894 Case Study #2: AT & CHAT

Why Use These Theories?

My object of research, the academic interview, exists within the at least partially definable ecological space of academia.  For this reason, theories that hold ecological views about social action are likely to be relevant.  Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and its predecessor, activity theory (AT), are two reasonable choices.  Arguably, actor-network theory would also be a valid candidate, but a secondary motivation for me in choosing the activity systems theories is to examine how the first generation theory, AT, compares with its more elaborated version, CHAT.  The fact that both are still used as theoretical frameworks makes it reasonable to examine them side-by-side even though, in fact, CHAT evolved from AT.  I am also interested in examining Paul Prior and his fellow authors’ (2007) attempt to adapt CHAT as rhetorical theory.  Because Prior et al’s version turns out to be something of a Franken-theory with elements that are challenging to translate into an analysis, I will not apply it.  However, I will make a few comments on it at various points.

About the OoS

                The published academic interview, my object of research, can be found in a number of places.  The most obvious is in academic journals.  A recent search, for example,  quickly turned up two 1995 interviews of Charles Bazerman, one in Composition Studies (Crawford, Smout, & Bazerman) and one in Writing on the Edge (Eldred & Bazerman).   Interviews also receive book-length treatments.  An example is Conversations with Anthony Giddens, composed of seven thematic interviews with the prominent sociologist (Giddens & Pierson, 1998).  Another is An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, which is described as “Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘discourse on method’” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, back cover) but has as its second and longest section an interview of Bourdieu by Wacquant. Finally, it is possible to find academic interviews that are primarily distributed online.  Online journals can include interviews, such as McNely’s (2013) interview of Spinuzzi as described in my first case study. It is also possible to find interviews online that are transcriptions of oral interviews, such as, for example, the 18 visiting speaker interviews included in Florida State’s Rhetoric and Composition department site. 

In spite of the fact that, as we can see, the interview is a robust form that is published in different media and is distributed in several ways, very little research has targeted this genre. One of the few is Arnold’s (2012) look at Michel Foucault’s interviews as a particular genre within his larger body of work.  Although Arnold doesn’t examine the academic interview as a genre, she does examine the ways that Foucault used the interview as a space to make theoretical statements that transcended his specific published works.  Another look at a specific scholar’s interviews is Chakraborty’s (2010) discussion of how Gayatri Spivak’s interviews brought together “the scholarship with the persona” (p. 623). Chakraborty also examines the way that such interviews allow public intellectuals to “use the interview as a modus vivendi to produce intimate interlocution with their chosen constituency” (p. 627). In both Arnold’s and Chakraborty’s discussions, however, the focus is primarily on the scholars rather than the genre.  In terms of looking at how genres are situated, Tachino’s (2012) study of intermediary genres might serve as a model. Though Tachino is looking at a completely different activity system, namely the judicial system, the concept of “a genre that facilitates the ‘uptake’ of a genre by another genre” (p. 455), almost certainly applies in the case of the academic interview.  One outcome of an academic interview is almost certainly increased uptake of a scholar’s published works.  A similar case is the use of published interviews as a mediating genre for avant-garde artists to discuss their art, as discussed by Bury & Scott (2000). 

Mediation: A Core Concept

The idea of an intermediary genre leads us to the idea of mediation, a concept at the core of both activity theories, AT and CHAT.  As Russell (1995) notes, activity theory owes a significant debt to Russian psychologist Vygotsky.  Vygotsky emphasized that “the structure and the meaning of the tool in a community… strongly influence the actions that people accomplish, and as such the cultural tool is a strong semiotic component of the learning process” (van Oers, 2010, p. 8).   Since Vygotsky’s theories were connected to learning, unsurprisingly they have frequently been used by educational theorists.  However, because “activity theory analyzes human behavior and consciousness in terms of activity systems,” or in other words, “goal-directed, historically situated, cooperative human interactions” (Russell, 1995, p. 53), it is obvious that these theories can be applied to many settings.  For example, activity theory (AT) has been employed by at least two writing scholars Russell (1995) and Nowacek (2011).  Both use the “mediated action triangle” that Yamagata-Lynch (2010) identifies with first generation activity theory.  However, Yamagata-Lynch points out that “many CHAT scholars now encourage investigators to engage in new work within an interventionist framework using third generation activity theory” (p. 23).  This version correlates with the framework that Spinuzzi applies in his 2003 study.  The idea of mediating artifacts continues as a Vygotskyan core concept that remains at the heart of both versions.

