Alex Levant, Kyoko Murakami, Miriam McSweeney (Eds.)
Activity Theory An Introduction
Alex Levant, Kyoko Murakami, Miriam McSweeney (Eds.)
ACTIVITY THEORY An Introduction
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Table of Contents Forewords ............................................................................................... 7 Part I. Histories and Lineages Alex Levant A World of Activity: A ‘Special Reality’ with a ‘Peculiar Objectivity’ ........................................................................................... 15 David Bakhurst Ilyenkov, Activity Theory, and Moscow in the 1980s: An Interview with David Bakhurst ......................................................... 51 Seth Chaiklin The Theory of Activity— in a Psychological Perspective .............. 73 Vesa Oittinen Ilyenkov and the Shadow of Helvetius ............................................ 97 Part II. Current Trends: Applications/Interventions Katsuhiro Yamazumi The Application of Activity Theory to Research on Learning and Education in Japan: The Case of Practical Research into Community-Based Disaster Prevention Learning ....................... 115 Yrjö Engeström, Mikael Brunila, Juhana Rantavuori The Politics of Expansive Learning: A Study of Two Social Movements ......................................................................................... 137 Brecht De Smet Revolution as Learning: Tahrir in Terms of Activity and Instruction........................................................................................... 173 Bonnie Nardi Reduction Redux: Humanity as Code ........................................... 199 Cathrine Hasse Activity Theory, Socratic Ignorance and Posthumanism............. 219
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Miriam McSweeney, Kyoko Murakami Tracking the Object: A Case of a Small-scale Developmental Work Research-based Intervention ............................................................ 243 Juliano Camillo, André Machado Rodrigues, Cristiano Mattos Thinking with Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: Examining Science Education Key Issues .......................................................... 275 Annalisa Sannino Foundations of Educational Studies of Agency: An ActivityTheoretical Critique........................................................................... 295 Part III. Pasts and Futures Michael Cole Encountering Cultural Historical Psychology and Activity Theory: An Interview with Michael Cole ...................................... 329 Andy Blunden Leontyev’s Activity Theory and Social Theory ............................. 345 Anna Stetsenko Reclaiming the Tools of the Past for Today’s Struggles: Radicalizing Vygotsky, via Marx, in Dialogue with Audre Lorde ................................................................................................... 369
Index .................................................................................................... 407 Contributors ....................................................................................... 413
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“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism—that of Feuerbach included— is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice.” (Marx 1969 [1888])
Forewords My journey exploring this remarkable body of thought began through my research on the work of the philosopher Evald Ilyenkov. He developed an original materialist conception of “the ideal”—immaterial phenomena like mathematical truths, moral imperatives, concepts, rituals, and so on. In contrast to views of these phenomena as either mere social constructions based entirely on convention or eternal facts with truth-value independent of society, he saw them as products of human activity. For Ilyenkov, the ideal emerges from the ongoing practices of human beings, but it also acts as a blueprint that shapes future practice. Individuals encounter these ideal phenomena as having material force, even though they are human made. When detached from their grounding in human activity, they appear in reduced form, as either conventions or immutable facts. In contrast, Ilyenkov's perspective sees immaterial phenomena as neither arbitrary conventions nor eternal truths. Instead, they originate from collective human practice over time, while also guiding the activities of individuals in the present. This “activity approach” provides an original way of analyzing the emergence and power of ideal phenomena in social life. Despite its highly theoretical origins, this approach that prioritizes activity as a means of understanding the genesis and nature of knowledge, has proven to be remarkably effective in practical applications. I was aware of its break-through in disability education in relation to the achievements of the Zagorsk experiment with deaf-blind children in the 1970s. (Please see chapters 1, 2, and 4, for details.) However, at that time I did not yet know how these ideas had spread beyond the Soviet Union and how they were developed in very different directions and applied in different fields. My work 7
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on Ilyenkov brought me into contact with figures like Meshcheryakov, Vygotsky, and Leontiev (who coined the term “activity theory”), but at that time I was not yet aware of the contributions of Michael Cole and Yrjö Engeström, and the development of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). I became fascinated by its global proliferation and its application in such diverse fields as social movement theory, human-computer interaction, and even business management. At the same time, I also noted some of the profound differences between how activity theory developed in the West and in Soviet philosophy and psychology. Reflecting on these differences, David Bakhurst writes: “While the latter saw the concept of activity as a fundamental category to address profound philosophical questions about the possibility of mind, activity theory in the West has principally become an empirical method for modeling activity systems” (2009, p. 197). Indeed, a reader familiar with activity theory through the work of Ilyenkov, Vygotsky, and other Soviet thinkers may find it surprising how their ideas have been retooled and applied in ways they could not have imagined. Nevertheless, regardless of their specific content, these real-world applications of activity theory highlight its power and remind us of its untapped potential. Moreover, it is important to also recognize, as we do in this volume, that, despite its focus on modeling activity systems, CHAT has also been applied to research oriented on larger political issues. Overall, as I wrote in “Two, three, many strands of activity theory!”: “I see activity theory as a broad tent, a theoretical tradition in the making… and I agree with Engeström and Miettinen (1999, 8) who write: ‘Activity theory should not be regarded as a narrowly psychological theory but rather as a broad approach that takes a new perspective on and develops novel conceptual tools for tackling many of the theoretical and methodological questions that cut across the social sciences today’” (p. 107). It is the vast potential of this approach that drew me to this work. Today we find activity theory consisting of a loose-knit, eclectic body of theorists, working in various fields around the world. What
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binds them is a common tradition rooted in a particular approach that has considerable, virtually untapped, methodological value for understanding social phenomena. Activity theory has vast potential for tackling theoretical and methodological questions cutting across the social sciences today, as it illuminates a special reality with a peculiar objectivity, which otherwise remains obscured. My hope is that this collection will contribute to the expansion and selfclarification of this tradition, facilitating its transformation into a method that can stand alongside other established research methods typically used in the social sciences. Alex Levant, August 2023
