Studies in Critical Social Sciences An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity Andy Blunden Table of Contents Part I. Introduction and Historical Excursus 1 1. Introduction 2 2. Soviet Cultural Psychology (1924-) 13 3. Goethe’s Romantic Science 23 4. The Young Hegel and what drove him 33 5. The Phenomenology and ‘formations of consciousness’ 41 The Phenomenology 46 6. The Subject Matter of the Logic 53 7. Being, Essence & the Notion 61 8. Subjectivity and culture 71 9. Hegel’s Psychology and Spirit 77 Hegel’s psychology 82 10. Marx’s Critique of Hegel. 87 11. Marx and the Foundations of Activity Theory 95 Activity 96 Social Formations 102 12. Marx’s Critique of Political Economy 105 Abstraction 107 The Commodity Relation 111 13. Conclusions from this Historical Excursus 116 Part II. Lev Vygotsky 121 14. Vygotsky’s Critique of Behaviorism 122 Vygotsky’s Hegelianism 125 Behaviorism 129 Vygotsky’s Sources and Influences 134 15. Vygotsky and Luria on Romantic Science 135 Luria 140 16. Vygotsky on Units and Microcosms 143 Unit of analysis 148 17. Vygotsky on Gestalt and Bildung 151 The Higher Psychological Functions 154 The Social Situation of Development 156 Vygotsky on concepts 160 18. The Significance of Vygotsky’s Legacy 166 Part III. Activity Theory 169 19. Activity 170 Interdisciplinary concept 170 The General Conception of “Activity” 175 20. Activity as the Substance of a Science 181 Gadamer on the Hermeneutic Circle 188 21. Criticisms of Vygotsky’s concept of Activity 191 Vygotsky’s Unit of Analysis for Consciousness 194 Leontyev’s Criticism of Vygotsky’s Unit of Analysis 199 Meshcheryakov’s Work 202 Vygotsky’s Cultural Psychology 203 Bakhtin 204 22. Leontyev’s Anatomy of Activity 207 Levels of Activity 207 The Standpoint of Activity Theory 210 Leontyev’s Methodology 213 Some Outstanding Problems 216 23. Leontyev’s Activity Theory and Marx’s Political Economy 219 The Object of Labor under Capital 220 24. Groups as a Model of Sociality 225 25. Yrjö Engeström’s Model 231 26. Michael Cole and Cross-Cultural Psychology 237 What is Context? 242 History and Culture 246 27. The Results of this Immanent Critique 250 Part IV. An Interdisciplinary Approach 255 28. Collaborative Projects 256 29. Ethics and Collaboration 267 Social Science and Ethics 267 Collaboration with Strangers 268 The Ethics of Collaboration 271 30. Marx’s Critique of Political Economy and Activity Theory 275 Collaboration and Exchange 276 Projects and Firms 277 31. Towards a Taxonomy of Activity 281 32. Collaborative Projects and Identity 289 33. Collaborative Projects and Agency 295 34. Emancipatory science 301 35. Conclusion 317 Cultural Psychology and Critical Theory 318 Science and Survival 324 Acknowledgements 327 References 328 Index 344 Part I. Introduction and Historical Excursus 1. Introduction This work is a friendly critique of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a current of psychology which grew up in the early Soviet Union, until it was suppressed in the mid-1930s, and only gradually became more widely known from the 1960s.1 It was the difficult conditions in the Stalinist USSR which restricted the scope of CHAT to psychology, and it is the aim of this work to resolve those features of CHAT which have prevented it from fulfilling its potential as an interdisciplinary approach to the human sciences in general. This is not a project for a science of everything. But it does point to a potential for a progressive, critical new approach across a range of disciplines, and an improved possibility for interdisciplinary work. But if this book achieves nothing else, then it will be to clarify a range of methodological problems for CHAT researchers themselves. Hopefully it will also create interest in CHAT among those not yet familiar with it. CHAT is today one of the most influential and progressive schools of thought in the domain of child development and elementary education, and is active in a wide range of other disciplines. With its emphasis on culture2, it is also one of the very few currents of psychology which can effectively respond to reductionist neuroscience: one of the founders of CHAT, Alexander Luria, is also recognized as one of the founders of neuroscience. The roots of CHAT lie in 19th century German philosophy, in particular Goethe’s ‘romantic science’3 and some of the ideas he introduced in 1 ‘CHAT’ is a name invented only in the 1990s by Cole (1996: 104-5; 2007: 206-7) and Yrjö Engeström to promote the unity of what was by that time a diversity of currents all originating from the work of Lev Vygotsky. ‘Cultural Psychology’ came into currency in the early 1930s and ‘Activity Theory’ in the 1960s. 2 In CHAT, ‘culture’ refers to the universe of artifacts created by and used in a society (Cole 1996: 144). Culture is meaningful in social life only in relation to the living people using it and to the place of artifacts in the various forms of activity in which it is used. Some researchers use the term in a wider sense as referring to artifacts, forms of activity and thought-forms characteristic of a way of life (Ratner 2008). 