Re: "Individual" Activity
Katherine Brown (kbrown who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Fri, 27 Oct 1995 12:30:54 -0700 (PDT)
I can offer the suggestion that perhaps the difficulty in understandinng
or agreeing upon why individual activity doesn't make sense to some, and
seems like a useful concept to others lies in the way thap t people want
to use the theoretical tools, or in the ways they stand in relation
to these terms as objects (of their own research trajectories).
Engestrom provided a nice table in his book, "Learning, WOrking, Imagining:
Twelve studies in activity theory". )(1990). on page 197, he has
the following: Units: Activity, Actoion, Operation. Respective direction
oops direciting factor: Object/motive for activity; goa for action; al for action; conditions
for operation. Subject for each, respectively: Activity--collective;
individual oor group for action; non-conscious subject for operation.
Maybe a long time ago we had a discussion on the old xlchc about the
differences between goal and object motive. I recall all soerts of
explanations made about how action and activity were different that
made it clear why activity is necessarily collective. TIme sequences,
cycles of transformation, contradtiictions that drive change in activity
that constrain the work of any one individual whose perspective is taken
up in analysis of activity...I gusess I am used to seeing ho w and why
the distinction and elaboration between OCOC made between what the individual
does and what the nviewpoint taken (temporarily) is . To argue that
there is something called individual actionvity seems to me to throuw away
very useful, fruitful theoretical layers. Unlssess soemone's on the verge
of a new way to deal with the issue of division of labor, I don't know
how to use this notion of individual activity. Is this helpful?
Katherine VBrown
LCHC
UCSD