The current book has undergone many different stages of development. It is an understatement that it has been a long, taxing journey, but I believe it is a worthy one. I joined this book project, first as a chapter contributor, then as a co-editor in 2020 together with Miriam McSweeney. It has been a privilege to be part of the editorial team as it gave me an opportunity to deepen my understanding of Activity Theory and to explore its potential beyond the way it is used. Looking back on my intellectual journey so far, it was the dialectical research tradition, underpinning sociocultural theory/CHAT that appealed to me. The perspective informed by this tradition steered from the problematic of the individual and shifted to the focus of the social and collective and its interface with the individual. It felt like a serendipity at the time, but it was not by coincidence that Activity Theory came to me. I ‘bumped’ into colleagues, who were taking the journey according to CHAT whilst my academic career took me to the CSAT (Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory) at the University of Bath, and to Denmark, the research group named PPUK (Person, Praktise, Udvikling, Kultur). I walked the CHAT road for however brief or long the shared paths lasted under our professional circumstances. In that juncture, Harry Daniels, Seth Chaiklin, Mariane Hedegaard and Katsu Yamazumi, amongst many others unnamed, were my dear ‘teachers’. Furthermore, I had the pleasure of learning from those
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pioneering scholars interviewed and chapter authors in the editorial process. They are the teachers of otherwise inaccessible thoughts, Soviet philosophy for someone like me, who does not have an obvious Soviet or Russian connection. Working with the editors and chapter authors of the book, it felt as if pieces of the puzzle were being put together in terms of the history of Activity Theory, its theoretical development and empirical application to various social science disciplines. Again, perhaps out of serendipity, the joining of the editorial team marked a special turning point in my intellectual journey which destabilised my thinking. It was now time for me to evolve. I am grateful that I met Alex Levant, the book’s editor, in the seminar organised by Catharine Hasse, a contributing author, in 2015 in Copenhagen. As Alex says, CHAT research is prolific and global. One can become complacent with CHAT for what it is capable of and its powerful claims for transformation of practice and societies. Despite the ongoing critical debates about CHAT, the diffusion of CHAT research to other fields beyond psychology and education is astounding. Its practical application to understanding the process of how our practices in workplaces and classroom alike can be transformed for the better strikes a chord to many. One cannot keep being complacent with the legacy of CHAT and its popularity. Whilst working with the contributing chapter authors in this edited book project, I was keenly reminded of my own knowledge gap in the vast and profound theoretical tradition that Activity Theory embraces. To put it humbly, I gained the deepest insight into Activity Theory—its origin, history, development and potential for future advancement, by working with the contributing authors, especially in the way the theory was read and debated by philosophers. It is my earnest hope that this book will simulate, provoke and encourage debates and discussions by scholars, both emerging and experienced, together with research students, to sustain the activity theory approach and develop its potential in the widest possible way. For those educational and psychological researchers, no one theory solves the complex problems of humanity. Activity Theory is evolving, as shown by the chapter authors of the book, rooted in
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a rich history, widening its scope and presenting more questions for theoretical advancement and empirical application. Kyoko Murakami, August 2023
It was a curiosity about the cultural context in which I work that brought me to Activity Theory. I came to higher education as a lecturer having worked in the information technology industry. Working in a multi-campus environment I noticed there was a low and slow uptake of teaching and learning technologies among lecturers across different schools and campuses where I worked. I believed that the technologies themselves were not the problem but that something about the lecturers’ work context may have been contributing to the complex phenomenon I observed. In a bid to understand how the cultural context might have been impacting on human thinking and activity I undertook my PhD journey at the University of Bath under Harry Daniels and Kyoko at the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory. It was Harry and Kyoko who introduced me to Activity Theory. I had come from a background in Business and Information Technology and so I had a lot to learn about Soviet psychologists. My PhD studies brought me to Helsinki where I met with Yrjö Engeström and Annalisa Sannino and continued learning about Developmental Work Research (DWR) and the practical application of Activity Theory in a diversity of fields. I was more drawn to Activity Theory, particularly noting its potential as a framework from which a broad range of social contexts could be understood. Today, I can introduce my own students to Activity Theory as a conceptual framework in the fields of Business and Information Technology. Kyoko introduced me to Alex and I was delighted when they invited me to join them in editing this book. It has given me a valuable opportunity to continue my journey with Activity Theory. The privilege of working with the contributing authors has been an insightful learning experience. The range of contributions signifies both the rich tradition and the vast potential that yet lies in Activity
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Theory. My hope is that those who come to Activity Theory like I did, from a place of curiosity about human activity, will find here a collection of thought-provoking contributions. For new and seasoned scholars alike I hope it will be a place where they can read about the historical roots, the many practical applications, along with thought provoking ideas for the future evolution of Activity Theory. If scholars are inspired to question and think more deeply about collective human activity then that is a just reward. Miriam McSweeney, August 2023.
Part I Histories and Lineages
A World of Activity: A ‘Special Reality’ with a ‘Peculiar Objectivity’ Alex Levant In Dialectics of the Ideal (2009/2014) the philosopher E. V. Ilyenkov describes a “special reality” with a “peculiar objectivity”. He aims to illuminate an aspect of the world that typically remains out of sight—something as material as the objects we see around us, but which usually goes unnoticed. This special reality is the world of human activity, and its peculiar objectivity is the materiality of practice. What makes this reality special is that it is not always perceptible, although it occupies the same space as the everyday observable world. As a metaphor, consider a still image from a film on pause. Looking at the screen, one could make observations about what one saw, but these observations would be limited by not having seen what had happened prior to everyone freezing into place. Quite easily, a simple gesture, like a kiss for example, could come to mean something very different when seen in the context of the film unfolding.
