Abstract
Reviewed by: Carol A Macdonald, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Vygotsky, cultural historical activity theory, social theory, psychology, sociology, political science.
Andy Blunden, a Marxist and social theorist, has been developing an interdisciplinary unit of analysis for the human and social sciences and arts for something over a decade. Drawing on the work of Hegel, he has written or edited three books (Blunden 2010, 2012 and current volume) in the last five years developing his ideas, and many papers in the last decade, also since the publication of the book under review (Blunden, 2015; Hegel, 2013). This book, Collaborative Projects, of which he is both editor and a contributor, is an attempt to broaden the base of the theory by having like-minded people, most of whom work with Marxist and Cultural Historical Activity theory, to share their work and further develop the theory. The focus of this review is to assess the theoretical development of his ideas on Collaborative Projects (CP).
In the present book, the overarching aim was to collect a wide range of empirical research which more loosely or tightly makes use of the concept of CP to demonstrate the efficacy of the concept for interdisciplinary research. The concept of CP makes it possible to draw together at least social theory, sociology, psychology and educational studies. Blunden introduced the new concept for two reasons: the first is that the idea of ‘collaborative projects’ has gained currency in popular discourse and has also been used for decades in general and technical education. (One of the contributors, however, thinks this very aspect is a weakness, p. 357.) It also has a philosophical sediment from the history of the human sciences. Instead of using ‘activity’, an idea which he thinks is not readily accessible or at best ambiguous, Blunden proposes CP as an activity. In the theoretical introduction, he traces the origins of the idea of CPs.
Most of the authors have their roots in the Cultural Psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the Soviet school of Activity Theory developed by Leontiev, and more recently by Engeström. Vygotsky saw that human beings develop not merely in collaboration with adults of a given culture, but through collaborative use of cultural artefacts, especially signs such as the spoken word. The activity theorists extended Vygotsky’s work with the concept of ‘an activity’, which is an aggregate of actions united by serving the same socially developed motive, represented by the mind as a concept. ‘Collaborative projects’ are simply ‘activities’ in this specific sense, but the concept is not hampered by the ambiguity of a word like ‘activity’.
Other authors are primarily social theorists with varying degrees of familiarity with Vygotsky and Activity Theory, who have used the concept of collaborative project because it provided a particularly useful approach to problems arising in their speciality.
The Introduction Blunden shows how Vygotsky and later Activity Theorists used the notion of concepts ‘as both units of consciousness and the units of a social formation, and in their understanding of the genesis of projects’. Concepts here are not mental objects but rather systems of actions made sense of by their common purpose: they constitute a project. It has norms, rules and symbols ‘flowing from the project’s self concept’ (p. 9) A project as an evolving and expanding social practice arises as a protest against a problematic social practice. Projects become social movements which in turn may become institutionalized – if they are successful, part of the fabric of everyday life; otherwise they atrophy and die.
Blunden talks about resolving dichotomies in the social sciences, such as agency/structure, development/immanence, determinism/contingency and subjective/objective. This is dealt with at length in the 2010 book and is a major achievement of its own. He also can account for agency, will and identity. Insofar as he achieves these resolutions, this is a considerable theoretical achievement.
There are 12 research projects described in Part 1, and Part 2 contains 12 short pieces in which the authors reflect on the ideas raised in the earlier chapters.
The first three chapters relate to initiatives including children and young people involved in developmental projects.
Elena Kravstova and Gena Kravtsov outline a method used in the Golden Key Russian schools – an experimental-genetic method pioneered by Vygotsky. Children are not taught different subjects typical of schooling today, but rather projects are used to model a real-life developmental process, so that children can reach their full potential.
Eduardo Vianna, Naja Hougaard and Anna Stetsenko’s work was in a urban community college, where learners are encouraged to adopt of ‘Transformative Activist Stance’: this empowers them to harmonise their learning goals and general life pursuits, and interrogate divisive social practices.
Morten Nissen discusses a video made by young drug users at a Copenhagen rehabilitation centre. Examining the collaborative video they made helps to reveal issues of power and examine the role of recognition in identity formation.
In the fourth chapter, Vera John-Steiner looks are the long-term partnership of a chemist and physicist whose collaborated over periods of time, and then they worked individually at other times. John-Steiner focuses on rhythms and cycles of collaboration, and the concepts of complementarity and mutual appropriation.
From this point on, the focus shifts to projects as the producers of the social fabric itself. The next chapter shows Michael Cole, Virginia Gordon and Bill Blanton’s work on a project started in the 1970s to develop practices to contest educational inequality. This project, called the 5th Dimension came up against problems which went beyond the scope of educational and psychological theory. This initiative, a meso-level collaborative project, reveals important information on sustainability – why seemingly successful innovations fail to thrive in the long-term.
