Boundary Objects
Michael Glassman: [The] big issue here that I am trying to grapple with…boundary
objects… relates to the metaphor of the table…. [I]n the museum should the place be set
up as affordances, perceived affordances, or constraints? It seems the museum in the
study has potential affordances for the users. The cultural historical moment (unable to
think of any other word) of the museum sets the context, meaning those walking through
the museum are going to be restricted by the historical and cultural boundaries leading up
to the art work, along with the expectations and needs of the individuals moving through
the museum, but they will come across objects/artifacts that they think meets the needs of
their particular journeys.
…Or should museums should be designed for what Don Norman refers to as perceived
affordances?...The focus goes from cultural history setting a general context…to actually
setting the trajectory of the act….The object offers an opportunity to make
communicative gestures….
Or should museums be designed as constraints. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art…
the rooms are set up very, very carefully, so that in many ways the objects…to constrain
your thinking, so that you are responding to a certain period or school of art,
understanding how it all fits together. The table metaphor fits here as well I think. Does
the table constrain our actions, limiting to certain types of behavior (use only certain
types of forks for certain types of food).
Henry Shonerd: …I see a parallel between your work on boundary objects, where
individual persons collaborate to create spaces, AND boundary objects “negotiated” by
groups of people who live in real spaces. I am thinking, among other things, of
indigeneity, a big topic here in New Mexico, with so many Native Americans.
Assymetries of power. Bullying. Testing and curriculum become instruments of war by
other means….
Andy Blunden: [W]ould it be correct to describe the government institutions and political
system are "boundary objects"?
RS: [P]otentially…depending on how the concept is applied. Star describes three
criteria: 1) interpretive flexibility 2) material/organizational structure and 3) scale/
granularity in which the concept is useful.
…boundary objects are typically most useful at the organizational level - so I would say
that one would have to justify the utility of applying the concept to a particular
institution, as opposed to, say, an object within an institution.
AB: …It seems to me that what BOs do is introduce some social theory into domains of
activity (scientific and work collaborations for example) where the participants naively
think they are collaborating on neutral ground. So it is not just granularity, but also the
ideological context….
RS: …I think it depends on the aspect of activity one is attempting to explore as opposed
to the definite identification of what may or may not be a boundary object….
HS: [What can be a boundary object?]
AB: …[A]nything. But the point is objects which play some role in mediating the relation
between subjects, probably a symbolic role, but possibly an instrumental role, too, and
one subject challenges that role and turns the object into its opposite, and changes the
terms of collaboration.
…[The] core point is that the ideological construction placed upon an object is subject to
contestation, and if successful, the re-marking of an artefact is a tremendously powerful
spur to subjectivity.
Yrjo raises the question: is the"boundary object" a mediating artefact or the object of
work (/Arbeitsgegenstand/)? I think the answer is that in these cases it is a mediating
artefact, tool or symbols according to context. In principle it is not the Object in the
Engestromian sense, though it might happen to be.
AJG: the difference that [Engeström & cols.] point out between boundary object on the
one hand, and object and instrumentality as different aspects of activity theory on the
other. …[Rolf & I] noticed that the museum space…was a means, an instrument for
achieving a final design product.
At the same time, the museum space begun to become the object of the designers'
activity. …what seemed to be a common object for all them was the museum as place.
Thus, most representations of it begun to be made in terms of narratives about being
there. That was the orientation that seemed to stick them together.
Thus, the museum space was both object and instrument. We wondered whether we
should do connections to notions of object of activity and tools, but we felt that that road
would take us away from the focus on body and experience. We ended up drawing from
Binder et al (2011), who differentiate between object of design, the design thing that
work delivers, and the object's constituents (or means of presentation before the design
thing is finished).
…One advantage was that boundary objects focus on the materiality, which, as already
mentioned, is not about materials in themselves, but about consequences in action. … But
I still want to learn what we may get out of making the distinction between object and
tool, as Engeström and colleagues do (so I should perhaps read more carefully their study
rather than be here thinking aloud).
Boundary Object // Methodology: definition of ‘object’ and
discussions about Activity Theory
LSP: I am not sure what you mean in this sentence:
"But I still want to learn what we may get out of making the distinction between object
and tool, as Engeström and colleagues do (so I should perhaps read more carefully their
study rather than be here thinking aloud)."
In classic Activity Theory there is a very well defined distinction between the object of
activity and the means/mediating instruments for shaping/changing that object. Actually,
one of the "formulas" or models is Subject (in the sense of Classical German
philosophy)--Means--Object (of that activity).
...[H]ow is your approach related to classic Activity Theory?…I would like to clarify
certain things for myself.