The Kissing Sailor Consider the iconic image of The Kissing Sailor by the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. It continues to be celebrated and reproduced around the world. It is sold at universities across Canada at annual poster sales for students to buy and stick to their walls. The image appears to depict a couple kissing during a WWII victory celebration. However, according to Greta Zimmer Friedman—the woman in the picture—this image is not at all as it appears. “It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and grabbed!” She 15
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explained in an interview with Patricia Redmont for the Veterans History Project in 2005 where she described what took place in detail. “That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me.” The man was George Mendonsa, a sailor who was engaged to another woman walking just behind him. He grabbed and kissed Greta and then continued with the celebration. The two of them did not know each other and did not meet again until 1980 when they were both contacted by LIFE magazine. This example illustrates the difficulty of deriving meaning from an image. How could one have known that this was not a romantic kiss? The expressions of others in the picture appear to confirm this interpretation. Perhaps her left hand, which is closed in a fist, takes on a new significance now that we know the context; however, in the absence of that context, what appears in the image becomes open to other interpretations. This context, however, is not in the still image. Only when the image is set in motion does the story appear. For instance, if this photo were a still from a film, and if we could rewind and see the story unfold, we would be able to observe what the people in the image were previously doing. The motion of the figures would become visible and seeing this would offer an entirely new understanding of the moment the picture was taken. We don’t have such a film, but Greta’s testimony serves as a substitute, and the Kissing Sailor acquires quite a different meaning when set in the context she provides. However, when looking at a separate still, in the absence of the film, the activity of all the characters slips out of sight, and—along with it—the story of what happened. On the face of it, it would seem that the iconic status of this image endures because of a lack of context. After all, students who buy this poster likely have no idea who these people were or what they did moments before this photo was taken. But the question persists as to why Greta’s voice remains largely unheard. Why is it so difficult to see this image as she experienced it? Moreover, why did no one in the picture intervene when he grabbed her? Why did they continue to celebrate, as the photograph appears to suggest? Perhaps it is not the absence of context that makes it difficult to recognize the reality of what took place, but the presence of
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another already-existing context that makes it so easy to interpret the image as a romantic kiss. In other words, the context one would have if one knew what George and Greta were doing prior to the kiss is replaced by another context. In an article called The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”, Victor Vaughn directs our attention to rape culture—the societal attitudes about gender and sexuality that normalize sexual violence. In the context of rape culture, the passers-by appear oblivious to what in another context would appear as a sexual assault. The context here refers not only to what George and Greta and others in the image were doing moments prior to the picture being taken; rather, it includes the larger patterns of activity in society, the social practices that constitute rape culture. Rolling the film further back could offer a view of these activity patterns; however, they vanish from view in freeze-frame. This is what makes their reality special and their objectivity peculiar. Bodies remain in view when a film is paused, but their activity becomes largely invisible. Sometimes, we can make reasonable assumptions about what took place moments earlier and predictions about the immediate future, especially in an “action shot”, but that is quite different from the possibility of seeing larger patterns of activity that the addition of temporality affords. When these patterns are brought into view, they can become subject to analysis and intervention; however, when they remain out of sight, as in a still, it can become difficult to understand the source of various observable phenomena. This situation can be further illustrated by looking at an old Star Trek episode from the original series where something analogous takes place. The Enterprise arrives at a planet where there appear to be no signs of life except for a buzzing sound from time to time. Upon arrival, strange, inexplicable events start to happen that continue back on the ship. It is subsequently revealed that the aliens from the planet—the Scalosians—are the cause of the events and that they remain unnoticed because they live at an accelerated rate of activity. Because they move so quickly, they are virtually invisible and things seem to appear out of nowhere, like magic. From the Scalosians’ perspective, everyone else is terribly slow, while they
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are too fast even to be noticed. They are detected only by the consequences of their activity, such as a cup vanishing into thin air. The special reality that Ilyenkov illuminates is the world of human activity, which plays a similar role in explaining apparently disparate and often inexplicable phenomena. The world of activity is a special reality because it is not immediately perceptible. Despite its materiality, it vanishes when observed in freeze-frame. Similarly, patterns of activity elude us when we think in freeze-frame. Our challenge is to think in film.
