From habituality to change: Contribution of activity theory and
pragmatism to practice theories
Reijo Miettinen, Sami Paavola & Pasi Pohjola
A draft of a paper accepted for publication in Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour.
Abstract
The new social theories of practice have been inspired by Wittgenstein’s late
philosophy, phenomenology and more recent sociological theories. They regard
embodied skills and routinized, mostly unconscious habits as a key foundation
of human practice and knowledge. This position leads to an overstatement of
the significance of the habitual dimension of practice. As several critics have
suggested this approach omits the problems of transformative agency and
change of practices. In turn classical practice theories, activity theory and
pragmatism have analyzed the mechanisms of change. Pragmatism suggests
that a crisis of a habit calls for reflection. Through working hypotheses and
experimentation this leads to a transformation of a practice. Activity theory
introduced the concept of remediation. A collective elaboration of shared
mediational artefacts is needed to transform an activity.
Introduction
The concept of social practice has been widely used in sociology and
organisational studies to the point that many scholars have started to speak
about the practice turn in social theory (e.g. Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Von
Savigny, 2001; Reckwitz, 2002a; Stern, 2003). It is difficult to characterize this
turn when there are so many partially overlapping, yet different approaches
associated with it. Nevertheless, the term practice theory is largely identified
with a group of sociologists and philosophers in the late twentieth century who
either presented a fully fleshed-out theory of practice or who at least found
practice to be an important concept in their work. Bourdieu (1977), Giddens
2
(1984) and ethnomethodologists are often mentioned as social theorists, and
Heidegger along with Wittgenstein in his later works are the philosophers cited
as establishing the background for the new practice theory (see e.g. Schatzki,
2001, p. 1; Reckwitz 2002a, pp. 243-244; Turner, 2007, p. 111; Rouse, 2007, p.
501; Schmidt, & Volbers 2011, p. 19). Latour and other actor-network theorists
are also often mentioned (e.g. Reckwitz, 2002a; Schmidt & Volbers, 2011), as
is Foucault. Actor-network theory emerged from constructivist science and
technology studies, which examined laboratory and scientific practices
(Pickering, 1992) and also led to theoretical accounts of the concept of practice
(Pickering, 1995; Rouse, 1996).
Practice-based approaches were widely adopted in organisational
studies in the 1990s, especially in organisational learning and knowledge
management (Blackler, 1993; Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003; Brown &
Duguid 2001). Since the 1990s several approaches have been developed to
study strategy as practice instead of analysing strategy as rational decisionmaking
or
planning
(Whittington,
1996;
Samra-Fredericks,
2003,
Jarzabkowski, 2005). In organisational studies Schatzki’s (1996) and
Reckwitz’s (2002a) understanding of practice theory are widely cited and used.
That is why we will refer to the interpretations of those two scholars.
We will suggest that an important shared feature of the new practice
theories is their emphasis on habituality of practice, that is, the recognition of
the primacy of pre-reflective embodied actions in contrast of individual
rationality and conscious reflection. We suggest that this position makes it
difficult for these theories to make sense of the change of human practices. In
contrast, the classical practice theories, pragmatism and cultural-historical
3
activity theory – a heir the of dialectical tradition – focused from the beginning
to explain the change and development in human practices. They focus on how
people can influence such changes when emerging problems or contradictions
in practices are faced (Miettinen, 2006).
Cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki,
1999) and sociocultural approaches (Chaiklin & Lave, 1993) have their roots in
the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his followers, who
took up Hegel’s and Marx’s concept of work as an important starting point.
Work is here understood as a prototype of creative activity mediated by tools
and cultural artefacts and as a process in which humans simultaneously create
both themselves and their material culture. In pragmatism, the crisis of
established habits requires reflection of the condition of activity and the
formation of a working hypothesis for the experimentation of a new way of
acting. Both activity theory and pragmatism regard intervention and
experimentation as a means of influencing the direction of the change, and both
have developed methods of doing just that. Activity theory in particular, based
on the concept of mediation by cultural artefacts, has developed a vocabulary
for dealing with the materiality of human practice.
In this paper we will proceed as follows. Firstly, we will discuss some
of the differences between the classical and a selection of new postmodern
theories of practice. Secondly, we will discuss the problem of habituality of
practice and its consequences for making sense of the change of activities.