For example: What are the limits and boundaries of Activity Theory? How much we can
fuse Activity Theory and Postmodernist approaches? What do we gain when we infuse
new methodological, epistemological, and ontological realities into Activity Theory?
What do we lose? What is the threshold when it is not Activity Theory anymore? (I mean
here Activity Theory as research methodology.) Do we need to call something Activity
Theory if it is not? If we create a new approach starting with Activity Theory, do we need
to call it Activity Theory?
Activity Theory is a product of Modern thinking, Late Modernism. The discourse you use
in your paper borrows strongly from Postmodern discourses and approaches. I am not
sure that Modernist and Postmodernist discourses can be fused. We can borrow ideas
across the range of discourses, but after we assimilate them for use in our project, they
will "change hands" and will change their particular discourse affiliation and will become
completely different components of a completely different discourse. Mostly because the
epistemologies and ontologies are different; and the concepts are very different despite of
the similarities in ideas and words used to name these ideas.
Just a few questions that I hope will help me understand better what is going on in the
realm of CHAT.
AJG: …[W]e describe in the paper has to do with how the object of design emerged and
developed for the team in and as they were dealing with, developing, and resorting to
particular means or tools. But I guess we could say that in our analyses there is a lack of a
historical account of the object that goes over and above the particular instances
analyzed. Although we provide with some ethnographic contextualization of the team's
developmental trajectories, all of our discussion is grounded on concrete events and their
transactional unfolding. We did not resort to the distinction between object and means
because it seemed to be the same thing in the there and then of the episodes analyzed, at
least in what participants' orientations concerned. If they oriented towards anything
beyond what was there in the meetings, it was in and through the meetings' means. How
would then the distinction between means and object have added to our understanding of
the events? (And this is not to doubt of the contribution from such a distinction, I really
mean to ask this question for the purpose of growing and expanding; and as said before,
part of the answer may be found in Engestrom et al. contribution).
As to how we would position our contribution with regard to activity theory, I would
reiterate what we said when introducing the paper for discussion: we begun with the
purpose of working outside any particular framework and think, as we think Star did,
broadly, drawing from several sources. These included cultural historical psychology,
ethnomethodology, and discourse analysis. But also the ideas about Experience (in the
Deweyan/Vygotskyan sense) that have been the topic in this discussion were in the
background all the time, but we did not operationalize them in terms of any particular
theory. This is not to say that we went for the "anything goes;" we tried our best to keep
internal coherence between what we said about the data, and what the data was exhibiting
for us. Perhaps Rolf would like to add to this….
AB: If I could try to do my thing and draw attention to some distinctions in this field ...
we have at least three different versions of Activity Theory involved here plus Leigh
Star's theory and in addition the theories that have spun off from Leigh Star's initial idea.
Each is using the word "object" in a different way, all of them legitimate uses of the
English word, but all indexing different concepts. So for the sake of this discussion I will
invent some different terms.
The German word Arbeitsgegenstand means the object of labour, the material which is to
be worked upon, the blacksmith's iron. It is objective, in that if may be a nail to a man
with a hammer and waste material for a man with a broom, but it is all the same
Arbeitsgegenstand. Engestrom use the word "Object" in the middle of the left side of the
triangle to mean Arbeitsgegenstand, and when it has been worked upon it becomes
"Outcome." The hammer that the blacksmith uses is called "Instruments" or now
"instrumentality," and the Rules, whether implicit or explicit, these are respectively the
base and apex of the triangle.
Engestrom says " The object carries in itself the purpose and motive of the activity." So
this "purpose or motive" is not shown on the triangle, but I will call it the OBJECT. This
is what Leontyev meant by "object" when he talks about "object-oriented activity." The
OBJECT is a complex notion, because it is only *implicit* in the actions of the
subject(s); it is not a material thing or process as such. Behaviourists would exclude it
altogether. But this is what is motivating all the members of the design team when they
sit down to collaborate with one another. Bone one of the team thinks the OBJECT is to
drive the nail into the wood and another thinks the OBJECT is to sweep the
Arbeitsgegenstand into the wastebin. These OBJECTs change in the course of
collaboration and in the End an OBJECT Is *realised* which is the "truth" of the
collaboration, to use Hegel's apt terminology here.
Surely it is important to recognise that while everyone shares the same
Arbeitsgegenstand, and ends up with Outcome as the same OBJECT, along the road they
construe the object differently. This is what Vygotsky showed so clearly in Thinking and
Speech. It is not the Arbeitsgegenstand or some problem carried within it alone which
motivates action, but *the concept the subject makes of the Arbeitsgegenstand*!
