On Experiencing History II: Web of biographies and human imaginations

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 5. click here to go to part_1, part_2, part_3, part_4

In part 4 of our introduction to cultural psychology we discussed about human situatedness at a small village of Halifax in pre-industrial England in early 18th century. In such stage of history what kind of biographies and human imaginations were possible? 

In pre-industrial England the craftsmen and their family in Halifax lived happy and productive life. A young man of a dyer family most likely would become dyer himself or at least would get involved in cloth production activity for his living. In those days skills among craftsmen were transferred to younger generations through apprenticeships in families or neighbors. Grammar schools were for the sons of nobility and gentry only. Main challenges for such young men were to increase their own exchange value by improving the quality of hands and mastery of weaving or dyeing tools. 

Typical imaginations of young men from working class families were to become a craftsman or artisan who had his own enterprise and family with many kids to help support his production activities. The paradise for young women in this segment was to marry successful artisan and doing domestic jobs like raising kids or helping their men to manage the workshops. Craftsmen and artisans who have their own workshops were at that time the nobility of the working class. They were the ones who were leading in woollen cloth producer guild to protect the industry and the people who earned their living from it.

Halifax as homeland for the people was a peaceful place with productive culture. People seldom went outside the area. Transportations to faraway places like the seaport of Liverpool were still expensive that ordinary workmen would not be able to afford. Often times it was dangerous as well. The fastest mode of transportation in this time was the same as in Roman Britain 2000 years before: a man on a galloping horse; or for larger number of passenger there were coaches with several horses. These coaches were the favorite prey of highwaymen who robbed and killed the passengers. It took two days of traveling 50 miles from London to Cambridge. Only people with money or in contrast people who have nothing to lose to find fortunes would travel outside their homeland.

Literacy rate was still low. Although Gutenberg more than two centuries before had revolutionized printing technology to allow cheaper printed media, its consumption was still limited to nobility and gentry who lived in bigger towns like London. Although newspaper business has existed and began circulating routine news since early 16^th century, there was no news paper or gazette to reach typical working class families in Halifax. 

In such situations where mode of transportation and communications were still primitive the imaginations of the Halifax working class were limited to what could be seen at their hometown. Again, only people who have money or in contrast people who had been expelled from peaceful community, to whom life had been cruel, and had nothing to lose would have imaginations beyond their homeland.

Richard Arkwright and His Imaginations

One such personality was Richard Arkwright. He was born on December 23, 1732 in Preston Lancashire, a county neighboring to Yorkshire, as the youngest of thirteen children of a poor family. Thomas Arkwright his father was a tailor who though poor was aware of the importance of reading and writing for the future of his children. Thomas sent Richard to be taught by his cousin Ellen Arkwright. At an early age he was apprenticed to Mr. Nicholson as a barber. He then moved to Bolton in 1750 to work with Mrs Pollitt, a barber and wig maker. Like all the young of poor craftsmen family his wild imagination was to have his own business. In 1755 after the death of his first wife he setup his own barbershop and invented the first water-proof wig dye.

After his second marriage with Margaret Biggins in 1761 he gave up his barbershop and focused himself more on wig making. For his business he traveled widely in Great Britain to collect discarded women hair for his wig. The shift in fashion trend had caused decline in wig usage and affected the exchange value of his wig business. Accordingly his fortune declined. It was said even in 1768, just three years before he founded his Cromford cotton mill, he was so poor that when he returned to his hometown he needed to be furnished with a suit of clothes before he could appear to vote at an election as a burgess of Preston. He could see clearly that his wig making business was not promising and looking for other opportunities. 

During his business travels in Great Britain he observed a lot, meeting various kinds of people including spinners and weavers. In around 1764 he met John Kay, a clock maker of Warrington Lancashire who has worked with Thomas Highs, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny. Since then textile business had become his wild imaginations, his subjunctive reality.

How Arkwright's Imaginations Changed World's History

Since early 17^th century textile market had been a battle field between Britain’s wool producers and East India Company (EIC). In 1620 EIC imported over 50,000 pieces of Calico from India. Calico is a fabric designed from unbleached cotton, using a plain weave and a low thread count. Compared to hot and itchy woolen, cotton cloth is cooler and smoother. Soon Calico became fashionable. This comfort and style were also cheap. Clothes made of Indian Calico were a sixth the price of wool. 

At this time, calico printed with bright colorful Indian motifs was particularly popular amongst particularly middle lower women, who were known as "Calico Madams." By 1690 EIC had brought 265,000 pieces of Calico in a year from Madras alone. It was just one of EIC’s three main producing areas in India. EIC imported cotton cloths also from China and Persia. In the decades at end of 17^th century it practically had flooded Great Britain with imported cottons.

In the spirit of mercantilism of that day British Parliament took various measures to protect the Britain wool industry. Initial measures in 1690 were in the form of import duties, but these were too low to make much impact on the huge labor cost difference between Britain and India. In 1701 Calico Acts passed by British Parliament prohibited printed calicos and other types of cotton cloths imported from India into Great Britain. 

The 1701 Calico Act still allowed the importation of white cottons from India for printing within Britain. These measures however could not tame the demand for cotton clothes among the new emerging and growing lower class fashion consumers. They were the so-called Calico Madams, those women who typically worked as domestic servants which could not afford wool clothes. In this period Calico printing business to make copycat of the Indian motifs was booming. 

In 1720 twenty years after the first Calico act the volume of imported cottons into Britain was back to its 1701 level. In 1721 the British Parliament passed the second Calico Act which was much more restrictive prohibiting not only the import but also all the use and wear of imported cotton cloth.

Richard Arkwright clearly saw the opportunity in fulfilling the demand of cotton cloths in lower class market especially among the Calico madams. Cotton production in Britain before the industrial revolution was not growing since the cotton cloths in domestic market is of lower price while its labor cost with hand-made production mode in Britain would be much higher than the imported ones. 

Arkwright's imaginations, his subjunctive reality before 1771 while he was in reality still poor were to make his fortune by producing cotton cloths in larger volume and with cheaper price. Figure 3 pictures his imagination in the form of activity system network.

