic objective truth which simply has different
sides perceived from different standpoints is also inadequate and
oppressive in its import.
Multiplicity of culture is now widely and rightly accepted as part of the
modern world.
However, other very important things about this world include (1) the
shattering of almost all person-to-person relations into customer-service
provider relations, and (2) the unification of all people (and their work =
activity systems) in a single worldwide division of labout (= activity
system).
I think it is very important to see the interaction of two activity systems
not as the collision between two independent lumps but through finding how
to conceive of their actual relation (there must be such a relation or you
wouldn't have a 'bump'!), i.e. as a unity.
Andy
At 09:41 AM 31/01/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Hey, people -- The analysis has a perspective, too -- a motive. The
analysis can't be "objective." So we've got nested activity systems, each
defined by a motive. Where the motives are disjunctive, we've got the
edges of one activity system bumping up against another one.
>
>This is one of the beauties of AT -- it allows us to keep in mind that
we've got multiple systems running at all times and that what drives one
system may not be what drives the one that forms its context or that lies
within it.
>
>This is key to using AT for understanding work.
>
>Helena Worthen
>
>Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>
>> I know there are many xmca-ers who can help me here. Nate? Andy? someone?
>>
>> At 03:20 PM 1/30/01 -0500, you wrote:
>> >>>>
>>
>> This, I think, gets right to the heart of debates lately. The
"real" motive in AT is supposedly objective, right? So while individuals
may participate in an activity for different reasons, the difference
between their version of affairs and the "real" social motive is
irrelevant, unless it affects their actions, in which case they become the
subjects of analysis and the disjunctions between what they think they're
doing/their reasons for doing it and the collective object becomes the
'object' of analysis. Or do I have this wrong?
>>
>> In Yrjo's interpretation of the contradictions in Stanislavski's
methods and of the workshops conducted as an intervention into theatre, the
subject's version of affairs does not define the object -- on the contrary:
the ideal of theatre is enunciated by the analyst. I buy it because it's
illuminating, inspirational, but we don't know what participants in the
workshop might have commented on Yrjo's analysis. So what makes the ideal
he identifies the 'real' objective ....?
>>
>> At 11:41 AM 1/30/01 -0800, you wrote:
>> >>>>
>>
>> Questions:
>>
>> Does motive always determine the activity?
>> Or, does different people having different motives change the
activity system for each individual even if they physically are doing the
same thing?
>> Because people can have more than one motive while engaging in
work (e.g., survival, pleasure, social influence, etc.), can one person
with multiple motives doing the same thing be engaged in more than one
activity?
>> Given the difficulty of determining motive(s), how do we
identify the "real" activity?
>>
>> Charles Nelson
>>
>> <<<<
>>
>> <<<<
>
>
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| "Spirit, so far as it is the immediate truth, is the ethical life of |
| a people: - the individual, which is a world. Phenomenology, Hegel |
Spirit, Money & Modernity, Melbourne Uni Summer School 23/24 Feb '01
Reading material at http://home.mira.net/~andy/seminars/23feb00.htm
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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