Then Leigh Star comes along and applies (as Lubomir astutely notices) postmodern
ideology critique to the collaboration within an ostensibly neutral infrastructure - that is,
in Engestrom's terms Rules and Instruments, which are naively supposed to be there just
to aid collaboration. And Leigh Star shows that this is an illusion; the Rules and
Instruments are in fact residues of past collaborations which carry within them the
Outcomes, i.e., realised OBJECTs of past collaborations. It is these one-time OBJECTs,
now-Instruments+Rules which are the Boundary Objects.
But it seems that others have grasped the postmodern critique elements of this idea, that
apparently ideologically neutral obJects (in the expanded sense of socially constructed
entities, usually far more than OBJects - as things, or artefacts, including institutions fossilised "systems of activity") and recognised the shared OBJECT as a Boundary
Object, reflecting the fact not everyone has the same concept of the OBJECT, as
Vygotsky proved.
But what Engestrom has done, by placing the Boundary Object in the place of Object on
his triangle, joining two "systems of activity," for the purpose of looking not at
cooperation but rather the conflict within the broader collaboration. The reconstrual of
the Arbeitsgegenstand is deliberate and aimed to change the relation between Subject and
obJECT (here referring to the Hegelian "Object" usually rendered as "the Other.")
thereby introducing yet a different strand of postmodern critique into the equation,
namely Foucault's Poststructuralism, to my mind, with great effect.
OK, so we have Arbeitsgegenstand. OBJECT, Boundary Object, OBject, obJECT and
obJect. And I might say, the situation is almost as bad in Russian and German.
LP: …I will try to focus on one particular relation you have highlighted.
If I am clear on your distinctions then:
It is not the Arbeitsgegenstand ALONE [the object OF labour or the object upon which
labour works] where the problem resides. The problem is NOT carried WITHIN the
Arbeitsgegenstand as an abstraction. The OBJECT [purposes and motives] includes also
the "concept" that the subject-person makes OF the arbeitsgegenstand [object OF labour].
So it is the concept's relation WITH the arbeitsgegenstand [object OF
labour] that generates "subject's socially shared OBJECTs [purposes and motives].
Andy, I may have garbled your construal of the relations involved in these two meanings
of "object", my question is why not just say "object of labour" [when we mean
arbeitsgegenstand] AND say "purposes and motives” when we mean OBJECT.
In the same way that Dewey wishes he had used a different term
for "experience" it seems we need alternative terms for "object".
I am also struggling to understand the historical movement implied in the alternative
changing OBJECTs [purposes and motives] expressed in how a term is situated.
The notion of "polyphonic" languages with shifting meanings and OBJECTS seems very
complex and seems to require expansive understandings of multiple different "languagegames" [as Wittgenstein uses that concept.
The labour process AND the conceptual process and multiple modern / postmodern
understandings of "their" [using personal pronoun] relations. Very complex process.
AJG: …[C]oncern[ing] the quote that the object "carries in itself the purpose and motive
of the activity." What does "in itself" mean here?
AB: Well, they're Yrjo's words so he will have to tell you, but I can tell you how I've
construed them. Not until you asked, did I see that there is ambiguity in the phrase. I had
always taken it that the purpose and motive is "in the nature" of the Arbeitsgegenstand. I
think Yrjo gives an example somewhere of a person who is ill - it is obvious that the
illness needs to be cured. So I read "in itself" literally. "in it" would be the same. But
there is an alternative Hegelian reading, that in the Arbeitsgegenstand, the is an OBJECT
which is only "in itself," that is, not yet realised, and that makes good sense. It slides over
the point that Larry raised, that the OBJECT is not in the Arbeitsgegenstand alone but in
the relation of the Arbeitsgegenstand to the Subject, but that is consistent with how Hegel
uses the phrase "in itself."
LSP: The object doesn't carry in itself the motive and the purpose of activity. Actually,
depending on the motive and purpose of activity, the object can be approached in many
different ways.
It is true that the relationship between the object and the subject caries the
purpose/goal/objective/motive of activity. This type of relationship might have several
aspects and the teleological aspect is one of them. Actually, in AT, the teleological aspect
is central one among all aspects of Subject-Object relationships.
The teleological aspect in AT is envisaged at several levels with distinctive teleological
phenomena: motivation, goal, etc….
LP: Here is a quote from the introduction of "The Cambridge Handbook of MerleauPonty on the topic of the subject.
"Foucault's archaeological studies of the early 1970's, most notably "The Order of
Things" and "The Archaeology of Knowledge", did perhaps more than any other work of
the period to LEGITIMIZE conceiving of processes without subjects."
