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Thanks for that Mike. for resurrecting my original question (which may
could not be clarified through difficulties in learning maths as I'd
hoped) and for the Engestrom paper. As Engstrom says: "a theoretical
integration of these two [talking and acting] has not yet been
accomplished." Engestrom is discussing exactly the problem of the relation of Discourse Analysis and Activity Theory, in the context of the relation between a Discourse and an Activity. In the fine detail of the performance of Activity and Discourse, the two are of course inextricable. The hope of some Discourse analysts to make conversation an object of analysis, while abstracting the conversation from what the talkers were trying to do (or talking about) is clearly (to Activity Theorists and the participants, if not the analysts) vacuous. But also, it is obvious that if we try to make some kind of dichotomy between practical activity (as in making metal bars and operating machines) and discursive activity (talking about it, issuing commands, etc.) then we can't make any sense of Activity either. Even a dichotomy of Actions is problematic, but maybe has some sense. It is self-evident and obvious the distinction between words and practical actions, but speaking is also an action and all practical actions also have a symbolic effect. To this end, the question of unit of analysis is raised. Engstrom wants to make a "situated activity system as the basic unit of analysis." But this defeats the purpose. It is actually taking the analytical road, not the road of Goethe and Hegel and Vygotsky, in my view. If we break the whole down into situated units which contain systems of activity, inclusive of the talk going on and the surrounding artefacts (machinery etc), then try to assemble the whole again, we find on the one hand the "long duration" concept of the specific industry producing metal components, and on the other, the "historically distinctive social languages at work, namely the social language of the machinists and the social language of the expert engineers." That is, there are discourses (plural) sustained of course, by practical activity (visiting workshops, attending conferences, writing papers, having conversations) and mathematics is one of them. And when in a given circumstance we have practical activity (making bars) and discourse (expert talk, issuing advice) going on together, then these different strands weave together as extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social fabric by not being coextensive. I.e., a particular discourse is not excluively located within a certain "activity." So I don't think it works to take a molecule of talk-and-labour as a "unit of analysis" unless we just want to be analytical sociologists, and nor can we take (I believe) Discourses to be a particular variety of Activities (because the Actions entailed, meanings, are always inextricably connected with practical Actions, as per Bakhtin's Utterances). You can't have an Activity that doesn't include talk or a Discourse that doesn't include or imply practical actions as well as meanings. So, for example, mathematics is a Discourse. There we have a unit of analysis. I believe Anna is in agreement here. Doing mathematics involves talking and all sorts of practical actions. It also has the structure and movement of a concept: a system of judgments - acts of thinking - of long duration, which has an internal unity thanks to the word. So the Activities (units of Activity) are long threads which are overlapping and interacting in the concrete situation, which gains its tensions, contradictions, its nature as a predicament, because these threads are not coextensive. I think we have to merge the concepts of an Activity and a Discourse. They are inextricable. Andy mike cole wrote: Dear Colleagues-- I am poking along at the question of activity and discourse. While poking around, it occurred to me that Yrjo had written a paper on the topic. The context is different-- a special issue of a journal on organizational communication, but it seems as if it might be relevant to Andy's question and Anna's answers. mike --
*Andy Blunden* Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 MIA: http://www.marxists.org |
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