Activity theory and ontology

Abstract

This paper seeks to re‐examine Yrio Engeström’s activity theory as a technology of knowledge designed to enable positive transformations of specific practices. The paper focuses on a key paper where Engeström defines the nature and present state of activity theory. Beginning with a brief account of the relations between activity theory and ontology, the paper asserts that Engeström’s take on Vygotsky is restricted by a commitment to a progressive, apolitical ideology of improvement. The paper goes on to consider Vygotsky’s metaphysics in relation to Heidegger’s elaboration of ontology, and Engeström’s elaboration of what activity theory is and of its global mission. Engeström’s activity theory is defined in terms of its expression of a will‐to‐power and is questioned in terms of its lack of engagement with the philosophical tradition it claims to inherit and its misappropriation of the Vygotskian legacy.

Keywords:

• Engeström
• Vygotsky
• activity theory
• ontology
• Heidegger
• metaphysics
• technology of knowledge
• improvement
• will‐to‐power

Notes

1. The word “enframing” here is borrowed from Heidegger’s influential post‐war essay, “The question concerning technology” (1993c).

2. Being and time was published 1927; The essence of human freedom in 1929; Vygotsky’s Thought and language in 1934.

3. Engeströmian Activity Theory (EAT) finds itself being deployed in the cause of all sorts of localized projects of improvement: “My current research is focused on health care organizations, a bank, and a telecommunications company striving toward new forms of co‐configuration and knotworking”. Y. Engeström, http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/people/engestro/. For a critique of improvement see Peim and Flint (2008).

4. See Derrida’s insistence that the western metaphysics is embedded in everyday language (2001).

5. For a full account of this problematic of “voice” see Derrida’s complex and convincing elaboration in, among other places, Of grammatology (1976).