This is an "antihumanist" program as Foucault saw the failure of phenomenology and the
residual links between subjectivism and anthropology.
The force of Foucault's argument was tying the philosophy of the subject to what he saw
as an outmoded humanism.
It may be what Andy is highlighting is a new humanism.
AB: That is exactly right, Larry, I am advocating a humanism, in opposition to
poststructuralism, structuralism Marxism, and strands of Activity Theory which give
everything to the Object.
LSP: Merleau-Ponty works in a completely different paradigm than AT and what he says
should be interpreted in the context of that paradigm. AT should be interpreted in the
context of Historical Materialism. Otherwise, it is not AT. It might be a study of activity,
but in a different paradigm….
In historical materialism, activity and process are two different things. Activity is a
process, but it is more than a process. It is planned and goal-directed, while the process is
naturally flowing. In the natural world (Nature) there are processes, but they are not
activities.
The primacy of the subject is typical for historical materialism….
The study of activity and AT are two different things. AT is a particular way of studying
activity in the framework of historical materialism. Any attempt to fuse phenomenology
or hermeneutics in AT might create a product that is not AT. …AT is not the most
productive way to engage in experiential and descriptive study of activity as an everyday
phenomenon. AT presupposes a top-down approach to the study of activity, imposing a
set of methodological principles and theoretical framework. There are situations when
this approach is very productive. However, if we emphasize the human experience aspect
and the importance to unveil new aspects and their subsequent descriptions, I would not
use AT.
MC: …I recall Lubomir writing that AT was centered on the subject. And now Andy is
gesturing to Strands of AT theory that give everything to the object.
Question-- isn't this a version of Rubenshtein/Leontiev schools' conflict? Or LSV "vs"
AN L on the problem of the environment?
Or?
What is at stake here theoretically and practically?
…I almost want to ask -- what forms of joint mediated activity do not involve boundary
objects?...
AB: …What it comes down to is the insistence of ANL in interpreting contradictions
between the "subjective sense" and the "objective meaning" of an activity in terms of the
social vs. the individual. This reduces subjectivity to a matter of the capriciousness of the
individual mind or the underdevelopment of the child mind. This is hardly objectionable
in the domain of child development, but in the domain of social theory it is a Neanderthal
position. Social life is made up of a multiplicity of standpoints among which none have
the right to claim unproblematic "objective truth" for themselves. This is the basis on
which I describe ANL as giving too much to the Object….I see Engestrom's approach as
a kind of social behaviourist approach in which change occurs only thanks to
"contradictions" at different levels in the "system." My aim in proposing to see the
"system" as a "project" at one or another phase in its life cycle aims to restore the
purposiveness of human action to Activity Theory….
…The problem with your question about Boundary Objects…I can now see 3 different
meanings of the term.
Manfred Holodynski: …As far as I interpret ANL he presented a very elegant solution of
the relation between sense and meaning: For ANL, subjective sense is not a part or subset
of objective meaning (as you seem to insinuate him), but a psychological quality that
emerges when a person uses societal signs and their objective meanings in order to
regulate his or her socially embedded activity.
What happens is a transformation of societal meanings into the personal sense of those
involved. The personal sense that an individual assigns to interactions, facts, and
experiences through the use of signs can be conceptualized not as a subset of societal
meanings but as a particular sphere of mind that is constituted by two psychological
factors in particular (a) the relation to the motives of the person, and (b) the relation to the
situated and sensorially mediated experiences of the individual within the process of
internalization.
a) People do not appropriate the use of signs and their meanings during social interactions
in an impartial way. They interpret and use them in the light of their actually elicited
motives along with the motives they assign to the interaction partner. The societal
meaning of the used signs does not have to match the individually assigned personal
sense. For example, an outsider may well interpret a public fit of rage by a low-ranking
bank employee toward his superior as an inexcusable violation of social etiquette.
However, for the menial employee, it may well be a reassertion of self-esteem in
response to a humiliating directive.
b) The personal sense of sign-use is also determined by the situatedness and sensory
mediation of the previous encounters in which the use of signs is (or was) embedded.
Societal meanings are coded primarily not by propositional phrases (e.g., “a dog is a
mammal” or “wide-open eyes signal fear”) but through their ties to sensorially mediated
and situated perceptions—as complex as these interrelations may be….
Thus, conventionalized signs and the meanings assigned to them are subject to an
interpersonal process of interpretation and coordination that more or less successfully
supports the embodiment and expression of personal sense. People do not have a private
“speech” at their disposal that they can construct and use on their own (Wittgenstein).
Therefore, they depend on the appropriation and use of conventionalized signs when they
want to communicate successfully and satisfy their motives in social interactions.
