1
The final version of this paper was published in 2006 in the Journal For the Theory of
Social Behavior 36(4)389-408.
Reijo Miettinen, University of Helsinki
Epistemology of Transformative Material Activity: John Dewey’s
Pragmatism and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
Abstract
The paper compares John Dewey’s pragmatism and cultural-historical activity theory
as epistemologies and theories of transformative material activity. For both of the
theories, the concept of activity, the prototype of which is work, constitutes a basis for
understanding the nature of knowledge and reality. This concept also implies for both
theories a methodological approach of studying human behavior in which social
experimentation and intervention play a central role. They also suggest that reflection
and thought, mediated by language and semiotic artifacts, serve the reorientation of
activity and is vital in the development of new, alternative ways of action. That is why
Dewey’s pragmatism and activity theory supply means of understanding
organizational behavior and change in human activities better than the concepts of
practice based on rule following, routines or embodied skills.
Introduction
In this paper I will compare John Dewey’s pragmatism and cultural-historical activity
theory as epistemologies and theories of transformative material activity. Both
activity theory and Dewyan pragmatism can be regarded as theories of activity. Both
regard the concept of transformative practical activity as a theoretical category that
makes it possible to solve philosophical dilemmas that emerged from Cartesian
subject-object (and mind-body) dualism. For both of the theories, the concept of
activity, the prototype of which is work, constitutes a basis for understanding the
nature of knowledge and reality. This concept also implies for both theories a
methodogical approach of studying human behavior in which social experimentation
and intervention play a central role. The thesis of this paper is that these theories have
much to offer to recent discourses of social practice and for the understanding of
organizational behavior and change in human activities.
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The last decade of the 20th century witnessed a renaissance of the concept of practice
in sociology, in organizational studies, in science and technology studies as well as in
education. Some scholars speak about the ‘practice turn’ in social theory (Schatzki et
al. 2001). In sociology, Bordieu (1977) and Giddens (1984) developed their theories
of practice to offer an alternative to rational and normative concepts of action and to
solve the problem of the relationship between agency and structure. In more 'applied'
disciplines, such as organizational and management studies (Niccolini et al. 2003) as
well as in education (Glassman 2000), practice has been adopted to redefine the
concepts of knowledge and learning and to understand change in working life. In
these contexts it has been a part of new research areas, such as organizational
learning, knowledge management, innovation and workplace studies. A practicebased approach or theory of social practice has been characterized by listing the
traditions and scholars who are thought to have contributed to a theory of practice.
These lists most often include Bordieu, Garfinkel’s entnomethodology as well as
actor network theory (Preda 2000, Reckwitz 2002, Niccolini et al. 2003, Gerardi
2006). The most important philosophical foundations for a practice theory have been
found in late Wittgenstein's later theory of rules and forms of life and Heidegger's
early theory of being-in-the-world (Reckwitz 2002, Stern 2003).
In addition to addressing the dualism of subject and object, the concept of practice has
been introduced to solve at least two related theoretical problems. First, it has been
used to transcend the limitations of a representational concept of knowledge and the
realist epistemology behind it. This is because in postindustrial society the
understanding and managing of knowledge creation has become vital. Second, it has
been introduced as a reaction against social constructivism and to re-establish the
significance of material artifacts in the study of human behavior. In this paper, I hope
to able to show that both pragmatism and activity theory supply the most valuable
intellectual resources for solving these problems. Therefore, it is a paradox that both
of them have largely been excluded from recent discussions on social practices (e.g.,
Baert 2003, 89).
The discussion of the two theories needs two specifications. First, the paper will
primarily deal with John Dewey’s philosophy. Since the concept of activity is not
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central in the work of Peirce, James nor the so-called neopragmatists, they will not be
discussed. Second, I regard the cultural-historical activity theory founded by Russian
psychologist Lev Vygotsky in the 1920s as a heir and a modern version of Marx’s
materialistic concept of practice. Vygotsky, his colleagues, and part of his followers
were inspired by Marx’s anthropology and method (Vygotsky 1927/1997, Leontjev
1981). They regarded Marx's concept of work as an archetypical form of human
activity (Davydov & Radzikhovskii 1985). On the other hand, philosophers who have
developed and commented on materialistic dialectics and theory of mind, among them
Evald Ilyenkov (1977b), V. A. Lektorski (1980) and David Bakhurst (1991), have
extensively used the results of cultural-historical psychology.
Many authors have pointed out the similarities between Marx’s and Dewey’s
conceptions of practical activity. In his study on Dewey’s logic, Bertrand Russell
(1951, 143) pointed out the “close similarity” of Dewey’s doctrine to “that of another
ex-Hegelian, Karl Marx, as it is delineated in his Thesis of Feuerbach.” Russell thinks
that Marx’s concept of activity or praxis is in spite of differences in terminology
“essentially indistinguishable from instrumentalism.” The leading European
pragmatist in sociology, Hans Joas, points out “the extraordinary proximity between
Marx’s philosophy of praxis and the fundamental principles of pragmatism“ (1991,
60). A collection of philosophical essays comparing Dewey and Marx entitled
Context over Foundation (Gavin 1988) finds two important commonalities between
them: the dismissal of the idea of subject and object as independent forms of being as
well as the social, historical and relational origins of self and individual
consciousness. In educational philosophy, several scholars have recently discussed the
similarities and differences between Vygotsky and Dewey (Popkewitz 1998, Prawatt
2000, Glassman 2001, Garrison 2001, Miettinen 2001).
