On Experiencing History I: Social historical world as network of activity systems

By Eric Santosa

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 4. click here to go to part_1, part_2, part_3, part_5

Cultural psychology conceives of human experience as flow of dramatic scenes. This flow forms an individual biography which is constituted by the kind of narrative adopted and activities the individual get involved with. The dual landscape of human experience: consciousness and practices that allow human thinking, imaginations and communication; both are embedded in certain biography of individuals. The dramatic scene of Indah hanging out with her close friend at Starbucks Pondok Indah Mall for example is part of Indah’s biography which is constituted by the kind of narratives and activities she had. Understanding such individual biographies and imaginations of people in certain segments or locations may help business to come up with market insights for spotting opportunities.

In the previous articles of my introduction to cultural psychology I present several dramatic scenes of human actions and interactions, and discuss how we as individual human may have imaginations, perceive and make ourselves intelligible to our interlocutors. These scenes however are possible to happen only in certain kinds of social-material world which function like a geographical landscape in certain periods and locations in history. Two individual biographies may be similar to each other though they occur in different periods or locations in history. The fabula and sjuzet of Martha's story as female warrior that captures Indah's landscape of consciousness may be more or less similar to Nyai Ontosoroh's who in Pramudya Ananta Toer's novel she is said to live as a concubine of Herman Mellema, a Dutchman in Java at the beginning of 20th century.  The dramatic pentads of the two however would be certainly different. Humans are born into specific kinds of social-material realities that have already existed before. Their personalities and actions are first of all simultaneously enabled and constrained by these conditions; though their imaginations can allow them to form subjunctive realities that go beyond their being in history like for example when Martha get inspired when reading the story of Nyai Ontosoroh.

Many of our examples are from modern 21st century that would not have been possible in 19th or even 20th centuries. We may say that our contemporary life is very much under the structure of modern capitalist system. For example Blackberry messenger as mode of communication or Facebook as virtual market place was not conceivable even in the last decade of 20th century. The forms of 21st century capitalism with its sophisticated derivative market, consumer pop cultures, social media marketing strategies, creative industry, 3D printing-enabled mass-customization mode of productions, Wikinomics style of mass collaborations through internets, all these were inconceivable for Karl Marx when he wrote Grundrisse and Das Kapital in the second half of 19th century. The books are witnesses of early forms of capitalism in its mother countries in Europe around the first industrial revolution. If Marx lived in 21st century he might have written his Communist Manifesto on Mac Book Air and spread it through Facebook and Twitter. It is intriguing to imagine what Marx would have written if he were to live in this century.

In what follows I shall try to sketch up an approach to help us reconstruct understanding on our own situatedness in history which may become important contexts that allow specific human imaginations, actions and dramatic pentad to happen. The rise and development of capitalist system would become important stage or "socio-geographical" landscape in which the scene of modern human life is possible. This task may sound ambitious; more so while I only plan several blog articles on this topic. First of all I'm not ambitious or trying to make thorough and detailed analysis on current state of capitalism like what Karl Marx did in his Das Kapital. What I'm trying to do is like standing on the shoulders of giant thinkers to have a broader view of the world. It is much more humble, that is, to make a brief sketch of an approach to understand what Paul Ricouer calls our "being in history" with the help of Marx followers through Vygotsky and others in Russia, France and Scandinavia who have achieved a lot to advance Marx ideas.

The publication of Yrö Engeström's book Learning by Expanding in 1987 maybe said as an important milestone in the development of Marxist ideas. With the fall of communist regime of Soviet Union in 1989, it is safe to say that Marx was wrong about his prediction on the demise of capitalism, about communism and his suggestion for abolishing of private properties. His critiques of capitalism, his Thesen über Feuerbach, his methodology and analysis of human condition under capitalism however paradoxically prove useful for later generations to get insights how to move on with life under capitalism, to make life much more humane than its earlier version as in London's first half of 19th century after the first industrial revolution.

One of Marx's most valuable contributions for social science is his methodology in studying concrete production activity as a living cell of capitalism. Though Marx himself did not explicate it, activity is the unit of analysis that he used for observing and scrutinizing modes of production, distribution, exchange and consumption under capitalist system. Great thinkers after Marx through Vygotsky and others including Engeström of Helsinki University have followed this path and utilized this unit of analysis as a tool for studying various areas of human life.

Engeström's network of activity system

In his book Engeström describes the evolution of activity as a system that consists of triangles of tool-mediated actions that dialectically relate human subject, community, object (Gegenstand, in German). I will not go detail on this since the book can be read. and easily accessed through internet. I myself have two articles already related to activity system in my blog; one, activity system: a later development of Vygotsky's psychology, in which I sketch the development of the approach with an example of a sculpture artist business activities; and the other, CSR as business strategy, in which I parallel Engeström's activity system approach with Michael Porter's value chain analysis for finding relevant connections between business and society. Here I would like to use Engeström's activity system, the network and flow of value creation for illustrating similarities and differences of human experience and biography in several different locations and stages of history.

