Toward a Grammar of Collaboration

Abstract

Inspired by Susan Leigh Star’s work, we propose a conceptual grammar for analyzing and comparing culturally and historically different kinds of collaboration. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory and Bakhtin’s theorizing, the grammar is tested and concretized with the help of the macroscale case of different types of social movements and the microscale case of different types of collaboration in home care encounters. There is no direct mapping across these scales, but the conceptual lens seems to work at both. This is seen as a first step toward a grammar of collaboration that allows some continuity of movement across the levels.

Notes

¹ Chronotope literally means “time-space.” Bakhtin (1982) developed this notion as a lens for analyzing the interconnected temporal and spatial categories represented in texts. See also Bemong, Borghart, De Dobbeleer, Demoen, De Temmerman, & Keunen, (2010). In our data, discourse initiated by Thomas literally turned the focus on times and places radically different from those expected in the standard script of a home care visit.

² These data could also be analyzed as possible instances of double stimulation in the generation of volitional actions (Sannino, in press; Sannino & Laitinen, 2015). As this would radically widen the scope of the argument developed in this article, we confine ourselves to the conceptual lens of instrumentality.

³ Macroscale phenomena are easily characterized in very general terms and typologies that may become detached from the historical concreteness of the phenomena depicted. To counteract this tendency, even though Figure 2 depicts macroscale phenomena, the axes of Figure 2 represent relatively specific objects and instrumentalities. Correspondingly, microscale phenomena are often described as unique in their specificity, which may lead to a neglect of the general qualities inherent in the phenomena. To counteract this, although Figure 3 depicts microscale phenomena, the axes in Figure 3 represent relatively general types of objects and instrumentalities.