Andy Blunden and Michael Arnold describe a project at the University of Melbourne in 1999 to create Collaborative Learning Spaces, an innovation which has become a ‘concept’, institutionalised in universities across the globe. Such projects, where they succeed, become part of the social fabric.
Helena Worthen reports on a non-unionised health-care facility where the relationship between workers and employer broke down after the latter tried to implement draconian changes. The workers formed a union and took protracted strike action. They constructed their participative structure as they went along and succeeded in gaining a contract.
Ron Lubensky was part of a project to develop a Citizen’s Parliament in Australia and the challenges in getting public acceptance of such enterprises.
Next comes those projects which transcend the life span and activity of a finite number of individuals.
Anna Stetsenko and Igor Arievitch discuss how Vygotsky’s work has been mostly portrayed from the standpoint of cognitivist and individualist views on science and history, and present an alternative approach to Vygotsky’s legacy that is compatible with the very spirit of his theory which evolved as a collaborative project unique for its practical, political, and civic engagement and ideological commitment to ideals of social justice, equality and social change. If they are right, and I think they are, we must look afresh at Marxist psychology as good (social) science.
The final three chapters concern projects played out on the global social and political arena involving masses of people. Here projects are essentially engaged in conflict with the dominant projects in a society and which are in collaborative relations with other projects. The social changes achieved are not just legal or institutional changes, but changes in the consciousness of masses of people.
Jennifer Power shows how the AIDS Movement changed people’s minds in Australia, where affected communities established the first ‘safe-sex’ campaigns, created large volunteer-based care and support networks for people living with HIV/AIDS, and established a presence at the vanguard of public health-policy making about HIV/AIDS.
Lynn Beaton and Andy Blunden look at the history of the asbestos industry in Australia. For at least 70 years, the industry was aware that asbestos severely compromises the health of asbestos workers. During this time workers remained ignorant of the dangers, while medical scientists and governments, trade unions and the media were aware of the dangers associated with its manufacture and use, but were effectively powerless in the face of the power of the manufacturers. Different projects joined forces and constructed the collaborative project of the Anti-Asbestos Movement.
Finally, Brecht De Smet examines the emergence of the Egyptian revolution from the collaborative project in Tahrir Square. The object of the original demonstrators was transformed, and defying expectations, brought down the Mubarak regime and opened a way to democracy. De Smet investigates the complex relations between different projects and importantly shows how a project’s concept of itself develops immanently from its activity.
The final part of the book is made up of 12 reflections covering reflections on the projects studied in the previous chapters as well as other projects such as the Women’s Liberation Movement, prefigurative politics, emotions, children’s play and others. These, while informal, are interesting for their insight into weaknesses and areas for further theoretical development of the new unit of analysis: and, it is of course, necessary that a book on CP should itself be a collaborative project. Blunden writes the final reflection, teasing out one or two more conceptual distinctions which must be made. His ongoing commitment to theory development is reflected in his 2015 revisions (personal communication) of the notion of ‘object’ which he articulates in this final reflection.
What then, are we to make of the theoretical development of the notion of CP? Blunden himself is a master of exegesis of difficult philosophical, psychological and political texts, but there is not yet a strong indication that any of the contributors have yet made a profound contribution to the nitty-gritty of his theory, but perhaps busy with their conceptions of projects. But there are definite glimpses. Vera John-Steiner says (p. 344) ‘unless we pay attention to those personal contributions to a project and trace their diffusion among participants, our description of CP remains too general’. Manfred Holodynski (p. 356) says ‘it is also necessary to establish a socially shared personal sense of the project’s goals … such as shared indignation’. But Worthen (p. 359) says that ‘none of the writers who contributed to this book used this Activity Theory to work out the details of a project’ and she argues for a prospective as well as a retrospective view of projects. I think that a micro-genetic analysis of a project would answer her concern, but it is clear that the prospective object of the project will not be the retrospective object.
While the one hand Blunden is open to other approaches to the idea of CP, such as Discourse Analysis, it is clear that such a sincere invitation will entail some tough negotiations on concepts of power, will and identity, and not simply be concerned with communication as such. Though sympathetic to Engeström’s model of activity systems, he talks about sublating Engeström’s insights into the internal structure and dynamics of activities into the concept of project. If we are able to both do this as well as integrate the insights of workers like Holodynski, Thompson and John-Steiner, this would take the theory of projects forward.
I surmise that Blunden’s ideas may well become more generally appropriated by workers in cultural psychology, cultural historical psychology and Cultural Historical Activity Theory. As Blunden says at the end (p. 370), ‘… [I]t is early days. This book marks only the very first effort’. We may have on hand the fourth generation theory of Activity, and so we look forward to CP, Volume 2.