Thanks to Victor and Yrjo and others, for helping to illuminate the vast
darkness of the subject, or something like that -- helping me to see the
text more clearly in its ambiguities....
Ik'm actually writing now to apologize for my previous message which was
thoughtless and worse perhaps misleading. The phrase "a community that is
not really a community" has been running through my mind for months now --
it is not a characterization of xmca but a reference to 2 more general
questions: 1. the differencea between virtual & real communities but more
relevant 2. the truth that there's no community that is "really" one - no
community that realizes a communal ideal. just scratch the surface, and all
that. The words came from a patch of static background in my thinking, not
from thoughtful-ness.
So I apologize for the hastiness of my email-ing & look forward to ch. 2.
Judy
At 11:13 AM 10/4/00 +0200, you wrote:
>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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