To Think in Film The world of activity becomes visible only when we think in film because of its peculiar objectivity. What makes it peculiar is that it has a dual existence: it consists of both past and present activity— past activity that is objectified in the world around us, and the present activity that this objectified world motivates. Societal norms have a materiality in human activity in the sense that people act on ideas. And the ideas on which we act, which motivate our actions, also have a materiality. They are codified in laws, written in books, enacted in performance, sculpted in stone, and so on. One can think of them as patterns of activity, schemas that guide practice, or ideas that are enacted and socially enforced. In this sense, ideas do not exist “in our heads” as opposed to “in reality”; rather, they exist outside us and are in fact as material as the world they represent. In this sense, ideas are objective, and the ideal world is not the other of the real world but its constituent part. Ilyenkov explains: This [ideal world] confronts the individual as the thought of preceding generations realised (“reified”, “objectified“, “alienated“) in sensuously perceptible “matter“—in language and in visually perceptible images, in books and statues, in wood and bronze, in the form of places of worship and instruments of labour, in the designs of machines and state buildings, in the patterns of scientific and moral systems, and so on. All these objects are in their existence, in their “indetermine being”, substantial, “material“, but in their essence and origin they are “ideal“ because they “embody“ the collective thinking of people, the “universal spirit“ of mankind. (Ilyenkov, 2014, p. 52)
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In addition to the material form of the idea (in words or images, for example), there is also the material force of the idea in the form of the human activity it motivates. The objectivity of a law, for instance, consists also of the practices it calls into action, the patterns of activity that it produces. Hence, it is objective both in the sense of the materiality of the language in which it is embodied, but also in the sense of the material consequences of acting on it (or not). In both senses, the materiality of the ideal world confronts us with a force no less palpable than that of the material world of objects, and in fact cannot be separated from it. This ideal world is as real and objective as the material world, but its dual existence gives it a peculiar objectivity. It exists in the form of human activity as ideas in action, and it also exists in the form of the product of that activity as objectified ideas. Ilyenkov writes: “‘Ideality’ as such exists only in the constant transformation of these two forms of its ‘external incarnation’ and does not coincide with either of them taken separately” (p. 77). Taken together, however, the two forms of the ideal world (activity and object) appear as moments or phases of a single, indivisible process. To think in film, then, is to approach observable phenomena as moments in process, rather than individual things. Ilyenkov describes it as: the process by which the material life-activity of social man [sic] begins to produce not only a material, but also an ideal product, begins to produce the act of idealization of reality (the process of transforming the “material” into the “ideal“), and then, having arisen, the “ideal“ becomes a critical component of the material life-activity of social man, and then begins the opposite process—the process of the materialization (objectification, reification, ‘incarnation’) of the ideal. (Ilyenkov, 2014, p. 36)
This process of idealization and materialization is an indivisible unit where each moment comes to appear as something other when seen in freeze-frame. Rather than moments in a process, observable phenomena become reified as things (Lukacs, 1971). However, when seen in process, things take on new significance. As images come to be seen as stills in a film, their meaning changes. Patterns of activity come into view; stories emerge. The world becomes more complex, but also more intelligible, as the
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dimension of human activity brings into view previously unobserved connections, ways of understanding things that otherwise may appear with simplistic realism or may be incomprehensible altogether. Because of what it brings into view, thinking in film can be a powerful way of learning how to effectively intervene in realworld situations. For Ilyenkov, this “activity approach” holds the key to understanding much about our world. By drawing on this approach, Ilyenkov articulated an original conception of “the ideal” (immaterial phenomena, such as mathematical truths, concepts, customs, moral imperatives, laws, and so on). Were these phenomena social constructions based entirely on convention or did they have truth-value independent of society? In an influential essay on the ideal published in 1962, he offers an answer that is quite distinct not only from those who understand the ideal as a matter of the brain but also from social constructionists who identify the ideal with the world of human social constructions. In contrast to the latter, the “substantive difference lay in the fact that, for Ilyenkov, ideal phenomena can exist only within the context of human activity” (Guseinov and Lektorsky, 2009, p. 15). In other words, the ideal exists in the materiality of human practice rather than as a separate realm, such as Karl Popper’s World3, for instance (Ilyenkov, 2014). By “thinking in film”, Ilyenkov was able to grasp ideal phenomena neither as social constructions nor as facts independent of society. In contrast, he claimed that “the ideal” appears as a moment in a process. He writes, “The ideal is the outward being of a thing in the phase of it’s becoming in the action of a subject in the form of his wants, needs and aims” (1962, p. 223). The unit of analysis here is the activity, which has both an ideal and a material moment, neither of which can be understood in isolation from that process. In fact, he cautions against both forms of reductionism. “Neopositivists, who identify thought (i.e., the ideal) with language, with a system of terms and expressions, therefore make the same mistake as scientists who identify the ideal with the structures and functions of brain tissue” (2014, p. 68). However, by
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turning to the special reality of human activity, Ilyenkov offers a different way of understanding the nature of the world of ideas. He articulated his thoughts, in part, through debates with his contemporaries, many of whom understood the ideal as a property of the human brain (e.g., Dubrovsky). In contrast to these braincentered approaches, his findings in philosophy lead him to human activity as the key to understanding the world of ideas. For Ilyenkov, the ideal is not a mental projection onto the material world; rather, it is a moment in the activity of human beings. Consequently, the ideal representation of a material object always involves the activity into which that object is incorporated. Since man [sic] is given the external thing in general only insofar as it is involved in the process of his activity, in the final product—in the idea—the image of the thing is always merged with the image of the activity in which this thing functions. That constitutes the epistemological basis of the identification of the thing with the idea, of the real with the ideal. (Ilyenkov, 1962, p. 225)
Ilyenkov illustrates this point with the example of how the stars are idealized as they are incorporated into human activity. However, he is not referring only to parts of the material world that individuals directly transform, but to all matter that society comes “in contact” with. He writes: An ideal image, say of bread, may arise in the imagination of a hungry man or of a baker. In the head of a satiated man occupied with building a house, ideal bread does not arise. But if we take society as a whole, ideal bread, and ideal houses, are always in existence, and any ideal object with which humanity is concerned in the process of production and reproduction of its real, material life. This includes the ideal sky, as an object of astronomy, as a “natural calendar”, a clock, and compass. In consequence of that, all of nature is idealized in humanity and not just that part which it immediately produces or reproduces or consumes in a practical way. (Ilyenkov, 1962, p. 225)
From this perspective, all matter enters individual consciousness already transformed and idealized by previous activity, and this ideal informs the individual’s activity in the present. Consequently, Ilyenkov was interested in the relationship between human activity and human consciousness, and—unlike his contemporaries who
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sought the key to understanding uniquely human forms of consciousness in the human brain—he looked to uniquely human forms of activity.