Arkwright was not alone to have such imaginations. Since the first half of the eighteenth century many people had made efforts to invent tools to make cotton production more efficient and productive. Flying shuttle which was invented in 1733 by John Kay of Walmersley (not John Kay the clock maker of Warrington) was the first of the inventions to disrupt traditional hand weaving practices. He was a poor hand-loom reed maker who was just trying to make a better living by inventing better tools for weavers. The invention of flying shuttle had caused social unrest among weavers in the parish of Bury. He was expelled from the parish, and later exiled to France. His invention however was like opening the Pandora box. 

The effects could not be undone. The use of his invention had increased more than tenfold the productivity of traditional weaving process. It had also caused sharp increase of demand and consequently the price of yarn and threads. The situation the flying shuttle had created had caused social unrest not only among weavers but also among the spinners as well. Despite his success as inventor however he lived in obscurity and did not get the wealth that his invention could have created. He patented his invention but in practice he did not get the royalty he deserved until he died in 1780.

By the time Arkwright started his wild imaginations of cotton business the weaving process had greatly been automated though it was still hand-powered. In contrast spinning process still relied on traditional hand spinning wheel. The productivity of cotton yarns and threads production in Britain could not keep up with the domestic demands. They were still largely imported either with quite high tariffs or through smuggling. The race in this time was about improving spinning productivity. 

In 1764 Thomas Highs of Leigh, another talented reed maker from Lancashire like John Kay of Walmersley, invented Spinning Jenny. John Kay the clock maker was his neighbor in Warrington and assisting him to construct the metal version of the spinning Jenny. This is the year when Arkwright on his wig business travel first met John Kay, heard about Highs’ invention and got interested in cotton business. 

Spinning Jenny was able to improve production of weft yarns, but it still had limitations for producing stronger yarns needed for warp. Realizing this limitation Highs abandoned Spinning Jenny and gave it away to James Hargreaves, a weaver and carpenter who was later credited as the inventor of Spinning Jenny. With the help of John Kay of Warrington, Hargreaves produced Spinning Jenny in his hometown Blackburn.

Meanwhile Thomas Highs was working on a more promising project: the Spinning Frame that would be able to produce stronger yarn needed for warp. The idea behind spinning frame was similar to Lewis Paul’s Drafting Rollers which was patented in 1738. There had been several unsuccessful business efforts to make profits using Drafting Rollers. Edward Cave and Samuel Couchet had built their Marvells Mill in 1742 using Lewis Paul’s invention on the River Nene at Northampton. It made no profit and went bankrupt in 1755. 

Thomas Highs might have had his inspirations of Spinning Frame and made improvement from Lewis Paul’s Drafting Rollers. By 1768 he seemed to have found the solution for spinning frame design and asked John Kay the clock maker of Warrington to make its metal model.

In the same year 1768 Arkwright met John Kay in his hometown Warrington. Arkwright seemed to have given up his wig business and tried to persuade John Kay to work with him. Although poor, Arkwright was able to employ John Kay as his assistant to build the prototype of the spinning frame. In 1769 they moved to Preston, Arkwright’s hometown to do their work in a rented house. The house was secluded which allowed them to work in secrecy and keep so much to themselves. Strange humming noises emanated from Arkwright’s house. Neighbors accused them of sorcery and they were expelled from Preston, fleeing to Nottingham. The result of their work however was worth it. Their spinning frame produced far stronger thread and was able to spin 128 threads at one time. One important feature of their spinning frame was that it required no skilled operator to run it.

Arkwright’s spinning frame still had one important pitfall however, that its size made human powered operation impossible. In Nottingham they worked using horse power. As a cunning businessman Arkwright could see that working with horse power would not be profitable. Despite that he considered their spinning frame as a concept worked very well. In 1769 he patented the spinning frame without mentioning John Kay as his partner. Kay learned about this patent from James Hargreaves who at the time lived in Nottingham, fleeing from Blackburn where his spinning jenny had caused social unrest among the spinners. Furious, John Kay accused Arkwright of stealing his work tool. Arkwright counter charged Kay of leaking spinning frame design to Hargreaves. At the end Kay left Nottingham and permanently dissolving his partnership with Arkwright.

In search of funds to expand his business with spinning frame prototype Arkwright then met Ichabod Wright, a Nottingham banker in 1769. Wright then introduced him to Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need, both were successful businessmen who had built their silk hosiery Mill in Derby and Nottingham. Upon seeing how the spinning frame prototype worked they got excited and readily agreed to make partnership with Arkwright. The three became partners who in 1771 then built the Cromford Mill in Derbyshire. The spinning frame at Cromford was powered by water streaming from the Derwent River. Since then it was called the water frame which Arkwright was largely attributed as the inventor.

There had been disputes on who was the original inventor of spinning/ water frame. In 1785 Arkwright's patent on water frame was overturned by the British court since many people witnessed against him. Beyond these disputes however nobody would argue against the fact that Arkwright was the first to make the invention worked to produce large volume of cotton yarns and made huge profit. His genius as inventor might be disputed but his business management savvy was beyond doubt. He invented many of management practices of factory systems which are still in use until today.

Cromford before Arkwright founded the mill was a very small village with scattered houses of lead miners. Within ten years after the mill was established it had more than five thousands inhabitants, majority of which were employed in the factory. He recruited weavers with big families to live there. Typical families of artisans in the 18th century England in average had ten children. Since water frame did not require hands with skills he employed the children and the mother. He built cottages and almost all the facilities for the livelihood of the weaver families such as schools, Church and market. While the children went to work in the factory the father stayed at home weaving the yarns produced at the factory. The factory ran all day and night in two thirteen-hour shifts except Sundays. The workers were allowed a full week holiday in a year.

The success of his Cromford mill drove him to establish more mills all over Lancashire, Staffordshire and Scotland. In areas where he could not find water for powering his engine the brand-new steam engines invented by James Watt and Matthew Boulton were deployed. Factory management practices similar to those applied in Cromford were applied at the other mills as well. The success of Arkwright's mills attracted other businessmen to copy his practices. It was said that they asked the mill workers to describe the working of the mills in exchange of money. They even sent spies to know more detail about the mills operations. Arkwright's employees worked from six in the morning to seven at night. Two-thirds of Arkwright's 1,900 workers were children. His policy was to wait until the children reached the age of six and he was unwilling to employ people over the age of forty. Most factory owners after Cromford mill was established imitated these management practices.