By an act of reflection, the person can try to realize and to become aware of his personal
relation and sense of the situation and the used signs, but also this reflection has to fall
back on societal signs in order to express this personal relations. So, this is the overall
tension between objective meaning of an event or an object and its personal sense for a
specific person.
AB: …I am a social theorist, that is I am interested in changing societal arrangements (to
put it very politely), and I am one of few social theorists, properly so-called, who base
themselves on Vygotsky's theories, and use Activity Theory as well. My position is a
contradictory one because Vygotsky and Leontyev were psychologists (like you) and not
social theorists. …Social theorists have ideas about psychology, but generally not
scientific ones, and vice versa. In my opinion, Vygotsky's ideas provide an excellent
foundation for social theory because he introduced into human development and every
interaction between two individuals a culturally produced sign. But he only went so far.
He showed how people acted and developed within their social situation, but he did not
tackle the problem of how that situation arose. Leontyev, by his discovery of the Activity
as a macro-unit of activity, made an epoch-making development which opened CHAT to
become a fully developed social-and-psychological theory. But what he said himself on
questions of social theory was of very poor quality….
Now, to your point. If I am not mistaken "objective meaning" is not a psychological
category at all for Leontyev. Yes? And personal sense is, as you eloquently explain, a
fundamental Psychological category. So if what I said were to be interpreted to say that
personal sense is a subset of objective meaning, that would be quite wrong. While I
accept (as I must) a categorical difference between material objects/processes and their
reflection in my mind, I do not at all understand societal processes as nonpsychological
processes. I try to conceive of them together in one unit, and I think I am on my own
there…. There remains of course the distinction between the individual (Einzeln) and the
universal (Allgemein), mediated by the particular (Besonder). A human individual is
something radically different from a number of individuals….I am interested in how the
Activities go. In small part to avoid having arguments with followers of Leontyev I call
activities "projects." …if there is any confusion with projects as defined by
Existentialists, I call them "collaborative projects." (i.e., people usually join them, not
create them). …all those things which gives our lives meaning while we build the world
we and our children must live in, what Fedor Vasilyuk called an отношение . A project
is not a collection of people, it is an aggregate of actions (like an Activity) and the "logic"
of projects is something different from Psychology, but it is inclusive of Psychology as
well. A project is a kind of psychological phenomenon, but it is also much more than
psychology, because, as you remind us, people regulate their own behaviour using signs
created in the world beyond their ken. Projects are the material substance of Concepts,
and I rely on Vygotsky for a Psychology of concepts. OK?
LSP: Hi Mike and Andy,
Sorry, it takes time to respond….
In Historical Materialism, the subject is an active social agent. The subject exists
objectively. This is not a paradox in that paradigm. On the other hand, although
materialists talk about the objective existence of the world, they conceptualize people as
active social agents, while the object of activity is subservient to the social agent/subject
of activity. In addition, there is a dialectic between the objective existence of human
beings and their subjective (in the sense of personal, individual) perception of the world.
The subject is in the center of everything. When we talk about "subject", we do not mean
subjectivity in the US sense. The Histmat is an objectivist paradigm that professes the
objective existence of humans but at the same time acknowledges the perceptions and
agency of the individual. It is a bit different to translate/transfer these concepts. In
Historical Materialism the subject is not subjective in the Anglo sense, not biased, not
partial, but exists objectively according to the laws of social reality. Of course, in a
different usage of the term "subjective," the subject can display subjectivity in the Anglo
sense, like developing political bias and prejudice in his/her perceptions and actions
regarding the social world. So, the subject exists objectively and always in control of the
object. The dialectic of the subjective and objective regarding a social individual also
means that each individual has his/her own specific consciousness, but its content is
affected strongly by objective social laws that the subject cannot disregard, even if he/she
wishes so. By "social laws" we mean social regularities, and actually the Histmat people
say -- objectively existing social regularities. This means that the subjects or individuals
can not affect or change these objective social regularities. Again, there is no paradox
when the Histmat people believe that the objective laws of social reality cannot be
changed, but at the same time subjects have the power to change their lives and the
organization of society. Yes, subjects/social agents can make changed, but within the
limits of social regularities and using these objective social processes to their advantage,
creating synergy.
In Histmat, they talk about subjective meaning (like in the Anglo discourses) and
objective meaning (socially agreed and accepted in everyday life conventions)….
In principle, it is very difficult to translate/convert Histmat ideas into Anglo discourses.
Most of the stuff will be lost in translation. Even German words like Tatigkeit and
Activitat are used very differently than in German language where they are synonyms.