Pragmatism and activity theory were formulating their respective theories of activity
simultaneously but independently and still came to many similar conclusions. Several
authors, in addition to Russell, have sought an explanation for this from the shared
philosophical root of the two theories: the Hegelian tradition. The Hegelian
background provides a commitment to an ontology of change as well as to an
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anthropology of becoming. Both Marx and Dewey naturalized Hegel in their own
ways (e.g., Garrison 1995, Shook 2000).
Both of the theories suggest that the interaction between man and his environment,
mediated by tools and language, constitutes the foundation of knowledge. In the
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx (1964, 177) stated that “the
outstanding achievement of Hegel's Phenomenology is … that it understands selfcreation of man as a process” which is the process of transformation of nature and the
creation of artifacts. Hegel, says Marx, “grasps the essence of labour (…) and
comprehends objective man (…) as an outcome of man's own labour.” Dewey
(1925/1988, 73-74) regarded the industrial arts and craft work as basic models of
human experience: they make visible how things are connected to each other. Tools
are a means of controlling and steering the interconnections between things and a
device for coordinating shared human activities.
The paper will proceed as follows. First, a comment on pragmatism and the
background of activity theory is presented. Then, four shared characteristics of the
two approaches will be discussed. The first characteristic is the constitutive
philosophical significance of the concept of activity. Dewey characterized activity by
using the concept of instrumentalism and Vygotsky in terms of mediation. The second
feature shared between the theories is their concepts of language and meaning, the
third is their idea about the significance of resistance for the objectivity of knowledge,
and the fourth the experimental and interventionist research strategy based on their
transformative ontology. In the conclusions, the strengths of the two activity theories
are discussed by comparing their basic ideas to the phenomenological approach that is
prevailing in the present theorizing on practice. It is suggested that especially in
making sense of agency and change in activity, activity theory and Dewey’s
pragmatism have much to offer.
Two theories of activity: instrumentalism and mediation
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Comparison of Dewey’s pragmatism and cultural-historical activity theory is not easy
since both of them have their own history and have been both interpreted and further
developed in various directions. Dewey (1859-1952) developed his theory of activity
in the 1890s in his The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus (1984) and his seminal essay The
Concept of Reflect Arc in Psychology (1896). A mature philosophical foundation for
the pragmatist concept of activity was presented in the 1920s in Experience and
Nature (1925) and Quest for Certainty (1929). The Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky (1896-1936) developed the foundation of activity theory in the 1920s. After
being developed for half a century, mainly in the Soviet Union, activity theory was
adopted in the 1970s and 1980s in Europe and the United States as an alternative
approach, especially in the study of learning, thinking and education (Wertch 1985a
and 1985b, Moll 1990) and recently also of work and the uses of technologies
(Engeström et al. 1999). Vygotsky’s main work, Thought and Language, was
published in English in 1962 and an influential collection of his papers, Mind in
Society, in 1978.i
It is well known that Dewey’s philosophy is complex and diverse and hence an object
of constant reinterpretation. His theory of active experience or activity has been
interpreted by well-informed scholars both as an idealistic (Shook 2000) and as a
realist (Sleeper 2001) philosophical doctrine. Dewey himself characterized his
approach
using
the
complementary
categories
of
empirism,
naturalism,
instrumentalism, and functionalism. These categories refer to the instrumental function
of thought (or the mental) in biologically understood human activity. Ralph Sleeper
(2001, 3) characterizes Dewey’s philosophy as a transformational philosophy, in
which thinking and reflection are “means of conducting transformational transactions
with the world, a means of changing or reconstructing the world.” Instrumentalism
refers to an attempt to establish a logical theory by considering (Dewey 1925/1988b,
14) “how thought functions in the experimental determinations of future
consequences.”
Lev Vygotsky developed the concept of mediation as (Vygotsky 1927/1977) an
antidualist solution to the crisis of psychology in the 1920s. Psychology was
characterized by two opposing approaches. On one hand, mind (the mental,
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psychological) was studied as an autonomous reality of its own, independent of and
opposed to material reality. The method used in research was introspection: an
individual observed his/her inner world and stream of consciousness. On the other
hand, psychological processes were studied as an epiphenomenon of biology and
physiology. Reflexology and behaviorism tended to explain consciousness in terms of
elementary nervous mechanisms, using the concept of reflect or the stimulus-response
connection.