Awakening to Consciousness We know today that much of what we had previously considered to be uniquely human cognitive capacities are in fact exhibited by other species as well. For instance, recent research demonstrates that some great apes make tools, communicate linguistically, have a culture (acquire behaviors socially), have friends, help others, and even demonstrate the capacity to evaluate each other’s social actions (Tomasello, 2019). Clearly, we are not as unique in terms of exhibiting these capacities as we had once thought. In fact, separately from this, contemporary social theory highlights that many forms of human behavior we typically associate with agency should be reconsidered in relation to networks of technology in which they are embedded (Latour, 2005), or that matter itself is “self-organizing or smart” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 57). Demoting the human in these ways is perhaps warranted, given the legacy of approaches that place humanity as the subject at the center of a world of objects; however, it can also obscure uniquely human forms of consciousness that are nevertheless real. This is particularly relevant now that human capacities have developed to the level of having planetary implications measured in geological time. As geologists have noted, we have entered the Anthropocene—a new epoch of geological time, characterized by the ascendance of humanity as a new primary force affecting the planet (Angus, 2016; Hasse, in this volume; Moore, 2016; Wark, 2015). Given the reality of these new powers that humanity has acquired, there could not be a more urgent time to reflect on the nature of these uniquely human capacities, and Ilyenkov’s work and activity theory more broadly are uniquely positioned to offer insights into how to better address the challenges we currently face. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who looked to the human brain and nervous system in their effort to understand uniquely
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human cognitive capacities, Ilyenkov believed that it was this special reality with its peculiar objectivity that held the key. He claimed that “an individual awakens to conscious life” only within the normative patterns of behavior of a culture. These are the cultural norms, as well as the grammatical-syntactical linguistic norms on which he learned to speak, as well as the “laws of the state” in which he was born, as well as the rules of thinking about the things around him since the world of his childhood, and so on and so forth. He must internalize all of these normative patterns as a special “reality” that is clearly distinct from himself (and from his brain, of course). (Ilyenkov, 2014, p. 30)
Ilyenkov believed that individuals must internalize this special reality in the form of these norms to be able to behave according to its requirements, and that a uniquely human consciousness emerges through that experience. He claimed that individuals awaken to consciousness not because of physiological developments but because of the experience of having to comport themselves according to normative patterns of behavior of their culture. He writes: Consciousness and will become necessary forms of mental activity only where the individual is compelled to control his own organic body in answer not to the organic (natural) demands of this body but to demands presented from outside, by the “rules” accepted by the society in which he was born. It is only in these conditions that the individual is compelled to distinguish himself from his own organic body. These rules are not passed on to him by birth, through his “genes”, but are imposed upon him from outside, dictated by culture, and not by nature. (Ilyenkov, 2014, p. 71)
For Ilyenkov, human consciousness develops in response to the experience of having to control one’s body according to these rules.
Consciousness Forms in Slow Motion Ilyenkov found confirmation of his ideas in the extraordinary achievements of the Soviet psychologist Alexander Meshcheryakov, who developed effective pedagogical strategies in the context of the so-called Zagorsk experiment—his work with a group of pupils at the Zagorsk children’s home for the deaf-blind. One of his
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most heralded success stories was in assisting four deaf-blind children to acquire undergraduate degrees at Moscow State University in 1977—a level of achievement previously unattained (with singular exceptions, like Helen Keller). Meshcheryakov systematized Ivan Sokolyansky’s method of deaf-blind education to enable its application on a mass scale with remarkable real-world results. His book, Awakening to Consciousness (1974), chronicles this work in detail. Proceeding from one of the fundamental propositions of the activity approach—that mental development always occurs intersubjectively or socially first and is subsequently internalized by individuals—he was able to grasp the significance of deaf-blindness as two-fold: children who are born deaf-blind cannot readily have access to both the physical world as well as the social world, i.e., to the social experience necessary for cognitive development. Meshcheryakov devised pedagogical strategies that had the effect of simulating typical social experiences that stimulated mental development, establishing a sense of self and others, as well as a capacity to navigate the social world, or—more accurately—a meaningful (idealized) material world. David Bakhurst, whose work on Ilyenkov remains unparalleled in the English-speaking world, explains in “Ilyenkov, Activity Theory, and Moscow in the 1980s: An Interview with David Bakhurst”: [T]he pedagogue has deliberately to create the conditions in which their mental powers can be activated and cultivated. So the experience of working with blind-deaf children can teach us a lot about the preconditions of human psychological development. Central among them, it transpires, is the child’s initiation into the basic activities of everyday life: learning to eat with a spoon, learning to dress oneself, and so on. Ilyenkov sees this process of “initial humanization” (pervonachal’no ochelevechivanie—it sounds much better in Russian!), not just as a matter of training in basic routine behaviours, but as the child’s entrance into the realm of the ideal: learning to relate to the world as a site of significance and value and building communicative relations to other human beings, so that the child’s environment comes to life as a meaningful world and their activity within it is constantly mediated by ideal phenomena, including the activity of other minded beings. (this volume, p. 52)
