Spinuzzi: Networks, Chapter 3, main points

Here is my brief rundown of chapter 3. The assignment related to the material will follow on Friday this week.

Activity system: Mediational means based on subject/object relation towards an outcome, which in turn is based on rules, community, and division of labor

Contradictions.

• Primary: conflict between exchange value and use value
• Secondary: conflict between the corners of the activity system
• Tertiary: conflict between culture and object (example: a pre-school kid wants to go to school to play, but the parents and teachers expect him to learn)

Different systems:

a) Chained (mass production/modular)

b) Overlapping (knotworking, self-organization)

Translation

• Polycontextuality (tasks and communities)
• Boundary crossing (between tools, relationships, social languages, etc.)
• Problematization (stakeholders problem)
• Interessement (defining stakeholders, splicing)
• Enrollment (definition of roles)
• Mobilization (collective solution/representation)

Pragmatics opens the system up to other things (pragmatism not as a negative concept)

Common ground between activity theory and actor-network theory: both are monist and materialist approaches to define activity