Vygotsky formulated an alternative conception to these two opposing but equally
unsatisfactory explanations: the concept of mediated action (Vygotsky 1978). The
relation between the human agent and the object is mediated by cultural means or
artifacts. The basic types of these means are tools and signs. The use of signs as
‘psychological tools’ constitutes the foundation of specifically human, higher
psychological functions. During socialization, an individual internalizes, by
participating in common activities with other humans, the means of culture: language,
theories, technical artifacts as well as norms and modes of acting. Thus, consciousness
does not exist situated inside the head of the individual but in the interaction between
the individual and the objective forms of culture created by the labor of mankind.
Vygotksy’s theoretical work was inspired by the philosophies of Spinoza and Marx.
He, however, heavily criticized the attempts to develop a "Marxist psychology" in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s. According to him, these attempts applied the concepts and
categories of Marxist dialectics externally, not taking into account the special nature of
the phenomenon under study (Vygotsky 1927/1997, 331):
The direct application of dialectical materialism to the biological sciences and
psychology, as is common nowadays, does not go beyond the formal logical,
scholastic, verbal subsumption of particular phenomena, whose internal sense and
relation is unknown, under general, abstract, universal categories.
Instead of the direct use of philosophical concepts, Vygotsky demanded the creation of
object-specific theories and methodologies. He wanted to learn from the genetic
method that Marx developed in his analysis of capitalist society (ibid.): "I want to learn
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from Marx's whole method how to build a science, how to approach the investigation
of mind."
Vygotsky's empirical studies focused on the problem of how a child internalizes the
most important of all cultural means, language. He formulated "the genetic law of
cultural development," according to which a child's cultural development takes place
twice, or on two planes (Vygotsky 1981, 163). First, the development appears
interpsychologically, in the interaction between a child and her parents (and older
children) and secondly, within a child as an intrapsychological category. This law has
great significance outside the sphere of language learning and ontogeny. It is a general
formulation of the mechanism through which the forms of material culture are
internalized by an individual due to participation in collective activities in society. On
the other hand, Vygotky's theory of thought implies the reverse transition, the
externalization of individual thought and action into cultural artifacts.2
In developing the specific concepts of his theory (internalization, cultural mediation,
the zone of proximal development, the method of double stimulation), Vygotsky
extensively used the psychological, sociological and anthropological literature of his
day. He critically used and further developed the ingredients of developmental
psychology (Pierre Janet, Carl Bühler, Jean Piaget), Gestalt theory (Köhler, Koffka,
Lewin), sociology (Durkheim), and anthropology (Levy-Buhl).
Subsequently, activity theorists have studied the social mediation of activity.
Vygotky’s colleague and follower A.N. Leontjev suggested that individual actions can
only be understood as a part of joint, collective activity characterized by a division of
labor (Leont'ev 1978).3 As a result, the unit of analysis of studying human mediated
activity is an activity system, a community of actors who have a common object of
activity (Engeström 1987, Cole & Engeström 1994). In the system, activity is not only
mediated by cultural means (signs and tools) but also by the division of labor and the
rules mediating the interaction between the individuals in the activity system. A
collective activity system, as a unit of analysis, connects the psychological, cultural
and institutional perspectives to the analysis. The study of an activity ceases to focus
on the psychology of an individual but, instead, on the interaction between an
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individual, systems of artifacts, and other individuals in historically developing
institutional settings.
It is obvious that Dewey’s instrumentalism and Vygotky’s mediation have a family
relationship. Both of them regard thought and its material means (tools and language)
as a vehicle of both the orientation of an individual body to its environment and
coordination of the actions of individuals in shared undertakings. Language is a
special means, a tool of tools, that makes “thought, reflection, foresight and
recollection possible” (Dewey 1925/1988, 134). In characterizing the functions of
thought in activity, Dewey used both the concept of “reconstruction” and the concept
of “mediation” (Dewey 1925/1988b, 14). These two have an affinity with the two
key dimensions of Vygotsky’s mediation, the external transformation of objects using
tools and the use of signs as “internal tools” or cognitive artifacts for affecting and
controlling one’s behavior (Vygotsky 1978, 54-55).
Activity as a constitutive philosophical category of the two theories
Both Dewey’s pragmatism and activity theory regard the concept of activity or
practice as a solution to the problems caused by the Cartesian dualism between the
subject (consciousness) and object (nature, reality). Dewey particularly worked to get
rid of various dualisms, such as oppositions between facts and values, between
realism and relativism, and between theory and practice. The two theories share the
idea that subjects and objects co-emerge and become interactively transformed in the
reality-transforming practical activity. The concept of practice or activity is used by
both traditions as a seminal means of solving the problems of ontology and
epistemology, such as the nature of objects, the subject-object relationship, meaning
and objectivity. In 1953 Dewey outlined his view (1953/2001,154): “We are at root
practical beings, beings engaged in exercise. This practice constitutes at first both self
and the world of reality. There is no distinction.”