When applied to my object of study, the interview genre fits slot of “tool” or “mediational means” in activity theory and of “instrument” in cultural-historical theory. In other words, it is posited as a core node in each case.  Incidentally, the central role of a mediating tool or artifact is obscured in Prior et al’s theory of CHAT because mediators are not nodes in this version.  In fact, the authors discuss mediation as a concept but do not include it explicitly in the conceptualization, “Remapping Rhetorical Activity: Take 2.”  Instead, they argue, “We take mediated activity and mediated agency as fundamental units of analysis. In those terms, everything in the three maps (literate activity, functional systems, and chronotopes) is about mediation” (p. 22).  Clearly, this mediation-is-everywhere stance is a significant departure from the more focused version of AT/CHAT.  To be honest, many terms in their list, such as communities, ecologies, activity, and socialization, are so general that it is hard to imagine the idea of mediation having the theoretical potency that it has when it is associated with a tool or instrument.  While it is true that in a sense, these abstract categories are mediating, in another way, the conceptualization moves mediation from node to connecting channel.  This idea of connections as inherently mediating draws Prior et al’s version of CHAT closer to actor-network theory.  At the same time, the theory lacks the precision of ANT because Latour (2005) insists on careful tracing and labeling of connections. To see abstract categories as mediating seems to fall into the everything-is-social pit that Latour labors so hard to banish. 

How the Network is Structured

The network formulation associated with AT and CHAT, i.e. the nodes, structuring of nodes, agencies and relationships within and between nodes, is where the first generation theory (AT) diverges from the more elaborated version (CHAT).  I will take each in turn. Activity theory is usually represented by a triangle with the “mediational means” at the top, the “subject” on the left, and the “object” or “objective” on the right.  An additional arrow emerges from the corner of the triangle pointing towards “outcome(s),” meaning that human agents use mediational means to work towards goals in the activity system, and this should generate hoped-for outcomes.  There are a couple of implications here.  First, it is the human agents who have agency.  Tools are used intentionally by these agents to work towards conscious results.  Other objects and proximate groups have little relevance within this model. However, subjects, tools, and objectives are assembled together in the drive towards outcomes.

Since in my application of the theory the academic interview is the mediational means, or tool, as we have said, the interviewer and interviewee work together constitute the subject, the agents who work together to accomplish a goal of illuminating a scholar’s ideas, motivations, influences, personal idiosyncrasies and other interview content.   The hoped-for outcome, one imagines, would be the increased circulation of the scholar’s ideas within the disciplinary community.  Of course, there may be supplementary outcomes, such as reinforcing the values of a discipline, educating interested parties outside the discipline, mentoring disciplinary novices, and so forth.

Although Spinuzzi (2003) describes his framework as “activity theory” (p. 36), the diagram on page 37 demonstrates that his version bears a great resemblance to what is usually described as cultural-historical activity theory, or CHAT.  In an important expansion of activity theory, Engeström (1987), one of the theory’s main proponents, added an additional row to the bottom of the original triangle to draw in more of the ecological context of the activity system.  This is what is now typically known as CHAT.  The first additional node is rules, followed by community, and finally, division of labor.  These are stretched out to make up the bottom row of a larger triangle, with lines drawn between each point.  Spinuzzi’s version has two minor substitutions, namely, to replace subject with collaborators, and rules with domain knowledge.  However, the appearance of the diagram is altered.  Instead of embedded triangles, each node is pulled out to constitute vertices in a hexagon.  Since both diagrams connect the points to multiple other points, the result is not fundamentally different, but it does suggest that Spinuzzi wants points to be visually and logically equivalent.  This contrasts with Engeström’s version where the arrangement might imply that in some way the subject is caught between rules and mediating tools, for example. 

To apply the model to academic interviews, we add to the previously-mentioned tools, subject, and object, the domain knowledge of the discipline within which the interview takes place, which is normally also the discipline of the scholar being interviewed.  The content knowledge and research objects of the discipline would be included here as well as, arguably, the discursive formulations of the discipline in a Foucauldian sense, that is, what can be talked about and how.  The community clearly would be the disciplinary practitioners and other scholars working within the discipline.  The division of labor can capture the point that one “collaborator,” to use Spinuzzi’s term, is the scholar being interviewed and the other is the interviewer, usually another, less established scholar in the discipline, who, although named, is nevertheless rendered less visible in the greater light of the luminary being interviewed.  Perhaps, too, we can extend the division of labor to include other actors in the publication process, such as journal editors, archivists and webmasters and so on.  If this is the structure of the network, we can see that agency has now been dispersed since collaborators and community both involve human agency.  Of course not all human actors have the same level of agency; the community arguably has less impact on the activity system than the collaborators per se.

In an important sense, CHAT can capture more of the ecological framework that makes up the activity system.  After all, when we analyze the interview genre within the activity system, we should recognize that the system entails more than just scholars talking to other scholars.  In a way, the entire institution of the university is activated with all its moving parts, from financial aid to student support services to plant services.  Scholarship depends on the educational enterprise that defines the scholar as professor and enables the scholar as thinker.  The educational enterprise in turn depends on a complex of supporting staff, facilities and equipment.  The interview captures the professor as scholar.  Although the professor also writes in an array of other genres: exams, syllabi, annotations on student papers, emails, proposals, catalog descriptions, textbook adoption forms, expense reports, and others, the interviewer does not ask the interviewee to comment on these.  The genres that are most highly valued and frequently discussed are research articles and books.  The interview may, however, mention dissertations and conference presentations as well as genres of public engagement such as blogs, TV interviews, newspaper columns, etc.  By calling the larger ecology into play, CHAT allows us to recall these other professional activities, whereas activity theory’s first generation model largely narrows the focus to the interview itself with a nod to the larger, though unelaborated, activity system.   