This success came not without debates, critics and, for sure, social unrests similar to what John Kay's flying shuttle had caused, but with much larger scale and impacts. The Derby Mercury reported on 22nd October 1779 that Arkwright feared that people made unemployed by his new methods might destroy his factory: "There is some fear of the mob coming to destroy the works at Cromford, but they are well prepared to receive them should they come here. All the gentlemen in this neighborhood being determined to defend the works, which have been of such utility to this country. 5,000 or 6,000 men can be at any time assembled in less than an hour by signals agreed upon, who are determined to defend to the very last extremity, the works, by which many hundreds of their wives and children get a decent and comfortable livelihood."

Critics accusing Arkwright as responsible for the misery of many mothers and children had emerged as well. In 1780 Ralph Mather published An Impartial Representation of the Case of the Poor Cotton Spinners in Lancashire. His book included details of Arkwright's operation: "Arkwright's machines require so few hands, and those only children, with the assistance of an overlooker. A child can produce as much as would, and did upon an average, employ ten grown up persons. Jennies for spinning with one hundred or two hundred spindles, or more, going all at once, and requiring but one person to manage them. Within the space of ten years, from being a poor man worth £5, Richard Arkwright has purchased an estate of £20,000; while thousands of women, when they can get work, must make a long day to card, spin, and reel 5040 yards of cotton, and for this they have four-pence or five-pence and no more."

In 1774 the Calico Act was repealed. Undoubtedly Arkwright had some influence to make this happen through his lobby in the British parliament. Regardless of his influence however with the increased productivity and competitiveness of cotton textile made in England the mercantilists had lost its arguments to support the import ban of cotton raw materials. Instead, consistent with the mercantilist arguments of the day the policy should support more import of raw cotton materials and encouraged the export of cotton clothes. The emergence of cotton mills in Lancashire had put Britain in more competitive position to sell cotton clothes to India and other countries. This was widely attributed to his achievements in building successful factories. In 1786 he was knighted by King George the third and the year after he served as high sheriff of Derbyshire. He died at Rock House, Cromford, on 3 August 1792, aged 59, leaving a fortune of £500,000.

Decades after Arkwright died the social unrest caused by the cotton mills still occurred. Like John Kay of Walmersley with his flying shuttle, Arkwright with his Cromford mill had opened a pandora box with much larger and more enduring effects that could not be undone or prevented. The changes from home spinning and weaving to industrialized caused groups of 'Luddites' to attack the factories. Boom and bust, wars and shortages of cotton caused large fluctuations in wages, strikes, lock-outs, riots and shootings. Luddites were groups of workers who broke and burnt the cotton factories.

The British government's responses to the Luddites were harsh. Despite a passionate speech by Lord Byron in the House of Lords, in February 1812 the British parliaments passed the Frame-breaking acts which carried death penalty and ordered 12,000 troops to the areas where the Luddites operated. In the summer of 1812 eight men in Lancashire were sentenced to death and thirteen transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills. Another fifteen were executed at York. This was followed by further sporadic outbreaks of violence. The Luddites movement however declined along with the improvement of wages. When working in factories had become regular life the workers lost interest in the movement. By 1817 the Luddite movement had ceased to be active in Britain.

In this rather long exposition of Richard Arkwright biography we can see how commodifications of technological knowledge had overdriven social change and disrupted traditions that had lasted for many centuries before. These commodifications however were allowed to emerge and made lasting impacts only after commodifications in several other aspects of life such as human labor, trade and finance were mature enough. Furthermore the inventions alone would not be able to make the change happen. Only when there are good chemistry with capital, business management savvy, political freedom and stability, and the availability of infrastructure, labor and market would the inventions be able to produce disruptions and induce social change. 

In the language of Engeström's activity system what Richard Arkwright had done was to construct a new more advance form of activity system, new practices that disrupted the old by utilizing available technological knowledge and innovative tools, funds available in capital market and the already available neighboring activity systems such as unskilled labor, the market and the mercantilist policy making of British parliament. Had Richard Arkwright been born one century earlier he would not be the one who drove the accelerations of industrial revolutions. His imaginations would not even be possible fifty years earlier when the British Parliament passed the second Calico act. The socio-geographical landscape of 18^th century Britain had allowed personalities like Richard Arkwright to do great things that had lasting impacts throughout future generations living under capitalist system.

These lessons learn can be found in many books on economic or business history. Here my focus is more on the personalities, their imaginations and the socio-geographical landscape that allow them to occur. Richard Arkwright’s fabula may have been that of the warrior with rags-to-riches type of sjuzet. Very early in his life as a young boy he had been driven out of his homeland paradise to deal with the sad reality of living in poverty. For sure he was not the only boy living in poverty but Thomas his father knew that reading and writing were important for the son’s future and sent Richard to live with his cousin to learn something that Thomas did not have. This may have driven Richard to have experience and imaginations beyond his fellow homeland boy at his age. As consequence he may have fully realized what he had been deprived of, something that got him quite focused on what he would like to achieve in his life.

Among all the inventors who participated in the race of inventing tools for more productive spinning he was the only one which did not grow up in spinning-weaving environments. Both John Kay of Walmersley who invented flying shuttle and Thomas Highs who might be the original inventor of spinning frame were the reed makers who knew a lot of details on the working of spinning and weaving. James Hargreaves was a weaver, and John Kay of Warrington was a clock maker who helped Thomas high to make metal versions of the spinning jenny and spinning frame. The fabula of these men may have been that of the creators with from-zero-to-hero sjuzet. Compared to these men Richard Arkwright was nothing. He might not have the adequate technical skills to invent the spinning frame. However he must have been a very good observer that was able to learn fast from other people he had met. The fact that he was nobody in spinning-weaving industry allowed him to learn more not only about spinning and weaving but more important on the business management, potential market opportunities, and the possibilities that those inventions may have brought about.

I should end this blog article here before it’s getting longer. In my next articles on cultural psychology I wish to delve deeper into the lives of the Calico madams. They were the ones who actually became the first driver that made industrial revolution possible in the 18^th century. However this will depend on the availability of the materials on the subject. My intention is to illustrate ways how we can spot business opportunities through understanding the imaginations that people may have.

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.