Let's start our observations from Yorkshire, England in 1727, five years before Sir Richard Arkwright, the father of Britain’s factory system, was born in Preston, Lancashire, and almost five decades before he made his water frame and founded his Cromford cotton mills in 1771. Daniel Defoe made a journey that year around South and West Yorkshire. As he came nearer to Halifax from Blackstone Edge he observed:

"... an infinite number of cottages or small dwellings, in which dwell the workmen which are employed, the women and children of whom, are always busy carding, spinning, so that no hands being unemployed, all can gain their bread, even from the youngest to the ancient; hardly anything above four years old, but its hands are sufficient to itself..."

Before industrial revolution the main site of production activities is the house of families of craftsmen, the so-called cottage industry. There were no issues of child labor yet since children as young as four years old worked at home. Woollen cloth production that was introduced in England long before middle age was conducted largely by proud hands whose skills were traditionally acquired through apprenticeship in the house or workshop of these craftsmen. Carding, spinning, weaving, bleaching and dyeing for producing woollen cloths were done often by different families which bought raw materials and sold their finished woollen threads and cloths to local markets nearby. Job divisions were largely determined by gender and family structure. Spinsters for example were young unmarried women who worked carding and spinning at home while assisting domestic jobs by their mothers. Weavers and dyers in contrast were men since weaving and dying activities were more labor-intensive and usually conducted outside home at workshops.

These concrete activities at the house of the craftsmen can be described as an activity system that creates values from raw material objects that is, producing woollen threads and cloths from raw woollen, involving community of people. The relation between community and object-outcomes is mediated by division of labor. The relation between individual subject and community is mediated by rules, for example, women are not allowed to hang out with men at the workshops except for serving meals for them. Lastly, the relation between individual subject and object-outcomes is mediated by tools. Together these mediated relations constitute an activity system that creates valuable woollen threads and cloths. The value creation, the object-outcome maybe said as the center of gravity for the activity system since all elements and processes inside are directed toward it. German word maybe more precise to describe this: Gegenstand. It is what the activity mainly is about. The Gegenstand of concrete activities of the craftsmen near Halifax above can be formulated as woollen cloth.

Engeström's activity system can be conceived like a geographical landscape in which streams of objects flowing from production through distribution and exchange, and ending in consumption phase. We could see these complete streams in one activity system however only in its primitive forms such as in hunter-gatherer or in early agricultural society where currency did not yet exist. In such communities people really ate what they killed or grew. Men hunters went to the wild hunting preys and bringing meat home to distribute, exchange and at the end be consumed by fellow community members. Tools were used for helping hunters more effectively to catch, kill the prey and bringing the meat home. The streams are not necessarily of material objects. The moment of food production is at the same time the moment of consumption of individual labor and skills. It is also the moment of distribution of tools and materials among the hunting men who through exchange of signifiers (communication) coordinate themselves to kill the prey.

In this primitive hunter-gatherer society already we can see early forms of network of activities. Hunting as food production activity did not exhaust the time these people had under the sun. The meat of their prey was further prepared and consumed in families. Domestic activities are those conducted in family, including food preparation, self care, and child rearing. Seen from stream of objects point of view domestic activity is predominantly consumption activity. However it is a production activity as well, that is of care-giving whose product is human self. Like that of hunting, domestic activity as production of human self involves consumption of labor and skills, distribution of food materials and exchange of signifiers that function to coordinate and deliver care for family members.

Outside family these hunter-gatherer people were doing several other types of activity system, still in early forms: governance, religious, tool-making, learning and play. When there were still surplus of time and resources these hunter-gatherer people would spend time outside family for social and leisure activities. When there were surplus of goods they would distribute and exchange various materials and tools in accord with individual family needs. Besides tool-making these activities are predominantly signifiers exchange activity where people communicate with each other. Religious activities were predominantly signifier production activity which fed the imagination of these primitive people's mind.

The production activity of the craftsmen in Halifax in early 18^th century was far more advanced and differentiated than the hunter-gatherer society. The production-consumption activity of early hunter-gatherer through ages had evolved and differentiated into chains or network of activities. Pre-industrial Europe was mainly still an agricultural society, a more advance one. Although banking system had not reached rural Halifax areas at that time, people had already used pound-sterling, shillings and pennies as currency for making transactions. Bank of England in London was founded in 1694. Bank of Halifax however was founded much later only in 1853 in Halifax town first as building society to help local working people to purchase house. Woollen cloth production when it was first introduced in Halifax in early 14th century was initially conducted not as main production activity. It was more of leisure-educational activities in their spare time, or in winter when they could not grow anything.