Thirdly we will analyse the idea of reflection as a mechanism of transforming
habits. Fourthly we will bring forth theories of artefacts in practice theories. We
maintain that the transformation of artefacts or remediation, that is, collective
4
elaboration of shared meditational artefacts – suggested by the activity theory –
is an essential part of the transformation of practices. In addition we suggest
that an analysis is needed of the various functions that different artefacts play in
activity.
Bringing back the classical practice theories
The concept of practice, or praxis, is not, of course, new, either in philosophy
or in the social sciences. The first generation of practice theorising took place
in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The ideas of this
generation were summarised by the philosopher Richard Bernstein (1971) in
his Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies of human activity. Bernstein
distinguished four philosophical approaches to practice. The first approach is
the Hegelian tradition followed by Marx’s thesis on Feuerbach, in which Marx
finds the solution to the dualist opposition between idealism and materialism in
the concept of practice or objective activity. The second approach Bernstein
discusses is Charles Peirce’s and John Dewey’s pragmatist theories of practice,
based on the concepts of habit, inquiry and interaction between the human body
and its environment. Thirdly he addresses the concepts of practice in
existentialism discussed by such post-war authors as Jean-Paul Sartre, and
fourthly the concept in analytical philosophy.
As David Stern (2003, p. 188) points out, most of the accounts of the
practice turn and theorizing do not refer, or refer only in passing, to these
classical philosophical antecedents of the practice concept. The philosophical
roots of the new practice theories are found in the works of Heidegger and
5
Wittgenstein. Current practice approach could also be characterized as
postmodern practice theory, since it is a “response to failures of projects of
modernity or enlightenment” (Turner 2007, p. 110).
We, in turn, find Bernstein’s (1971) distinction among his four
philosophical approaches to praxis and action still relevant for depicting the
differences and similarities among philosophical concepts of practice. Each of
the philosophical traditions provide different basic concepts to make sense of
practice or activity. Activity theory, an heir to Hegel and Marx, emphasises
cultural (artefact) mediation and the object-orientedness of activity (Vygotsky,
1978; Leont’ev, 1978). Pragmatism deals with habits and their transformation
through reflection and inquiry (Dewey, 1929/1988). Critical realism and its
theories of transformational human activity and intentional agency continue the
analytical tradition today (Bhaskar, 1986; Archer, 2000).
Phenomenology adopts from Heidegger (1962/2003) the idea of
preconscious background knowledge. This background knowledge is often
analysed in the way inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945/2003) as
embodied knowledge, that is, in the forms of bodily skills and dispositions.
This idea resembles Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus and also resonates
with the idea of tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1957/2002). Ethnomethodology, a
sociological approach that emerged from phenomenology, highlights the
following of tacit rules.
Current discussion on practice theories emphasises phenomenologically
inspired interpretations of practices as well as sociological approaches to
habitus or routinized activities. In this paper we discuss Bhaskar’s
transformational model of social activity and Lawson’s theory of artefacts as
6
versions of critical realism that contribute to the problem of change of
practices. They are critical to the concept of habituality and deal with the
problems of agency and role of artefacts in change of practices.
Two first traditions analyzed by Bernstein, namely dialectical tradition
– represented today by activity theory – and pragmatism are far less often used
in these interpretations than are the phenomenologically influenced approaches,
although new practice theories have absorbed influences from many directions
(Schatzki, 2001; Reckwitz, 2002a). If a single unifying feature of the current
approach to practice should be named, then habituality – the primacy of
routinized,
prereflective,
and/or
unconscious,
embodied
actions
and
dispositions to actions in contrast to individual rationality and reflection –
would be a good candidate.
Many distinguished observers, however, have pointed out that a habitual
concept of practice has difficulties in making sense of the change in practices or
of the contribution of individual agency to the process of change (Emirbayer, &
Mische, 1998; Knorr-Cetina, 2001; Shusterman, 2008). Emirbayer and Mische
(1998, p. 983) observe that such theorists as Bourdieu and Giddens focus on
low-level reflectivity and “do not show us how schemes of action can be
challenged, reconsidered, and reformulated.” They (Emirbayer, & Mische, p.
