On Sunday 06 July 2003 10:16 am, Mike Cole bid us discourse:
> So, Bill, could we say that subject/agent from AT perspective depends upon,
> among other things, positioning within the ongoing dynamics of joint
> mediated activity?
that by definition the object is an essential element of Leont'ev/Engestrom AT
narrows it's explanatory power to culturally-historically formed mediated
joint activity i.e. the explanatory principle. as such it does not
adequately treat such "situations" as a daycare center playroom full of
toddlers engaging in parallel play, which, however, Wertch's
agent-with-mediational-means might adress better. imho, this is a strength
as much as a limitation, for as long as what one has to study is addressed by
L/E AT, the theory is more specific and deeper than W's.
> And might it be possible, when one puts time into the
> unit of analysis, that attributions of agency are (at best?)
> retrospectively constructed?
short response is "yes". longer rsponse: i think we need to unpack more about
agency. goal direction and causation seem to be 2 essential elements broadly
speaking. then add the essential object-orientation in L/E AT. but then the
study of causation leads to scale problems ala lemke. how in the wolrd can
we retroactivley attribute causation? What is a long enough time-scale?
instantiated the problem looks like this: does not Leont'ev continue to
effect our discussions long after his having written on the problem of
acitivty (upward caus.)? When, rhetorically asking, will "his" agency end?
Consequently, one might be able to attribute agency only in a limited fashion
- to those those events, actions, people, things etc. that came before and
had "effect" -- *unfathomable*! anything humanly possible is inescapbly
incomplete. Parsing into time-scales is analytically convenient, but doing
so arguably obscures the depth and breadth of the unit of analysis problem
when time is explicitly incorporated. Nevertheless, the milieu could stand
to be parsed (downward caus.) and LBE urges an historical analysis of
realizable scope.
JW encounters similar problems:
"a complete account of the meditional means that shape classroom discourse
migh include analyses os textbooks, audiovisual aids, calculators, science
equipment, the physical layout of the classroom and so forth (p119, MiA)
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