Although in one way Prior et al’s version of CHAT offers an even more powerful model than the two versions mentioned so far, it also has some significant disadvantages.  The “functional systems” part of the model overlaps to a degree with CHAT, as it includes people, artifacts, practices, institutions, communities, and ecologies.  In addition, the “literate activity” list, includes production, representation, distribution, reception, socialization, activity, and ecology.  The purpose of the “literate activity” list is to replace the five terms of the classical canons of rhetoric with a more effective model.  This is a laudable goal that certainly extends the reach of the theory.  The disadvantage is that it is hard to see where literate activity fits into the larger model.  If we were to adapt Spinuzzi’s diagram, for example, where would the literate activity fit?  In the middle of the hexagon?  Should it be seen as an elaboration of activity in which each step activates all parts of the hexagon?  To complicate matters, we have the concept of the “laminated chronotopes,” a term that is not well-defined in the article.  Chronotopes are introduced as being “in the broadest context” and at the same time, “embedded in semiotic artifacts” (p. 19).  Does this perhaps mean that the application of the theory is like the embedded Russian dolls where the artifact examined has nested within it the whole universe of the activity system that created it, within which is another artifact with its activity system inside and so on down the line?  The biggest problem for me, however, is the “functional systems” list which replaces Spinnuzi’s hexagon or Engeström’s embedded triangles with a loose list of items that are not defined in the article.  Prior et al claim that the “CHAT map points to a complex set of interlocking systems within which rhetors are formed, act, and navigate” (p. 22).  While complex interlocking systems and a “perspective that integrates communication, learning, and social formation… as simultaneous, constant dimensions of any moment in life” (p. 23) are intriguing, they may make the model too complex and too comprehensive to be meaningfully applied to any single research project. 

Movement and Change

To return to network structures that we have established for AT and CHAT, we need to consider the network as a dynamic system.  What moves?  How does it move? How does the dynamic nature of the network allow the network to change or evolve?  Within the AT triangle, as already stated, there is a forward trajectory where the elements of the activity system—subjects using tools to accomplish objectives—work together to move towards outcomes.  Considering that we are applying the model to a genre of writing, the action here is rhetorical action.  What is moving through the network is the actions taken in time to accomplish the goal and reach the outcomes.  As in a physical system, there are forces driving results. The best candidate for these forces is the agency of the subjects employing the genre as a tool.  Since we have already established that the basic system of AT remains within CHAT, this dynamic also applies to the CHAT network.  The difference is that the actions that move through the system, the forces of agency, now have more internal structure, since the knowledge or rules that apply, the larger community that may influence the actors (“collaborators”, again to use Spinuzzi’s term), and the structural system within the community or organization that does the acting (“division of labor”) all leave their traces on the packaging of the action as it moves forward.  It is easy to see how these elements shape the academic interview.  At times, as when an interviewee mentions scholarly influences or describes the development of ideas within a discipline, these elements may emerge within the text of the interview.  In both activity theory models, I see the network as operating like a machine that is activated to package and produce a rhetorical artifact or event.  If we persist in seeing the genre as the tool or mediational means, then we may see the text as the distributional outcome of the work of the network.  In this conceptualization, the content or the meaning comes to exist when it is package and moves forward as a stable artifact.  What happens as the text emerges from the activity system, as it moves into “outcomes,” is less certain.  Presumably it enters a new activity system to enter the community and be taken up as domain knowledge, or even, depending on its content, to argue into place new instruments, changes to community, adjustments to divisions of labor and so forth.  If this understanding is correct, we have to assume that the activity system lies within a larger universe of activity systems.  Perhaps this is what Prior et al are trying to achieve with the separation of ecology (the single activity system that packages a given text?) and ecologies (an interlocking network of activity systems?)  Incidentally, Prior et al suggest that what travels through the network is not only action, but cognition.  “Mediated activity means that action and cognition are distributed over time and space” (p. 17-18).  Particularly in terms of rhetorical activity, we might argue that what moves here is cultural capital and knowledge, to be repackaged by human agents.  As Prior et al point out, “It’s about attending to semiosis in whatever materials at whatever point in the activity” (p. 23). 

In each model discussed, action theory argues a dynamic system, one that allows recurrence as well as change.  Although human actors tend to repeat things that work, circumstances vary, allowing minor shifts to occur even when a genre, for example, is redeployed.  What would drive larger changes to the network would be changes within the ecology.  As time passes and as each element of the system evolves or renews itself—either as a result of what happens within the activity system under discussion or as a result of other activity systems in the society—the system will shift slightly in new directions.  If we use the first generation activity theory as a model, we can imagine an interviewer and interviewee coming together to produce an interview.  The interview is published, and it inspires a graduate student to apply the ideas to another object of study.  By the time the study is published to significant acclaim, more journals have shifted to online formats.  When the graduate student has become a noted scholar and is interviewed, the network has changed.  The subjects are different people, the online nature of the interview has changed the genre as a mediational means, and, although here the object is largely the same as in the earlier interview, the outcomes may well be different.  What remains stable is how things tend to work within activity systems.  Human beings still do accomplish things using mediating tools. 

