Hello --
I'm slowing reading along in LBE, happy to be reading it, happy that I think I
understand and recognize what's going on.
Paul, elaborating on Bill, has expressed my primary question about activity
theory. While I don't expect an answer I would like to flag this concern at
this point and see how it develops over the next few weeks. Here it is:
"while I totally agree with you that the model is powerful and that insights
do acrue from almost any application/interpretation, I am concerned about
the comparability...."
When is this model (AT) more than a method? I can see how it is valuable as a
kind of checklist for what we have to think about when confronted with a
complex situation that needs to be examined. I'm getting to be in the habit of
using it for that myself -- as I read through comments on a law, for example
(most recently, a law that is supposed to put disabled people into the
workforce -- The Ticket to Work Work Incentives Improvement Act, or TWWIIA) and
find interest groups noting conflicts of interest among people who are affected
by this law. So I'm happy with this model as a method of laying out an
"ethnography of troubles" (great term!!!) and keeping them arranged on the
mental tabletop, as it were, and then thinking about how to engage various
other methods in analyzing them.
But I'd like to hear more discussion of the "explanatory need" -- that's
another good one -- and above all, the elements around the AT triangle and what
constitutes a contradition.
Thanks, all -- Helena Worthen
"Paul H.Dillon" wrote:
> Bill, you wrote:
>
> "IMHO, one powerful feature of ch2 is the ability to treat multiple
> categories while maintaining their relations to the whole. For example,
> from primary to quaternary contradictions, one is able to engage in the
> "ethnography of troubles" from within a category, i.e., the exchange/use
> value of computers (artifact category) to the much larger scale of troubles
> between systems. One is not bound to a unit of analysis that is fixed in
> relations and time. So as the explanatory need emerges from the data, one
> can "zoom in" to the development of a single person, and relate it to the
> development of an institution the person works in, and further embed the
> analysis in the political and economic conditions of the region and time,
> and go back. "
>
> My concern is the flip side of this flexibility. One of the important
> characteristics of theoretical activity is consistency of interpretation.
> Among linguists, for example, there can be disagreement at the theoretical
> level itself, but fundamentally there is a common recognition of such units
> as morphemes, verb phrases, etc. From what I've seen there is no such common
> agreement as to what constitutes a rule, a community, a tool, a subject, a
> division of labor, and last but not least, an object or a motive. Almost
> anything seems capable of becoming Similarly, and probably as a consequence
> of this absenceof common use of the basic elements of the activity
> triangle, there seems to be a wide and varied interpretation of what
> constitutes a contradiction within the activity system let alone the level
> of contradiction.
>
> while I totally agree with you that the model is powerful and that insights
> do acrue from almost any application/interpretation, I am concerned about
> the comparability of studies, the development of specific areas of
> theoretical interest. This comes to mind most clearly when considering the
> problem of division of labor and subject or the delineation of the patterns
> in which the primary contradiction plays itself out and determines the
> secondary, etc. contradictions.
>
> What are the conditions that must be satisfied so we know we are dealing
> with an elementary activity system and not something else; either something
> less than an activity system (eg, an action such as "smoking") or something
> greater, such as an institution composed of interrelated, integrated
> activity systems?
>
> Paul H. Dillon
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