Thanks, Victor - I also look forward to following the discussion on the the
next chapters.
Yrjo
----------
>From: Victor Kaptelinin <vklinin@informatik.umu.se>
>To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>Subject: Re: Leontiev
>Date: Wed, Oct 4, 2000, 12:13 PM
>
> Many thanks, Yrjo, for clearly positioning your perspective within the
> context of this discussion! One may or may not agree that the tension you
> mention is actually going through Leontiev's work, but there is no doubt it
> is underlying much of current thinking about future development of activity
> theory. I believe we will have ample opportunities to return to this
> important issue when discussing chapter 3 and, especially, Chapter 5.
>
> Best wishes,
> Victor Kaptelinin
>
>>-Victor Kaptelinin in his message touched again on the tension which I see
>>going through Leont'ev's work: the tension between traditional psychological
>>thinking focused on the individual on the one hand, and emerging
>>activity-theoretical thinking focused on joint, collective, or distributed
>>units of analysis. Victor wrote:
>> "Therefore, both Leontiev and Valsiner emphasize the role of individual
>> activities as the source of "consciousness" or "personal worlds"."
>>In my opinion, the concept of activity is collective by definition. Thus,
>>you cannot really speak of 'individual activity' - you can only speak of the
>>activity OF AN INDIVIDUAL. In other words, the individual participates in a
>>collective activity system, thus making it 'his' or 'her' activity - but
>>this does not make the activity itself individual. Without wanting to go
>>into textual exegesis, let me just point out that Leont'ev, in the passage
>>quoted by Victor, does not speak of 'individual activity':
>> "His consciousness too is a product of his activity in an object
>> world." (Leont'ev, p. 19)
>>In fact, immediately after this Leont'ev reminds us that Marx used to talk
>>about activity as 'industry'.
>>I know Victor and probably many other will disagree with my line of thinking
>>- and that's just fine.
>>
>>Yrjo Engestrom
>
>
>
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