An Evaluation

                It is no accident that activity theories have been attractive to genre theorists.  Spinuzzi’s 2003 study, of course, traced genres through time, exploring in depth how they functioned within a moderately stable activity system.  The main goal for Nowacek’s (2011) study was understanding transfer in student writing, but she is concerned with questions of genre as well, arguing that genre can serve as exigence for or obstacle to transfer.   In a 1997 article David Russell surveyed studies that used CHAT as an approach for exploring genre and writing in higher education or workplaces.  Unfortunately, I was only able to get my hands on the abstract, but it does demonstrate the fact that activity theories have been productive for genre researchers.  Within activity theory, as already noted, genres are mediational tools or instruments.  In this pivotal position, it is easy to track the importance of the genre within the system, as indeed Spinuzzi does.  Even though my own discussion here has only proposed how the theory might work rather than actually applying it to specific texts, it is easy to see how it could work.  If I were in fact to apply the framework to actual examples of academic interviews, I would use Engeström or Spinuzzi’s model because these versions of CHAT capture more of the ecological framework.  On the other hand, the AT model has the advantage of focus and simplicity.  I might want to reflect the generational development by making that the core of my analysis.  I would not use the version proposed by Prior et al.  For one thing, I struggle with what I see as the incompatibility of terms. Things are not quite “flattened,” as Latour (2005) tries to do, and yet there are not levels either.  Process elements are mixed with spatial elements.  Furthermore, some elements can be conflated or exchanged: Socialization arguably occurs through activity, ecology is the spatialization of socialization and activity, distribution is a type of activity, and so are production and reception. 

One final thing that I found interesting about activity theory in general is that in a sense both AT and CHAT are future oriented.  It is true that CHAT refers to cultural-historical activity theory, but the system is not examined in terms of how it operated through history.  Rather the system is an artifact of historical processes, an idea that is captured by the laminated chronotopes of Prior et al’s version.  In other words, instead of focusing on what has happened historically, the analysis is focused on the deployment of the activity system to reach not yet realized goals.  This is neither a strength nor a weakness, but it is, nevertheless, an interesting feature of AT and CHAT.

References

Arnold, W. (2012). The secret subject: Michel Foucault, Death and the Labyrinth, and the interview as genre. Criticism, 54(4), 567-581.

Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bury, S. and Scott, H. (2000). The artist speaks: The interview as documentation. Art Libraries Journal, 25(1), pp. 4-9.

Chakraborty, M. N. (2010). Everybody’s Afraid of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Reading interviews with the public intellectual and postcolonial critic. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35(3), 621-645.

Crawford, T. H., Smout, K. D., & Bazerman, C. (1995). An Interview with Charles Bazerman. Composition Studies, 23(1), 21–36. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43501314

Eldred, M., & Bazerman, C. (1995). "Writing Is Motivated Participation": An interview with Charles Bazerman. Writing on the Edge, 6(2), 7–20. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43156966

Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy.

Giddens, A., & Pierson, C. (1998). Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making sense of modernity. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McNely, B. (2013). “That lightbulb feeling”: An Interview with Clay Spinuzzi .Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 3(1). Retrieved from
http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-3/that-light-bulb-feeling-an-interview-with-clay-spinuzzi/

Nowacek, R. S. (2011). Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Prior, P., & Shipka, J. (2003). Chronotopic lamination: Tracing the contours of literate activity.  In C. Bazerman & D.d Russell (Eds.),Writing selves, writing societies: Research from activity perspectives (pp.180-238). Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and Mind, Culture, and Activity. Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/prior/

Prior, P., Solberg, J., Berry, P., Bellwoar, H., Chewning, B., Lunsford, K.J., . . . Walker, J.R. (2007). Re-situating and re-mediating the canons: A Cultural-Historical remapping of rhetorical activity. Kairos, 11(3). Retrieved from http://technorhetoric.net/11.3/binder.html?topoi/prior-et-al/index.html

Russell, D.R. (1995).  Activity theory and its implications for writing instruction.  In J. Petraglia (Ed.), Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction, (51-78). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Russell, D.R. (1997). Writing and genre in higher education and workplaces: A review of studies that use cultural--historical activity theory. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 4(4), 224-237.

Spinuzzi, C. (2003). Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Tachino, T. (2012). Theorizing uptake and knowledge mobilization: a case for intermediary genre. Written Communication, 29(4), 455-476.

Van Oers, B. (2010). Learning and learning theory from a cultural-historical point of view. In B. Van Oers, W. Wardekker, E. Elbers, & R. Van Der Veer (Eds.), The transformation of learning: Advances in cultural-historical activity theory (pp. 3-12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yamagata-Lynch, L. C. (2010). Activity Systems Analysis Methods: Understanding Complex Learning Environments. Berlin: Springer US.