3 ‘Romantic Science’ is an approach to natural science which grew up in opposition to dogmatic Newtonian science in the early 19th century, associated with Goethe, Sir Introduction 3 opposition to the dominant abstract empirical, or positivist approach to science at the time. Goethe’s key scientific ideas were picked up by Hegel and more consistently developed, albeit on the foundation of absolute idealism. Marx’s critique4 of Hegel freed these ideas of their idealist shell, making individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live the sole premises (Marx 1975i: 31). In the cauldron which was the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Lev Vygotsky was able to appropriate the key insights from this tradition in a completely original approach to psychology. Political conditions, which made it impossible to rationally discuss political or sociological issues, determined that his work would focus on education, child development and disability education. ‘Activity’ simply means what people do, but with his “Theses on Feuerbach” (1975g), Marx connected the concept with critique of a range of metaphysical conceptions, and made it the foundation of his own view of the world, at the philosophical level. In the work of CHAT writers, the concept of activity has accrued further connotations and nuances in the course of efforts to develop a rational foundation for psychology. Central to the approach used here is the notion of immanent critique5. This means that the subject matter is criticized solely through its own voice, in the words of its own representatives. In an immanent critique, the writer follows disputes internal to the subject, observes how they are resolved and how each new step forward uncovers new problems, and so on, tracing the development of the subject matter as it develops according to its own logic. Humphry Davy and Alexander von Humboldt. The term is tied to this historical juncture, and we will use the term ‘emancipatory science’ to indicate a contemporary development of the principles first proposed by Romantic Science. 4 ‘Critique’ may indicate a variety of forms of engagement, but what is most important is that the word is not used here in any sense as a kind of ‘attack’, in fact, the best critique is one which speaks to the writer under critique and benefits them. Also, ‘critique’ is not necessarily a textual activity; ‘practical critique’ is an important part of critique, as per “Do as I do, not as I say,” and so on. 5 Although the idea dates back to Aristotle, immanent critique is generally associated with Hegel (1969: 31). In criticizing the ideas of some group of people, immanent critique uses the group’s own basic principles against the group’s claims, where possible in their own words, and by holding them true to their own principles demonstrates where these principles finally lead. 4 An Interdisciplinary Concept of Activity This allows the critic to build up a concrete understanding of the material and identify its main problems and possible ways forward. Immanent critique is contrasted with simply putting forward a counterproposal or finding fault with the subject matter, and arguing a counter-position. This latter approach will rarely succeed in the developing the subject matter itself, and can dogmatically harden differences. What is meant by an ‘interdisciplinary concept’ of activity (Cole 1985) is this: when specialists in different disciplines or currents of science communicate with one another they must have recourse to a shared language and conceptual framework. This is usually the lingua franca and everyday common sense, as scientific concepts are generally limited to the theoretical framework to which they belong, in one or another discipline. This limits the depth of possible collaboration and mutual criticism and appropriation. The aim is to develop ‘activity’ as a scientific concept which is meaningful not only in the domain of psychology, but also in sciences such as sociology, political science, linguistics and so on. Irrespective of whether specialists in other disciplines take up the idea, CHAT needs access to ways of describing and grasping societal phenomena, because it is a basic tenet of CHAT that everything that may be found in the individual psyche was previously to be found in relations between people, and that artifacts and forms of social interaction originating in the social world constitute the content of the psyche. So an interdisciplinary concept of activity is necessary for its own purposes. Throughout this book, the need to remain true to the original aims of Goethe’s Romantic Science is affirmed. The term ‘Romantic Science’ is dated, and the expression ‘emancipatory science’ is preferred.