1006) find it important to create circumstances that “provoke or facilitate”
human actors to gain imaginative distance from iterative, habitual responses,
“thereby reformulating past patterns through the projection of alternative future
trajectories.” Richard Shusterman (2008) finds that the reflective level of
somatic consciousness helps to (Shusterman, p. 74) "acquire better means to
correct inadequacies of our unreflective bodily habits." Karin Knorr-Cetina
7
(2001, p. 175) states that a habitual concept of practice is insufficient for
making sense of what she calls knowledge-centered activities. The
transformation of practices is emphasized also by critical realism (Bhaskar,
1986).
As suggested above, the first two traditions introduced by Bernstein,
namely the dialectical tradition (the Hegelian/Marxist) and the pragmatist
tradition, can be characterized as classical or modernist theories of practice, and
they share many ideas with each other (Miettinen, Samra-Fredericks, & Yanow,
2009). The pragmatist concept of habit also has a family relationship to the
concepts of habitus and dispositions, which are important for the new social
theories of practice. However, both pragmatism and activity theory find
reflection, inquiry and thought – rather than practical coping – instrumental for
agency and for the transformation of practices. The social theories of practice
inspired by phenomenology regard the concept of embodied skills and their
unconscious adaptation to new situations as central to understanding human
practice and give reflection and thought only secondary significance in human
activity. On the other hand, without a concept of an artefact, reflection is easily
transformed into individual thought, or into a formation of collectively shared
ideas lacking contact with the materiality of human activity.
Habituality, practical understanding and change of practices
The ideas of habituality and the primacy of unconscious, embodied actions also
call for a redefinition of knowledge and its role in human practices. According
to Theodor Schatzki (2002), the new concept of knowledge opposes
8
representational accounts of knowledge and meaning. The integrative
foundation of doings and sayings in Schatzki’s theory of practice is “practical
understanding.” Schatzki defines practical understanding by referring to
another set of concepts developed by practice theorists:
Examples of what I have in mind are Bourdieu’s habitus, otherwise called
practical sense (“having a feeling for a game”), and Giddens’s practical
consciousness (“tacitly grasping a rule”), both conceptualizations [sic] the
phenomenon of knowing how to go on highlighted in Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Investigations. Habitus and practical consciousness are
alleged either always (Bourdieu) or often (Giddens) alleged to determine
what people on particular occasions do. As a result, these phenomena also
allegedly provide explanations of the particular actions involved.
(Schatzki, 2002, p. 78-79.)
All of these concepts refer to skills, dispositions, pre-discursive rules and
schemes of action that underlie activity. These dispositions are the primary
forms of knowledge, and they are mostly unconscious and/or pre-reflective. In
this vein the philosophical (ontological) thesis of the primacy of practical,
bodily interaction with the environment in relation to knowledge is extended to
a theory of knowledge. The phenomenological position was well articulated by
Spinosa, Flores, & Dreyfus (1997):
Writers such as Henry Mintzberg and Robert Solomon, like us, think that
skills are more important than theory when it comes to dealing with the
real world. We go beyond these thinkers in that we claim, first, that the
skills that form the background for dealing with people, things, and selves
contain an understanding of what it is to be anything at all and that taking
up such practices gives one an identity and so gives one’s life meaning
…. (Spinosa, Flores, & Dreyfus, p. 191)
Also, for the ethnomethodologists the attempts to reflect consciously and
discursively the forms of activity, that is, formulations of activity, are mostly
about legitimating actions, which already by themselves exhibit orderly
9
structure and rationality (Lynch, 1995).
Karin Knorr-Cetina (2001, p. 175) has presented an explicit sociological
critique of a habitus-, skill- and rule-based understanding of practice. In her
view, research work and more generally professional work cannot be explained
in terms of routine procedures. That is why she opts for the notion of practice,
which is more dynamic and includes the potential for change. The challenge is
“to dissociate the notion of practice somewhat from its fixation on human
dispositions and habits, and from the connotation of iterative procedural
routines” (Knorr-Cetina, 2001, p. 187). Knorr-Cetina thinks that, in a
contemporary knowledge society, we need to understand the changes taking
place in the knowledge processes themselves. To make sense of these we have
to study their objectual relationships, the relationship of professionals to the
objects of their work and practice. The objects themselves are changing in a
‘knowledge society’. Compared with mass products or services, these objects
are ever more complex, dispersed and in constant need of being redefined and
reconstructed. This is why they can be characterized in terms of open,
constantly unfolding epistemic objects or knowledge objects.
The lack in completeness of being is crucial: objects of knowledge in
many fields have material instantiations, but they must simultaneously be
conceived of as unfolding structures of absences: as things that
continually ‘explode’ and ‘mutate’ into something else, and that are as
much defined by what they are not …than by what they are. (KnorrCetina, 2001, p. 182)
According to Knorr-Cetina (2001), for understanding epistemic practice, the
process of object-subject differentiation is crucial. She argues that Heidegger’s
concept of instrumental being-in-the-world deals primarily with the
10
unselfconscious, but nonetheless goal-directed employment of a ready-to-hand
equipment. In such a being-in-the-world the equipment becomes transparent or
invisible, and a subject does not think of him/herself as separate from the
immediate activity. This is an adequate description of routine or habitual
practice, even in research work. However, when such a practice becomes
problematic, the undifferentiated unity is dissociated from a subject-object
relationship in which the properties of the object become an object of knowing
and transformation. In this relationship researchers actively search for and use
resources to overcome the subject-object separation.
Knorr-Cetina’s critique focuses on the change in the interaction between
human subjects and increasingly complex objects. She, however, does not
discuss the means of this interaction. The concept of mediation in activity
theory underlines the interactive development of subject, cultural means and an
object. A follower of Vygotsky, A.N. Leont’ev developed the idea of an
objective, mediated structure of the human activity system. Human activity is
object-oriented: “Activity necessarily enters into practical contact with objects
that confront man, that divert it, change it, or enrich it” (Leont’ev, 1978, p. 56).
The object of an activity, something to be transformed by the activity into a
use-value, is a driving force behind the activity. The object of an activity is
material, as well as simultaneously imagined and projected. Its formation and
realisation take place by using a set of relevant mediational artefacts. When an
object changes the means also need to be transformed. For example, the
medical tools and procedures developed for treating infectious diseases do not
on their own help in the treatment of diabetes or coronary diseases. The means
need to be redesigned to meet the demands of the changed object by
11
remediation. An object of activity turns into a means: a product designed and
fabricated becomes a tool for use in another activity. The changing
interrelationship between objects of activity and the means of their realisation is
an important way to make sense of the materiality of human practice.
Breakdown of habits and reflection as explanations of transformation
Most of the philosophical approaches to practice, phenomenology and
Deweyan pragmatism, as well as activity theory agree that the bodily
interaction of individuals with the material and social environment is primary to
cognition and thought. All of them recognize (at least to some extent) that
reflection, thought and future orientation are needed when established ways of
doing things (ready-to-hand, habits, routine operations) break down, and novel
solutions are needed (Koschmann, Kuutti, & Hickman, 1998). However, these
phenomena are given different kinds of status in different approaches. While
Heidegger
regarded
pre-reflective
and
pre-linguistic
knowledge
(philosophically) primary, he also focused on pre-linguistic forms of coping,
leaving breakdowns as well as the processes and means of solving them largely
out of his analysis.
For pragmatism, the breakdown of established habits and the
disequilibrium of a situation constitute the starting point for reflection. Peirce
(1992-98) introduced abductive reasoning as a special process whereby people
confront unexpected phenomena, search for clues and form new candidate
hypotheses for solving a problematic situation (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005).
Similarly, in Dewey’s theory, habit and inquiry are inseparable. To transform a
situation, a working hypothesis is formulated and then tested in practice. The
12
central issue for Dewey was whether an authority-bound and routine way of
acting could be replaced in a reconstructive and reflective way. Dewey’s model
of enquiry and reflective action can be depicted in six phases (Figure 1, based
on Dewey 1933/1986, pp. 199-208 and 1938/1991, pp. 105-122.).
Idea,
concept
Solution of the problem
and control of the action
5. Testing the hypothesis
in action
1. Disturbance and uncertainty:
habit does not work
4. Reasoning
2. Intellectualization and
definition of the problem
3. Studying the conditions of
the situation and formation
of a working hypothesis
Figure 1. Dewey's model of reflective thought and action. The graphic
presentation is taken from Miettinen (2000, p. 65).
When an established habit no longer functions an uncertainty and a crisis
emerge and call for reflective thought and investigation of the situation (phase
1). The process of reflective thought starts with an attempt to define what is
wrong in the situation (phase 2). The actor forms a tentative conception of the
difficulty and defines the problem (Dewey, 1938/1991, p. 112):
13
Without a problem, there is blind groping in the dark. The way in which
the problem is conceived decides what specific suggestions are
entertained and which are dismissed; what data are selected and which
rejected; it is the criterion for relevancy and irrelevancy of hypotheses
and conceptual structures.
The analysis and diagnosis of the conditions take place in phase 3. The
conditions include both material and social conditions including the means and
resources with which the problem is supposed to be solved. The presupposition
of a possible solution is called a working hypothesis. A working hypothesis can
also be characterised as a guiding idea or a plan. Reasoning (phase 4) is
composed of the elaboration of the meaning of ideas in relation to each other.
Through reasoning, thought experiments can be done. In phase 5 the working
hypothesis is tested by trying to implement it in practice, by reconstructing a
situation or an institutionalized way of acting. Dewey says that only the
practical testing of the hypothesis in material activity makes it possible to draw
conclusions about its validity (Dewey, 1916/1985, p. 328):
Upon this view, thinking, or knowledge-getting, is far from being the
armchair thing it is often supposed to be. (...) Hands and feet, apparatus
and appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it as changes in the brain
(…) Thinking is mental, not because of a peculiar stuff which enters into
it or of peculiar non-natural activities which constitute it, but because of
what physical acts and appliances do: the distinctive purpose for which
they are employed and the distinctive results which they accomplish.
Although Dewey recognized the significance of tools and the dependency of an
aim on the relevant means, curiously, tools are not included in his theory of
inquiry. The only artefact mentioned in his cycle is a working hypothesis. Since
tools and artefacts are included in habits, it would be natural to assume that the
14
acquisition of new tools or the transformation of old ones is needed in order to
experiment and change the situation or a practice.
In Bhaskar’s transformational model of social activity (TMSA)
representing critical realism people reproduce or transform existing social
structures. Transformativity is part of a social ontology that provides solutions
to several mistaken dualisms prevailing in social theory (Bhaskar, 1986, p.
125): “the ontological errors of voluntarism and reification, the constitutive
ones of individualism and collectivism and the epistemic ones of
methodological individualism and social determinism.” Human activity is
dependent on the materials, such as the means, media, resources and rules that
it transforms. In characterizing the reflexivity of an intentional agent, Bhaskar
(p. 128) resorts to psychological terminology: feelings, desires, want, practical
skills, unconscious rules and rationalisations play a role in the process. An
agent reproduces or transforms structures mostly in an unconscious and
unmotivated way, although rational action is also possible (Bhaskar, p. 133).
Artefacts are missing in Bhaskar’s account, although his model comes close to
acknowledging them by emphasizing “human activity or praxis as essentially
transformative or poietic, as consisting in the transformation of pre-given
material (natural and social) causes by efficient (intentional) human agency”
(Bhaskar, p. 122).
The theory of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987), a recent version of
activity theory, has made sense of the process of reflection in terms of
collective remediation. This process first traces the historically-formed
contradictions of an activity that causes disturbances, problems or breakdowns.
A working hypothesis for a more advanced form of the activity or a zone of
15
proximal development is formed and is expected to resolve the contradictions.
The process includes the modeling of the instruments for the projected new
activity.
In activity theory the idea of theoretical concepts as a means of
envisioning the future is inspired by Vygotsky’s work on concept formation
and by V.V. Davydov’s theory of generalisation and theoretical thinking in
education (1977). In this methodology a theoretical concept also assumes the
form of a germ cell, which refers to a new instrumentality and a corresponding
form of action that is developed as a solution to the contradictions of an
activity. The implementation and development of the germ cell may lead to the
emergence of a new form of activity (Engeström, Engeström, & Kerosuo,
2003). The reflection includes both concepts of and models for an alternative
activity and the development of new tools and instrumentalities with which to
experiment and develop the alternative (Miettinen & Virkkunen, 2005).
Accordingly, the activity-theoretical approach regards retooling, that is, the
shared creation of artefacts used, as a key of changing practices (Vygotsky,
1986).