How Human Imagination Possible and How It Works: The Dual Landscape of Human Experience

By Eric Santosa

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 3. click here to go to part_1, part_2, part_4, part_5

In discussions with friends on marketing communication I often say that we're not selling products. What we are selling is the story behind it. When people buy the story they will buy the product. I am saying that it is imaginations which the story delivers that people buy. It is similar in politics when we say what a party is selling is the ideology. When people buy your ideology, your imaginations, they will vote for your party. These expressions reflect the importance of two landscapes of human experience for explicating how people may be able to buy certain imagination, a story or ideology.

Practice and Consciousness

Paul Ricoeur describes these two landscapes as "being in history" and "the telling about it." Sequence of events or human actions in the "real world" occurs concurrently with mental events in the mind of the protagonists involved. The first is the landscape of practices and the second, of consciousness. The example of Indah and Martha that we find in my earlier post illustrates a complex interplay between the two. Just look at how absorbing the story of Martha for Indah that she almost forgets herself having a lunch appointment with her friend. When Martha is telling her story it has captured the landscape of Indah's consciousness that she forgets her being in history. It is as if Indah gets sucked and is jumping into Martha's life. Indah is indeed buying the story of Martha. If Martha were in a role to offer an elixir for preventing divorce, chances are that Indah would buy to prevent her paradise lost. In the context of media and creative industry in general, having products, services, performances or communications that may be able to have similar effects like the story of Martha is the paradise of every enterprise.

Let's take a look closer to these two landscapes. Telling may not be the right word to describe the essence of the landscape of consciousness since it is only one of the things that human is doing involving the second landscape. Essentially it may be more accurate to name "the observing on it"  When Indah is in the classroom activity system with the kids for example she is doing a storytelling practice telling a fairy tale for them, while at the same time observing on her own doings and their effects on classroom environments. In such situation she does not tell anything about what she is doing in classroom. Only in imaginary settings where a narrator with an omniscient eyes and ears telling reports of what she is thinking and doing would we have a live "telling about it." If Indah put an effort to tell herself what she is doing like a narrator's voice-over while she tells the fairy tales definitely it would confuse the kids listening. We can imagine Indah making such narrator's voice-over when she is doing a cooking class for the kids or a cooking TV show for a food channel. In many other occasions her consciousness does not do the telling about her own practices.

This particular scene of Indah telling fairy tale to her kids is involving a quite complex interplay between the landscape of practice and of consciousness. Humans have the capacity of self reflection, that is, going beyond or transcending the landscape of practice into the landscape of consciousness to inspect or scrutinize their own doings and their effects on environments. Humans have the capacity to go back and forth, transcending to and descending from the landscape of consciousness. They are able even to make reflection, transcending on their own consciousness ad infinitum. This is the hallmark of human intelligence that may differentiate them from other species in animal kingdom. Human capability of knowledge, of having sense of self, of having stories, imaginations and at the end having the ability to build civilization rest upon this capacity.

To explicate the interplay we need to differentiate two basic categories related to the two landscapes. In the landscape of practice we may differentiate between linguistic and extra-linguistic practices. For example Indah's cooking activity may involve mainly extra-linguistic practices when she is using her cooking tool for manipulating the cooking materials. The cooking activity may involve linguistic practices when she is describing to the kids how to cook, or when she is doing a kind of self talk about the dish she would like to make. Leontiev refers to this as internal activities which in certain activity system like cooking go together with external activities in a coordinated way to achieve the objective of making certain dish. In contrast storytelling is the kind of activity that involves more linguistic practices. It certainly involves extra-linguistic gestures like when Indah moving her hands to animate the action figures of the tale, or when her mouth producing utterances. In contrast to cooking in which her hands function to manipulate the cooking materials, in storytelling her hands moving and mouth uttering to make gestures as symbols or icons to signify the sjuzet and dramatic pentad of the fairy tale.

While she is doing the practice of storytelling she is able to monitor her own practices and the effects they have on the audience. It is as if she can transcend or go beyond herself and gaining access into the landscape of consciousness. In this landscape correspond to what we find in the landscape of practice we may differentiate between practical versus discursive consciousness. Following Anthony Giddens with his Structuration Theory, practical consciousness refers to knowledgeability which results from the monitoring of "being in history" that very often may be hard to explicate into words. This knowledgeability consists mainly of images that may function as icons and indices in Peircean sense. Discursive consciousness in contrast is knowledgeability that involves symbols which may be more easily elucidated in words or utterances.

Thinking and imagination as symbolic practices

Observing on "being in history" is not the only thing human can do in the landscape of consciousness. They can do practices in the landscape of conscious like they have in the landscape of "being in history". Thinking is a kind of practice that is purely symbolical which is conducted in the landscape of consciousness, the product of which is imagination. Just like cooking practices in "real world" thinking is a practice which uses symbols, indices and icons as signifier tools to produce more complex signifieds, the imagination, which when reproduced may become complex signifiers. This is the process of iterated signification which is described by Peirce and Saussure's semiotics.

Similar processes occur when we are reading and writing. When Indah is reading fairy tale books in her preparations for the class the book provides her with signifiers that she uses as tools to reconstruct narratives in her own consciousness. Likewise writing is a practice similar to storytelling. When Indah tells the fairy tales she is producing signifiers for the kids to help them reconstruct the narratives as signifieds in their own consciousness. Conceived of from this approach a movie can be seen as a very complex set of signifiers involving symbols, indices and icons both visual and verbal which presents a higher order signifieds to the audience's consciousness.

When Martha is telling her story to Indah after class session with the kids, she is reproducing a product, a set of signifiers of imaginations on her own life that performs certain functions for her interests. We may perceive this process similar to news reporting: Martha  is telling about her "being in history". It's not that the second is merely representational of the first, like orthodox journalism would have it, that news papers merely report sequence of events objectively as a matter of facts. Students of narrative since Aristotle in his Poetics have recognized that Mimesis is not merely the art imitates life. It's not merely an innocent platonic representation of reality.

Paul Ricoeur says that Mimesis is a kind of metaphor of reality. "It refers to reality not in order to copy it but in order to give it a new reading." These new readings, the imaginations are imbued with interpretations that help people like Martha to realize her fabula. Again, they are not merely innocent representations of reality. They serve to realize certain interests for the actor in the light of its fabula. The structure of her imagination is build in accord with certain sjuzet and dramatic pentads which in relation to fabula may form a kind of hermeneutic circle. These new readings function to help humans to structure themselves and their life. They function on the one hand for human to understand past events, and their current existence, and on the other hand reconstruct possible scenarios of the future. In other words stories and the imaginations behind it have strategic and tactical functions to help humans maneuvering their life, and they are reconstructed using packaged signifiers given by their culture.

