Note
Chapter 3 Cultural Historical Activity Theory
5.1 Levels of activity
In illustrating his conception of levels of activity, Leontyev (1981, p. 210) uses the image of a collective hunt in which an individual’s actions will not necessarily have the same goal as the overall motive of the collective activity:
When a member of a group performs his [sic] labour activity he also does it to satisfy one of his needs. A beater, for example, taking part in a primeval collective hunt, was
stimulated by a need for food, or perhaps, a need for clothing, which the skin of the dead animal would meet for him. At what, however, was his activity directly aimed? It may have been directed, for example, at frightening a herd of animals and sending them toward other hunters, hiding in ambush. That, properly speaking, is what should be the result of the activity of this man. And the activity of this individual member of the hunt ends with that. The rest is completed by the other members. This result, i.e. the frightening of game, etc. understandably does not in itself, and may not, lead to satisfaction of the beater’s need for food, or the skin of the animal. What the processes of his activity were directed to did not, consequently, coincide with what stimulated them, i.e. did not coincide with the motive of his activity; the two were divided from one another in this instance. Processes, the object and motive of which do not coincide with one another, we shall call ‘actions’.
We can say, for example, that the beater’s activity is the hunt, and the frightening of game his action.
In the division of labour essential to this activity, individuals engage in separate actions with immediate goals. Leontyev (1981) argues that to understand why these separate actions are meaningful, one needs to understand the broader motive behind the whole activity. The result of this activity is connected to its outcome through relations with other members of the group.
activity of other people that constitutes the objective basis of the specific structure of the human individuals’ activity, [which] means that historically, i.e., through its genesis, the connection between the motive and the object of an action reflects objective social connections and relations rather than natural ones. (Leontyev, 1981, p. 212) In Leontiev’s distinction between individual action and collective activity he further articulates the relationship between an activity of the individual and collective processes, what in the HIV and AIDS literature might be presented as context, or social factors. In his representation of the levels of activity (see Table 5 below), and drawing on his example of the hunt, Leontiev argues that collective activity is driven by an object-related motive (to obtain food); the middle level of individual (or group action) is driven by a goal (to drive the animal away from us to those who will kill it); and the bottom level of automated operations is driven by the conditions and tools of action at hand (the objective circumstances under which the hunt is carried) (Engeström, 1987).
Object-related motives DRIVE collective activity
Goals DRIVE individual or group action Conditions and tools DRIVE automated operations
Table 5. Leontiev's levels of activity (based on Engeström, 1987)
Leontiev (1978) thus elaborated on the notions of ‘object’ and ‘goal’, and the centrality of the object to an analysis of motivation. Individual action is managed, or driven, by a goal, but a collective activity is driven by an object. This is again a particular conceptualisation of the relationship between individual and social and has methodological implications when studying human behaviour. A focus on activity means one needs to focus on the ‘object’, not on the level of individual action and goal. It is this object which is related to collective activity and in which the individual’s ‘action’ is embedded.
From Leontiev’s theorising, this notion of object starts assuming a central significance in understanding activity. What is important at this point is to highlight that in Leontiev’s theory
“what distinguishes one activity from another is its object… the object of an activity is its true motive…” (Engeström, 1987, p. 66). This leads to a focus within CHAT theorising on
‘object-oriented activity’, which is taken up in the third phase of the evolution of CHAT.
Engeström (1987) argues that this extension of the sphere of analysis from individual tool- mediated action (presented by Vygotsky), to consider the individuals’ actions within the overall collective activity, provides a more nuanced and detailed conceptualisation of the relationship between agent, world and activity. However, Leontiev’s work did not address how the levels of activity interact as components of a system (Engeström, 2004).
6 The third phase of CHAT: Engeström, activity systems
The third phase of activity theory is epitomised by the work of Yrjö Engeström, a Finnish psychologist based at the Centre for Developmental Work and Activity Theory at the University of Helsinki. His critique of earlier theorising of activity is that it focused on the analysis of individual experience as if it consisted of relatively discrete situated actions and it under-theorised the notion of ‘context’ (Engeström, 1996). Leontiev’s work articulated the levels of human activity, but did not express how these might relate as components of a system (Engeström, 2004).
Engeström (1987) has argued that theories of action need to account for the artefact-mediated, or cultural, aspects of purposeful human behaviour; the socially distributed or collective aspects of purposeful human behaviour; and the continuous, self-reproducing, systemic, and longitudinal-historical aspects of human functioning. The first of these has been addressed through Vygotsky’s theorising and Engeström has made a significant contribution to the second two: the socially distributed and collective aspects of action/activity; and the systemic, dynamic and historical aspects of activity.
This third phase of the evolution of CHAT has been defined as the ‘collective and institutional challenge’. This is because it has recognised that:
Activities…do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning. These systems of relations arise out of and are reproduced and
developed within social communities which are in part systems of relations among people.
(Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53)
Activity is thus seen as a “collective, systemic formation that has a complex mediational structure” (Daniels, 2001, p. 86). Joint activity or practice, rather than individual activity
therefore becomes the focus. In Engeström’s (1996, 1999) theorising, and the work of activity theorists in the third phase of the development of CHAT, the unit of analysis is the entire activity system, it is the “object-oriented, collective, and culturally mediated human activity, or activity system” (Engeström & Miettinen, 1999, p. 9).
The significance of Engeström’s conceptualisation of activity as a collective activity system is that it fundamentally reframes the concept of context. Engeström (1996, p. 67) argues that for activity theory
contexts are neither containers nor situationally created experiential spaces. Contexts are activity systems. An activity system integrates the subject, the object, and the instruments (material tools as well as signs and symbols) into a unified whole.
This concept of context is thoroughly relational. The system, or given objective context, is not immutable. It is not “something beyond individual influence”, rather it is “continuously constructed” by humans in their activity (Engeström, 1996, p. 66). Engeström (1987, p. 160) rephrases the focus of social science researchers:
Instead of asking how the individual subject developed into what he [sic] is, the … [researcher]… might start by asking how the objects and structure of the life-world (themselves understood as activity systems) have been and are created by human beings, how something objectively new is developed all the time… individuals are seen as co- producers of societal and cultural development and only indirectly as producers of their own development.
Given this dialectical relationship between the individual and ‘setting’, the system and context of actions (in the form of socio-institutional, cultural and historical factors), need to be
described and accounted for, and not ignored (as is often done in psychological studies), or seen as immutable (which is the case in deterministic accounts of social processes).
In providing a different conceptualisation of human activity, Engeström (1987) argues that a model of human activity must enable a focus on systemic relations between the individual and the outside world. To this end, he has created a model of an ‘activity system’.