Activity Networks

Once again, I couldn’t get past the opening pages of this Spinuzzi’s Network without finding my personal example to which I could apply the principles. One of my most challenging (and not surprisingly short-lived) jobs was as a coordinator with Utah State University’s distance education program. I was responsible for all of the courses (200+ per semester) taught via satellite and video-conferencing and found myself as a node, perhaps the primary node between academic departments and their instructors and curriculum, distance education campuses/centers and their unique needs, university registration offices, two separately located technical support centers, technology service (channels, internet pathways, etc) schedulers, physical resource (classroom) schedulers, and probably another half-dozen entities I should have been in communication with but ended up neglecting. A network indeed.

Looking back, which theory would have been better for analyzing it? I’m sure it will take me our discussion in class and then probably a rereading to really wrap my head around the differences between activity theory and actor-network theory. In chapter 3 while discussing the connections between development and political-rhetorical interests, Spinuzzi suggests “each side accuses the other of putting the cart before the horse” (p. 67). While this is a helpful metaphor, it seems to me that each side is accusing the other of putting the chicken before the egg. I understand that each believes in their perception, but at the end of the day I see the “which came first” question as nonsensical, and that in reality development and political-rhetorical interests are in a perpetual cycle of creating one another.

However, my initial reaction is that activity theory provides a better lens of analysis. I’m not sure I understand the differences of symmetrical/asymmetrical, but I do agree with the concept of activity theory that gives agency to humans (I’m not ready for the computer uprising). I also like the idea of the woven net more than the splice. I’m most intrigued by the notion of overlapping activity systems. Part of it comes from my minimal understanding of systems theory with its notions of permeable boundaries and processes of inputs, outputs, and throughputs. While the overlapping activity systems is probably more helpful than the linked activity systems, figure 3.2 is instructive. Multiple activity systems (such as the various organizations I identified in my opening paragraph) each have their communities consisting of rules, meditational means, divisions of labor, which transform their subject (inputs) in their objects (object(ive)s). However, none of these function independently. Each part of one activity system is theoretically a part of another activity system forming this complex network web.