So, when Martha tells her story to Indah it's not like an innocent news report. Martha comes to see Indah with one objective in mind: to get Indah help to solve her problems with Raka. This is conducted tactically in two steps. First of all she tells the story of Raka with his problems to get Indah understand the situation and how she could help him. In the second step Martha tells the story of her divorce, how she then becomes a single mother. The function of this step is twofold. It is to justify her action, making excuses for her inability to handle Raka, and at the same time to get Indah moved and motivated to help. The divorce story has the strategic function for Martha to achieve her objectives.

It's not that as if Martha consciously try to exploit Indah in this case. Martha maybe truly sincere in telling her story. Being a single mother to survive she could not adopt a good mother fabula with paradise lost sjuzet. Adopting a more warrior-like fabula with becoming-tough-mother sjuzet makes more sense for Martha to continue her life, the reason why she allows herself being unable to become a good mother. Earlier when the divorce has just happened her fabula might be different, and she might still adopt this paradise-lost sjuzet. In this context telling her divorce story to family and friends might function to position herself as helpless victim, being dumped by her spouse. The story might function unconsciously to induce anger towards her spouse, and at the same time to induce pity for her from family and friends.

Telling her story to Indah is like Martha is offering a product, a package of signifiers that Indah may buy. Indah buys the story and adopts it for her own interest. Again, the way Indah understand the story of Martha is not like innocent listening of reports. Presented with a package of signifiers from Martha, Indah reconstruct the story in the lights of her own fabula. Martha may not present her story in the way of paradise lost sjuzet. Despite that Indah may understand it as paradise lost. Her currently active sjuzet may be that of transformations-for-becoming good mother. The paradise lost sjuzet is activated in Indah's consciousness as sub-junction that may possibly happen to her. What has been the reality of the past for Martha becomes a possible subjuncted reality for Indah, a threatening one that she may not all this time consider as a possibility. This maybe one of the reasons why the story of Martha is absorbing her very much that she almost forgets herself having appointment with a close friend at Pondok Indah mall.

The story of Martha for Indah may have functions very similar to women magazines which present real life stories from their readers like for example "Oh mama oh papa" in Kartini magazine years ago. The title "Oh mama oh papa" itself functions as signifier for the target audience which induces a paradise lost sjuzet in the readers' imaginations. Who maybe the potential audience of this rubric? From our cultural psychology approach those who would buy are the one which consider paradise lost sjuzet as threatening subjuncted reality, or those whose active sjuzet is domestic paradise lost looking for another more hopeful subjuncted paradise. It may need research to affirm this guess. Chances are people like Indah whose active fabula and sjuzet are transformation for becoming good mother may be more likely to buy the magazine. In contrast people like Martha for whom the divorce story has been the reality of the past may not buy such magazines.

Activity and Narrative as Building-block of Human Experience

by Eric Santosa

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 2. Click here to go to part_1, part_3, part_4, part_5

My hobby may seem strange for some people. One of the things I like doing is just having a seat with cigarettes and a bottle of beer at the corner of cafés on weekends while people hanging out and spending times together with friends and families. I'm myself off course alone with my own imaginations with books or observations on people around me. Yes I'm like people diagnosed with autism, and I like being in my autistic world.

In my imaginations I'm always fascinated by questions how meeting of minds possible. We usually tend to consider human experience as purely subjective like me myself in my own imaginations. Often times It's difficult to make ourselves intelligible for other people. Nobody seem to be able to understand what's inside my subjectivity. If human experience is purely subjective then the question is how meeting of minds possible? In contrast, my observations on people at the cafés show at times that people do not seem to have difficulties to understand other people's mind. People seem to be able to have easy access to other people's subjective experience.

In several extreme cases it may even be possible that two complete strangers could go together like old friends who haven't seen each other in very long time. I remember the scene for example when Karl Marx first met Friedrich Engels. The two met the first time on August 28, 1844, at the Café de la Régence near Louvre at the very heart of Paris. It is said that they talked for ten straight days and as many nights after that date. The two seemed to live in the same world of imaginations that would later changed the world, engaged heavily with each other from the very first time they met throughout life time.

Similar fascinations also captures me when I observe meeting of minds that may seem mundane in our social world. At Starbucks for example I'm fascinated by how easy people make transactions, buying hot cappuccinos, exchanging gossips, making business deals. It may seem easy how Starbucks can sell hot cappuccinos worth more than thirty thousands rupiah, and people do not seem to mind with the price or question why the price is that high. Everything seems to be taken for granted. It seems like Starbucks can read other people's mind that they are willing to buy that kind of drink and  turns the reading into business opportunities.

In my cultural psychology course I usually make use of two important concepts to elucidate the cultural contexts that enable human to experience the world, to understand self and make him or herself intelligible in the world: activity and narrative. The first concept I derive from marxist psychology of Vygotsky and his followers which roots back to Hegel and Feuerbach. There are two articles of mine on this topic (one on the story of Vygotsky, and the other on Leontiev's and Engestrom's cultural historical activity theory) which can be found in my blog. The second, I owe it from Jerome Bruner's cultural psychology, literary theory of Roland Barthes and semiotics of Saussure and Peirce.


Activity System

Alexei N. Leontiev which may be said as the main theorist that develops Vygotsky’s ideas considers activity as the appropriate unit of analysis that Vygotsky has searched for before his death of Tuberculosis. Leontiev defines activity as:

“..the non-additive, molar unit of life for material, corporeal subject…. It is the unit of life that is mediated by mental reflection. The real function of this unit is to orient the subject in the world of objects. In other words, activity is not reaction or aggregate of reactions, but a system with its own structure, its own internal transformations, and its own development.” (Leontiev, 1981: p.46)

This definition may be difficult for more western-influenced readers to digest. To put it in more simple way activity is a system that functions as the building block of meaningful human life that orients how people interprets and responds to him or herself or other minds. For example, the classroom teaching activity is a system that allows the act of raising hand to become intelligible. Cultural scripts that direct how people respond to the act are also made possible through the activity as a system. Even human self is determined as well by the roles they play in those activities. Participations in classroom activities would define the teacher's and the students' self concept and esteem.