Marx has used these words to denote two very different concepts: Tatigkeit is activity,
whole Aktivitat is used for all kinds of chemical and biological process, denoting some
kind of movement and development of the situation or the cell, or whatever. The Histmat
people religiously follow and keep this differentiation. It is a big mistake to substitute
Tatigkeit (deyatelnost in Russian) for Aktivitat (aktivnost in Russian). Actually, the
definition of deyatelnost is that it is goal-directed aktivnost.
AB: …[I]t is not a problem of unfamiliarity with diamat…. It is partly a problem of the
departmentalisation of knowledge and activity, and partly a problem of getting one's head
around genuinely interdisciplinary concepts. Unlike Manfred, you have ventured beyond
the bounds of Psychology, so you give me the opportunity to illustrate my point. Let us
suppose that there are three characters whom I will call the Psychologist, the Sociologist
and the Social Theorist for the sake of convenience.
You play the role of *the Psychologist*. Everything in your explanation is about the
individual (a.k.a. subject) on one side, and society with its unchangeable laws, on the
other. Objective meaning, is *socially agreed*! By whom? Pretty well any Psychologist
will be inclined to see things this way…. They are a very small agent in the world, but
enough of an agent to change what matters to them. It is the subject, an individual, on one
side, and society with its unchanging, "agreed," "objective" meanings on the other.
*The Sociologist* on the other hand, does his or her survey and tells us that men and
women think differently, as do retired people and workers, and blue collar workers have
different opinions from white collar workers and so on. And these different groups of
people interact. The Sociologist agrees that "objective laws of social reality cannot be
changed" but he/she knows that every proposition you want to make about the social
reality is contested, and there is no "socially agreed" meaning for anything. …[I]f things
change it is because of the changing relations between these groups, and these changes
are beyond the power of any individual to do anything about them. …It is a matter of
formulating the laws governing the interaction between these groups.
For *the Social Theorist*, the individual is an agent in the world beyond their immediate
sphere of life only insofar as they can participate in some project…it is here, taking
actions as part of a collaborative project, that the regularities of social life are made and
broken. These projects are motivated by concepts of themselves which are manifested by
their actions in the world as a whole, embedded in artefacts and signs and active in the
consciousness of individual participants…. These projects are not the Sociologists' social
groups, but activities made up not of individuals but of actions. Projects are not
sociological entities. They are the actions of individuals and are just as much part of
Psychology as Social Theory, but the actions of individuals as such are mere
capriciousness, grains of dust in the wind, except insofar as they are coordinated by
concepts, that is, are carried out in collaboration with others. The world is made up not of
old and young, male and female, Muslim and Christian, but feminism, business, farming,
sport, socialism, etc., activities, the unit of which is a project.
Mike asked what is at stake here? What is at stake if we insist that there is an objective
world, whose laws cannot be changed, and words/signs have objective meanings which
are "socially agreed"? Where, if you don't accept the "socially agreed" meaning, you need
to see a Psychologist to find out why. And who is it that is the arbiter of the "socially
agreed" meaning of everything? Surely it speaks for itself.
LP: …I find myself wondering about the characteristics of "action" which are NOT
individual. Actions "manifest" projects which are "realized" by concepts OF the projects.
In other words, projects manifest "by" concepts "upon" these projects.
…[A]s I try to grasp this understanding I reflect on Dewey's "having an experience" in
relation to "having knowledges.
Your way of unifying experiences and knowledges though shared actions (undergone and
manifested) as historically effected activities coming to be through developing
concepts….
AB: When I say: "activities made up not of individuals but of actions," I should have said
"activities made up not of persons but of actions." It is always persons who act. I referred
to concepts being "manifested", not projects. Projects are aggregates of actions, and both
projects and actions are manifested in physical movements of things and people. It is not
projects which are realised by concepts, but concepts which are realised by projects. And
this is the only part of Activity Theory as I see it which is really difficult to get your head
around.
MH: …Ok, if one is going to analyze what the essence of an "objective meaning" e.g. of
the word "dog" is (and all the more of abstract terms such as feminism, social justice),
then one will find oneself in a confusing struggle of different meanings that are also
changing with time. So, the objective meaning of a word or concept is fuzzy and of many
voices. Nevertheless, people are sometimes (:-) ) able to communicate their personal
sense by using words and concepts. This is not a hopeless endeavor although it
sometimes and for some people fails miserably.
Your construction of a theory of collaborative projects is indeed a noteworthy proposal to
deal with the societal emergence and change of the objective meanings of concepts that
maintain the link between the social and psychological plane.
AB: Thanks Manfred. I think we are on the same page.
This "confusing struggle of different meanings" is of course nothing other than activity.
