Morten Nissen

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Action Research

The aim of this special issue is to provide a platform for comprehensive and critical discussion of the issues arising from methodology and practice in the experience of those working in the field of socio-cultural research with a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and/or action research (AR) orientation.

Objectification and Prototype

This article takes up the problem of how to reconcile research objectivity with the discovery in practice research that research, at least in the social sciences, is intersubjective. I suggest a return to critical psychologys roots in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in order to reestablish the concept of objectification as the production of cultural artefacts through which human subjectivity is mediated. This allows us to approach research as a practice among other practices, engaged in exchanges with other practices. Adopting theoretical resources from both CHAT and science and technology studies, the practices and artefacts of research are viewed as prototypes. A prototype in practice research is the unity of three aspects: the designated prototypical practice; the model artefacts with or in which this prototypical practice is objectified (as both a “model of” and a “model for”), and the (contentious, distributed, variable) general relevance of that modeling. The designation and production of prototypes is far from a neutral, “technical” process, but it is in itself both a critique of ideology and the production of ideology anew. It is contentious and situated in the struggles that transform history. This way, it is hoped that critical psychological practice research can escape the Scylla of objectivism, a danger always looming in activity theory when it fails to address subjectivity and ideology—and the Charybdis of descriptive subjectivism, the possible fate of any antiscientific embracing of everyday life. The idea of prototypes is displayed theoretically and illustrated with an example from research in social work practices.

Writing drug cultures

The paper juxtaposes the cultural mediation of experience through drugs with that performed with text. As a sample of the currently radically changing relations between professional and lay knowledge in the field of drug interventions, the website of a Copenhagen institution for young drug users is discussed. In particular, six different readings are offered of the coexistense of (professional) “facts” and (lay) “narratives”: Taking off from the two opposite, critical-modern readings where one cancels the other, and the parallellist reading that acknowledges the two cultures as simply unrelated, a fourth reading identifies a post-modern convergence between science and common sense. An ideology critique of the pragmatic construction of such common sense reveals it as a disengagement of language from material aspects of practice that produces a dichotomy of authenticity and pretense, and serves to regulate exclusion. This leads to an alternative articulation of the website as contributing to the construction of collectives that challenge the culture of consumption in which addiction is embedded. In conclusion, it is claimed that in order to grasp and facilitate such a more substantial recognition, it is necessary to transcend the standpoint of civil society and embrace a transformative welfare-state collectivity.

Standards and standpoints: Why and how standards, and studying them, imply critique

This article argues that critique is a necessary component in any study of standards, just as it is implied in the concept of standard itself. From this follows the relevance of reflexively situating our research in relation to the cultural-historical development of standards and standardization. The argument takes off from two different conceptualizations of standards in the literature. On the one hand, standards as immanent to practices (the “Neo-Aristotelian” approach), and on the other hand, standards as imposed to regulate practices (the “neo-pragmatist” and “governmentality” approaches). It is suggested that this opposition can be superseded by articulating the former alternative, not as an essentialism of “practice,” but as the reflexive assumption of standpoint. Some intricacies of the articulation of standpoint are then discussed, concluding in a proposed dialectics of standard and standpoint.

The emergence of motives in liminal hotspots

The concept of “motivation” commonly constructs as a psychological essence what is really the paradoxical imposition of a required desire. While the resulting impasse blocked theoretical development for around four decades, pragmatic motivational techniques evolved regardless. These could be (probably to no avail) dismissed for not taking account of the deep theoretical problems. This article suggests instead to rearticulate them with the conceptual repertoire of liminal hotspots, which directs attention to the emergent nature of activities and collectives, and thus motives. This is done as part of an ongoing collaboration with counselors who experiment with different ways of helping young drug users without taking motivation as premise, in the sense of a prerequisite, for interventions. Data from recorded counseling sessions are analyzed and rearticulated, first in terms of the classical motivation–resistance contradiction; then through pragmatic approaches in counseling, i.e., the prevalent cognitive-client-centered form and the “solution-focused brief therapy” approach—and finally as motives emergent in liminal hotspots.

A “post-psychological” curiosity about subjectivities and standards

This special issue is about standards. A standard is an abstract reproduction of certain aspects of practice and being, used across time and place to shape and regulate. Thus, standing opposed to human subjectivity, they are often viewed as external or even as such critiqued, consolidating a division between standardizing sciences and off-standard qualitative research. Yet, a “post-psychological curiosity” suggests a reflexive stance, admitting to complicity in the “intra-actions” of standards and subjectivity, in theoretical psychology as in practices such as management, counseling, or self-help. Objectifying values, standards can reach out to the image of infinity; even posited as immanent to practices, they can be seen as expressions of hope. They both shake and establish temporalities and spatial distributions that feed into affective economies and help or force us to focus and forget. We use them to govern ourselves and each other—or we suffer their suspension as “cranked subjects.”

User-driven standards in a mutual help context: The co-emergence of subjects and standards

Standards entail abstractions and generalizations. The 12-step fellowships (i.e., Alcoholics, Narcotics, Overeaters Anonymous, etc.) are all grounded in the same 12 steps and 12 traditions, originally developed for Alcoholics Anonymous. Furthermore, several principles and practices can be found across different fellowships addressing different addictions. At the same time, 12-step literature and most academic analyses of the fellowships agree that the content of these standards is never definite; no one but oneself may decide whether one lives up to the standard in question. Thus, 12-step fellowships seem a pure case of how the duality of social structure and personal definition is built into the fabric of standards. Yet, with a closer attention to practices, negotiations, and performances, it is possible to disturb this neat distribution of abstract-social versus concrete-personal. Drawing on two recent studies of Copenhagen fellowships, this article aims to problematize the assumption that user-driven standards must assume the pseudo-commercial “logic of choice,” in favor of a view of subjects and standards as co-emerging.

Beyond spaces of counselling

The article articulates experiments with spatial constructions in two Danish social work agencies, basing on (a) a sketchy genealogical reconstruction of conceptualisations and uses of space in social work and counselling, (b) a search for theoretical resources to articulate new spaces, and (c) data from a long-standing collaboration with the social workers working with youth and drugs. Beside a critical analysis of how disciplinary and pastoral spaces make it difficult to engage in helpful conversations with young drug users, we show how spaces of attunement, spaces of production, and public spaces are forms of spatialisations which might be taken as prototypical in attempts to develop social work and counselling.

Standards of performance and aesthetics in counselling and beyond

ABSTRACT In this article I discuss how drug counselling can be transformed through “aesthetic documentation”: a hybrid of art with narrative practice. After outlining the concepts of performance and standards, and a critique of “customising” counselling through formalised feedback, five claims are made about “aesthetic documentation”: The art works are prototypes rather than rigid standardisations; they represent collaboration rather than individualised performance; they both display and enact substantial meaning; they objectify and achieve recognition of clients and professionals; they facilitate flexible, diverse and transformative attributions of meaning and value; they address social problems rather than individualised malfunctions. This may help overcoming stigmatisation, and suggest a kind of trans-disciplinary knowledge that is different from the dominant scientific forms.

Practice Research as Collective Prototyping and Critique

Chapter 9 sums up what we can learn about research from the research practices and the theories developed in Part II.