It's not that the activity as a molar unit cannot be broken down, but if we would like to construct meaningful social life any smaller elements should be organized in activity contexts. To elucidate this, Leontiev make use of levels of unit of analysis as in figure below.

In our example of the act of raising hand in classroom, the activity is the classroom activity whose motive is teaching and learning. The operation is the tangible gesture of raising hand by the participant which is determined by the condition. For example when the participant is a disabled who does not have hands he would not be able to make the gesture. The action is what is understood of the intentions behind the raising-hand, for example to ask a question or to make comments on what is being talked about in the classroom. The action is driven by the participant's goal. The operation of raising hand would be meaningless if it is decontextualized from the activity of classroom teaching. The reading of other people's mind is possible only when the gestures are understood within their contexts.

Similarly the billboard is a gesture like the raising hand in the classroom. Billboard as a gesture becomes an act of showing or telling something in the context of brand promotion activities. In the first version of the mosquito repellent billboard where there are no visual cues other than the picture and the name of the product the audience will use the promotion activity as the context to figure out the meaning of the gesture. It's like a salesman is trying to offer the audience a mosquito repellent. Unless the product is really innovative and disrupting what people know about mosquito repellent the billboard will not get any attention from the audience.

In the billboard with the two additional set of visual cues the audience is given another layer of contexts. The context of promotion activity will be pushed to sub-consciousness as background. In these two alternative versions the audience is presented with a mother doing care-giving activities, and the other a mother doing fighting activities like a warrior. These layers of context then are positioned in the foreground at discursive consciousness level. These activity contexts are presented through two different sets of meaningfully interrelated gestures which include the act of the mother, the setting of bedrooms and cultural artifacts such as nightgown and bed, or army-look apparel and hand-gun. The existence of the mosquito repellent brand will be meaningful differently in these two different contexts although its function to kill the mosquitoes maybe exactly the same. In marketing communication jargons these two activity contexts communicate similar functional benefit, but they will induce different emotional benefits to the audience.

Narrative Mode of Experience

To deliver such emotional benefit however the presented activity contexts should be able to induce relevant and appealing narratives in the mind of the audience. Narrative is simply a meaningful sequence of activities or events. Jerome Bruner explains narrative as follows:

“a narrative is composed of a unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors. These are its constituents. But these constituents do not, as it were, have a life or meaning of their own. Their meaning is given by their place in the overall configuration of the sequence as a whole-its plot or fabula.”  Bruner (1990: 43)

These constituents are elements of the dramatic quality, what in Kenneth Burke's dramatism is termed as the narrative pentad which consists of actors, action, intention, instrument and scene. Just like gestures and visual cues in activity contexts, this dramatic pentad would be meaningless when they are not put into certain narrative contexts. Narrative with its timeless fabula and timely sjuzet functions to glue the pentad in various activities together into a sequence that delivers meaningful experience. Like cultural scripts it dictates what the actors and interlocutors anticipate, their inter-subjective experience, the kind of worlds possible for them and how they would respond to each other in a given situation.

For example in the first set of visual cues the image of a young mother making her kids asleep comfortably may induce the audience to reconstruct a narrative of a mother who has problems with her nagging kids who could not fall asleep because of mosquitoes. Killing mosquitoes with the repellent tube becomes the solution to her problem which at the end allows her to restore her paradise of being a good mother. In this example, being a good mother is the fabula, the timeless subject of the story that helps to make sense of the timely organizational plot of the sequence (sjuzet) and the pentad which is present in the image. The second set of visual cues in the billboard offers yet another dramatic pentad, another fabula and sjuzet, that is, being a courageous warrior which dictates another kind of meaningful sequence of activities. These two sets of visual cues with their own narratives will deliver different emotional benefit to different audience. Which of the two narratives is relevant and appealing will depend on its fit with the psychography of the target audience.

How can those sets of visual cues or gestures be able to induce certain kinds of narratives? Here Peirce’s semiotic is very much of help to explicate the workings of how visual or verbal cues or gestures may become signs that dictate people’s awareness of certain narratives, and at the end inducing emotional benefits to the audience. The visual cues are the signifier or in Peirce’s term, the representamen; and the narratives induced in the audience’s mind are the signified. In Peircean triadic scheme the signified has two elements, that is, the interpretant (the sense that comes from interpretation process) in the audience mind, and the object or referent. In this triadic scheme the narrative with its fabula and sjuzet is the interpretant, the sense while its dramatic pentad elements are the referents.

For Peirce interpretation is an on-going process where interpretants can function as representamen that induce another more advance interpretants. This iterative interpretation process can go ad infinitum to construct or reconstruct newer sense. Narrative as interpretant must be a result of more advance and complex iterations. I shall have to say more on this topic in other article since it’s a complex subject that cannot be put in one or two paragraphs. Here I just would like to point on one important merit of semiotic. It is that Peircean triadic scheme can help us to be aware of our own interpretations, our relations (or conflicts) with other minds and to reconstruct a targeted communication that is able to induce emotional benefits to our audience in more strategic way. The backward process is important as well. It enables us to deconstruct our own interpretation and communication process, to evaluate the impacts for our social worlds.

The Interplay between Activity System and Narrative Mode

Let’s go back to how activity system and narrative becomes the building block of human lives. In everyday life narrative plays a very important role of helping people to make sense of themselves and their world. Activity system alone as context is not sufficient to help people orient themselves in the world.  From the point of view of activity system human self is determined by timely experience delivered in certain concrete activity. It is as if human self would change from one activity to the other, oblivious of the past activities he or she has got involved in, and ignorant of the future possible activities that he or she may involve him or herself. In reality people have a sense of continuity that define the timeless self and determine how he or she will experience current activities and their sequence. Narrative as context with its timeless fabula and timely sjuzet helps people to experience their various activities as meaningful part of their self. Using Bruner’s term, narrative with its fabula, sjuzet and the dramatic pentad allows people to have narrative mode of experience while activity system a paradigmatic one.

Let's take a look back to our classroom. There we find a young woman in her mid twenty who acts as a teacher, and some kids who sit in circles circling some tables. It's in the morning around nine AM. They are in a classroom in a kindergarten that is located in Pondok Indah, a place where many more upscale middle class of Jakarta live. Indah, her name, has worked there as kindergarten teacher since her graduation from a well-known university in Jakarta three years ago.