Dewey developed his concept of activity against the psychological theories that
dominated philosophy throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According
to these theories mental life originated from sensations that are passively received and
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which are formed, through the laws of retention and association, into images and
conceptions. Instead, Dewey suggests that we need a psychology based on the
development of biology, on the idea of organic, adaptive life activity (1920/1988,
128):
Wherever there is life, there is behavior, activity. In order that life may persist, this
activity must be both continuous and adapted to the environment. (…) In the interests
of the maintenance of life there is transformation of some elements in the surrounding
medium. The higher the form of life, the more important is the active reconstruction of
the medium.
This concept is constitutive of Dewey’s ontology, epistemology and his conception of
self and consciousness, which are functions of life activity and special forms of action
themselves.
The tradition of materialistic dialectics and activity theory also regards activity as a
fundamental category. This was expressed by Marx (1984, 125) in his first Thesis on
Feuerbach by stating that the chief defect of all previous materialism “is that things
(Gegenstand), reality, sensuousness are conceived in the form of the object or of
contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.”
According to activity theory, cognition in all its forms is formed in the subject’s
practical activity that involves material objects (Lektorsky 1980). This concept of
activity adopted the idea of objectification or reification of activity into objects from
Hegel. The internalization and further development of these mediating objects (such
as apparatuses, signs and models) is constitutive of human activity and consciousness.
The production and use of such mediating objects (Lektrosky 1980, 154) “assumes a
breaking away from organism’s natural relation to the environment and use of
standards that have socio-cultural (and in this sense artificial) character.” These
systems of cultural artifacts embody mankind’s socio-historical experience.
One of Dewey's (1931, 31) definitions for pragmatism was "the doctrine that reality
possesses practical character." According to Dewey (1920/1957, 87), man gains
knowledge of reality by involving in practical interaction with it:
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In the first place, the interaction of organism and environment, resulting in some
adaptation that secures utilization of the latter, is the primary fact, the basic category.
Knowledge is relegated to a derived position, secondary in origin, even if its
importance, when once it is established, is overshadowing. Knowledge is not
something separate and self-sufficing but is involved in the process by which life is
sustained and evolved.
Things of reality become known when they enter the sphere of human, realitytransforming activity (or human-environment interaction). Elaborating on this point in
his Reconstruction of Philosophy (1920/1957), Dewey uses the example of a
carpenter, who notes things not as things in themselves, but “in reference to what he
wants to do to them and with them.” It is only by these processes of the active
manipulation of things in order to realize his purpose that the carpenter discovers
what the properties of the things are. Dewey adds (1920/1957, 114): “It signifies
nothing less than that the world or any part of it as it presents itself at a given time is
accepted or acquiesced in only as material for change.”
Correspondingly, a tool is more than a particular thing. It is a thing (Dewey
1925/1988, 101) "in which a connection, a sequential bond of nature is embodied." A
tool’s primary relationship is toward other external things, and it can therefore be
regarded as a "controlling principle" that regulates and orders the "connection of
things." In a similar vein, A. N. Leontjev, an activity theorist, characterized the
epistemological implications of work (1978, 23): "Work is the instrument that places
man not only ahead of material objects but also ahead of their interaction, which he
himself controls and reproduces."
Leontjev regarded human thought as a product of socio-historical development and a
special 'theoretical' form of human activity (1978, 22). Even with this degree of
development, when thought becomes relatively independent, practice remains its basis
and the criterion for its objectivity (ibid.). As a function of the human brain, thought
represents a natural process, but not outside of society, “outside accumulated human
knowledge and the methods of thought activity worked out by the human race" (ibid.).
Leontjev (1978, 23) cites here Friedrich Engels in the Dialectics of Nature: "A more
real and closer basis for human thought appears to be the way man changes nature,
and not nature as such."
The metaphysics of nature delineated by both of the
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approaches seems to be “that of participation in an unfinished universe and not a
spectator of a completed cosmos”(Garrison 1995, 111).
Meanings are not about “things out there” but about activities in which people
and things are configured and transformed
In Dewey’s epistemology, meanings made possible by language are not about things
out there. In Experience and Nature, Dewey states that meanings rather are about the
ways of doing things and the regularities of interactions of things in shared action, and
about the properties of things as they are expressed in the activity. Dewey makes this
clear (Dewey 1925/1998, 141-142 and 149):
Meaning is not indeed a psychic existence; it is primarily a property of behavior, and
secondarily a property of things. (…) Primarily meaning is intent and intent is not a
personal in a private and exclusive sense. (...) Secondarily, meaning is the acquisition
of meaning of things in their status of making possible and fulfilling shared
cooperation. (...) Meanings are rules for using and interpreting things (…) Meanings
are objective because they are modes of natural interaction; such an interaction,
although primarily between organic beings, as includes things and energies external
to living creatures.
Evald Ilyenkov, a developer of materialistic dialectics, largely shares this position.