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Meshcheryakov recognized that in addition to these considerable practical achievements, this research would enable an exploration of questions “that go beyond the narrow confines of deaf-blindness, such as the formation of… the human mind” (Meshcheryakov, 1974, p.6). Ilyenkov saw in Meshcheryakov’s work a window into how the mind forms in slow motion. Bakhurst explains: The sighted and hearing child is absorbed in so multivarious an environment, and open to so many interwoven influences, that these conditions are greatly obscured. In the case of the blind-deaf child, however, the very possibility of creating the child's mind depends upon deliberately determining and controlling the activities that precipitate internalization. Thus, as Leontiev put it, Meshcheryakov's work creates ‘the conditions in which the key events in the process of the formation of the person and the coming-intobeing (just think of it!) of human consciousness become visible - one wants to say, even touchable, and moreover drawn out in time as if in slow motion - conditions that, as it were, open a window upon the depths of consciousness's hidden nature. (Bakhurst, 1991, pp. 224-5)
This window into the formation of human consciousness confirmed for Ilyenkov that the human mind did not emerge spontaneously from the human brain. “The brain continues to develop according to the program encoded in the genes, in the DNA. However, there emerges not one neurodynamical connection securing mental activity”, he observed (Ilyenkov, 1977, p. 69). He sparred with his proponents in his day of the view that the mind was essentially information encoded in the brain. These were predecessors of the contemporary view that human consciousness lies in the dynamic interactions between neurons that occur in a connectome—a map of all the possible connections between neurons across the nervous system. In contrast, Ilyenkov claimed that human consciousness was in its essence a social phenomenon, and he directed our attention to that special reality of human activity with its peculiar objectivity instead of neurodynamic activity inside our individual bodies. Meshcheryakov demonstrated that deaf-blind children suffered from the absence of social interaction that other children typically experienced, and he established forms of social interaction that were appropriate to their circumstances, resulting in mental development that otherwise remained absent. Without social
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interaction, these children remained in what Ilyenkov observed as a vegetative state, passive and immobile. The image he paints of children who did not have the benefit of Meshcheryakov’s program is disturbing. The mind is not present at all, even in those elementary forms that any higher animal possesses almost from the moment of birth. This is a creature that, as a rule, is immobile and reminds one rather of a plant, of some kind of cactus or ficus, that lives only so long as it is in direct contact with food and water... and dies without uttering a sound if it is forgotten to feed, water, and protect it from the cold. It makes no attempt to reach for food, even if that food is half a meter away from its mouth. It utters not a squeak when it is hungry, will not cover itself from the draught with a warm blanket... It is a human plant in the full sense of the term, completely bereft of mind. It will grow—increase in size—but the mind will still not emerge. Not even the most elementary. (Ilyenkov, 1977, p. 23)
However, Meshcheryakov showed that when deaf-blind children experienced social interaction drawing on their other senses, they would develop similarly to other children. The key was to produce a program that was appropriate to their needs to assist in bringing them out of their isolation from the social world, which he claimed was as indispensable for the mind as the physical structure of neurological connections in our bodies. The claim here is perhaps more radical than it might appear at first glance. The notion that social experience shapes human perception is widely acknowledged in different ways across the social sciences; however, the claim here is that social experience does not only shape perception, but that human consciousness is social from the very beginning. Meshcheryakov’s work confirmed for Ilyenkov what he had argued on the terrain of philosophy, that human consciousness does not emerge spontaneously from the human body, but that individuals awaken to conscious life within a culture, through the experience of appropriating a set of shared practices that are meaningful.
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“Technological Breakthrough” Theory of Mind The activity approach stands in stark contrast to approaches that understand consciousness as information encoded in a neural network. According to such views, an artificial neural network could theoretically perform the same function as a biological one, and the information encoded in a biological network could then perhaps be transferred to an artificial one. This is the basis for a considerable number of stories in contemporary science-fiction popular culture, and even the basis for some real-world business ventures. Ilyenkov would be skeptical of this view since he did not see the mind as reducible to information encoded in a neural network. For him, the mind of an individual presupposes not just a body capable of complex neurological activity, but also a social body with a social consciousness. This social body is not located in an individual’s nervous system; rather, it has an objective existence outside the individual. He writes: [S]ocial consciousness is not simply the individual consciousness repeated many times, just as the social organism in general is not the individual human organism repeated many times, but is, in fact, a historically formed and historically developing system of “objective representations”, forms and patterns of [a] unique intellectual culture, all this being quite independent of the whims of the consciousness or will of individuals. This system comprises all the common moral norms regulating people’s daily life-activity, as well as the legal precepts, the forms of state-political organisation of life, the ritually legitimised patterns of activity in all spheres, the “rules” of life that must be obeyed by all, the strict regulation of the workplace, and so on and so forth, up to and including the grammatical and syntactical structures of speech and language and the logical norms of reasoning. (Ilyenkov, 2014, p. 47)
Individual consciousness, in this sense, presupposes a social consciousness that regulates the actions of individuals, bringing them into congruity with established norms of behaviour. The experience of acquiring this social consciousness, internalizing it, making cultural practices and norms one’s own, is synonymous with awakening to consciousness. However, according to the “technological breakthrough” theory of mind, the assumption is that conscious machines would
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eventually emerge as technology advances to the point of artificially creating neural networks adequate to the task. This may be a long wait, however, as there is no indication that a powerful neural network would ever spontaneously awaken to consciousness. In fact, if Ilyenkov and Meshcheryakov are correct, then it appears that even a typical human brain is not capable of such a feat. Individuals do not appear to develop minds by virtue of developing a human brain. Engaging in social practices that cultivate mental growth appears indispensable.
