RE: [xmca] activity (was concepts)

["White, Phillip" <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>]

Larry, many thanks for this bit or archeology!  that primary effect of your work here has been to direct me back to rereading Stetsenko.  

thanks,

phillip


Phillip White, PhD
University of Colorado Denver
School of Education
phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Larry Purss [lpscholar2@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 8:24 AM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] activity (was concepts)

Anna Stetsenko wrote a paragraph on the fundamental ground of activity
theory that used terms such as "regulatory mechanisms" & "part of dynamic
systems"  Thought it may add to the conversation.

"The activity theory perspective fully acknowledges the sociocultural origin
and nature of human subjectivity (i.e. broadly conceived human psychological
processes that include cognition, self-regulation, emotion, and self).  This
perspective, however, does not begin with this assumption and cannot be
reduced to it.  Instead, the grounding premises of activity theory are much
broader.  At its most fundamental level, ... activity theory states that
each living organism exists only AS PART OF a dynamic SYSTEM that connects
it with the environment and with other organisms (note some similarity with
the recently influential dynamic systems theory, e.g. Thelen & Smith,
1998).  It is the open-ended, ongoing exchange with the environment that
constitutes the foundation of life for all living organisms, and it is also
this ongoing process of exchange that gives rise to REGULATORY MECHANISMS
that allow it to be carried out.  Much of activity theory is devoted to
exploring how more and more REFINED MECHANISMS OF REGULATION, including
increasingly complex psychological processes, have emerged in phylogeny as a
result of an evolving complexity of EXCHANGES between organisms and their
environments that, IN TURN, resulted from evolutionary pressures to adapt to
the ever-growing demands of life"  [Theory & Psychology Journal,  Vol.
14(4): p 481-482]

Larry

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