894 Reading notes: Bateson and Gibson

Connections  

At my second-hand bookstore, I recently bought a book called The Powerof Place by Winifred Gallagher about the emotional and behavioral effects of environment on human beings, discussing such topics as the differences between living in cold and warm climates, effects of indoor climate, effects of geomagnetic field, environmental stimulation and so on. Although I haven’t read the book yet, it seems to have a strong connection to these three readings.  Places and objects offer us affordances.  By serving as tools or as mediators of sensory experiences, our surroundings become extensions of our selves. 

Bateson’s essay “Form, Substance and Difference” argues that human beings are like nodes in a large infrastructure, a larger network.  Not only that, but connections reaching from our inner selves, our nervous systems, reach out past our corporeal boundaries to connect us to the world in an ecological relationship that he describes as mind.  Thus, in a sense our minds are part of a larger, universal, interconnected mind.  If this is true, then it matters deeply how we treat our environment because in a very real sense destroying one’s environment means destroying oneself. (See p. 457.)

Gibson’s (1986) discussion of affordances has been widely referenced.  Even though the concept was somewhat familiar, it was helpful to go back to Gibson’s introduction of the concept.  Affordances “are in a sense objective, real, and physical,” as Gibson notes (p. 129).  That is, we think of affordances as objects or as spaces with physical qualities, but the idea of an affordance requires an organism to interact and it is the complimentary nature of the organism and the qualities of the objects or spaces that make affordances, affordances.  As Gibson points out, “an affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective… it is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither.  An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer” (p. 129). In a sense, then, the theory of affordances is compatible with Bateson’s ideas since it provides a conceptual bridge between the environment and the organisms.  If we are to call the human being a node, perhaps an affordance serves as a connection in the ecological framework.

Norman’s brief essay on “Affordances and Design” builds on this concept.  For example, Norman points out that “to Gibson, affordances are a relationship”.  One point that Norman is trying to make here is that we need to distinguish between affordances that are perceived—the usual way that the term is, in fact, used—and the complete class of affordances, an open class that is never completely defined by users.  In fact, for the designer, it is the perceived affordances that are crucial.  It is more important that users are drawn to clickable spaces, for example, than it is to recognize that one could stroke part of the screen.  As I think about it, perhaps there is something of a continuum here, though.  When I think about my iPhone screen, I enjoy stroking the screen of the phone when it is not activated.  The surface is smooth and a pleasing, glossy black.  It is quite probable that the designers are not blind to the pleasing aspects of the iPhone as an aesthetic object beyond its more obvious functions.  The best products are pleasing on many levels.  However, this goes beyond Norman’s useful insight about perceived affordances and design.

Wait! Haven't I heard that before?

            As I was reading Bateson’s discussion of “difference,” I couldn’t help thinking that his ideas sounded just a little bit Derrida’s notion of difference (différance). I understand that Derrida’s French pun adds another element, but there did seem to be some similarities, so I wondered if other scholars had picked up on this.  This answer turned out to be yes.  I don’t have access to the print versions, but I found three sources through Google books that made explicit connections between the two.  For example, White & Hellerich (1998) quote from this essay when comparing Derrida’s and Bateson’s ideas of difference.   White (1998) and Johnson (1993) also draw the comparison.  For example, White (1998) makes the point that both are “substituting dynamic forms of differentiation… for the static ideas that have come to characterize the Western system of knowledge” (p. 23).  I would have to understand both scholars in more depth to capture the differences between their “differences,” but I did find the similarity interesting.

I particularly liked

I had read some excerpts from Gibson before but I particularly enjoyed reading it this time.  For one thing, when common phenomena are described in terms of their affordances, the effect can be rather amusing.  My favorite, about water, was the observation that “its surface does not afford support for large animals with dense tissues” (131).  Uh, yes!

Gibson’s point about the fact that our default interaction with objects works on the basis of affordances rather than qualities was insightful.  It reminds me a little of prototype theory and fuzzy categories in cognitive science in its sense of the gestalt.  On the other hand, it is a fundamentally different approach.  As Gibson says, “I now suggest that what we perceive when we look at objects are their affordances, not their qualities. We can discriminate the dimensions of difference if required to do so in an experiment, but what the object affords us is what we normally pay attention to. The special combination of qualities into which an object can be analyzed is ordinarily not noticed” (134). I think this is true.

      Above I mentioned White & Hellerich’s (1998) comparison of Derrida’s and Bateson’s ideas about difference.  The quote from the essay that they included was one that also caught my attention: “In fact, what we mean by information… is a difference which makes a difference” (p. 459).

      For me, the most helpful strategy for understanding Bateson were his examples, and of these, the best was about the blind man.  I quote it in full because I feel like it encapsulates Bateson’s main point in the article:

“Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap, tap. Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the handle of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start halfway up the stick? Does it start at the tip of the stick? But these are nonsense questions. The stick is a pathway along which transforms of difference are being transmitted. The way to delineate the system is to draw the limiting line in such a way that you do not cut any of these pathways in ways which leave things inexplicable. If what you are trying to explain is a given piece of behavior, such as the locomotion of the blind man, then, for this purpose, you will need the street, the stick, the man; the street, the stick, and so on, round and round. But when the blind man sits down to eat his lunch, his stick and its messages will no longer be relevant—if it is his eating that you want to understand” (p. 465).