From Social Speech to Inner Speech Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the social nature of consciousness in this tradition is L. S. Vygotsky’s reflections on the function of speech in children’s development. Vygotsky was of an earlier generation than Ilyenkov and Meshcheryakov. They were of the 60s generation (‘Shestidesyatniki’), while Vygotsky was active in the 1920s and early 1930s. He was a contemporary of stimulusresponse theorists, such as Pavlov, and the founders of Gestalt psychology, such as Wertheimer. He figured prominently in the debates over the direction of Soviet psychology in the early years of the revolution and today he is by far the best-known figure associated with this approach. However, his ideas come to us by means of a precarious thread. In 1934 he died of tuberculosis at the young age of only 37. His work was blacklisted in the Soviet Union for 20 years following the Central Committee’s 1936 resolution against pedology (the study of children’s behavior and development) (Bakhurst, 1991, p. 60), and by the end of the war his legacy was “virtually eradicated” (Blunden, 2010, p. 6). This may well have been the case had it not been for the persistence of his students and collaborators, A. N. Leontiev and A. R. Luria, who contributed to a resurgence of the activity approach in Soviet scholarship during the thaw of the late 1950s (Blunden, 2010). Both Aleksey Leontiev and Alexander Luria took Vygotsky’s ideas in new directions (more on that below), and in the 1960s and 70s Vygotsky became available for the first time in
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English translation, largely due to the efforts of the American psychologist Michael Cole, who went to Moscow on an exchange and studied with Luria in 1962. He became aware of Vygotsky’s work and recognized the need for its translation into English. In 1978, Mind and Society was published, and it included an English translation of Vygotsky’s 1930 unpublished text “Tool and Symbol in Children’s Development”. In this book, Vygotsky sought to understand the “uniquely human aspects of behavior, and to offer hypotheses about the way these traits have been formed in the course of human history and the way they develop over an individual's lifetime.” The main findings of this research focus on the significance of the acquisition of speech as a qualitative leap in the development of the uniquely human aspects of behavior, or what he called “higher functions”. He drew on research from problem-solving experiments that noted how children with speech demonstrated capacities that children without speech and apes lacked. Clearly, children without speech, as well as apes, exhibited mental capacities; however, the way they approached problem-solving exercises revealed that children with speech possessed unique forms of consciousness that the others lacked. For instance, children with speech were able to master their surroundings less impulsively, often drawing on stimuli outside of their immediate visual field. They also appeared to use their ability to speak as they problem-solved, and he noted that children in the early stages of speech would freeze-up when not permitted to babble when they problem-solved. In essence, children with speech displayed a qualitative leap in behaviour as they were able to draw on something unavailable to the apes and to the children without speech. Vygotsky explained: The system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement. […] This development represents a fundamental break with the natural history of behaviour and initiates the transition from the primitive behaviour of animals to the higher intellectual activity of humans. (1978, p. 35)
The acquisition of speech signals the development of capacities that we typically associate with human consciousness.
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Speech, along with the mental development it implies, is understood to come from outside the individual, as opposed to developments in their body. It is literally acquired. Vygotsky called this process “internalization”, which he defined as the “internal reconstruction of an external operation” (p. 56). In acquiring speech through “the internalization of social speech”, children also acquire an internal dialogue, an inner speech. He used the example of pointing to illustrate this acquisition of speech as internalization. The event consists of a child who is reaching for something too far away to grasp, and a helpful adult observes the child’s effort and brings the object to them. After the child experiences several times that their attempts to grasp the desired object result in the adult bringing the object to them, their attempt at grasping becomes half-hearted and increasingly intended as a gesture for the observing adult rather than a genuine attempt to grasp the object. Vygotsky observes: “At this juncture there occurs a change in that movement's function: from an object-oriented movement it becomes a movement aimed at another person, a means of establishing relations. The grasping movement changes to the act of pointing” (p. 56). The interaction between the grasping child and the moreknowledgeable adult results in a qualitative leap in mental growth as the child internalizes this external operation, extending the horizon of their mental world. The example of pointing illustrates Vygotsky’s claim that higher mental functions emerge not from the brain or body of an individual but from the territory between individuals—social experiences that cultivate mental growth and that we cannot see using freeze-frame thinking. On the basis of these findings, Vygotsky drew his well-known conclusion: Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals. (p. 57)
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This is a radical proposition that stands in contrast to dominant approaches today, which typically associate the achievements of the human mind with the unique qualities of the human brain. Alternatively, Vygotsky claims that mental development occurs intersubjectively, and is subsequently internalized by individuals who are always embedded in normative patterns of activity that are indispensable for an individual to awaken to consciousness. Vygotsky’s work brings into sharp relief the limits of the technological breakthrough theory of mind. In fact, considering his work from decades ago, it appears quite clear that expecting a robot to develop consciousness due to a technological breakthrough would be akin to expecting a child to spontaneously develop consciousness with age. It is a situation reminiscent of the old Star Trek episode discussed above, with one appearing much like Kirk and his crew before they become aware of the presence of the Scalosians in the same space they inhabit, whose activity is responsible for the strange events they see around them. In the absence of seeing the patterns of activity that the child appropriates, mental development appears to take place all by itself. Illuminating the special reality of human activity, with its peculiar objectivity, can be empowering, as it can explain connections between observable phenomena that otherwise remain obscured. The scope of possible research is vast. Vygotsky was aware of its potential. He wrote, “the internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology. As yet, the barest outline of this process is known” (p. 57). Today, almost 100 years later, the activity approach has developed in directions entirely unforeseen by Vygotsky.
