Just a quick post, Ana, I tend to agree with what you wrote below, but do not find it necessarily problematic (anymore). My take on object in lbe is that object is both material and ideal, ideal in that, for example, when the object of schooling is literate children, that may not materialized until the child is at the end of schooling. Similarly in the tool building industries. That there are differences in what meaning the collective object has for individuals becomes the source for disruptions and the potential for change (sometimes not realized) -- this is handled in the various kinds of dialectical contradictions Yrjo has laid out.
One thing that i have learned is that the lbe framework does not handle well those settings in which there is not a great deal of routinization, i.e. scripts. Meeting over coffee or beer is outside of the domain in which the activity systems approach is viable -- while one can, for example, consider a division of labor regarding pouring the coffee, it is not one which is stabilized and conditioned by a developmental history of participation in that system, neither is the object, if there could even be such a thing in a chance meeting.
That's why a historical analysis is so important. It helps to establish in part, whether the lbe modeling approach can be applied well to the situation. And it is not to say that all things must fit well for the model to work -- rather, where the model does not work is where the investigator is compelled to find out why, and how the differences between what is modeled and the model can be reconciled -- this, itself, is a dialectical development in the research system, focusing research inquiry at the "boundaries" of the model.
my take also is that L*'s formulation of boundary object is quite different -- (I use both, and should probably delineate these better in writing) and this raises the issue that we all must address: what different notions of 'object' we bring to the interpretation of 'object' in lbe.
my watch just told me I have gone into time-debt
bb
At 12:41 AM -0400 4/4/01, Ana Marjanovic Shane wrote:
>
>If we want to take "collective activity system" for an analytic unit, then I need more discussion of the notion of an "object" .
>In my own work - regarding development of metaphors in children - that particular point of the triangular relationship between an individual and her communicative partners - I called a TOPIC. It seemed to me that as soon as an "object" enters into a social relationship as a mediating artefact, even if it is a focusing artefact, it becomes transformed into a "socially relevant object", i.e. a TOPIC or - that "thing" what the social relationship is about.
>However, as soon as we make that transformation, the "object" becomes a complex system in itself with all kinds of dynamic "properties" that depend on every other relationship within the activity system. It may even not be the same "thing" for different participants in the "same" activity...
>This is more apparent if we think of an "object" as a topic, because we are aware of the interpretative nature of the discourse (I think) and many possibilities for misinterpretations and multi-interpretations. We are maybe less aware of the interpretative nature of the activity systems, so it may look like the "object" is something more stable and more definite than it in fact is.
>
-- Bill Barowy, Associate Professor Lesley University 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790 Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169 http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html _______________________ "One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful." [Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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