Review_Author: Polly Steenhagen
Book_Author: Yrjö Engeström & David Middleton (Eds.)
Book_Title: Cognition and Communication at Work
Reference: 1998, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Date: 3/18/2002
Time: 4:44:33 PM
Remote Name: 63.214.199.217
mailto: Pollypilot@juno.com
It’s Off To Work We Go
A Review of Cognition and Communication at Work (1998), edited by Yrjö Engeström and David Middleton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
It has been said of Delaware weather, “if you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes.” The same can be said for Cognition and Communication at Work; “if you don’t like this chapter, wait 15 pages.” Engeström and Middleton have collected many articles from authors in various disciplines such as psychology, communication, anthropology, cognitive science, and computer science. Their writings span equally diverse topics and subjects. This book is an excellent compilation of current research in areas of activity theory.
I was originally drawn to this book because its second chapter deals with “Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit.” The chapter is co- authored by Edwin Hutchins, who also wrote about how naval navigators learn their trade. It was so refreshing to read research on aviation that dealt with the everyday activities of pilots to see what goes right, rather than what I call “autopsy research” where major accidents and tragedies are analyzed to try to understand what went wrong. Following this chapter is one by Lucy Suchman that looks at how an airline operations office at an airport functions, and yet even a third chapter on aviation following this: “Seeing as a situated activity: formulating planes.”
After reading these three chapters, whose subject, aviation, I am deeply acquainted with, and then several of the following chapters that deal with subjects such as computer program designing, traffic court, and high-tech diesel engine production, I realized how difficult it is to understand an activity that you are unfamiliar with. I was right in there when Hutchins was talking about cockpit communications, but quite lost when reading a chapter on computer systems designs. The organizing concept of this book, looking at diverse activities through diverse lenses, makes it difficult to traverse all of the activities and theoretical frameworks. However, there are some basic concepts that are developed successfully through the book.
The first is the concept of novice and expert skill. While many psychologists see expertise as a phenomenon that is located in the mind of an individual, activity theorists see it as communally constructed. Chandra Mukerji, for example, gives a wonderful perspective of scientific genius as a collaboration in the laboratory among a senior scientist and his/her technicians, research funding supporters, etc. (this chapter also deals with gender issues in science for anyone who is interested in a feminist view of a science lab). Hutchins sees expertise in the cockpit as a distributed cognitive coordination. Laufer and Glick discuss how, unlike much of the psychological research seems to show, experts can think backward and can problematize an activity that seems relatively simple.
Another concept that is included in almost every chapter is the importance of communication, both verbal and nonverbal. David Middleton’s chapter shows how conversation establishes common knowledge in a hospital. Engeström compares traffic courts (actually DUI court) in Finland and the United States and how the contexts of the courts determine how the voices of the judges, defendants and other participants eventually resolve dilemmas. Engeström applies this data to his triangular model of subject, object, and community that he has used elsewhere and appears to be a very useful model for activity theory analysis.
Finally, the authors discuss their use of ethnomethodologies. This aspect of the book is particularly helpful for me as I struggle to write the methodology section of my dissertation proposal. The last chapter of the book is written about “the ethnography of cooperative work.”
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in activity theory and the contexts of activity. The authors of the chapters in Cognition and Communication at Work exhaustively cite the works of Lave, Vygotsky, Cole, Scribner, Chi, Latour, Dewey, Rogoff, and Wertsch and thus connect their writings with those concerning situating cognition, distributed cognition, activity theory, cultural psychology, and “classical” cognitive theories. I especially enjoy seeing authors from so many fields coming out of their isolated departments and working together. The compilation complements the whole thesis of the book – that activity is a multifaceted construct that needs to be examined by many different voices.