In early 18th century England experienced a growth of productivity in agriculture. This means that England as society had surplus of products to distribute and exchange. This in combination with emerging trade, banking and market system allowed some of the farmers to focus themselves on making cloths to sell, and buy food in the market for their consumptions. The "profession" as craftsmen or artisan emerged. This was the moment where the previously subordinated became more independent activity system. Figure 2 describes the network that constitutes woollen industry. This means that they did not eat what they killed or grew themselves. They did not need to produce and store foods by themselves. They could focus themselves on making and improving their woollen products.

This development of activity system into network of independent, more differentiated activity system is made possible through the use of currency as tool of exchange. Currency has come into existence driven by human propensity to share and exchange surplus of various kinds of goods. Human civilizations as old as the Sumerian culture in ancient Babylonia had used currency in the people’s daily lives. Just like primitive container bags allowed the hunter-gatherer people to bring the prey home to be eaten later, currency functions to help agriculture people to store the value of their production surplus to be used in the future without worrying that the surplus would decay. When exchanged the surplus would be converted into currency which has certain exchange value that could be used later in the future to get products in the market to fulfill the need for consumptions. Currency is basically a signifier that signifies exchange values of certain products in the market. It acquires this function from the fact that it is accepted and used as medium of exchange by many more people in the market.

The use of currency and the division of labor between farmers, woollen cloth producers and many other kinds of producers in England in that period had on the one hand empowered people to have and to do things beyond imaginations for hunter-gatherer society. On the other hand however people were much more dependent on other people they may never meet face-to-face in their life. For example since the woollen cloth producers did not produce food for themselves, they depended for their food consumption on the market and other people who produce food somewhere else outside their community. For their survival they had to produce woollen cloth for selling to get money to buy food. Their life at this stage of history depended on the exchange value of woollen cloth in the market. Woollen cloth products which in previous stage were produced in spare time for own use had become commodity. They must want to sell their woollen cloth products as commodity in the market for their own survival.

The commodification of products which emerged since the dawn of agricultural civilization was the seed of early capitalist system and it put them in contradictions that result from tensions between use value and exchange value. Along with commodifications of various more human artifacts human life would change faster. Such contradiction is the hallmark of Marx's dialectical analysis of capitalist system which would overdrive the evolution and constant changes of the society. Through commodification on the one hand human beings are potentially empowered and independent both as productive agent and as consumers, but on the other hand they are being subordinated by anonymous societal power and money-relations very often beyond their control. The product on the one hand is a creation of productive agent which first of all may have use value and is empowering for the creators and potentially for consumers as well. On the other hand it is a commodity whose exchange value is determined by the market, often beyond the creator's control.

The commodification of woollen cloth products allowed some of these craftsmen to become successful enough to grow their business, accumulate their capital, buying more land and tools, and putting the whole process for producing woollen cloths from carding until dyeing under one roof, and employing more workmen and women outside their nuclear family members. Together they formed woollen cloth producer guilds, the associations of craftsmen that regulate purchase of materials, cloth productions, price and trade to protect their members. These under-one-roof woollen cloth productions were more efficient and productive than house-based version in which the various processes occurred and controlled by different families.

This is the early form of cotton mills of industrial revolution period that occurred fifty years after the time Daniel Defoe made his observations in Halifax. In this stage of history we could already see the division between smaller number of business owners and the growing number of working class with various skills related to woollen cloth production. They were the members of families who previously have home-based cloth productions. They gave up their operations since they could not compete with their fellow craftsmen who were able to increase productivity and accumulating more capital. Some others of them however had made their fortune through trading and distributing their woollen cloths to seaport in Liverpool. They then focused more on their own trading business than producing woollen cloth themselves. Besides these business owners, majority of others would have to enter the job market, selling their labor and skills.

Here we could see that commodifications were not limited to products. Human labor and skills were commodified already as well. At the time Daniel Defoe made his observations woollen cloth productions were still largely hand-made with the use of simple tools that were invented since centuries before. With such tools human hands with weaving skills had good exchange value and became commodity in job market. Fifty years after Defoe's Halifax visit, along with the emergence of clothing mills with their spinning and weaving technology life for working class would be completely different. Their proud labor and skills that had centuries-long traditions were losing their exchange value and their life would be driven into slave-like life.

Technology had replaced human hands as productive agent. On the one hand it was a curse for many people who made living with their skillful hands. On the other hand however it was a blessing for people who have knowledge and intelligence. From that point of history human technological knowledge had started to become commodity as well competing with human hands. It was basically the first step into commodification of signifiers of various forms. Human technological knowledge is one form of signifiers that signify the working of productive tools. This commodification of signifier was the seed of the future knowledge economy and creative economy of 21st century.