Eleven AM the class is dismissed. Behind the door there’s a good-looking young woman around her age waiting. She is the mother of Raka, one of Indah’s pupils, asking to have a talk with her. After having a seat in the empty classroom Indah asks her how she can help. Martha, the young mother starts to tell her story how she got divorced with her husband after three years of marriage, not long after her second baby was born; and how she has difficulties now raising two kids as a single parent while she’s got to work full-time. Raka, her elder of the two, now five years old is refusing to go to school the last three days. Martha is asking Indah for help.

Two hours has passed. Indah suddenly realize that she has missed a lunch appointment with her close friend at Pondok Indah Mall. The story of Martha is absorbing her very much. Looking at her Blackberry there are three missed calls and pings already from her friend. She hurry herself, answering her friend's pings, calling her chauffeur to take her car to school lobby. Inside the car on the way to the mall her eyes are wandering for a moment before a billboard catches her attention. The billboard pictures a young mother wearing a nightgown in her kids bedroom holding a mosquito repellent tube. Before she can recognize the brand name the car has passed the billboard. The picture reminds her of the paradise at home when she is with her two-years old.

These simple scenes may be found in our cheap local TV series, but it serves us here to illustrate how human experience a glimpse of their life, and at the same time show us the kind of life forms human may possibly have. From paradigmatic mode point of view the activity systems which Indah may get involved in her life are: work activity in an early education institution where her role is teaching; domestic activity in a middle class family where she acts as mother; and social-leisure activity where she can find a rather loosely-defined role as a friend. This paradigmatic mode helps her to manage her life in more strategic ways into several fields of life. Each activity systems may have their own rules. Together they may compete with each other in using up resources, like time, energy and money available for Indah.

From narrative mode point of view these activity systems are experienced seamlessly as part of Indah's self whose main motive or fabula is being a good caregiver. Fabula is the key element that defines how Indah may experience herself. She may conceive of herself mainly as a caregiver who strive to become a good one. In family setting it fits perfectly well with her role as a mother of a two years old. Similarly it may fit with her role as kindergarten teacher in her work activity as well. Listening to the story of Martha she may interpret it as a paradise-lost sjuzet where divorce prevents Martha from realizing her own paradise as a mother. Listening to the story of Martha, it's like she is presented with the kind of world she may possibly experience in the future, which may be the main reason why the story is quite absorbing for her. The picture of a young mother in nightgown on the billboard may reminds her of the paradise she may possibly be prevented from as well.

Martha on the other hand may not experience her own life the way Indah understands it as a story. Martha may have experienced a paradise-lost plot when the divorce happened several years ago. Now since she has been able to deal with it she may understand herself and her situation more like a female warrior who feel challenged to survive and overcome the problems. From narrative point of view her fabula is being warrior whose paradise is when she could strategically beat the enemies. She may see herself as undergoing transformations from a nice but fragile little girl who feel hurt because of the divorce into becoming a tough single mother who could stand the pain. That may be her sjuzet. If she were presented with the two alternative billboards, she might see the second set of visual cues more interesting than the first.

An approach for understanding human experience: an Introduction to Cultural Psychology

By Eric Santosa

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 1. Click here to go to part_2,  part_3, part_4, part_5

Cultural psychology has been delivered in Cultural Psychology course at the Faculty of Psychology Atma Jaya Catholic University Jakarta for several years since 2004. Starting the year 2012 the course is not offered to the students anymore because of the change in psychology curriculum at the faculty. This article is a response for those who asked and still want to have material and discussions on the topic. Here I would like to make a brief sketch about what cultural psychology is which previously has been discussed in the course.

Why Cultural Psychology?

I am often asked what my cultural psychology is about, why I am quite passionate on this topic. Let me illustrate with a case. If you belong to middle class segment living in big cities like Jakarta chances are that you may have visited and bought a cup of coffee at Starbucks which may cost around thirty thousand rupiah or more. Certainly Starbucks is not the only place you can find quality coffee. There are more other places you can find coffee with similar quality with cheaper price. The question is why people keep buying coffee at Starbucks despite higher price? Assuming that human can make rational decisions, what is it that people buy beyond coffee products at Starbucks? To answer those questions cultural psychology will direct our discussions into the concept of human experience. What is it that people buy? It is certain experience which is offered intentionally or not at Starbucks. This experience maybe delivered through brand communications, the products, packaging, design interiors or others that when coordinated and managed well are able to deliver certain unique experience that people may find only at Starbucks.

Cultural psychology is about understanding human experience and things that may work for delivering certain experiences for them. It is first of all about how humans understand themselves and their world, how they reason their mind and behavior, how they may be able to make themselves intelligible for other minds, and how they may change their mind and behavior.

Students will have a better understanding if they get also involved with three other courses: interpretive-qualitative research method; cultural change strategy and management; media and persuasions. Cultural psychology course consist of discussions on the approach and basic concepts, while the other three are discussions on research method and applications of cultural psychology. I plan to write articles on these topics as well later.

Cultural psychology as an approach is basically not new. Its root can be traced back to the time when Wilhelm Wundt founded his laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Wundt himself around the same period has written several volumes of Völkerpsychologie in which he offered an approach, quite different from experimental psychology, to study human cultures. To have complete pictures of human phenomenon one must use both approach. They should not be considered as conflicting with each other.

Later on in early twentieth century Vygotsky has raised similar concerns about psychology as science and profession. His works were aimed to build a unified general psychology that offer a more integrated approach to understand human mind and behavior. In his times already psychology has been segregated into several schools of thought that have not only their own approach but also their own object of study. His work focused on finding a more appropriate unit of analysis as an object of psychology.

In the times where psychology and social science as scientific study are still dominated by positivist and experimental approach, a more interpretive approach to study human mind and behavior is needed to balance and enrich the way we understand ourselves and our contemporary world.

In fact in people's daily life the way we understand ourselves and people around us is heavily interpretive. We understand our social life more through interpreting other people's behaviors rather than through comparing and testing them in laboratory or psychological test settings. Professional counselors does not seem to have difficulties to understand her clients without applying psychological tests. The term empathy for example which is heavily discussed and become a basic concept in many counseling courses is basically an interpretive and phenomenological process. Despite that, very little we have discussions on how we can understand ourselves and other people's mind and experience.

