Re: activity theory and situated learning
Charles Bazerman (bazerman who-is-at humanitas.ucsb.edu)
Fri, 2 Apr 1999 16:32:28 -0800 (PST)
I think the issue in this discussion is of simultaneously emergent
activity and emergent meaning, the socially meaningful world be constantly
remade on the fly just as we find meaning in it in the course of our
activity, which is constantly being reorganized around our new meanings.
Off-hand, while this is a contemporary very interesting thought,
wide-spread in our current amalgam of post-schutzian phenomenlogical
sociology and anthropology and activity focused analyses (perhaps with an
overlay of structuranism), but offhand I can't think of this as
particularly within Vygotsky or Leontiev and close compatriats. LSV tends
to locate meaning in either fairly stable social resources (as one learns
and internalizes) or in deeply internalized personal consciousness.
Leontiev also tends to reat meanings and activities as fairly socially
stable and accessible to participants.
Engestrom's critique of Lave and Wenger points to notion of core meanings
available within central practices that LPP circles around, but I have
also heard interpretations of Lave and Wenger that says the core dissolves
and we all live on some version of the periphery. Whether or not there is
any fundamental contradiction in the Lave and Wenger approach, they more
foreground issues of negotiation and emergent activity and meaning.
that's how it seems to me at this moment. but after all my meanings and
activities are emergent, so who knows what I am doing or what I mean?
Chuck