Declaración y llamada de una función

A different unit of analysis is used in much of the socio-cultural and Activity Theory literature from the units of analysis used in the literature discussed above. Blackler (1995, 1993) for example, takes the phenomena of knowledge and knowledge work in organisations, positing it as a discourse and normalising practice. Socio-cultural theorists (Lave, 1996; Brown et al., 1991; Wenger, 1998), like Blackler, emphasise social relationships, social settings and practices within them, suggesting that rules, norms, language and discourses influence activity. Wenger (1998) explains that theories of social practice are concerned with everyday activity and the social systems of shared resources used by the group, mutual relationships and interpretations of the world. Wenger adds that theories of social structure emphasise cultural systems, discourses and history. Wenger (1998) and Lave (1996) understand learning through communities of practice, moving from legitimate peripheral participation to the centre of the community or social practice. In the process, learners are ‘enculturated’ (Brown et al., 1991) into social practices in the setting of the activity under investigation.

This conceptualisation integrates context, activity and learning, as constituting each other and as dynamic, flexible and changing (Lave, 1996, p. 5). That learning takes place is not problematic, what is problematic is what learning takes place. Settings, social relationships within these settings and the practices and tools through which learners interact become the focus of study in the socio-cultural literature. When interaction, and the relations of the activity, become the focus of study, there are possibilities for understanding what takes place, as dynamic and interconnected.

Using an ecological perspective Lemke (1997) extends an understanding of context beyond the boundaries of situated activity. Lemke, for example, suggests that as people are participating in everyday practice they are:

functioning in microecologies, material environments endowed with cultural meanings; acting and being acted on directly or with the mediation of physical-cultural tools and

40 cultural-material systems of words, signs, and other symbolic values. In these

activities, ‘things’ contribute to solutions every bit as much as ‘minds’ do; information and meaning is coded into configurations of objects, material constraints, and possible environmental options, as well as in verbal routines and formulas or ‘mental’

operations (Lemke, 1997, p. 38).

Tools, language and symbols are important mediators of context. Whitson and St Julien (1997, p. 40) argue that biography, history and culture act in everyday activity and thus mediate learning. These authors suggest that the dynamics of any

‘ecosystem’ depends on the networks that link, couple and connect this element with that and make this interdependent with that. Economics, politics, societal values and beliefs needs to be taken into account, they argue. It is not just the immediate setting, but the global structure and dynamics of the systems, that constitute what we become (St Julien, 1997). St Julian’s (1997) claim is important to this thesis showing that learning and context cannot be separated, but are one and part of the same thing. There is a clear link between this literature and the literature of cultural historical activity theorists.

For cultural historical activity theorists (Wertsch, 1998; Engeström, 2004; Miettinen, 1998) the unit of analysis is activity. Wertsch (1998, p. 18) posits that activity is mediated by the cultural, historical and institutional contexts in which it takes place and that contexts are embedded in the cultural tools (e.g. textual resources) that mediate activity. Wertsch uses mediated action as the unit of analysis in recognition of the role played by mediational means or cultural tools, terms used interchangeably. In discussing co-configuration work Engeström (2004, p. 16) suggests learning is embedded in major transformations, innovations, implementations; it is across loosely interconnected activity systems and terrains taking shape as renegotiation and

reorganisation of collaborative relations and practices and as creation and

implementation of corresponding concepts, tools, rules and entire infrastructures. Tools of collaborative activity are termed boundary tools or instrumentalities

(Engeström, Puonti and Seppänen, 2003). The difference between Engeström et al.’s data and the data collected for this thesis is that they are writing about collaborative activity that is part of the work of activity systems such as public institutions (e.g. tax, police, law enforcement) that have in common established practices and values around public service and ways of working. This thesis is about collaborative activity

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between institutions with very different histories and purposes with limited or no common values and practices.

These theorists further develop the socio-cultural perspective, not only focusing on learning as the interaction of community members, but the activity and relations of activity as it is mediated by tools, rules, division of labour and communities of practice.

Objects are complex and difficult to identify, partly due to the dynamic nature of the object over time, also because the different levels of activity and action can lead to confusion. However, perhaps confusion is due primarily to the difficulty of

understanding activity as collective and individual forms, that is, individuals acting; act within and as part of a social form (Davydov, 1999, p.41).

The question for this thesis is how to understand objects in object mediated activity such as collaborative activity, as opposed to activity systems? Engeström & Escalante (1996) note that an object of activity is both something given and something projected or anticipated. The subject constructs the object of activity, and singles out these properties that prove to be essential for developing social practices in particular contexts. Therefore, the object of activity manifests itself in different forms for different participants and at different moments of the activity. This understanding of object is at the level of action carried out by individuals or groups and is perceived by the individual or group subject as goals (Leont’ev, 1978) to reach in order to meet the object of activity. Leont’ev (1978) notes that at the level of activity the object/motive is carried out by the community. There is a blurring between the discussion of object as typified by Engeström & Escalante above and as described by Leont’ev.

Cultural historical activity theorists, including those referred to above, draw on the work of Marx. It is therefore useful to return to Marx in an attempt to clarify this issue. In his discussion of production Marx notes

Production is… consumption, consumption is also immediately production. Each is immediately its opposite. But at the same time a mediating movement takes place between the two. Production mediates consumption; it creates the latter’s material; without it consumption would lack an object. But consumption also mediates

42 production, in that it alone creates for the products the subject for whom they are

products. A railway on which no trains run, hence which is not used up, not consumed, is a railway potentially, and not in reality… Consumption produces production in a double way, (1) because a product becomes a real product only be being consumed. … Only by decomposing the product does consumption give the product the finishing touch; the product is production not as objectified activity, but rather only as object for the active subject; (2) because consumption creates the need for new production, that is, it creates the ideal, internally impelling cause for production, which is its

presupposition. Consumption creates the motive for production; it also creates the object which is active in production as its determinant aim. (Marx, 1973, p.91)

This explanation by Marx on the dynamic mediating relationship between production and consumption explains the apparent confusion in the use of the term object. There is the object or motive which is the ‘impelling cause for production which is its presupposition’, and there is also the object of consumption, produced by production. The object only becomes ‘real’ when it is consumed or used.

A useful differentiation then between the object or motive which is the “impelling cause for production” and the object produced, is to refer to that which is being produced for consumption as the object of production, and that which is the presupposition for production, object of activity.

In summary, both learning and context are dynamic and interactional. Seddon (1994, p. 196) suggests that a focus on the dynamic processes of formation and

transformation is required. For Seddon what is important is not what drives these processes and practices, but how they are formed within a historically specific pattern of social relations and with what effects. History, social relations, cultural and

institutional contexts are important concepts for this thesis; they inform what context is and that these aspects of context mediate activity. The historical period, notes Seddon, offers particular possibilities and constraints, and in knowing the context in which activity takes place, so there is the ability to shape, form and transform practices:

Our practice in education, in research, teaching, policy and practical politics, is then a contemporary participation in processes of social change. It becomes part of and contribution to wider social questions about what constitutes a good life and how that end might be pursued (Seddon, 1994, p. 197).

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The next section explores the common themes identified in the literature discussed so far, and employs the perspectives identified above to assist in the process of

identifying the problematic and contributions to this thesis.