He, however, says that meaning is not primarily a property of either activity or things,
but rather of the endless mutual transformation of the two to each other (Ilyenkov
1977a, 99). Following Spinoza, Ilyenkov states that functional human capability and
actions follow the 'form' of things. On the other hand, man transforms things. An idea
expressed in words turns into action, and action into a thing. Ideality, the concept
Ilyenkov uses for meaning, only exists in the constant reciprocative transformation
from the form of activity into the form of things, and from the form of a thing into a
form of activity. In this process of transformation, things ‘show’ their objectivity
(1977b, 287): "Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose
movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own
laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it."
The historical epistemology of Marx Wartofsky (1979) also deals with the problem of
meaning in a way that complements Dewey's, Leontjev's and Ilyenkov's positions.
Wartofsky makes a distinction between primary and secondary artifacts. Primary
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artifacts are tools used in work. Secondary artifacts, typically models and
representations, are (1979, 201) “distinctive artifacts created for the purpose of
preserving and transmitting skills, in the production and use of ‘primary artifacts’ e.g.
tools, modes of social organization, bodily skills and technical skill in the use of
tools.” Secondary artifacts are not representations of nature out there, but of modes of
action, that is, of the artifact-mediated, historically conditioned interaction of human
beings with their environment. Marx expressed this idea in Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 by saying (1993, 113): "Man makes his life
activity itself as an object of his will and his consciousness," and this distinguishes
man from animal life activity. Again there is an affinity with Dewey, who speaks
about special cognitive instruments, “secondary objects” that are unable to grasp
primary objects with understanding instead of just having a sense contact with them
(e.g., Tiles 1988, 197).
Both activity theory and Chicago pragmatism regard language use and meaning
making ultimately as means of coordinating and making sense of shared human
activities and concerns. Dewey, for instance, believes in an intrinsic connection
between language and “a community of action.” He states (1938/1991, 52):
“Language compels one individual to take the standpoint of other individuals and to
see and inquire from a standpoint that is not strictly personal but is common to them
as participants or ‘parties’ in the conjoint activities.” This is a theme that was
thoroughly elaborated by Mead in his social psychology. Meaning in the language
helps an individual to accept the attitude of a generalized other, which is necessary in
the coordination of shared activities (Mead 1938, 335). “Language as such is simply a
process by means of which the individual who is engaged in co-operative activity can
get the attitude of others involved in the same activity.”
Vygotsky’s genetic law of cultural development (1981) runs parallel to this: language
is first used interactively in a joint activity and then internalized into the plane of
individual thought. Signs are turned into the psychological tools of an individual, thus
making the control of behavior possible. This also suggests that discourse and
language use should be studied in connection with practical activities. It is because of
the dilemmas of conjoint activities that the collective reconsideration of meanings is
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needed (Engeström 1999). In Dewey’s logic, the breakdown of and a problem with
habitual ways of acting gives rise to reflective thought (see also Korchman et al.
1998). Consequently, meanings carried out by language become vehicles of
transforming old and creating new activities (Shook 2000, 190).
Resistance and the objectivity of knowledge
Some philosophers (Pihlström 2002), sociologists and historians of science (Lenoir
2002), and psychologists (Brinkman 2004) characterize themselves as pragmatist
realists. Timothy Lenoir (1992, 162) expresses this position as follows: “Crucial to
the pragmatist project is the notion that nature is not a simple project of ideas; nor is
nature determined by society. Nature is plastic but not infinitely malleable. It resists,
and in doing so actively participates in forming our purposes.”
In the two theories of activity, the concepts of objectivity and resistance are
interrelated. In Experience and Nature Dewey defined an object as "that which
objects, that to which frustration is due" (Dewey 1925/1988, 184). Leontjev defined it
in a similar way (1981, 36): "The concept of object 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. '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 precisely a living creature relates itself as the object of its activity." In the
latter, narrower sense, objects of the environment are both ideal and subjective (as
objects of desire and intentions) and objective, capable of resisting these desires and
intensions.
The significance of resistance of material entities for the objectivity of knowledge has
been an important theme in the sociology of knowledge of the last three decades. The
forerunner of the constructivist sociology of science, Ludwig Fleck, presented in his
book Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935/1981) that the basis of a
fact is a resistance expressed in experimental work and interpreted by the research
community. Resistance refers to the blockage in reaching a goal or the realization of a
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hypothesis (ibid., 98). The practice theorists in science and technology studies
(Pickering 1995, Lenoir 1992) have taken the resistance manifesting itself in
experimental activity as a constitutive factor in accounting for the emergence of facts
and scientific concepts. Pickering (1993, 568) characterizes the temporal emergence
of experimental activity in terms of a “real-time dialectic of resistance and
accommodation.” He criticizes the widespread notion of ‘constraints.’ It is usually
understood as some kind of external condition that objectively limits scientific
activities and pushes them in certain directions. Pickering thinks this notion draws too
static a picture of the relationships between scientific practices, their objects and
institutional surroundings. In contrast to constrains Pickering wants to use the concept
of resistance because resistances are (Pickering 1995, 66) “genuinely emergent in
time, as a block arising in practice to this or that passage of goal-oriented practice.”