References

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co.

Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Johnson, C. (1993). System and writing in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.    

Norman, D. (n.d.). Affordances and design. Retrieved from http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

White, D. R. (1998). Postmodern ecology: Communication, evolution, and play. Albany: State University of New York Press.

White, D. R., & Hellerich, G. (1998). Labyrinths of the mind: The self in the postmodern age. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press.

894 Looking at outlines

After looking at Kim's outline...

Kim defends the reason that she wants to examine these theories.  She also includes a sense of how she is going to unpack the theory in terms of her own object of study.  This is a particular weakness in my outline at the moment, and in fact, an area that I could have improved in my first case study.  Another thing that I can learn from this treatment is to unpack the theory within my analysis.  For some reason, I decided to explain the theory in one section and then apply the theory in another.  Although that approach is reasonable, I think I can make my write-up more efficient and at least as effective by synthesizing these elements.  I don’t think I was confused by anything; Kim’s outline includes enough detail to be clear and her organization, as I’ve already said, looks pretty effective.  Likewise, I honestly don’t think there is an area that needs to be expanded.  The limitations section isn’t fleshed out, but she admits that.  

After looking at Alex's outline...

There were a number of things that I liked about Alex’s outline. The idea of tracing Blackboard over time was interesting, and I can see how Prior’s version of CHAT could lead to such historical tracing.  I was intrigued by looking at the idea of questioning the “pedagogical and epistemological ethos” of the platform.  I would be interested in seeing the insights.  The theory in the hypertext readings wasn’t obvious enough to me to consider applying the concepts as theory, so I was impressed by the fact that Alex was looking at community and connectivity in this way.  It seems like a valid application to me, though it hadn’t occurred to me when I read the readings.  There weren’t too many things that I was confused about in terms of Alex’s intentions, though a few terms were less obvious to me.  For example, I wasn’t sure what “challenge-based exigency” meant. I think the “questions of absence, absenteeism, inaccessibility, dehumanization, isolation, and alienation” sound interesting, though just from the outline I’m not sure how these would tie back into Johnson-Eilola’s ideas or how they would play out in the analysis.  Of course part of my problem here is that I found only some of the ideas in the hypertext readings sensible.  I’m particularly impressed with the attempt to apply Joyce’s “poetic” ideas.  That is exactly the way I found his ideas in more generous moments! That being said, I think metaphors can be productive for analysis, so again, this will be interesting to see.  Overall, looks like this will be an inventive analysis.

894 Case study #2 outline

Somehow I missed the fact that this was to be posted on Monday with reading notes.  At any rate, here it is now.  It is a bit messy, and I don't know how robust it is, but it gives me some structure to go with.

1)      Introduction

a.       Chose these theories in order to examine the activity system and ecology within which the genre exists.  These theories more suited to genre than Foucault (previous one)

b.      Looking at my OoS: dearth of research about interviews as a genre, even less about published interviews of scholars.  There are a very few studies that might offer some slight connection

2)      AT versus CHAT—First, I’ll start by defining the theories and highlighting the similarities and differences between the theories.  I might suggest—I think this is true—that the two theories have some overlapping elements as a result of similar influences that they are drawing on. 

a.       Common background

                                                   i.      Vygotsky is a major influence

1.       See Russell, p. 53

2.       Spinuzzi, p. 38

                                                 ii.      CHAT as complex version of AT (generations idea?)

b.      Brief description of AT (key concepts & terms)

                                                   i.      Simple version (Nowacek, Russell)

c.       Brief description of CHAT (key concepts & terms)

                                                   i.      Complex version of AT (see Spinuzzi)

                                                 ii.      Prior’s adaptation for rhetoric (see p. 17 for definition of CHAT from his perspective)

                                                iii.      Problem for Prior’s version of CHAT is not indicating how three lists (p. 18) interact.  Functional systems comes closest to CHAT diagram.

                                               iv.      Use quote on p. 22 about interlocking systems

3)      How might the OoS be defined in AT & CHAT (including Prior’s version) (How does the theory define your object of study (as a whole, broken into pieces?))

a.       AT—interview genre fits slot of “tool” or “mediational means”

b.      CHAT—“instrument” or virtually identical with AT

c.       Prior?—hard to tell; it is a form of mediator but mediators are not nodes in this theory

4)      Describing the network formulation—nodes, structuring of nodes, agencies and relationships within & between nodes (What and/or who is a network node? What types of agency are articulated for various types of nodes? How are different types of nodes situated within a network? What are the types and directions of relationships between nodes?)

a.       AT—

                                                   i.      Points on diagram are subject, tools, object, motive; is “tools” a node or a connector though?