That is how signs and situations acquire psychological meanings, and children learn not
only by observing but by participating in those activities.
David Kellogg: I think that the theory of language described here is really on a par with
the Social Theory that Andy described--that is, Neanderthal. But even the Neanderthals,
at least according to N.Y. Marr, and Volosinov, and Vygotsky knew that sense is actually
primary, not signification. Signification emerges, in the life of the child and for all we
know in the life of primitive societies as well, as a generalization of sense, rather than
sense emerging as a psychological category from the activation of signification. That is
why Voloshinov says that if there were a language that consisted of a single word (e.g.
childly language) it would have sense and not signification.
Whenever someone tries to justify the Leontievian idea that sense is a
psychological category that emerges from the activation of signification in social
contexts, and that it is underwritten by perception, they always use examples like "dog".
But a much more appropriate example would be "this", since this is very often the child's
first word in English. Since the sense of "this" changes with almost every single use, it's
quite impossible to see how it might emerge from a correspondence to perceptual
categories. "This", "that", "those", "there", and "then" (as well as their interrogative
forms, "which", "what", "whose", "where" and "when") may or may not correspond to
perceptions; they certainly don't correspond to any perceptual categories.
What kind of perception or experience corresponds to "If you are thirsty, there's some
beer in the fridge"? Does it correspond to the experience that every time I am thirsty beer
appears in the fridge by magic?
LP: David [and Andy] and others interested in this topic. I am trying to get clear on the
question of the "starting" point/place. David wrote:
“sense is actually primary, not signification. Signification emerges, in the life of the child
and for all we know in the life of primitive societies as well, as a generalization of sense,
rather than sense emerging as a psychological category from the activation of
signification.”
THIS sense before THAT generalization.
David, you are making a claim that Andy starts from a place of generalization. ALL
signification is generalization. Your claim is THAT THIS occurs after "sense".
SO the question becomes the relation of sense AND signification. [this and that].
Categories such AS the psychological category do or do not emerge FROM activating
signification.
Is this relation the question? Apologies if I misunderstand
DK: Larry, Manfred:
My claim goes with Andy's--he wants to organize a little colloquium where the
sociologist and the psychologist are each put right by the social theories. I am inviting
linguists too--I think that linguists actually provide the practical means by which the
social becomes psychological and vice versa.
Andy wanted to point out how grossly inadequate Leontiev's social theory was. I would
like to add that his theory of language is (as a consequence, actually) grossly inadequate
as well. Much of Thinking and Speech is devoted to showing that learning the names of
objects is not the same thing as learning language; the power of language does not lie in
its ability to signify objects or even percepts but rather in its ability to realize meanings
(Vygotsky says "signifying" as opposed to "nominative" or "indicative" function).
Meanings aren't things that you see; in fact, if we have to relate them to things we see at
all, we might start by saying that the meanings are precisely the things you don't see.
MH: …may be you misunderstood my claim…a person has to use signs with their
objective meaning in order to express his sense and to realize and satisfy his motives. So,
sense doesn't emerge from signification - that is what I tried to say - and I also
understand Leontyev in this way.
Also, the first words of children are related to a perception. Also first words such as
"this" are related to a common situation or object that child and caregiver share and the
meaning of this may be "look at this and share it with me" as a kind of joint attention
between child and caregiver. Of course, the word "this" or "da" is related to different
objects in different situations, but in socially shared situations where the referent of "this"
is clear to both. …The argument that speech can go far beyond perceptions, ok, this is
obvious, but this is not the starting point of speech development. So, what is your point?
DK: I think that Leontiev and Vygotsky disagreed, and they disagreed
fundamentally. For Leontiev, language use is essentially ancillary; that is, it is there to
help along material processes (perception in the child and labor in the adult) which would
function without language. A rose is a rose by any other name, and in fact a rose is a rose
without any name at all.
For Vygotsky language use is not ancillary at all. This is because the
specifically human functions--the things that make language into language and the things
that make human beings into truly human beings--are actually produced by language
itself (verbal thinking, social thinking, culture, higher psychological processes, whatever
we wish to call them). A name is a name without a rose.
Child language isn't brought into being through perception; animals do
perception pretty well, and they never develop language. It would be much truer to say
that it is brought into being through gesture, or that it arises alongside gesture. This is
certainly true ontogenetically, and it is probably just as true sociogenetically (although
there isn't really any way to know this). Meaning, in the sense of "intending" is primary
not perception. A name is not a name until the child intends to name the rose.
LP: This "confusing struggle of different meanings" is of course nothing other than
activity. That is how signs and situations acquire psychological meanings.