I write this article with the hope that the discussions will continue. I do not expect myself to cover all the material to properly understand cultural psychology in this article. What I write is the kind of cultural psychology that I usually discussed in my courses. My thinking in this area is very much influenced by three broad sources: 1. Jerome Bruner's cultural psychology, John Searle's philosophy of mind, speech-act theory, semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, and literary theory of Roland Barthes; 2. Marxist psychology with Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, Evald Ilyenkov and Ÿro Engeström's cultural historical activity theory; and 3. Comparative mythology of Joseph Campbell and Jungian psychology.

I'm also very much influenced by discussions with friends, colleagues and clients, both brand owners and professionals in marketing communications industry who have stimulated my thinking through posing me many interesting and challenging problems from business point of view. Besides people in public sectors, to my eyes they are in a real business of managing strategic cultural and behavioral change in our civil society. I would be satisfied when this article can move more people to ask questions and to explore more on the topic. It's still a long way to make what I'm presenting in this article more useful and workable for managing cultural change both in the context of marketing communications or in public sectors. I prefer to see the journey as a collective enterprise with a common vision: for us both in private and public sectors to be able to manage our civil society in more strategic ways.

What is cultural psychology?

Cultural psychology is an approach to understand human mind and behavior through studying the social cultural contexts in which it occurs. Even further it is claimed that it is impossible to understand them without considering its cultural and historical contexts.

This assertion is not limited to cultural psychology. Ecological and social psychology in general have quite similar assertions that human behaviors are influenced by their social context. Cultural psychology in contrast asserts that human mind and behavior, is not only influenced, but more fundamentally constituted by their social cultural contexts. This means that they exist and intelligible only when they are treated as texts and put in their contexts.

Let me give a very simple example: the act of raising hand in a classroom. Anybody who is born and grew up in modern world would understand what it means when somebody sitting in a chair among a group of people in a classroom raises his hand. It means he intends to ask questions or make comments. The question is how is it possible that everybody understand this action? The very same act of raising hand, when it is put in other contexts would mean differently. For example at the bus stop when a man raises hand that would mean that he intends to stop a bus or taxi. The driver who never previously talked to him would know what he means and will pull over his taxi

In the language of mainstream positivist social psychology the behavior of the taxi driver of pulling over his taxi is influenced by the man's behavior. The man's behavior becomes the stimulus and the driver's the response. In contrast cultural psychology would say that first of all the act of the man's raising hand is intelligible for the taxi driver and others nearby since the act comes up in the context of commuting activity. In itself the raising hand when it is decontextualized would be meaningless.

Furthermore the act of the taxi driver that follows after the man's raising hand is in accordance with a kind of subconscious cultural scripts such that when they are disrupted everybody else nearby would have questions in their mind. Such subconscious cultural scripts are things that people take for granted, and will not get their attention unless they are disrupted. For example when the driver does not pull over his taxi, the man will have a question and demand an explanation why he does not do so.  When nobody provides him with enough explanations, he will try to reconstruct in his mind for himself many possible stories to explain the driver's act. It maybe the taxi is heading home to its taxi pool; or that since it's late at night and the road is empty the driver fears of crime. The function of these stories are basically providing possible contexts that will help for mitigating the disruption the taxi driver's action has induced.

Take another example from marketing communication industry. A mosquito repellent brand is showing a picture of a mosquito repellent tube and its brand name on a big billboard with white background across the street. No other visual cues are there on the billboard. Like the act of raising hand in classroom the act of the brand owner putting the picture on the billboard will induce expectations among the audience. People who grew up in urban setting and happen to see the billboard will know that this is an ad, and that means the brand is trying to tell something to its audience. Seeing an ad people would expect that the brand would tell something new, something they don't know, or something that may disrupt their taken-for-granted experience.

Unlike the act of raising hand at the bus stop however there are no cultural scripts that dictate how the audience should respond to the ad. Depending on what the brand owner would like to achieve the ad should provide more cues for the audience to reconstruct possible stories in their mind that enable them to get meaningful take-outs from the ad. If the target the brand owner would like to achieve is to get the audience interested to buy the product, the billboard certainly would not be able to do it. Among so many billboards near the mosquito repellent ad it will not be able even to get the attention of the audience. The most that this ad can achieve is to get the audience aware that the product exists.

To help the audience reconstruct a meaningful story in their mind, let's consider to provide two alternative sets of visual cues by utilizing cultural contexts which are available and recognizable in modern people's life. The first alternative set is adding a picture of a young mother in nightgown with two of her kids lying asleep on the bed as background. The picture shows the mother holding a repellent tube trying to kill mosquitoes in the bedroom. These additional visual cues will help the audience to reconstruct a familiar story of a mother's efforts to make her kids more comfortable sleeping. The second alternative set is a picture of a young mother dress up with a GI army-look apparel trying to protect her two kids who stand behind her from something dangerous. She is combating against mosquitoes which attack her like a squad of fighter aircrafts. She has two repellent tubes. One she holds on her belt like a hand gun, and the other she is using to repel the mosquitoes. Similarly these second set of visual cues will help the audience to reconstruct a story of a young mother's effort to protect her kids from harm.

Which of the two alternative stories is more effective to get the audience attention or even further to induce the audience to buy the product, it is still debatable and will need more research to decide. The second set of visual cue may get more attention compared to the first since it contains disruptions from familiar scene of a mother taking care of her kids, though it will depend on its fit with the psychography of the target audience. The point we are going to make here is that by providing visual cues that help the audience reconstruct cultural contexts in their mind the ad is becoming more meaningful and enable the brand owners to get the respond that become its targets.

In real life settings people make use of such visual and verbal cues which are available in their environments to understand themselves and the world. Going back to our Starbucks case, it is the context which exists at Starbuck that help the guests having certain unique experience when they visit the place. The context is maybe delivered through brand communications, products, packagings, services, design interior, the kind of people doing the operations and also the kind of people visiting the place. Question that remains for us to discuss is what makes the difference between the experience people may have when they visit Starbucks compared for example Angkringan in Jogjakarta. The kind of concrete activities people are doing at Starbucks and Angkringan maybe similar, that is drinking coffee, having chats with acquaintances etc, but the experience maybe quite difference. We will keep this question in mind for our next discussions.