According to Bruno Latour (2000, 115), one of the founders of actor network theory,
objectivity refers to the presence of "objects that have rendered able to object to what
is told about them."4 Resistance constitutes a basic experience of experimental natural
science and engineering work. Experiments fail. Prototypes do not work. Microbes,
elements, instruments and particles behave unexpectedly and against our goals and
presuppositions (Latour 2000, 116):
They will have no scruples to whatsoever in objecting to the scientist’s claim by
behaving in the most undisciplined ways, blocking the experiments, disappearing from
view, dying, refusing to replicate, or exploding the laboratory into pieces. Natural
objects are naturally recalcitrant; the last thing one scientist will say about them is
that they are fully masterable. On the contrary, they always resist and make shambles
of our pretensions to control.
What the sociologists of knowledge say about the experimental activity of natural
sciences holds for all practical activity involving interaction between men and objects.
Not only are the unanticipated and unexpected properties of material entities faced but
also other purely understood and surprising conditions of social reality. People resist,
tools do not conform to new uses, rules are inappropriate, and disturbances occur in
automatic production systems. This resistance faced constantly in practice forces us to
change our preconceptions, hypotheses and plans.
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The dialectic of resistance and accommodation suggested by Pickering could be
characterized in Deweyan terms as follows. The interactive agencies or elements of a
situation are in equilibrium (temporally stabilized), and the affordances of the objects
involved contribute to the purpose of the activity. When habit breaks down,
something in the interactive constellation resists and new meaning must be given to
the elements of the situation (Dewey 1953/1991, 158): “The postponement of the
complete and direct activity is the same as the inharmonious adjustment, the rubbing
together of the various elements in it. This mutual resistance, or activity in its direct
course arrested, constitutes knowledge.”
The dialectical and activity theoretical tradition has been reluctant to identify itself
either with realism or constructivism, underlining the process of the objectification of
practice and the humanization of nature (Bakhurst 1991). The Marxist tradition
operated with a philosophical distinction between materialism and idealism. Bakhurst
(1991), however, characterizes Ilyenkov's position as radical realism. Thought and
reality stand in a relation of identity, not of correspondence (1991,16). This is
possible because activity becomes objectified and the objects of the world become
"idealized": they acquire significance by virtue of their incorporation into human
practice. A table is a material object that is used and fulfills a purpose in human
activity. The objective meaning of money has nothing to do with the material
constitution of notes and coins.
To elucidate the limits of the opposition between constructivism (relativism) and
realism, I will take an example from my study of a biotechnology laboratory that
studied cellulose degrading enzymes (Miettinen 1998, 1999). These enzymes were
produced by a microfungus called Trichoderma Reesei. For decades, the strains of
Trichoderma were developed in several laboratories worldwide by mutating them
with radiation and chemicals. The laboratory that I studied managed to develop a
strain that had a fourfold capacity of enzyme production compared to the laboratory
strain received from another laboratory four years before. It was later developed by
using genetic modification. The development of the production properties, however,
met resistance. The new strains started to behave in unanticipated ways, for example,
by precipitating in the fermentors.
16
How can these strains be characterized in terms of constructivism and realism? It can
surely be said that the strains studied and developed were accomplishments of the
researchers, transformed nature, that had new properties compared with the
corresponding properties of natural strains. On the other hand, it is reasonable to
conclude that the properties of the strains developed as a result of their natural
history, which preceded any human impact. The microbiologists tell us, on the basis
of fossil data, that wood-decaying fungi were born together with conifer forests 300400 million years ago (Taylor 1990). It is sensible to state that the 'natural' properties
developed during pre-human history are manifested both in the regularities of the
behavior of the microbes in a laboratory and in the resistance, surprises and
disturbances caused by them.
To use the language of dialectics, the Tricoderma reesei strains studied were a
contradictory unity of transformative human impact and the properties developed
before human history. They were simultaneously technological artifacts (production
organisms, enzyme plants) and entities having a natural history (see also Kohler
1994). To characterize this kind of object both the languages of constructivism (of
practical transformation) and realism (independent being and resistance) are needed.
This is in accord with the way Ralph Sleeper characterizes the essence of Dewey’s
transformational ontology (2001, 120): “The boldness of Dewey’s ontological
conjecture lies in his regarding the object of knowledge as both real and transformed
through the very process by means of which it becomes such an object.”