…I will share Vygotsky's own words on what a concept is:
"A real concept is an IMAGE of an objective thing in all its complexity. Only when we
recognize the thing in all its connections and relations, only when this diversity is
synthesized in a word in an INTEGRAL IMAGE through a multitude of determinations,
do we develop a concept. According to the teaching of dialectical logic, a concept
INCLUDES not only the general but also the individual and particular.
In contrast to contemplation, to direct knowledge of an object, a
concept is filled with definitions of the object; it is the RESULT of
rational processing of our existence AND it is mediated knowledge of the object. To
think of some object with the help of a concept MEANS TO INCLUDE the GIVEN
object in a complex SYSTEM of mediating connection and relations DISCLOSED in
determinations of the concept"
[Vygotsky, The Collected Works, Volume 5, Child Psychology, page 53]
I felt my struggle I am going through may be relevant to others. In
particular "when we recognize the thing in all its connections and
relations .... THROUGH a multitude of DETERMINATIONS". THIS [thing] is
synthesized "in a word" IN AN INTEGRAL IMAGE".
AB: …I am not the only one who insists that a concept is a unity of individual, universal
and particular!
The thing is, Larry, if we think of the concept of "game", how does the child come to use
"game" in a way that adults will understand and in turn be able to react when adults use
it? This is of course a protracted process but it is through actions. In Thinking and
Speech, Vygotsky explains concept formation only in terms of actions, not any kind of
hypothetical mental images or dictionaries or mental filing systems or whatever. It is all
actions which are in one way or another organised around some artefact, and in particular
a word. …But it is in the whole bundle of actions around the word “game” that a child or
an adult learns to use the word correctly, to utter the word meaningfully and coordinate
their own actions with respect to the word. The words on their own are nothing. They
acquire meaning only through their use in collaborative activity in which the learner
participates in some way. The problem is, of course, that not everyone in the world uses
the word in a uniform, consistent way.
David Kellogg: I think that the word Vygotsky uses here is not so much "image" as
"imagination" or perhaps "construal". Or rather, it is "image" but it isn't image in the
sense of a photographic image but more in the sense of a Russian icon. That's why you
can have an image of a game, and it's also why it is really only half true to say that the
concept is built through actions. Painting isn't reducible to actions, and in a very
important sense the ideal image of the painting exists long before any action at all is
taken.
LP: This answer to my struggle shifts or slants everything.
If we cannot "reduce" or "abstract" actions from "having an experience" then to be
explicit and clear we must also include some other factor that is "beyond" reducing
having "an" experience to just actions. This other factor is "construal" or "imaginal"
phenomena. Having an experience is an INTEGRAL EXPERIENCE including both the
imaginal and actions.
David the other relation is the unity of "construing" and "disclosing"/"undergoing" an
experience (as a unity or integral phenomena.)
The relation(s) of the imaginal to action and the slant from which we approach THIS
unity (that cannot be reduced or abstracted) from having an experience.
How we understand THIS integral phenomena that is extending "beyond" actions but
must necessarily INCLUDE actions.
Ritva Engeström: Although the discussion has taken some other theoretical threads, I like
to thank still Alfredo and Rolf for the meaningful and refined article on a boundary
object. I agree very much to the solution in the article to start the analysis by
differentiating ”the object of design” from ”the object or ’thing’ that is handed over at the
end of the design process”; the former addressing situated processes in which ”the
designers’ relation with their object of design” is observable and available for analyses.
In terms of object-oriented AT (as I see it), I would designate these different kinds of
object as related to the first order activity (”develop technology-enhanced solutions for
the design and redesign of museum exhibitions”) and the second order activity that does
interactive, epistemic, performative, reflective etc. function and is materialized in
collaborative emergent processes while working jointly on the object of the first order
activity. A good reason to emphasize this distinction is that today’s complexity is not
only a feature of the systems in society, but it is also concerned with the way in which we
generate and organize our thinking about those systems and their phenomena. Thus, the
article reminds us about co-evolution processes of knowledge production (inter- and
multidisciplinary collaboration) and society.
The above distinction holds methodologically the objects (activities) as unity but allows a
variety of logic of empirical methods depending on the interest of the study (such as the
importance of the living body). The research focus on the second order activity highlights
also the importance of a dialogical approach which guides us to study object in subjectrelation (e.g. Bakhtin, Marková). The objects are, then, reflexively constituted, being
outside and inside at the same time. The next question would be how to incorporate
values to the object’s constituents, always present in sciences, and particularly in
developmental or intervention research. The examination of the concept of imagination
by Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis may include some interesting discussion (”Standpoint
theory, situated knowledge and the situated imagination”, Feminist Theory 2002, vol.
3(3).