                                                 ii.      Human actors have agency (i.e. subjects)

                                                iii.      Tools are mediational, hence lie between subjects and objects

                                               iv.      Subjects+tools+objects are assembled together to drive towards motives

b.      CHAT

                                                   i.      More nodes than AT; see Spinuzzi; however, relationships are similar to the above

1.       Subject = [collaborators, knowledge, community, division of labor]; instruments=tools; objectsàoutcome (almost the same)

                                                 ii.      Not all human actors have agency—or at least not the same level of agency (“community” arguably has less impact on the activity system)

                                                iii.      Instruments are mediational

                                               iv.      Assemblage is similar to AT   

c.       Prior CHAT

                                                   i.      Mish-mash: who knows?  But obviously I have to think about this J

5)      Movement and change within the network—what moves and how & changes within the network (What is moving within the network? What happens to content or meaning as it travels through a network? How do networks emerge, grow, and/or dissolve?)

a.       AT—

                                                   i.      (Rhetorical) action to accomplish motive?

                                                 ii.      Content or meaning is mediated by tools as it is passed on

                                                iii.      ? See Russell p. 55

b.      CHAT

                                                   i.      (Rhetorical) action to accomplish objective?

                                                 ii.      Content or meaning is mediated by tools as it is passed on

                                                iii.      ?  See Spinuzzi

c.       Prior CHAT

                                                   i.      Moving through the network: “action and cognition”? (17)  In a sense, arguably cultural capital and knowledge, to be repackaged by human agents (see 22) “It’s about attending to semiosis in whatever materials at whatever point in the activity” (23)

                                                 ii.      Content is mediated by a huge array of intervening nodes and channels (see p. 17)

                                                iii.      Magic, I think

6)      How would I use this network?  Is one superior or do both capture elements that are valuable?  Can they be combined?  Or are they already in a sense combined, say in CHAT as a Frankentheory?

a.       Strength of Prior’s CHAT (see p. 23)—basically it has the terms to deal with all eventualities

b.      Weaknesses of Prior’s CHAT

                                                   i.      Incompatibility of terms—things are not quite “flattened” as in Latour and yet there aren’t levels either.  Process elements are mixed with spatial elements.

                                                 ii.      Some elements can be conflated or exchanged:

1.       Socialization arguably occurs through activity

2.       Ecology is the spatialization of socialization & activity

3.       Distribution is activity, as are production and reception

                                                iii.      Confounding connections and nodes—(some) items on list on page 18 need to be nodes, but mediators involve “historically-provided tools and practices” which Prior provides a long list of (see p. 17).  “Concrete actions” that are “situated” are probably best seen as nodes.  Or are these formations, or structures, mini-networks? At any rate, since these are then mediated, the mediation appears to be seen as connections.  Prior admits that mediation has disappeared from “Take 2” because everything is mediating.  Isn’t this kind of circular?

c.       What about AT?  Both basic version and Spinuzzi’s version

                                                   i.      Easier to conceptualize and work with (by far!)

                                                 ii.      Handles genre better

References

Nowacek, R. S. (2011). Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Oers, B., Wardekker, W., Elbers, E., & Van Der Veer, R. (2010). The transformation of learning: Advances in cultural-historical activity theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prior, P., & Shipka, J. (2003). Chronotopic lamination: Tracing the contours of literate activity.  In C. Bazerman & D.d Russell (Eds.),Writing selves, writing societies: Research from activity perspectives (pp.180-238). Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and Mind, Culture, and Activity. Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/prior/

Prior, P., Solberg, J., Berry, P., Bellwoar, H., Chewning, B., Lunsford, K.J., . . . Walker, J.R. (2007). Re-situating and re-mediating the canons: A Cultural-Historical remapping of rhetorical activity. Kairos, 11(3). Retrieved from http://technorhetoric.net/11.3/binder.html?topoi/prior-et-al/index.html

Russell, D.R. (1995).  Activity theory and its implications for writing instruction.  In J. Petraglia (Ed.), Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction, (51-78). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Spinuzzi, C. (2003). Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 

On Writing Space

Here is a view of my writing space over the past week.  Unfortunately, I did forget some days.

Feb 25

Feb 26

Feb 28

Feb 29

Mar 3

894 Reading Notes: Latour

Latour’s key idea and a few key terms

To use the idea of the “social” to explain social phenomenon is like pretending there is a material in which we are all floating, as if the adjective is a descriptor akin to silk or plastic.  Instead, Latour argues, to generate reliable explanations of how the social world works, one has to build a network of connections, spinning filaments that connect humans and objects within landscapes of activity, local point to local point, until a meaningful assemblage emerges.  The essence of ANT is captured on page 108: “I can now state the aim of this sociology of associations more precisely: there is no society, no social realm, and no social ties, but there exist translations between mediators that may generate traceable associations” (emphasis in original).

