Note
Chapter 3 Cultural Historical Activity Theory
6.2 Characteristics of activity systems
relationship between individual and social, the socially constituted nature of human
behaviour, and the historical nature of any activity. These characteristics are discussed briefly here and elaborated in the next chapter.
Analysing data from the viewpoint of historicity is therefore a central theoretical instrument to achieve explanation (Engeström, 1987).
Engeström (1999, p. 26) argues that the nature of an activity system as a unit of analysis allows for this historical perspective:
If the unit is the individual or the individually constructed situation, history is reduced to ontogeny or biography. If the unit is the culture or the society, history becomes very general or endlessly complex. If a collective activity system is taken as the unit, history may become manageable, and yet it steps beyond the confines of individual biography.
The activity system ‘exists’ simultaneously in two forms: its mode (the way the activity is organised and carried out by its participants at any given time), and its historical type (the way its components and inner relations represent historically identifiable ideal-typical patterns) (Engeström, 1996). ‘History’ itself therefore needs to be studied as the
local history of the activity and its objects, and as history of the theoretical ideas and tools that have shaped the activity. Thus [for example] medical work needs to be analysed against the history of its local organisation and against the more global history of the medical concepts, procedures and tools employed and accumulated in the local activity.
(Engeström, 2001, pp. 136-137)
A critical characteristic of activity systems is that they are in flux, permeated by tensions and contradictions.
6.2.3 Contradictions, discontinuity and change
Drawing on Marx’s theory of labour activity Engeström (1987) argues that in the historical development of human activity, activity systems become increasingly penetrated and
saturated by the basic socio-economic laws which contain historically accumulating structural tensions. For example, Engeström (1996, p.72) argues that “in capitalism, the basic
contradiction is the dual nature of commodities, the tension between the use value and the exchange value”. Contradictions related to these socio-economic processes permeate all activity systems (Engeström, 1987; 1996). Activity systems are therefore inherently
characterised by constant construction, renewal and transformation of the components of the system, as outcome and cause of human life (Engeström, 1996). As the contradictions of an activity system are aggravated over time, they can eventually lead to an “overall crisis of the activity system” (Engeström, 1996, p. 73). This state of ‘crisis’ leads to new forms of activity, and inevitably, to change. Engeström and Miettinen argue that these internal tensions and
contradictions within an activity system are the “motive force of change and development”
(1999, p. 9, emphasis added).
The potential for change expressed in Engeström’s analysis of activity systems has its roots in Marx’s concept of activity. Engeström and Miettinen (1999, p. 3) argue that this concept:
opens up a new way to understand change. Change is not brought about from above, nor is it reducible to purely individual self-change of subjects. The key is ‘revolutionary
practice’, which is not to be understood in narrowly political terms but as joint ‘practical- critical activity’, potentially embedded in any mundane everyday practice.
‘Change’ in behaviour will thus originate not from the context, nor from the individual, but is a product of their activity, and their collective activity with others. The use of the concept of activity is thus critical in countering the dominant assumptions in behaviour change theories about the possibility for, and understanding of, change. The analysis of activity systems with its emphasis on contradictions could reveal the potential for change within an activity system.
A comment on the nature of the heuristic device of the model is necessary. In many instances it is used as a ‘toolkit’ (Wells, 2004), for analysis. Wells (2004) argues that although it effectively represents the transactional relationships at play within an activity system, it
‘fixes’ rather than captures the dynamic and interactive nature of activity. Visual representations of dynamic processes are limited, and he argues this one “represents a moment frozen in time, or at best, a synoptic, atemporal generalization that subsumes many diverse, particular instances” (Wells, 2004, p. 76). This criticism has been countered by Roth (2004) who argues that the model is inherently dynamic: it is a dialectical conceptualisation which embodies change. The dialectical unit of the subject and object in the system “is the epitome of an engine of change” (Ilyenkov, 1977, cited in Roth, 2004, p. 2). In addition to this, the very notion of activity at the heart of this triangular representation embodies change.
The activity system also captures this notion of change in the conceptualisation of
contradictions, and tensions, within and between components. Change is thus inherent in its parts, in its relations and as a whole. As a graphic depiction of activity it might be static, but its use in the analysis of an activity, is dynamic. The ‘dynamic’ nature of activity is also captured in the historical perspective used in analysis. Roth (2004) argues that the framework of the triangle thus expresses an open, historically situated, system.
As some of the debate and criticism within the HIV and AIDS literature evidences, the study of human action is a complex task. Engeström (1987, p. 81) argues that this model of activity
is the “smallest and most simple unit that still preserves the essential unity and integral quality behind any human activity”. It integrates subject, object and ‘instruments’ into a unified whole, and it enables activity to be analysed as a “culturally mediated phenomenon” (ibid, p.
39), rather than a dyadic organism-environment model. This model, and the articulation of the components and their relationships, enables an analysis of activity as a “contextual or
ecological phenomenon… (concentrating) on systemic relations between the individual and the outside world” (ibid, p. 39). The activity system thus describes the dialectical relationship between the individual and the setting and locates activity in the rules and structures of the social world. In this way the notion of the activity system helps to reframe the concept of context which proves so problematic in the HIV and AIDS field.
Activity theory theorising has moved beyond this notion of singular activity systems to study networks of interacting activity systems focusing on dialogicality, multi-voicedness, and issues of power within the activity system (Roth & Lee, 2007). Although this is a significant expansion on the original notion of the activity system, it is not critical to the theoretical or methodological procedure of this thesis (which focuses on an activity system analysis). It does, however, have some significance for possibilities beyond the analysis in this study, and will be discussed in greater detail in the concluding section of the thesis.
7 The contribution of CHAT to the problematic of the thesis
The philosophical and revolutionary roots of cultural-historical activity theory provide an important and significantly different conceptualisation of the individual-society relationship from the dualistic conception which dominates the behaviour change theory used in the HIV and AIDS field. The mediational conception of human mind invalidates the notion that cognitive processes reside inside the heads of individuals, and that mental acts of the
individual are the impetus for action. CHAT is useful for the problematic of the thesis because it rejects a cause and effect relationship between the individual and context. It conceptualises a dialectical and mutually constitutive relationship between the individual and society, where the ‘mind’ of the ‘subject’ is derivative from the subject’s activity, and ‘society’ is constituted in the activity of the individual (Cole, 1996). It assumes that individuals are active agents in their own development but do not act in settings entirely of their own choosing. CHAT directs the study of human behaviour to a concrete examination of the dynamics of practical social activity.
In CHAT, the concept of context is fundamentally reframed through Engeström’s (1987, 1996) conceptualisation of activity as a collective activity system. The notion of the activity system accounts for the continuous, self-reproducing, systemic, and longitudinal-historical aspects of human functioning; the changing nature of humans and society; the socially distributed or collective aspects of human behaviour; as well as the artefact-mediated, or cultural aspects, of purposeful human behaviour (Engeström, 1999). An analysis of the internal dynamics and the history of the activity system illuminates its internal contradictions and tensions, providing a means to understand the actual and potential change embedded in the system. In this way it can potentially account for the ‘lack’ of behaviour change which is the problematic of this thesis. The next chapter presents a practical application of this conceptual framework to the research problem.