Experimentation and intervention is social research
Both activity theory and Chicago pragmatism regard practical experimentation and
intervention as an essential part of studying human practices. The reasons are both
epistemological and moral. The epistemological foundations of intervention in
pragmatism have already been discussed: the testing and validation of working
hypotheses takes place by putting them into practice and cannot be achieved by
thought experiments, rational inference or discourse, only. “Overt action is demanded
if the worth or validity of the reflective considerations is to be determined” (Dewey
17
1916/1985, 327). A working-hypothesis-based experiment is also the basic form of
social reform (Mead 1899). In activity theory, cognitive development is understood to
take place in a tension-laden interaction between novices and more experienced
representatives of a cultural domain, and was characterized by Vygotsky by the
concept of the zone of proximal development. The best way of gaining an
understanding of developmental possibilities is experimentation through introducing
new cultural tools into activity. In the method of double simulation, both a problem
and novel cultural tools are introduced in an experimental situation. The solution of
the problem requires what is called remediation or retooling, the adoption,
development and use of new cultural means which makes the transformation of
activity possible (Luria & Vygotsky 1992). Both traditions regard intervention or
practical experimentation as an indispensable part of the research method in studying
change in human practices.
The interventionist approach is not a typical one, even in the study of practices.
Constructivist sociology of knowledge studied for two decades, by way of using
laboratory ethnography and case histories, how facts and artifacts are (socially)
constructed. These studies cherished the traditional ideal of careful anthropological
description and analysis, which constituted the basis for theorizing on the nature of
knowledge construction. Not before the beginning of the 2000s were the
“postconstructivist“ science and technology studies seen to require both relevance and
collaboration with research objects (Segestråle 2001, Woodhouse et al. 2002). The
research process converts into a process dialogue between the subject (researchers)
and 'objects' (the practitioners studied): the strict distinction between subject and
object is transcended.
In pragmatism and in activity theory, the commitment to the problems and well-being
of the people and activities studied is a constitutive feature of research (Dewey 1916,
312):
The chief function of philosophy is not to find out what difference ready-made
formulas make, if true, but to arrive at and to clarify their meaning as programs of
behavior for modifying the existent world. From this standpoint, the meaning of a
world-formula is practical and moral not merely in the consequences which flow from
accepting a certain conceptual content as true, but as regards that content itself.
18
One cannot help comparing this statement with Marx’s 11th thesis on Feurbach
(1984, 127), according to which: “The philosophers have only interpreted world, in
various ways; the point is to change it.”
The ethics of experimental, transformative projects can be contrasted to “discursive
ethics,” the idea of ideal communication or dialogue proposed in different forms by
Richard Rorty (edifying philosophical discourse), Jürgen Habermas (the ideal speech
situation) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (dialogue for hermeneutic understanding). In
these theories it remains open as to why people want to understand each other and
pursue the dialogue in the first place. From the standpoint of theories of activity,
people are likely to be involved in dialogues that are needed to make sense of shared
concerns and to coordinate their actions in shared, object-oriented enterprises. For the
second, the two theories of activity suggest that these shared concerns grow out of
historically evolving contradictions, dilemmas and challenges of human practices
(Korchman & al. 1998).
Activity theory and Chicago pragmatism may be said to represent a modernist
tradition of naïve progressivism in its commitment to the idea of development and of
solving societal problems (Feffer 1993). Their methodological ideas of intervention in
research can, however, be well utilized and developed without adherence to abstract,
modernist rationality or to any concept of progress. Stephen Toulmin, for instance,
suggests a moderate program of humanizing modernism. Using the Aristotelian
concept of Phronesis, he suggests that “the wisdom needed to put techniques to work
in concrete cases dealing with actual problems” is needed (Toulmin 1990, 190).
Combined with locality, the commitment to experimentation to make things better
implies no teleology of progress.
From the points of view of pragmatism and activity theory, lasting ontological (the
inevitable change in the world), epistemological (understanding the conditions of
social change and transformative human agency) and ethical reasons (contributing to
the solving of vital social problems) underlie the significance of intervention and
experimentation as a research strategy. This does not contradict the study of such
19
phenomena and aspects of practices as power relations, mariginality, dialogue and
multiple interests and points of views. These phenomena, as a matter of fact, offer a
challenge for the interventionist approach.
Conclusions
The discussion of the concept of practice activated during the last decades has largely
neglected the two theories of activity discussed in this paper. Without doubt, various
reasons for this exclusion can be given. Both may be thought to represent Hegelinspired, Enlightment-laden 'grand theories' that contain a teleology of progress
unacceptable to postmodern thought. The Marxist tradition may be shunned because
of its historical connection to the totalitarianism of the collapsed Socialist societies.
These kinds of metatheoretical and political aversions should not prevent us from
utilizing the viable theoretical insights these traditions have to offer to social and
organizational studies.