•  Actant—Basically “different ways to make actors do things” (p. 55, emphasis in original) without clearly defining the specific agents.
• Collective—A term which Latour proposes to “designate the project of assembling new entities not yet gathered together and which, for this reason, clearly appear as being not made of social stuff,” or, in other words, the ANT alternative to “society” (p. 75).
• Intermediary—This is “what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs” (p. 39).
• Mediator—In contrast to intermediary, these “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry… their input is never a good predictor of their output” (p. 39).
• Oligoptica—Something like a router, in that it is a hub or node from which multiple connections emerge.  It is describe as “star-shaped” (p. 182).  A couple of examples are a newspaper editor’s cubicle or a military command center.
• Translation—Basically, the channel of mediation, “a relation that does not transport causality but induces two mediators into coexisting” (p. 108).

Drawing connections between things in the world (picture taken in Taipei, Taiwan)

Latour and literature

In my reading of Latour I was fascinated by the several times that he draws attention to literature in his text.  For example, in his discussion of actant, Latour uses literature as an example to explain the variety of actants that might occur, arguing, in fact, that literature is freer about what can be considered an actant than sociology normally is.  He gives as an example a fable in which a magic wand or even “a thought in the fairy’s mind” are as capable of acting as a knight with a sword (p. 54).  Later, in the discussion of the idea that objects can also have agency he brings up the “resource of fiction” for building connections between objects and humans (p. 82).

I was reminded of this point this week when I was reading an essay in The Best American Essays 2009, in which PatriciaHampl describes visiting an art museum to stimulate her writing.  She goes home and writes long descriptive passages, trying to better capture her memories.  But then something unexpected happens.  “To my growing astonishment, these long descriptive passages, sometimes running two, three pages or longer, had a way of sheering off into narrative after all.  The teacup I was describing had been given to me by my mother. And once I thought of the fact that she had bought these cups, made in Czechslovokia, as a bride just before the Second World War, I was writing about that war, about my mother and her later disappointments, which somehow were, and were not, part of this fragile cup” (p. 50).  The connection that Hampl makes between description and narrative reminded me of the ways that Latour describes the connections between objects and humans.  In fact, as Hampl goes on the parallels grow even more striking:  

“Description, written from the personal voice of my own perception, proved even to be the link with the world’s story, with history itself.  Here was my mother’s teacup, made in Czechoslovakia before the war, and here, therefore, was not only my mother’s heartbreak, but Europe’s. The detail was surely divine, offering up miracle after miracle of connections out of the faithful consideration of the fragments before me.” (p. 50)

Hampl’s use of this object, the teacup, not only creates a network of connections that resonate in her own individual life but ultimately opens to her the ways that she is connected to larger, broader networks, to larger populations and world events.

Mug memories: 

night street in Taipei and a favorite shop...

shopping at 10 pm coming back home... 

pencil box in Dad's shop (until I rescued it)... 

Taiwanese tea, Vietnamese and Malaysian coffee drunk in the USA... 

Reading Latour

Latour has been the most pleasurable author to read yet.  I found Spinuzzi accessible, but Latour has an accessible style as well, and rare for academic books, little glints of humor here and there. I especially enjoyed “On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: An Interlude in the Form of a Dialog,” the simulated interview with a graduate student, in which Latour proves that if you try to “apply” actor-network theory to frame an analysis, you are missing the point. 

Because we recently read about hypertext theory, I realized that reading an academic book—particularly Latour—isn’t that different from hypertext.  In other words, an academic reader will move between the main text and the footnotes or endnotes, and quite possibly the references or even the index. Here, by using footnotes, Latour makes it easier to keep track of the main text.  Of course, this is by no means unique, but for Latour, it is a way that he demonstrates connections to an unusually wide range of sources and it is also a place for odd bits of information.  For example, I liked footnote 179’s comparison of French and American scholarship: “In France, you can be at once naively rationalist and a great admirer of deconstruction. Once transported across the Atlantic, this innocent passion became a dangerous binary weapon” (p. 126).  I might also mention footnote 171, similar for tongue-in-cheek style and in message: “After years of teaching in England and America, I have been forced to recognize that semiotics does not survive sea travels” (p. 122).[1] 

Another thing that was interesting about reading Latour was considering whether there is a French style of writing.  (I also bring into play here my vague memory of Hélène Cixous’ essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” and an even vaguer memory of Derrida’s writing.)  At any rate, I noticed when I read Foucault that reading longer sections results in greater comprehension.  Latour is much more accessible, but I feel that he also argues cumulatively, driving an argument forward in small successive sweeps, and then circling back to remind the reader of an earlier point.  I feel like Anglo-American scholarship is more systematic, pushing the argument forward in evenly-paced steps. 

One thing that really works for me in Latour is his metaphor of travel.  He uses this to frame his warnings of what is to come and the distance the reader will have to move to get there. 

Walking slowly (ODU, July 2015)

Likewise, he uses metaphors of transportation to describe theories, comparing faster forms of transportation with ordinary social theories that quickly move to the explanation of the social. In contrast, he uses the idea of walking to describe the application of ANT as a theory, like an ant following a path of crumbs, moving slowly and painstakingly along the ground.  

References

Hampl, P. (1981). The dark art of description.  In M. Oliver & R. Atwan (Eds.), The best American essays 2009 (pp. 43-52). Boston: Mariner Books.

Latour, B. (2008). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.