[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy,
I was hoping you could elaborate on the two terms *modes* and *archeTYPES*
when discussing collaboration within projects [activities]
*modes* seem related to *models* *media* *medium* *mediation*.
*Actions* when *operationalized* are ALWAYS WITHIN modes of collaboration.
What phenomena are not included within human processes that are beyond
activities?
Shotter, exploring social life says,
"different people in different positions at different moments live in
different realities."
In other words "reality" we must re-think "reality" as being
differentiated, consisting in different regions and moments all with
different properties to these realities.
Shotter adds,
"WE can begin to think of social reality at large as a turbulent flow of
continuous social activity, containing within it [reality] two BASIC KINDS
of activity:
1] a set of relatively stable centers of well ordered, self-reproducing
activity sustained by those WITHIN them being accountable to each other for
their actions ... - but with the forms of justification used being
themselves open to contest (Billig, McIntyre)
2] with these diverse regions or moments of institutionalized order being
separated from each other by zones of much more disorderly, unaccountable,
chaotic activity.
It is in these unaccountable, marginal regions - on the edge of chaos, away
from the orderly centers of social life - that the events of interest to us
occur"

Shotter is suggesting the *models* we specify to help us understand the
uncertainty, vagueness, and ambiguity [REAL features of much of the world
in which we live] influence the nature of our future lives together.

To return to collaboration operating WITHIN *modes* [as archeTYPES]. The 3
types [master/servant - customer/provider - and collaboration per se]. Can
*we* through *education* develop *dis-positions* which *turn* away from the
first two archetypes and *turn* towards collaboration per se? Can we also
through education envision a turn towards the *interhuman* as a *model*
that is a general archetype  for understanding collaboration per se?
Is Shotter's composition of two basic KINDS of activity [sedimented and
disorderly] helpful in understanding community forming within types or
modes of communication [collaboration].

I struggle with the ambivalence of *addressing* my audience. This is a CHAT
forum and I have a tendency to *turn* the conversation. I will  close by
re-focusing on the dialectic of meaning and *sense*.
Sense involves [revolves?]  perception AND action mediated THROUGH felt
experience. I believe Shotter's conVERSEational "realities* as
collaborations per se may contribute to our interhuman understandings as a
way to turn away from master/slave and customer/provider activity settings.
Larry
Larry



Thanks Andy
On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Two things Greg.
>
> Firstly, most definitely the caddy and the player are involved in the same
> project or activity. Self-evidently. Each are also involved in other
> activities, and reflecting on these other activities may shed light on how
> they come to be collaborating in the shared project of the player's game.
> Like master and servant, people always collaborate in a particular mode.
> The archetypes of these modes of collaboration are master-servant,
> customer-provider and collaboration per se. It is important to recognise
> these different modes of collaboration because otherwise we tend to force
> *all* collaboration into the same mode, which may cause us to misconstrue
> some relations. The fact that different participants have different social
> positions within a project means that they each are bound by different
> sides of the same norms. That is, the norms of meaning, belief and action
> prevailing in the project mandate different meanings, beliefs and actions
> for different participants. The tensions arising from these asymmetrical
> relationships is one of the motors of change.
>
> Secondly, no, projects do not exist *between* persons, persons exist
> *between* projects. This is just another effort by you, Greg, to make the
> unit of analysis the individual person. The relevants units of analysis of
> Activity Theory are operation, action and activity. :)
>
> Andy
>
> Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>>
>> "Motive" seems a slippery concept to rest too much on. Andy I'm wondering
>> how you answer the question you put to Roland, namely whether or not master
>> and slave are participating in the same activity/project? Or, what about a
>> golfer and caddy? And so on down to, as Phillip and Carol point out - the
>> different participants in a discussion on XMCA.
>>
>> ...
>>
>>
>> Goffman's answer is interesting in that he doesn't rely on the motives
>> (motivational relevancies) of the participants, but rather creates a notion
>> of the local context as a "frame" that exists somewhere between
>> participants. No one person can dictate the frame (even dictators have to
>> deal with the possibility of duplicitousness - the word with a side-wards
>> glance - hence irony is a powerful weapon of the weak - even if James Scott
>> didn't recognize this, Bakhtin clearly did). Frames emerge as participants
>> take parts in the unfolding play of some event or happening, and, to a
>> certain extent, without regard to alignment of the motives of the
>> participants. Every once in a while the motives of all participants create
>> a frame may be relatively closely aligned, but it seems much more common
>> that frames are built out of a plethora of motives.
>>
>>
>
>