Reading :: Concept Formation in the Wild

 Concept Formation in the Wild

By Yrjo Engestrom

Sometime last year, I became interested in what is meant by “concept” — a term that is used broadly, in both colloquial senses and a multitude of academic senses. Like terms such as “solidarity” and “phenomenon,” it can mean very specific things to someone who is steeped in a specific scholarly tradition, yet different things to those in another tradition or in no tradition. After reading several sources, including this one, I have a better understanding of some of these senses (and a diminished enthusiasm for the term itself).

“Concept,” of course, has intrigued Engestrom for a while. As someone who has studied and learned from Vygotsky, Leontiev, Davydov, and others in the tradition of Soviet-era Russian psychology, Engestrom understands concept as sociocultural:

The primary focus of this book is … collective creation of culturally new concepts in the wild. The starting point is the realization that culturally novel concepts are created not only by scientists but also by people struggling with persistent problems and challenges in all walks of life. (p.5)

To study it, he draws on studies he conducted throughout his decades as a scholar, examining not laboratory studies but rather field studies and interventionist studies. 

In Chapter 2, Engestrom draws on the work of a variety of (loosely speaking) sociocultural researchers to explore the notion of concept formation. These include familiar names such as Cussins and Hutchins. Re the latter, Engestrom notes that “Hutchins argues that conceptual models are commonly stabilized with the help of ‘material anchors’” — which “are more than just words or signs” (p.12). Indeed, although Engestrom does not point this out, Hutchins does not show any interest in distinguishing between signs and tools — like Engestrom and Leontiev, unlike Vygotsky.

In Chapter 3, Engestrom draws on Vygotsky’s work on concept formation in Thinking and Speech. Discussing the methodological principle of double stimulation as laid out by Vygotsky and explicated by Sannino, Engestrom then moves to discussing the four generations of activity theory. (Longtime readers of this blog will recognize that Engestrom has long described activity theory in terms of these generations, and that they are not universally accepted by other AT scholars. See my upcoming book for the gory details.) When he inevitably presents the activity system triangle (p.19), he locates Concepts under “Instruments: Tools and signs.” And he argues that “From a dialectical perspective, a concept is a stepwise process of moving from the initial germ cell abstraction to its concrete manifestation” (p.21, his emphasis). He adds that “the origin of concepts is to be found in productive labor, in the practical molding of materials into artifacts” (p.22). This is a very Leontievan understanding of concepts, and it contrasts sharply with (for instance) Andy Blunden’s understanding (as we’ll see when I eventually review his book on concepts). 

In Chapter 4, Engestrom examines functional concepts in organized productive activities. He begins by discussing “prototype concepts,” which we can examine as material rather than mental representations (p.37). Following Brooks, he provides the example of the Chartres Cathedral, which was built by many contractors in many campaigns over decades, a “mess” that nevertheless defined the concept of the Gothic cathedral (pp.37-38). “It may have been later used by others as a model to emulate, but it was not created to be emulated. It is primarily a prototype of itself and for itself” (p.38). Turning to an example of observing how Indian fishing boats are built, he argues, “A prototype concept answers the question ‘What?’, not by listing attributes or explaining but basically by pointing and inviting the observer to touch and test” (p.41). “Prototype concepts are oriented to the here and now,” and “The formation of the prototype concept in our study took place as extended dwelling and moving in a bounded space around the material object” (p.42). 

Other types of functional concepts exist. In fact, Engestrom provides a table (p.77) laying out five types:

• Prototype
• Classification: Category
• Process: Script, story, or plan
• System
• Germ cell 

Each is illustrated by a case study, and each has a different purpose. He adds:

Each type of functional concept has its own specific strengths and affordances. In other words, one type is not “better” or “more advanced” than the other. However, many complex activities would benefit from making use of the complementarity of different types of functional concepts. (p.77)

In Chapter 5, Engestrom considers an embodied germ cell at work, drawing on the studies he conducted with Nummijoki and Sannino on physical mobility in elderly home care. He argues that “A theoretical concept may be understood as dialectical movement from the abstract to the concrete. In other words, the concept is a way of moving within a domain, not a static definition” (p.80). Here, he focuses on the germ cell he and Nummijoki identified for elderly home care: “Getting up from the chair, or sit-to-stand, [which] is extensively used as a rehabilitation and intervention technique and central item in tests of physical mobility and functional capacity” (p.83). After all,

It is foundational for any other kind of physical movement. In other words, it can be seen as the smallest and simplest initial unit of a complex totality; as something ubiquitous, so commonplace that it is often taken for granted and goes unnoticed; and as opening up a perspective for multiple applications, extensions, and future development. (p.84)

Intriguingly, through this elaborated illustration Engestrom argues that “Concept formation in the wild is foundationally a societal and collective process that takes shape in a distributed fashion not reducible to individual learning, cognition, and behavior” (p.106) — that is, if we think about concept formation as a socially distributed process, we must think beyond the sign or individual understanding. 