Researching the World of Activity Some of this work became available in English for the first time in the 1960s and 70s, inspiring a new generation of theorists outside the Soviet Union in different contexts with different concerns to deploy and develop the activity approach in new directions. In 1962,
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a 24-year-old American psychology student named Michael Cole went to Moscow on a student exchange where he met and studied with Alexander Luria, Vygotsky’s student and collaborator. He was one of the first Americans to take on the task of translating this material into English. He went on to head the Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) at the University of California in San Diego, the premier research center for activity theory in the US, and where the journal Mind, Culture and Activity is housed. The following year, Cole went to Liberia to assist the local government with improving the performance of children in mathematics. Building on Luria’s earlier research in Uzbekistan, which focused on the importance of context in cross-cultural psychology, Cole was able to note something that had eluded other researchers. The Kpelle children in Liberia were performing poorly not due to a lack of skill, but due to the way their performance was being measured. Specifically, when the children faced tasks that were found in their culture, even complicated ones, and if they were also able to use artifacts that were indigenous to their culture, they performed remarkably well—better than their American counterparts, who outperformed them in tests used for American children. This research demonstrates some of the difficulties associated with measuring performance, even in a field apparently as clear-cut as mathematics. It also illustrates the power of the activity approach: by focusing on the special reality of their world of activity, the activity patterns they exhibited, such as complex financial exchanges in their markets, for example, Cole was able to recognize an intelligence among the Kpelle children that others had missed. Building on this research, he developed approaches to education that proved to be effective in real-world situations, including an intervention in the education system in his state of California, beginning in the 1980s with the Fifth Dimension afterschool center. Cole’s work serves as a crucial bridge between activity theory in the Soviet Union and its development in the West, and it contributed to the development of a distinct current of thought within the broad tent of activity theory rooted in the legacy of Luria. (See the interview with Michael Cole: “Encountering Cultural Historical Psychology and Activity Theory” in this volume.)
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Additionally, Cole is a central proponent of what came to be known as Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). CHAT is the most well-known expression of the activity approach outside of the former Soviet Union. Its usage begins in the 1990s (Blunden, 2010, p. 3); however, it traces its lineage to the Soviet founders of the activity approach, and it offers a particular way of reading that body of work. Yrjö Engeström’s ground-breaking book, Learning by Expanding (1987), is foundational in charting this direction. Working in Finland in the 1980s, Engeström made a theoretical intervention by recasting the main contributions of Vygotsky and Leontiev, as first- and second-generation versions of activity theory, and positing a third generation that offered a new method of researching the world of activity. This method has been widely used in multiple fields across the social sciences and has demonstrated some of the breadth of the potential of this tradition. Engeström and his colleagues at the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE) at the University of Helsinki have placed CHAT on the map of world scholarship, in part due to its remarkable breadth of application in real-world situations. Through their work, activity theory has been retooled to analyze complex organizations and to make practical interventions to promote innovation and learning. Engeström’s method appears with considerable nuance and complexity in Learning by Expanding. One of the most cited aspects is a way of visualizing patterns of activity in which individuals are situated using a diagram of triangles. These activities are mapped as systems of activity. Brecht De Smet (who has a chapter in this volume) succinctly defines an activity system as follows: “a coherent but often contradictory system comprising rules, relations, and divisions of labour which organize the subject’s actions and relations toward (a) their object, (b) co-participants in the activity, and (c) other agents who are engaged in separate and distinct activities that are oriented toward the same object” (De Smet, 2012, p. 140). This approach has resonated strongly with researchers who reject the individual as the primary unit of analysis, and who instead seek to understand individuals as inextricably embedded in their cultural context.
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What is particularly interesting here is that the unit of analysis is not simply broadened to include the larger community; rather, it grasps a moment in time. The basic unit is not the individual embedded in a community, but in an activity. For instance, recall the example of pointing that we examined above. Vygotsky maintained that the action of pointing signaled a qualitatively new type of behaviour. In the shift from grasping to pointing, the child demonstrated mental and behavioural complexity beyond simple stimulus-response, as when they sought to grasp the object prior to their acquisition of an understanding of pointing. The gesture of pointing serves as a mediating artifact that alters the child’s behaviour. Once they acquire the capacity to point, they no longer continue to grasp the object. The response changes from grasping to pointing due to the mediation of this new artifact that the child now possesses. Vygotsky writes: Consequently, the simple stimulus-response process is replaced by a complex, mediated act, which we picture as:
Figure 1: Vygotsky’s auxiliary stimulus In this new process, the direct impulse to react is inhibited, and an auxiliary stimulus that facilitates the completion of the operation by indirect means is incorporated. Because this auxiliary stimulus possesses the specific function of reverse action, it transfers the psychological operation to higher and qualitatively new forms and permits humans, by the aid of extrinsic stimuli, to control their behavior from the outside. The use of signs leads humans to a specific structure of behavior that breaks away from biological development and creates new forms of a culturally-based psychological process. (1978, p. 40)
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For Engeström, this diagram represents the basis for the firstgeneration model of activity. He builds on this visual representation of an individual’s action by seeking to include the larger context in which it takes place. He draws on Leontiev’s work, which is cast as the second-generation of activity theory. Leontiev was a student and collaborator of Vygotsky who went on to become a major figure in Soviet psychology in the postwar period. His book, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (1978), articulates many of the key ideas that characterize second-generation activity theory. Leontiev sought to look beyond the actions of individuals and to examine the larger social activities in which he believed they were inextricably embedded. He argued that activities were an indivisible unit, what he called a “unit of life”. He writes, Activity is a non-additive unit of the corporeal, material life of the material subject. In the narrower sense, i.e., on the psychological plane, it is a unit of life, mediated by mental reflection, by an image, whose real function is to orient the subject in the objective world. (Leontiev, 1978, p. 3).
This unit of life held the key to understanding the actions of individuals that comprised the activity. For Leontiev, the purpose of an activity is the actual motivation behind the actions of individuals, which he grasped as elements in a larger division of labour. He calls this purpose the “object” of the activity and claims that all activity is object-oriented, and that the object is the “true motive” of the activity. “The basic ‘components’ of separate human activities are the actions that realize them”, he explains (1978, p. 6). Individuals who contribute to the activity through their actions may or may not be aware of the motive. In their minds, they may be motivated by something else altogether, unaware of the true motive force behind their actions (the activities in which their actions are situated and without which they would not exist). Leontiev uses the example of a hunt, where the activity of hunting consists of two groups: a group whose goal is to chase the animal toward the second group whose goal is to wait until the animal is chased toward them and to kill the animal. The activity is motivated by the objective of acquiring food. However, each group