What’s wrong with CHAT?

Clay SpinuzziUniversity of Texas at Austin

What’s wrong with “What’s Wrong with CHAT?”?Clay SpinuzziUniversity of Texas at Austin

A quick word about what I’ve been up to for the last 20 years

Field studies of workplaces

Field studies of...

Software developers

Traffic safety workers

Telecommunications workers

Office workers

Freelancers

Search engine optimization specialists

Coworkers (in coworking spaces)

Innovators learning to be entrepreneurs

Common threadsin these studies

Multiple, often quotidian texts

Composed and assembled innovatively, sometimes idiosyncratically

Yielding solutions that balance stability and flexibility (centripetal/centrifugal)

Within bounded cases (bounded by a relatively stable, mutually defined activity)

Activity theory

Activity theory...

… and Bakhtinian genre theory (Tracing Genres, 2003)

… and actor-network theory (Network, 2008)

… and organizational networks (All Edge, 2015)

AT is overly complicated. We can talk about it if you want...

Choose your own adventure!“Your conceptual framework”: Basics of AT?

“Your methodology and methods”: AT and methodology?

“The conclusions you are drawing”: Rhetorically pivoting AT?

“[How] your work could speak to or be used by scholars from a different discipline”

“Your conceptual framework”

Stimulus-response (this is how animals live!)

S R

Mediation through physical or psychological tools (ex: egocentric speech)

S r

m

Mediation at the social level (cyclically repeated labor) (also handy for bounding case studies of work)

Subject (actor/s) object(ive)(material, projective)

Mediating artifact(s)

Community (stakeholders)

outcome

Rules Division of labor

Levels of activity: To explain learning and development in collective activities

Level of activity CharacteristicsActivity (Macro level)

Culture, history; objectives and outcomes; usually unconscious

Action (Meso level) Actions and goals; consciousOperations (Micro level) Habits and reactions; unconscious

“Your methodology and methods”

Field research in case studies (not ethnographies)Observations

Interviews

Artifact analysis (including textual analysis)

Others as they might be useful

Cf. Topsight (2013)

“The conclusions you are drawing”

“I’m using a Soviet theory to study

entrepreneurship.” — me, 2014

“Generations” of AT, with historical accretions of concepts** An ANT-based translation analysis

1GAT

2GAT3GAT

mediation, internalization, proximal development

activity system, structure of activity

activity networks, contradictions, rules

3GAT was applied to

design research

And consequently changed in fundamental ways

From research subjects to participants

From individual to collective subjects

From prediction to description (and deliberation)

From individual activities to networked activities

1GAT2GAT

3GAT

4GAT

Rhetorical pivots—as assumptions and justifications reach their shelf life

The next pivot?

A “rough draft”

Application: Apply AT to sociocognitive, not just social, research into writing

Theory: Rebuild activity theory around dialogism

Phenomenon: Understand the object(ive) as multiple

Development: Theorize interfering cycles of development

“[How] your work could speak to or be used by scholars from a different discipline”

Applications in...

Professional writing

Technology studies

Human dimensions of organizations

Studies of work

HCI/CSCW

wherever AT has spread.