In Chapter 6, Engestrom turns to double stimulation and concept formation in everyday work. He focuses on critical encounters, in which participants face a conflict of motives. This conflict could be internal (a participant is oriented toward two different motives) or external (two participants pursue conflicting motives) (p.110). In such a situation, an artifact can be used as a second stimulus, helping to clarify the conflict. Put differently:

A critical encounter is an event in which two or more relevant actors come together to deal with a problem that represents a shared object and at the same time a conflict of motives. In such a critical encounter, there is both complementarity and tension between the actors. To resolve the problem, the actors may use mediating artifacts to take volitional action and to try and conceptualize the situation. In this sense, critical encounters are generic sites of learning, understood as formation of transformative agency and functional concepts. (p.111)

This might lead to “A conceptualization effort [, which] is some type of an articulation of a general idea or characteristic that has integrative potential for establishing a perspective for a solution to the problem or conflict of motives” (p.113).

In Chapter 7, Engestrom considers collective concept formation as creation at work. He argues that “Collective concept formation in the wild may be seen as creation of new worlds, condensed or crystallized in a future-oriented concept” and that it “is typically a long process in which the concept itself undergoes multiple transformations and partial stabilizations. This type of creation transcends the boundary between the mental and the material. The concept typically radiates outward, finds extensions and practical applications that stretch the boundaries of the concept and make it a constantly moving target” (p.139). Let me just note here that I really like Engestrom’s orientation to concept as a social fact, not something that just happens inside the head, but something that happens across people and across their environments. It portrays “concept formation as a process that transcends the divides between mental and material, between mind and body. For these authors, concept formation operates not only with symbols, words, and language, but also it is grounded in embodied action and artifact-mediated enactment in the material world” (p.142). 

Based on this line of thought, Engestrom proposes that

concept formation in the wild may be regarded as movement in a space defined by means of two dimensions, namely the dimension of stabilization … and the dimension of representational modality …  The end points of the stabilization dimension are “emergent” and “well-defined.” The end points of the modality dimension are “enacted, embodied” and “verbal, textual.” (p.142)

After discussing some case studies of work, Engestrom concludes:

If we abandon the individual as privileged unit of analysis and redirect our analytical gaze to real transformations in work and organizations, we gain a very different angle on work-related creativity. Creativity appears as practitioners’ and their clients’ collective efforts and struggles to redefine the idea of their activities – to construct and implement qualitatively new concepts to guide and organize the work practice. This kind of creativity cannot be neatly located in a standard scale from Big C to small c, simply because the individualist unit of analysis of that very scale is inadequate. Collective concept formation at work is creation in the sense of forging the future, building new worlds of work while dwelling in those worlds. (p.155)

In chapter 8, Engestrom considers concept formation “over the long haul,” anchoring the discussion with Sannino’s recent involvement in the Housing First program. As longtime readers of this blog know, I’ve been following this project for a while, and Engestrom’s discussion here gives us new details about how it has unfolded and what it has produced. In particular, he notes a contradiction between security and freedom in managed housing, and he proposes the concept of escorted transfer as a way to integrate services laterally (p.173). 

Chapter 9 wraps up the book, providing advice for interventionist researchers who are interested in helping concepts to form while avoiding imposing their own ideas. 

Overall, I really appreciated this book. Like the other books Engestrom has written since retirement, this one draws case studies from across his long career, using them to explore and sum up themes that he has touched on throughout. In particular, I appreciate the more or less distributed cognition treatment of concept. It helped to make concept a more useful category for me and for the sorts of studies I conduct, and along the way, it helped me to think through relationships among different sorts of material conditions that we too often rush to characterize as tools, signs, words, etc. 

So I will return to this book as I continue to think through these sorts of relationships. If you are similarly interested in them, or if you’re just interested in activity theory more generally, I highly recommend this book. 

Reading :: Writing as a Human Activity: Implications and Applications of the Work of Charles Bazerman

 Writing as a Human Activity: Implications and Applications of the Work of Charles Bazerman

Edited by Paul M. Rogers, David R. Russell, Paula Carlino, and Jonathan M. Marine

This festschrift for Charles Bazerman was published in 2023, so I’m a couple of years late in reviewing it. Honestly, I feel bad about this, since I read it as soon as it came out — and I have a chapter in this collection as well. So today I have shoved aside a couple of reading projects to make time for this review.

The book is, of course, a festschrift — a reflection on the lifelong work of a foremost scholar, Charles Bazerman, who has left a deep mark on writing studies through both his scholarship and his organizing (especially the iWAC conference). I’ve reviewed several of his books on this blog over the years, and most (perhaps all) of these are, like this festschrift, available for free via the WAC Clearinghouse — reflecting Chuck’s deep interest in ensuring that scholarship is available to all (something that Mike Palmquist discusses in detail in his chapter). 

