[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>]

Dear Andy,

Thank you for the issues you raise. They are a lot and this is natural, considering the complexity of Activity as an object of study. I will share my views on selected issues.

Activity is a concept with a very wide scope and range of abstractness. In this respect, it can be modeled in many ways. However, different models have different limitations, scope of applications, and so forth. When Activity is conceptualized as a universal explanatory principle, the model of activity can incorporate the subject. When Activity is used as one of the major principles of psychology (as in the textbooks by Leontiev and his students) it incorporates everything, even culture. This should not sound as a paradox or as a conundrum. I see it possible and productive in the methodological realm. I do admit that in this short space of time it is not possible to explain all other contradictions or to elaborate on details. I am also a bit conservative in the scope of my discussion so that I don't engage in needless incongruities. 

Regarding MMC: You are right that they were trying to do social engineering/social design (Socialnoe Proektirovanie). They took a very different direction than the ergonomists. And for the record, they were not serving the totalitarian government. On the contrary, they were dissidents and they paid for that with their staled careers. They envisaged themselves mostly like philosophers of technocracy and believed that society can be lead best by experts. Not by party leaders. They fused activity theory with philosophical thinking and created a new approach to solving social problems. My former boss had the ambition to develop a general theory of design, which should have the scope of a general theory of artification. It was intended to work as a theoretical foundation of general methodology of practical problem solving. The project was based on systems theory and activity theory. Basically, this was a sociotechnical systems engineering approach, but not like the approaches in ergonomics and human factors. 

 That topic was very fashionable in the late 1970s and in the 1980s. The MMC activity models were designed for engineering, for intervention. In the late 1980s the MMC started working on "organizational games." I was quite perplexed how they came with that idea and how they had the guts to engage in management studies. Management studies were a restricted field for Party functionaries and their supporting research institutions. 

Just a few thoughts following your mail.

Best wishes,

Lubomir


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 11:26 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

Lubomir,
I agree that AN:'s concept of an activity needs to be simmplied, not expanded a la Engestrom, if it is to be adequate as a foundational concept. I also agree that the problems in the conception of an activity are not visible from the point of view of psychologists but they do appear as serious problems for social theory. Further, I don't believe Activity Theory can fulfill its potential until the same concepts work at micro-, meso- and macrolevels. Otherwise, psychologists have to just take the tasks as given by some abstract "society" and social theorists take their subjects as given by some abstract human nature." Neither is sufficient.

I don't agree though, that the alternative to taking the object as external to the activity (as defining it) is to take the object as internal to the subject, a.k.a. individual. At all. I think the work of the Moscow Methodological Circle began in the right direction, but to my eyes, it ended up locked into an "engineering" approach, somewhat symmetrical with the cognitivism which was popular in the US at the same time.

In my view, the object is *immanent* in the activity, being realised by the activity. The subject/object problem (or dichotomy) is resolved not by choosing an objective motive or a subjective sense/meaning, but by following Hegel in using the individual/particular/universal relationship which he took to be the foundation of a concept (as the ideal object of an activity). I use the concept of "project" (I think I share this with the MMC) to represent the idea of an activity in which the object is imminant within the activity.