Introducing mediating artefacts
Recently there have been several attempts to clarify the fundamental role of
artefacts in the change of activities and in the formation of agency. The
sociologist Ian Burkitt calls cultural artefacts a prosthetic extension of the body
and has emphasised how the human body and its capabilities are re-formed by
cultural artefacts. He regards them as the basic units of cultural development
16
instead of “memes” (Burkitt, 1999, p. 12). In his theory of the evolution of
human consciousness the psychologist Merlin Donald has convincingly
suggested that modern human consciousness cannot be explained as the result
of biological evolution alone. Instead, the key is the external memory or the
externalisation of memory (Donald, 2001, p. 262): “modern humans can
employ a huge number of powerful external symbolic devices to store and
retrieve cultural knowledge.”
Bruno Latour has analysed the ways in which mankind (humanity)
“delegates” tasks and norms to artefacts (Latour, 1992). As a result, technical
artefacts have a script, an affordance, a function or a programme of action and
goals (Latour, 1994). Human agency is here distributed between men and
artefacts. This has been demonstrated in the empirical research conducted by
Edwin Hutchins (1995), as well as in other investigations into distributed
cognition (Goodwin, 1995). In these approaches, instead of working via
cognitive processes in the head or in bodily schemes, human capabilities are
preserved and transmitted, first of all, through the artefacts and the ways in
which the artefacts are used. Where this is the case, a theory of artefacts,
including representational artefacts, is needed to understand the dynamics of
the change in practices.
Critical realist Clive Lawson (2007; 2010) has developed a theory of
technological objects as an extension of human capabilities, and he provides a
review of the extension theories. Electronic media can be understood as
extensions of the information-processing functions of the nervous system.
Radio, for example, is a long-distance ear. Lawson’s theory of technological
objects as extensions of human capability is based on Roy Bhaskar’s critical
17
realism and his transformational model of social activity. Lawson likewise
underlines that human activity harnesses the causal powers or intrinsic
properties of material artefacts. Technologies are relational: an artefact is
interconnected with networks of social and technical interdependencies, which
can be typified according to their functions in human activity.
Lawson makes a distinction between different kinds of artefacts by
means of the different kinds of causal powers within them (Lawson, 2007).
Some artefacts (typically technical objects) derive their causal powers from
their physical structure (a photocopier, for instance); other artefacts attain
power more from their social relations and conventions (for example, a
passport). Lawson’s discussion raises the key question of the interrelationships
of technologies – understood as tools and equipment – with semiotic means in
human activities, although he himself does not draw a distinction between tools
and symbolic or semiotic artefacts.
In activity theory and in the dialectical tradition (Ilyenkov, 1977b;
Lektorsky, 1980) the objectification of activity into artefacts is emphasized as a
key mechanism in the development of culture. A human being creates
him/herself in the process of changing a part of the world and a culture, with a
corresponding transformation of the mediational means. Human activity is
objectified into cultural artefacts (Ilyenkov, 1977a, Lektorsky, 1980). The
embodiment of forms of human activity within artefacts is the primary means
of learning and transmitting human achievement wherein the role of individual
agents is also important. “All forms of activity (active faculties) are passed on
only in the form of objects created by man for man” (Ilyenkov, 1977b, p. 277).
This insight goes back to Hegel, who suggested that the “spirit” develops
18
through its objectifications into material forms, such as artefacts. Vladislav
Lektorsky (1980, p. 137) finds that norms, procedures and knowledge are
embodied in artefacts: “The instrumental man-made objects function as
objective forms of expression of cognitive norms, standards and objecthypotheses existing outside the individual.”
Vygotsky (1978) made the distinction between two basic types of
mediational means, tools and signs. Although tools and signs are both cultural
means, they differ in the way that they orientate an activity. Tools are
externally orientated and are used to transform objects. Signs are used to
coordinate the actions of individuals in a collaborative activity. Signs are also
used as psychological tools, that is, to direct and control an individual’s
behaviours and actions. In his Thought and Language (1986) Vygotsky showed
that this function develops through the internalisation of language, first into
internal speech and then into individual thought. Although he made a
distinction between tools and signs, Vygotsky emphasized that the
interpenetration of these two types of artefacts is the foundation of specifically
human activity (1978, p. 24): “Although practical intelligence and sign use can
operate independently of each other in young children, the dialectical unity of
these systems in the human adult is the very essence of complex human
behaviour.”
