Activity U — A Knowledge Curation Project
By: Oliver Ding
Tags: Books And Authors, Activity Theory, Curation, Projects, Knowledge Workers

Though the name of Activity U refers to Activity Theory and CHAT (Cultural-historical Activity Theory), I also consider other related theoretical approaches for my learning objects. For example, Vygotsky’s Cultural-historical theory (CHT), Marxism, and practice theories.

According to Nikolai Veresov (2020), “Both CHAT and cultural-historical theory emphasise the importance of cultural mediation in the process of formation of identity as a sociocultural phenomenon. However, they provide different perspectives in relation to what is the basic unit of analysis. For CHAT this unit is a mediated action; cultural-historical theory emphasises dialectical and dynamic aspects by introducing the mediating activities of an individual within changing social environments. In other words, cultural-historical theory is not focused on mediated actions, but on a human being who uses or create cultural tools in order to reorganise the social situation and overcome existing challenges.”

We should pay attention to the difference between “mediated action” and “mediating activities”. For Vygotsky, “Man himself determines his behavior with the help of artificially created stimuli-devices…human behavior was determined not only by the stimuli present, but by a new or changed psychological situation created by the man himself. (Vygotsky 1977, pp. 49–54)”. Thus, the key of the Activity U project is the action of creating and using the HERO U framework and diagram which can be considered as “cultural tools”.

However, the Activity U project went beyond the HERO U framework during the writing process. I started to expand it by adding more “social aspects”. The “U” of “Activity U” became “You” which refers to potential audentices of my articles and potential learners of Activity Theory and Transdisciplinary Thinking.

Also, I was motivated by Bonnie A. Nardi’s story. Bonnie A. Nardi is an activity theorist, HCI researcher and anthropologist. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. The third article of Activity U is about her story: Activity U (III): Bonnie Nardi’s Choices and Boundary Knowledge Work.

What I learned from Nardi is not only about the knowledge of applying Activity Theory to HCI field, but also the attitude of Appropriating Theory. I am not saying everyone needs to learn theory, I just personally believe the value of theory. In other words, Nardi influences me on the level of personal epistemology which is about an individual’s belief on knowledge and knowing.

Can I say Nardi is my mentor? I didn’t direct contact with her. I only read her books, papers, and information on her website. However, I can claim that she is one of my “symbolic mentors”.

I learned the term “symbolic mentor” from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book The Systems Model of Creativity. Csikszentmihalyi pointed out, “Levinson (1978) also noted the complexity and variation inherent in mentoring relationships in general. They are not, as he said, ‘simple or an all-or-none matter’ (p.100). Rather, they may be only partially beneficial to a young person or seriously flawed and destructive, depending on the motives, capabilities, and disposition of the mentor (and of the apprentice). It is also possible for a mentoring relationship to be very limited and yet highly valuable to a young person’s development. For example, some people have purely symbolic mentors whom they have never met, such as an inspiring figure from the past, but who nonetheless may have taught them a great deal about the nature and standards of a domain of interest.” (2014, p.209)

So, it is better to describe the Activity U project with the following diagram.

I made this diagram with a meta-diagram called ZONE I made two years ago. The center of the diagram is the “object”, for the Activity U project, the object is “activity theory”. The three small circles at the middle loop refer to three types of subjects. For the Activity U project, I consider the following subjects:

Subject 1: “You”.

Subject 2: Oliver Ding.

Subject 3: Activity Theorists.

The peripheral circle refers to settings. For the Activity U project, the settings are digital platforms such as Medium, Twitter, Linkedin, Miro, Google Books, Academic.org, and Gmail.

The essential notion of the diagram is ZONE. Each ZONE is a social interactive space between two types of subjects. For example, ZONE 1 refers to interactions between “You” and Oliver Ding. ZONE 2 refers to interactions between Oliver Ding and Activity Theorists. ZONE 3 refers to interactions between Activity Theorists and “You”. There are four concepts for understanding ZONE: Structural distinctions, Situational dynamics, Themes of Practice, and Boundaryless Echoes.

Since three subjects have their own identities, positions, and motivations, there are Structural Distinctions between three ZONEs.

There are personal differences between individual members of each ZONE. The real interactions happen between real people. So, there are Situational Dynamics inside each ZONE.

In order to curate various experiences of daily interactions, I adopt the concept Themes of Practice from Curativity Theory for ZONE. A Theme of Practice refers to a set of interactions which share a common issue, an agenda or a theme.

For each subject/person, they have their own experience of each ZONE. These experiences can be negative or positive. In order to cope with negative experiences at one ZONE, the subject/person can utilize positive experiences from other ZONEs. Also, the subject/person can curate interactions from different ZONEs with similar Themes of Practice. I call this notion Boundaryless Echoes.

The ZONE diagram matches the status of the Activity U project. It is still a personal project, however it has its own social context. There are social interactions generated by the project. For example, I connected to some Activity Theorists through Twitter, Gmail, and Academic.org during the past several months. I also got feedback and advice from these Activity Theorists.

I expect “You” to join the Activity U project and transform it into a collaborative project. Then, we can use the Activity System model (The Engeström’s Triangle) to make a new diagram for our story.

The Book

Now the book Activity U is planned. The above picture is the cover I designed for publishing the draft of the book on Leanpub.