Andy

Lubomir Savov Popov wrote:
> Dear Andy,
> (sorry for typos, I type as I think)
>
> I agree in some way with your concerns about the model that you envisage in your mail. Although Leontiev is very disciplined in his logic, I have difficulty accepting some of the relationships there.  http://www.igs.net/~pballan/AT.htm    At this time, I cannot access articles that talk about this problem. Also, it is not very common to refer to that model as problematic. The Scandinavians talk about a problem, and their solution was to expand the original activity model to include the social environment and group action. Consider that the original activity model is created by psychologists, not social psychologists or sociologists. Even the Moscow Methodological Circle keeps with the Lentiev tradition, although have "on board" a lot of philosophers and sociologists. However, I accept Leontiev's model as general. That is why it has to be kept simple and straitforward. On the basis of this model, several other more specific models are developed. They might represent only one level selected from the general model. 
>
> The problems I see are not that the motive is external to activity. The motive can be interpreted as internal to the subject, if necessary. However, the goal can be seen both at activity level and at operations level. The model doesn't talk about the Task. However, if you need models that incorporate Task, go to Ergonomics. Another problem that I see is that the directions at the higher levels are provided by teleological concepts. However, at operations level, the direction is provided by the Conditions. Conditions do exist at each level and do affect the trajectory/course at each level. There are many other variations as well. In Russian, they talk about deyatelnost and aktivnost. The best way to get into activity theory is to read Russian originals. There are a lot of problems when translating Russian concepts and terms in English. This comes with difficult to translate tatigkeit. Plus, the Russians have borrowed the word aktivnost  and endowed it with their own meaning. For me, it was always a puzzle why they use Aktivnost, when in English is actually Activity. But that is the nature of the production of terminology. People just take a word and endow it with new meaning that they need for communicating their ideas.
>
> I haven't seen yet a global model of activity that models it at each level and that connects/relates all component concepts. I am not sure that this is possible. There are hundreds of model variations when we look in different disciplines. Each discipline envisages only one particular aspect and level. 
>
> In the 1960s, Vladimir Lefevre, the founder (or one of them) of the Moscow Methodological Circle, had come with the idea of the Conceptual Configurator. It was supposed to be a model that presents all aspects and levels of a phenomenon in a coordinated way. Unfortunately, he didn't go beyond the idea. No one has ever created a conceptual configurator for activity, and I am not sure if this is possible at this time. All models are either general, at a very high level of abstraction like Leontiev's, or discipline specific, with very peculiar terminology and discriptory and explanatory capabilities. 
>
> Best,
>
> Lubomir
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu 
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 5:15 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Leontyev's activities
>
> Leontyev says that an activity is defined by its motive.
> See "The Development of Mind," Leontyev 2009, p. 28-29 
> http://www.erythrospress.com/store/leontyev.html
>
> But Leontyev, in my opinion, does not adequately distinguish between "an activity" and "a type of activity," leading to confusion on this point.
> Plus the fact that the object or motive is given externally to the activity, underming his claim to have created an activity theory, rather than a theory of human needs.
>
> Andy
> -------------------------------
>
> The specific processes that realise some vital, i.e. active, relation of the subject to reality we shall term processes of /activity/, in distinction to other processes.
>
> We shall also, accordingly, limit the concept of object. It is normally used in a dual sense: in the broadest one as a thing standing in some kind of relation to other things, i.e. as 'a thing having existence'; and in a narrower sense - as something withstanding (German /Gegenstand/), resistant (Latin /objectum/), that to which an act is directed, i.e. as something to which precisely a living creature relates itself as the /object of its activity/ - indifferently as outward or inward activity (e. g. /object of nutrition/, /object of labour/, /object of meditation/, etc.). >From now on we shall employ the term /object/ precisely in this narrower, special sense.
>
> Any activity of an organism is directed to some object or other; activity without an object is impossible. Consideration of activity therefore requires us to single out and distinguish that which is its real object, i.e. the object of an active relation of the organism.
>
> All lower filtrable organisms (certain larvae living in water, copepods, all Tunicata, etc.), for example, are capable, as we know, of altering their activity in connection with a change in the aqueous medium; in that connection it can sometimes be said with confidence that the change in the organism's activity is specifically linked with a definite activating property of the medium, for example with a greater or less concentration of nutrients. Imagine, however, that we have artificially altered the medium, for example, of a daphnia, by putting it into water that lacks its nutrient, plankton but contains particles of some neutral inorganic substance; the daphnia would react to this by a slackening of the movements that create a flow of water to its ventral slit. Is the observed slackening of the water flea's filtering movements a response to the absence of plankton in the water? Or is it, on the contrary, a response to the presence in it of unassimilable particles? Or does it, finally, depend on some other moments still, not considered by us? Only by answering these questions can we decide precisely /what/ property of the medium is the object of the daphnia's activity, i.e. with what kind of a relation we are dealing with here.
>
> /Thus, the principal 'unit' of a vital process is an organism's activity; the different activities that realise its diverse vital relations with the surrounding reality are essentially determined by their object; we shall therefore differentiate between separate types of activity according to the difference in their objects/.
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>   
>> Well I am currently looking for specific text on how leont'ev 
>> operationally defines a unit of analysis of activity, I'm sure I'll 
>> find details, but some pointers may help me get there faster.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Huw
>>
>> On 7 August 2013 18:57, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> Seems we are up and ready for chatting.
>>> mike
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Huw Lloyd 
>>> <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com
>>>     
>>>       
>>>> wrote:
>>>>       
>>>> testing.
>>>>
>>>>       
>>>>         
>>   
>>     
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
>
>
>
>
>   

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden