In this chapter, we attempt to articulate and expand the concept of activity by applying Spinoza's idea concerning human collective activeness. Though rarely discussed in an activity-theoretical research context, Spinoza's idea, we believe, has multifaceted implications for advancing and supplementing the concept of activity. Among these, we will focus on three. First, concerning the ontological articulation of the concept of activity, we will briefly discuss the connection between Spinoza and Vygotsky. Second, we will, on the basis of Spinozic anthropology, focus on what is called politico-affective process in human local interaction. Third, we will discuss discursive practice, a form of activity in Spinozic anthropology, and, specifically, its significance in the transitive learning process of student nurses.

PRIMORDIAL ARTICULATION OF THE CONCEPT OF ACTIVITY

It is widely held that the historical origin of activity theory was German idealist philosophy and that the activity concept was fully developed in Marx's writings, with the concept being introduced to psychology by Vygotsky (Davydov, 1999b; Engeström, 1999a; Kasavin, 1990; Lektorsky, 1999; Tolman, 2001). As it is rare for Spinoza's ideas to be regarded as a philosophical foundation of activity theory, it seems rather strange for a scientific explication of the activity concept to draw on the ideas of Spinoza, who has been depicted as a “god-intoxicated” pantheist.

However, Spinoza has unquestionably been an extremely influential philosophical source of activity theory, as evidenced by the wide-ranging impact his work has had on the philosophical founders of activity theory, particularly on Marx.

In 1987, I went to a conference on a rather remote farm in a rather remote corner of Finland. Here, most of the Scandinavian information systems and human–computer interaction community was gathered among Finnish lakes and smoke saunas.

I had recently finished my Ph.D. thesis, which would later be published internationally (Bødker, 1991). This thesis helped set the scene for what came to be known as second-generation human–computer interaction (HCI). I came to this topic with a background in early Scandinavian participatory design. My sources of theoretical inspiration were, among others, Leont'ev, whose works I had learned about from Danish colleagues in psychology – Henrik Poulsen, Jens Mammen, Klaus Bærentsen, Mariane Hedegaard, and others. Other sources included the recently published books of Winograd and Flores (1986), and Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986), which served as vehicles for a joint study circle between psychology and computer science.

In two essays (Bannon & Bødker, 1991; Bertelsen & Bødker, 2002a), we summarized the state of our concerns at the time:

1. Many of the early advanced user interfaces assumed that the users were the designers themselves, and accordingly built on an assumption of a generic user, without concern for qualifications, work environment, division of work, and so on

2. In validating findings and designs, there was a heavy focus on novice users, whereas everyday use by experienced users and concerns for the development of expertise were hardly addressed.

3. Detailed task analysis was seen as the starting point for most user interface design, whereas much of the Scandinavian research had pointed out how limited explicit task descriptions were for capturing actual actions and conditions for these in use (Ehn & Kyng, 1984). The idealized models created through task analysis failed to capture the complexity and contingency of real-life action.

4. […]

No societal development within the past 50 years or so has been more fierce or far-reaching than that related to information and telecommunication technology. The digital technology on which it is based has penetrated every societal process and every societal activity system. It not only laid the foundations of the World Wide Web, including its derivations, but built a new global network of communication systems.

No matter how we may judge the consequences of this technical development, we cannot but concede that digital technology has entered most things in everyday life, and it increasingly determines the activity of people even if they avoid using it. In more general terms, it has become the basis of an emerging globalization process that is not only economic but cultural, not only universal but irreversible. There is nothing outside it. Reality itself has changed fundamentally.

Amazingly, most of the scholars committed to either cultural-historical psychology or activity theory do not deal with digitalization. Or at least they underestimate its revolutionary quality and so fail to prove their concepts and methodology. Clearly, when Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Luria built the foundations of their approach, computers did not exist, and digitalization was not at stake. But does this fact justify the contemporary reserve? I am convinced that digitalization marks a twofold – methodological and theoretical – problem for activity theory, possibly the most difficult challenge it has been confronted with.

In sociocultural and activity-theoretical perspectives, institutions are understood as communities of practice with intermediary functions; they regulate and handle conflicts and dilemmas between individuals and collectives in society. How institutional actors deal with such dilemmas, and what consequences their activities will have for the collective as well as for individuals, are important issues to explore (Engeström, 2005a; Engeström & Toivianen, in press). Through their rules and practices, institutions act as arbiters of opportunity, making decisions about how certain situations are to be interpreted in an ambiguous world of complex social activities (Mäkitalo & Säljö, 2002a). One interesting feature of such communities is how they accommodate the emergence of tensions and conflicts that challenge the institutional order and established practices. In this chapter we primarily address the notion of community in this sense, with a focus on how institutional agency is constituted at the local level.

A historically significant conflict in society is that between labor and capital. Many of the institutions that are responsible for health care, social welfare, or taxation, for instance, directly or indirectly intervene in such matters when making decisions as to whether individuals and groups are entitled to certain benefits. In times of societal transformation and changes in production, tensions may emerge in the labor market concerning the obligations and entitlements of workers and employers. During such periods of transformation, institutions have to respond to new challenges coming from the outside.

Activity theory seeks to analyze development within practical social activities. Activities organize our lives. In activities, humans develop their skills, personalities, and consciousness. Through activities, we also transform our social conditions, resolve contradictions, generate new cultural artifacts, and create new forms of life and the self.

The legitimacy of activity theory as a unified theory has been the subject of various discussions. Holzman (2006), for example, argues that there is no unified perspective on activity theory. Holzman uses the term “activity theory” to cover a wide variety of approaches inspired by Vygotsky: among others, cultural-historical activity theory and sociocultural psychology. Such a broad view of activity theory contributes to a misrepresentation of the theory as fragmented and scattered across multiple perspectives. Further, this view brings with it the risk of losing focus on the actual nature of activity, which is the core of activity theory. An emphasis on psychological approaches without consideration of anthropological, sociological, historical, and linguistic characteristics of activity is risky and narrows the focus to the study of specific and limited aspects of activity. As a unified theory, activity theory has shown consistent viability throughout its history, beginning in the 1930s when Leont'ev formulated its basic principles and proposed the structure of activity. In addition, activity theory today attracts more interest globally than ever before. The term “unified” does not refer to a closed and fixed theory. However, it rules out an interpretation of activity theory as an eclectic grouping of multiple theories.

Throughout his career, Yrjö Engeström's work has been characterized by his ability to bridge theory and research originating in Russia with similar work from Western Europe and North America. In this regard, he has been prominent in Finland's historical role as a mediator between these differently organized and oriented competitors on the world stage.

In this chapter, as part of the celebration of Yrjö's career, we address the issue of theories of human development as one strategically promising site for East and West to learn from each other, to find their common origins, to evaluate their divergences, and to create understanding across the borders of Russia and Eastern European countries, on the one hand, and those dominated by the West, including Western Europe, on the other. This is a propitious time for such an effort because there has been an unprecedented flow of ideas in recent decades across the divides of former Cold War adversaries; this has provided new and promising opportunities to synthesize common understandings and to better locate fundamental issues where it appears that there are disagreements that need to be understood and, perhaps, resolved.

As vast as it is, the topic of human development cannot be given an exhaustive treatment in a single chapter, so we have decided to organize our discussion through an exploration of an issue that Engeström raises in his Learning by Expanding (1987) – the question of “purpose,” or teleology, in development.

I aim to accomplish two things in this chapter. First, I want to present what I see as the striking similarities between activity theory and our own somewhat different concept of coorientation (see Groleau, 2006, for a contrasting view). Second, and more important, I will delve into where I think our ideas diverge and, indeed, significantly so. I hope in this way to enlarge the dialogue, because taking account of similarities and differences is how we learn. This chapter should thus be read as one more episode in an ongoing dialogue that began more than a decade ago, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

POINTS OF AGREEMENT

Probably the most important insight that activity theory has emphasized is that, when we turn to examine any segment of behavior, individual or collective, we should bear in mind its embedding in a heterogeneous material, technical, social, and cultural world. It is always tempting for an empirically oriented researcher to focus in on some single aspect of the situation, the discourse of people at work, for example, and in privileging their concentration on that dimension, to set the rest aside as irrelevant to the task at hand. Activity theory rejects, in my opinion correctly, this narrowing down.

My intuition, in this respect, dates from my years as a television producer. In the television studio, the producer was never confronted with a choice of less than two (often three or more) alternative images of the action unfolding before the cameras.

Documents largely organize the activity of the modern world and – a forteriori – the postmodern world, with its reliance on hypertextual networks. Writing is arguably the most powerful mediational means for organizations and institutions, and writing-in-use in organizations has become an object of research in the past 25 years in North America, with applications in a number of fields, primarily organizational (business, technical, and scientific) communication and education (Bazerman & Russell, 2003). In these fields, analysis of writing-in-use is often crucial for planning interventions to improve students' literacy, at all levels, or to improve organizations' communication, through document design and document management, or what has come to be called information design and information management.

This tradition is largely separate from literary or, indeed, applied linguistic research, though both have influenced it (Bazerman, 1997; Russell, 1997b). Instead, it grows out of a U.S. tradition of rhetorical analysis applied to texts, particularly the concept of genre as social action (Miller, 1984, 1994), with deep roots in Schutz's phenomenological analysis of typification (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). I will refer to it as writing, activity, and genre research (WAGR). Sociological studies of science and technology were the original impetus (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Merton, 1968), along with studies of orality and literacy, particularly studies based on Vygotsky's theory (most importantly, Scribner & Cole, 1981).

Empirical and historical research on written communication in this tradition has from its inception in the early 1980s found cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) useful.

This chapter highlights three important dimensions of Yrjö Engeström's work. It then examines some objections that have been recently addressed to him. Finally, the chapter presents an original French approach that is not sufficiently well known internationally, although some publications in languages other than French have recently appeared (Béguin & Clot, 2004; Clot, Fernandez, & Carles, 2002; Clot & Scheller, 2006). Engeström has, in his own way, allowed the “French-speaking school” of analysis of activity to come into contact and enter into discussions with the Anglo-Saxon world. In France this discussion was recently relaunched with the symposium “Situated Action and Activity Theory” (ARTCO) in Lyon, where researchers from different countries met to debate their conceptions of “action,” “activity,” and “collective” (Clot, 2005a; Engeström, 2006b).

TRANSFORMING FOR UNDERSTANDING

The position given by Engeström to transformative action in the workplace brings him very close to the French-speaking school of analysis of work and activity. Whereas international ergonomics focused on the engineering of task and artifacts, French-speaking ergonomics was organized around activity and health with the intention of preserving and developing the operators' power to act in the workplace. Vygotsky's work is indeed inseparable from this perspective on action. When Vygotsky analyzed the crisis of psychology, he pointed to practice as a means to overcome the crisis. He even presented practice as a real alternative to the blind empiricism that can paralyze psychology (Vygotsky, 1997a), as is still the case today.