What would then be the contribution of these theories to the study of work practices
and knowing in organizations? An answer can be looked for by comparing these two
theories to one of the approaches prevalent in the study of practices, the
phenomenological and ethnomethodological approach. This approach also has many
important affinities with Bordieu’s theory of practice and his concept of habitus (e.g.,
Crossley 2004) as well as with the concept of routine in organizational studies (e.g.,
Powell & DiMaggio 1991). This approach – to characterize it briefly and
ideotypically – is oriented to studying situated everyday practices in order to show
how social order is produced and maintained (Garfinkel 1967). It focuses on
‘ethnomethods,’ the taken-for-granted routines and the non-conscious rules that
people follow in their everyday interactions. In criticizing the concept of intentional
planned action, this approach primarily underlines the embodied skills and know-how
as well as the tacit nature of rules and knowledge related to them. Ethnomethodology
maintains that people do not have an end in mind before acting, but that they rather
justify their actions after the fact by referring to culturally available legitimating
‘accounts.’ Thinking and reflection, therefore, do not have a function of orienting
activity or anticipating its new forms. The approach emphasizes the intuitive and non-
20
conscious nature of situated expertise, disregarding the processes of learning and
developing expert skills (e.g. Noble & Watkins 2003). In these processes, mediating
explicit knowledge and collaboration plays a vital role, and the skills become
gradually automated and routine by training.
Many authors have suggested that this approach does not supply a means of
understanding the agency needed in the transformation of prevailing routines or in the
creation of new activities (e.g., Emirbauer & Miche 1998, Corssley 2001, Miettinen &
Virkkunen 2005). One of the critics, sociologist of science Karin Knorr-Cetina
(2001), points out that the prevailing approach is particularly weak in dealing with
knowledge-related, expert work, which is becoming ever more important in modern
society. In such work, one would expect that practitioners to have to keep learning
and reinventing their ways of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge-intensive work is
characterized by an unfolding object of activity to which the practitioners often have a
passionate relationship (Knorr-Cetina 2001, 187):
I have characterized the objects involved (which may be neural things, instruments,
scientifically generated objects etc.) in terms of their unfolding ontology. .. and their
meaning generative connective force. These ideas also suggest a notion of practice
that is more dynamic, creative and constructive than the current definition of practice
as rule-based routines or embodied skills suggests. The challenge we face, with the
present argument, is to dissociate the notion of practice somewhat from its fixation on
human dispositions and habits, and from the connotation of iterative procedural
routines.
Both activity theory and Deweyan pragmatism supply a theory of activity that deals
with this challenge. Both of them regard practical, material activity in forms of bodily
actions and habits as the starting point for studying human conduct. Both of them, in
addition, study the relationship between thought, imagination, objects and the
transformation of the world. Both Dewyan instrumentalism and Vygotskyan
mediation suggest that thought and reflection serve the reorientation and coordination
of shared activities. In addition, they both suggest that special “secondary objects,”
cognitive instruments, typically concepts or models, are needed to understand the
conditions of activity, give new meanings to its elements, and to develop new ends-inview and alternative forms of activity. The collaborative creation of such shared
21
mediating artifacts is therefore essential for (organizational) learning and for the
creation of new joint activities.
Because of their transformative ontology and because of their normative
commitments, both pragmatism and activity theory have been oriented to studying the
problem of change and development in human activity. Both of the approaches –
particularly activity theory – have developed an interventionist research approach
with relevant concepts (a working hypothesis, remediation, developmental
contradiction, the zone of proximal development) based on the dialogue between the
researchers and the people that they are studying (e.g., Kerosuo & Engeström 2003,
Miettinen & Virkkunen 2006). This is meant to make the studies of practices sensitive
to the concerns of the people involved in these practices and to contribute to their
becoming subjects (or agencies) of their activities. Although the prospects of such a
contribution by social scientists should not be overestimated, it will be an important
issue in developing the methodology of studying human practices.
Endnotes
i
The six volumes of Vygotsky’s collective works were published in the years 19871999. Also, the main works of his two best-known Russian colleagues, A.R. Luria
(1973, 1976) and A.N. Leontjev (1978, 1981), were published in English in the 1970s
and early 1980s. The first International Conference on Activity Theory was held in
West Berlin in 1986 (Hildebrandt-Nilshon & Rückriem 1988).
2
Jean Piaget developed an alternative, more biologically oriented theory of child
development. In the second chapter of Thought and Language (1962), Vygotsky
presented his famous critique of Piaget’s theory of children’s speech and thought.
There is a wide body of literature that compares Vygotky’s and Piaget’s theories that
cannot be discussed here (see e.g., Feldman & Fowler 1998).
3
Two research programs have emerged from the Vygotskyan legacy. The research
tradition that focuses on the semiotic mediation of individual consciousness and
actions as well as on interaction characterizes itself as sociocultural theory (Wertch et
al. 1995, Wertch 1998). Those who focus more on – inspired by Leontjev – collective
material activities and the relationship between semiotic mediation and tool use
characterize their approach as cultural-historical approach (Cole 1996, Engeström et
al. 1999). The latter program has further developed the legacy of materialistic
dialectics by working out the relationship of Marx’s concept of work, material activity
and Marx’s theory of capitalism to Vygostky’s theory of mediation.
4
Actor network theory has been characterized by one of its founders as "relational
materialism" (Law 1994), and it has, in my mind, much in common both with
22
pragmatism and activity theory, although Latour would without doubt emphatically
reject any such family resemblance (Miettinen 1999).
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