Not surprisingly given Chuck’s energetic promotion of writing across fields and international boundaries, the chapters in the festschrift were written by international and interdisciplinary scholars. The 18 chapters are grouped into several sections:

• Academic and Scientific Writing
• Writing Pedagogy
• Sociology of Knowledge & Organizational Communication
• Activity Theory
• Writing Research Development
• New Media and Technology

Rather than covering every chapter, I’ll just call out a few.

Editors’ Introduction (David R. Russell, Paul M. Rogers, Paula Carlino, Jonathan M. Marine)

This introduction was written by four of Bazerman’s collaborators (and David was, of course, also my dissertation director). It attempts to summarize Bazerman’s contributions across his scholarly life, clarifying how these added up to a lifelong contribution. Arrestingly, they declare: “Bazerman created—with the help of many, many others—what amounts to a new field: writing studies” (p.4). In the rest of the chapter, they overview his scholarly biography, discussing how he first became interested in teaching writing, how he became interested in writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID), and how he came to grips with writing as a social phenomenon. As a restless and relentlessly interdisciplinary scholar, Bazerman explored the humanities and social sciences, rhetoric, genre, social studies of science, and practice theories — including but going well beyond activity theory. The authors also overview Bazerman’s many service contributions to the profession.

Chapter 7. Genre Change around Teaching in the Covid-19 Pandemic (JoAnne Yates)

JoAnne Yates confesses that Bazerman’s book Shaping written knowledge came out too late to influence her own book on genre, Control through communication. Yet his work on genre systems deeply influenced her and Wanda Orlikowski’s later work, and they used genre systems when examining “how people use sequences of typified communicative actions to coordinate their activity over time and space” (p.170). In this chapter, she examines “the changes in teaching genres, genre systems, and genre repertoires triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic” at the Sloan School at MIT (p.170). Using genre, genre systems, and her and Orlikowski’s concept of genre repertoire, she develops a detailed case study of genre changes. 

Chapter 9. Writing and Social Progress: Genre Evolution in the Field of Social Entrepreneurship (Karyn Kessler and Paul M. Rogers)

In this chapter, Kessler and Rogers focus on “explore the role of writing as a tool of mediation in the formation and evolution of a newly recognized area of activity,” in this case, “the field of social entrepreneurship—work that seeks to address the world’s most intractable problems through entrepreneurial behavior and a commitment to the public good” (p.227). They examine the case of an organization called Ashoka: “this study aims to examine the ways in which a particular genre … served as a primary driver in the activity of identifying a new category of social actors (social entrepreneurs) and building a new global field (social entrepreneurship)” (p.227). 

What’s Ashoka? “For the past 40 years, Ashoka has spread the idea of social entrepreneurship primarily through its rigorous process for identifying, designating, and supporting the world’s leading social entrepreneurs in a network of ‘Ashoka Fellows’” (p. 231). And for Ashoka, one genre — “The Fellow Profile—has emerged and persisted as the primary tool for internally organizing people, activity, ideas, and processes, as well as for presenting evidence for the existence and effectiveness of the impact and activity of social entrepreneurs” (p.233). Kessler and Rogers identify this genre as unique to Ashoka, contrasting it with more familiar genres such as funding proposals and capability statements (pp.234-5). 

In this study, Kessler and Rogers focus on the tension between stability and flexibility in genre, a tension that has often been mentioned but not so often explored. They also examine the profile as having multiple uses within the ongoing activity (activities?) in which the fellows are enmeshed.

These profiles made me think of the Team slide in an investor pitch, a slide that highlights the entrepreneurs' qualifications. Similarly, accelerators and incubators usually have pages describing the entrepreneurs as well as links to their social media. The entrepreneur isn't the venture, but sometimes audiences are more interested in the entrepreneur than the venture anyway (and sometimes that fact is reflected in pitch deck order -- the Team slide sometimes comes first instead of last!). 

I think this question of the entrepreneur's identity is really crucial since any entrepreneurship (including social entrepreneurship) involves a great deal of risk. Stakeholders (investors, partners, distributors, etc.) have to get a basic idea of who they might be able to trust and what they'll trust that founder to do. In some cases, they invest in the entrepreneur even if they don't believe in the venture idea itself. 

But I also think it's hard for first-time entrepreneurs to draw that separation -- that is, to understand how to use the genre to describe themselves as an entrepreneur rather than as a part of a venture. At the time of writing, they are obsessed with this venture idea and how it will change the world. After some time as an entrepreneur, they may have gone on to other ventures or changed this venture idea significantly, and they thus start to see themselves as separate from a given venture idea. I see a reflection of that transition in Kessler and Rogers’ interviews, in which two interviewees see their profiles as outdated. Yet they likely patterned their profiles on other profiles by other young entrepreneurs. That is, in a sense, the genre is a time capsule that reflects an early stage in the entrepreneur's development and is thus tied to a fairly limited orbit of circulation across activities. It's possible that if Ashoka wanted to provide more guidance, they could revamp the genre by having experienced entrepreneurs revise their profiles, fine-tuning them for more expanded circulation across broader activities. That revamping could then provide scaffolding and reorientation for less experienced entrepreneurs. The tug of war between stability and flexibility might play out differently.

That being said, I'm sure experienced readers of these profiles also know the game, and also know that the profiles serve the distinct purpose of advertising Ashoka's past projects. Surely the rhetorical work mentioned above goes on in LinkedIn, in the entrepreneurs' own websites and social media, etc., and readers know where to look for these updated genres. 

In any case, I’m sure I will go back to this chapter when thinking through entrepreneurs’ profiles!

Chapter 10. Two Paths Diverge in a Field: Dialectics and Dialogics in Rhetorical Genre Studies (Clay Spinuzzi)

I won’t review my own chapter, but wanted to flag it in case people are interested. I started thinking about writing a version of this piece in 2010, but couldn’t get traction on it, so I put it aside for a while. After another decade-plus in which I researched the Vygotsky Circle more thoroughly, I developed this chapter, which finally helped me to articulate my misgivings about dialectics.

Chapter 11. Writing for Stabilization and Writing for Possibility: The Dialectics of Representation in Everyday Work with Vulnerable Clients (Yrjö Engeström)

Bazerman essentially brought Yrjö Engeström to writing studies, circulating his work to colleagues in the mid 1990s. Here, Engeström salutes Bazerman’s 1997 argument that discourse contributes strongly to structuring professional activity systems. Rather than writing my own summary, I’ll just present Engestrom’s forecasting statement:

In what follows, I will first summarize the characteristic features of the shift from emic to etic representations in encounters between professionals and vulnerable clients. I will then discuss the available literature on possibilization and possibility knowledge. This leads me to introduce three types of representational instruments developed and used for possibilization in my own studies and those published by others. These three types are written agreements, four-field models, and pathway representations. I will show how each one of these types of representation can work to open up and support discursive and practical re-orientation toward dynamic possibilities in professional-client interaction. I will conclude the chapter with a discussion of possible transitions and iterative movement between the contextualized-emic, the decontextualized-etic, and the recontextualized-prospective modes of representation and writing, arguing for a politics of deliberative shifts in representation. (p.294)

Throughout this chapter, Engestrom demonstrates that broadening the scope of an activity entails finding or developing regulatory genres, genres that can project actions. He mentions “written agreements negotiated between the professional and the client,” “four-field models that depict zones of proximal development for an activity,” and “pathway representations” (p.296) — each illustrated by studies in which he was involved. Critically, these different genres project a future and require participants to sign onto them, committing to that future. 

As I discuss in my upcoming book, from the 1980s to the 2020s, Engestrom steadily broadened the scope of his investigatory cases, and as he did, he changed the focus of the specific genres under discussion: Whereas his earlier, closely focused cases examined the many different texts and tools being used in work, his later, broadly scoped cases focused on producing regulatory genres such as care agreements in which participants sign onto a change in their work. That is, the earlier cases are descriptive, examining how people execute specific actions; the later cases are deliberative and sometimes prescriptive, envisioning how they will conduct their activity in the future. As a side note, it’s hard to understand how writing studies picked up activity theory in the 1990s and 2000s without realizing that we took Engestrom’s early descriptivist case studies as models (especially 1990’s Learning, working, and imagining: Twelve studies in activity theory and 1992’s Interactive expertise: Studies in distributed working intelligence). 

Chapter 17. Change, Change, Change—and the Processes that Abide (Charles Bazerman)

Chuck has two response chapters at the end, one focused more on research and the other on teaching. Here, I’ll just focus on the research chapter. Here, Chuck generously discusses each of the pieces, concluding in this way:

Perhaps at some point writing studies will develop a small, stable canon of issues, ideas, and methods, but we are not there now. I feel fortunate to be part of this period of proliferation and expansion, opening our eyes to the complexity of writing. It has certainly provided me the pleasure of new vistas coming into view through the haze. It at least fit my disposition to look broadly and seek underlying processes. I suspect our field will remain interesting in this way for a time to come, or at least I hope so, for it seems to me there is so much fundamental still to be discovered, beyond the reach of our current disciplinary tools and imagination. I thank my friends and colleagues, those contributing to this volume and so many others, for accompanying me on this rewarding journey into the haze of the unknown. (p.413)

This seems like a good way to close this review. If you’re interested in the impact Bazerman has had on writing studies, this festschrift seems like a critical part of your journey. And if you’re not interested — you should be!