Towards a theory of change
Pragmatism and activity theory differ from the recent social theories of
practice. Social practice theories have been developed in the context of
theoretical sociology and in social theory. They are often developed and used to
19
clarify a social ontology, to explain social order and to provide a solution to the
perennial problems of sociology, such as the relationship between structure and
agency. In such a theoretical context the discussion of agency is easily seen as a
remnant of methodological individualism. Many practice theorists suggest coevolutionary, reciprocal, relational, transactive or dialectical views and a
mutual constitution of self, practices and structures. These suggestions do not
supply accounts of the mechanisms by which individuals or collaborative
agents contribute to the reconstruction of structures, artefacts, practices or
institutions. The transactional approaches tend to suffer, as activity theorists
Anna Stetsenko and Arievich (2004, p. 479) point out, from “a curious form of
a ‘reductionism upwards’ … whereby the self is dissolved in the collective
dynamics of social processes.”
By contrast, cultural-historical and Deweyan pragmatist traditions were
developed in close connection with developmental psychology or educational
studies. That is why they supply articulated theories of learning and human
thinking. Although these traditions recognise the primacy of practice and the
social origins of the self, they also have viable concepts of relating individual
thought and reflection and change in practices to each other. Dewey’s concept
of reflective thought as a reconstruction of broken habits is an example of such
an articulation.
The distinction between signs and tools suggested by Vygotsky is
probably insufficient for making sense of the new ICT-based cognitive
artefacts, which are radically changing human agency and practices. A readyto-hand smartphone can be used as an example. An ever-growing assortment of
old and new intellectual tools, equipment and databases, such as calculators,
20
dictionaries, guides (e.g. plant guides and bird guides with recorded birdsongs),
cameras with the capability of sending photographs electronically, maps,
satellite-connected route guides with timetables and so on, are being embodied
in smartphones. Through internet connection, the smartphone provides access
to e-mail and Facebook, e-commerce, bank services, Google and Wikipedia, as
well as to libraries and scientific databases. Soon tablet computers, that is,
equipments with high-quality screens such as the iPad, will make it possible to
read material from libraries and databases. Such equipment is simultaneously a
small portable material object; an external cultural memory and a generalised
means of daily life and communication between people, in other words, a
means of literally extending the mind (see Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Such
extremely complex instrumentality and its consequences for human practice are
at present poorly conceptualised. That is why we welcome Lawson’s (2010)
suggestion, for example, to study and develop further “extension theories”,
such as McLuhan’s concept of media.
Both activity theory and pragmatism regard the study of change by
means of intervention and social experimentation a central challenge for the
study of practices. Marx formulated this position in his eleventh thesis on
Feuerbach (1888/1978, p. 127): “The philosophers have only interpreted the
world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Twenty years later Dewey
(1908/1977, p. 104) agreed: “[T]he chief function of philosophy is not to find
out what difference ready-made formulae make, if true, but to arrive at and to
clarify their meaning as programs of behavior for modifying the existent
world.” Since both activity theory and pragmatism were committed to studying
21
education and ontogeny, the idea of making people’s lives better and creating
conditions for the development of human capabilities has been central to both.
Such a position calls for the development of an interventionist research
strategy. Dewey’s experimentalist school in Chicago is one famous example.
The revival of pragmatism in social theory has focused on reintroducing the
concepts of habitual action and transaction as methodological alternatives to
dualistic approaches in the social sciences (e.g. Joas, 1996, Kilpinen, 2009).
Thus far, however, the challenge of solving the problems of social practices has
hardly been discussed. We find that social experimentation or, to use Dewey’s
term (1925/1988, p. 362), the formation of communities of inquiry for the
recognition and resolution of important conflicts and problems of societal
activities, remains a major challenge, both for the old as well as the new
practice theories, and is crucial for understanding transformative agency (see
e.g. Bernstein, 2010).
The modernist conceptions of progress represented by the classical
practice theories might seem too simplistic or even naïve today, but they
provide tools and means for dealing with rapidly changing world (see
Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 1013). The concept of artefact mediation and
remediation emphasises that such a community needs not only to formulate a
joint working hypothesis for its future activity, but also to develop and evaluate
practical means for its accomplishment.
Reijo Miettinen
Institute of Behavioural Sciences
University of Helsinki
reijo.miettinen@helsinki.fi
Sami Paavola
Intstitute of Behavioural Sciences
22
University of Helsinki
Sami.paavola@helsinki.fi
Pasi Pohjola
National Institute for Health and Welfare
Helsinki
Pasi.pohjola@thl.fi
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