The book has the following parts.

Part 1: Background

Part 2: Theory

Part 3: Project-oriented Activity Theory

Part 4: Practice

Part 5: Heuristics

Part 6: Life as Activity

Appendix: The Curativity of Activity

Part 1: Background

This part focuses on the introduction and background of the Activity U project. During the last almost five years, my personal learning journey focused on ecological psychology, practice theories, cognitive science and the philosophy of science.

I started learning Activity Theory in 2014 and started CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab) in 2019. The Activity U project is a case study of the HERO U framework which is based on the WXMY diagram. An interesting thing is that the WXMY diagram was born from my experience of reading papers about Vygotsky and Dewey.

In August 2019, I read several academic papers around a debate between Jim Garrison who is a philosopher and Dewey scholar and Reijo Miettinen who is an Activity theorist and Vygotsky scholar. They discussed the relationship between Deweyan pragmatism and Cultural-historical activity theory which was founded by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. This reading experience inspired me to create the WXMY diagram which has three containers: X, Y, and Z. For the academic debate between Jim Garrison and Reijo Miettinen, X means John Dewey and X’ means Jim Garrison, Y means Lev Vygotsky and Y’ means Reijo Miettinen. The debate means Z.

This part collects several articles about the background of the Activity U project. The first article of the project — The Landscape of Activity Theory (Part I) — is for testing the HERO U framework. I do not want to deliberately review the development of Activity Theory. Thus, I just select works of activity theorists based on my personal reading history for the testing.

However, I found that the “landscape” I wrote is not the real landscape of Activity Theory. As Sannino, Daniels and Gutierrez mentioned, the theory is not one theory, but a group of theories. They said, “As a unified theory, activity theory has shown consistent viability throughout its history, beginning in the 1930s when Leont’ev formulated its basic principles and proposed the structure of activity. In addition, activity theory today attracts more interest globally than ever before. The term ‘unified’ does not refer to a closed and fixed theory. However, it rules out an interpretation of activity theory as an eclectic grouping of multiple theories.” (2009, p1)

There are endless debates about Activity Theory, CHAT (Cultural-historical activity theory), and Lev Vygotsky’s CHT (Cultural-historical theory of development). Some researchers argued that these three theories should not be considered as one theory with several generations.

As a knowledge curator, I like this chaos of discipline. In fact, this is one of the reasons I choose Activity Theory for testing the HERO U framework. However, I need to write a new article to present the real landscape of the knowledge enterprise.

I am not an activity theorist. My goal is closing the gap between theory and practice. Before touching Activity Theory, I was influenced by Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner.

Since 2001, a group of philosophers, sociologists and scientists have rediscovered the practice perspective and used it as a lens to explore and examine the role of practices in human activity. Researchers called it The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. As Schatzki pointed out, “there is no unified practice approach”(2001, p.2). Davide Nicolini adopted a way of toolkit to introduce the following six different ways of theorizing practice in his 2013 book Practice Theory, Work, & Organization. Nicolini selected Activity Theory as one of six approaches for his book.

The Activity U project is also inspired by Nicolini’s book. While his book gives one chapter for each theoretical approach, my project only focuses on Activity Theory. However, I’d like to provide more theoretical resources for discussing some ideas from other practice theories. For example, I mentioned Theodore Schatzki’s social practice theory when I talked about the Hierarchy of human activity and social practice.

Part 2: Theory

This part focuses on theoretical reviews and discussions. Each article talks about one idea.

There is an emergent pattern in my writing: HERO — IDEA — OTHER — ECHO. Each time I focus on an activity theorist (HERO) and one related notion of activity theory (IDEA), I then expand the scope of discussion by adding related resources from other activity theorists and other disciplines (OTHER), I also share my own experience and reflection on some topics (ECHO).

This pattern is not a rule for me. I don’t apply this pattern to every article. It depends on the topic.

Part 3: Project-oriented Activity Theory

A major development of Activity Theory during the past decade is Andy Blunden’s account “Project as a unit of Activity”. In order to develop the theoretical foundation of “Project as a unit of Activity”, Blunden adopts Hegel’s logic and Vygotsky’s theory about Concept as theoretical resources. The process is documented in three books: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), and Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014).

After deliberately reviewing the unique theoretical concept of “Project-oriented Activity Theory”, I was attracted by its significance and promising prospect. I also found some of my ideas echoes Blunden’s approach. Furthermore, Blunden’s approach is perfect for supporting my newest frameworks the Life-as-Activity approach and the Platform for Development framework.

Eventually, I wrote five articles about Project-oriented Activity Theory. Blunden doesn’t use this term to name his account. I also designed a series of diagrams and expand Blunden’s approach with some new ideas.

Part 4: Practice

Activity Theory has inspired many empirical studies in various domains. This part focuses on domain special empirical research. I’d like to pick the following domains for writing in the next stage.

There are two types of practice domains: horizontal domains and vertical domains.

Horizontal domains refer to general functions in society such as “organization, strategy and innovation”.

Vertical domains refer to specific industries, for example, farm (agriculture), bus (transportation), and movies (entertainment).

I choose horizontal domains for the Activity U project because I want to service boundary innovators and knowledge workers.