individual vs. individualized activity
Galina Zuckerman (galinaz who-is-at mail.soemadison.wisc.edu)
Mon, 30 Jan 1995 19:25:00 -600
Some 10 or 12 years ago their was a grate discussion in the Moscow
Psychological Institute concerning individual vs. cooperative
activity. Georgiy Shchedrovitsky - the head of Moscow methodological
school proposed a witty terminological solution for the contradiction
between the empirical evidence and theoretical nonsense (in
Leont'evs' perspective) of individual activity. He suggested to
differentiate between two terms: "individual" and "individualized",
the latter indicating social origin and social context of any human
action or activity. That helped a lot to extend an activity theory in
Russia in the last decade, particularly to develop models of
nonadditive cooperative action which never is equal to the sum of
individual imputes of all the participants. That gave a new insight
to Vygotsky's concept of interpsychological action. No more was it
understood as a scaffolding to a future "individual" action of a
child, that will be taken away as soon as a child masters a new
action in cooperation with adult, but rather as a significant element
of a future internalized "building" of actions and of the very
capacity to acquire them.
Galina Zuckerman,
galinaz who-is-at mail.soemadison.eisc.edu