Activity Analysis Network #2: Identity, Narrative, and Creative Life
This is the 2nd issue of the Activity Analysis Center's newsletter
by Oliver Ding
Hi, and welcome to Activity Analysis Network, a newsletter hosted by the Activity Analysis Center.
Each issue is organized around the "Flow - Focus - Center - Circle" schema, the primary model of the World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025).
As a biweekly newsletter, I'll share summaries of new articles from the Activity Analysis Center, along with updates on related activities, including some of my own published work elsewhere.
Flow
The historical development of the Activity Analysis Center and my experience of daily life
In 2015, I first encountered Activity Theory and discovered its power to bridge the theory-practice gap. Since then, I have been on a long-term journey of engaging with Activity Theory. The year 2025 marks a milestone in this ten-year journey.
At the end of 2023, I edited a book draft titled Appropriating Activity Theory: A Journey of Knowledge Engagement. The draft used the diagram below to reflect on the "Oliver - Activity" thematic engagement.
I recently decided to rewrite the draft, changing its subtitle to A Decade of Engaging with a Century-Old Tradition. The picture for the new book cover was taken at the former residence of Yan Fu at Sanfang Qixiang, which I visited in Fuzhou three months ago.
The book draft is planned in two stages. First, I will share detailed stories in the category Appropriating Activity Theory. Second, I will edit these articles into a book later.
On September 25, I published the second story, which presents the early version of the Developmental Project model from November 2020.
Why did I publish it on that day?
Two days earlier, I received an email update about publications by creative cognition researcher Nancy J. Nersessian. I was influenced by her 2008 book Creating Scientific Concepts. Her approach, the cognitive-historical method, is a theoretical resource for the Slow Cognition project I developed in 2022.
I visited her personal website and browsed her papers. To my surprise, the second paper on the list is titled Epistemic Identities in Interdisciplinary Science.
This experience encouraged me to reflect on the concept of "Identity" and my relevant works around it. Over the past two weeks, it became a thematic "Focus."
FOCUS
The Thematic Foci of the Activity Analysis Center
Over the past two weeks, I have taken "Identity" as a thematic focus of my work. Accordingly, I published two articles on the Activity Analysis Center site.
In this article, I shared a detailed story about the early seed of the Developmental Project Model, especially its connection to a practical knowledge system - CIS - through the lens of Hegel's theory of concepts.
CIS (Corporate Identity System) was one of my themes in my early career. CIS was developed by Motoo Nakanishi in Japan, who drew from U.S. CI practices. He expanded the American version of CI, which focused solely on visual identity, into a system emphasizing three forms of identity: MI (Mind Identity), BI (Behavior Identity), and VI (Visual Identity). Essentially, Nakanishi integrated culture, strategy, and communication into a unified whole, providing companies with a high-level framework for development.
Although Nakanishi’s CIS emphasizes corporate philosophy to a great extent, it remains a practical knowledge system. Reading Andy Blunden’s work that time, I realized that the theoretical traditions of Vygotskian psychology and Hegelian philosophy could be used to re-examine the practice of CIS. The three dimensions of objectification—symbolic, instrumental, and practical—are precisely the theoretical underpinnings that correspond to Nakanishi’s three forms of identity.
That's why I named the early model the Project Identity System. Later, I expanded it by adding the concept of "Theme." I also made a theoretical statement:
Within the Ecological Practice Approach, both of these concepts serve to link the “individual–whole” relationship, but in slightly different ways. Theme emphasizes communication and coordination—making oneself understood by others—while Identity emphasizes difference and distinction—separating oneself from others.
On September 7, I published my first Kindle book Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach. The major part of the book investigates my 2015 autobiography using the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema, also known as the World of Activity model. It is a book about how the 2025 “I” employs theory-based reflection to reflect on the practice-based reflection that the 2015 “I” made about my past self.
In the Introduction of Homecoming, I shared two cross-stage life themes: 1) The “Observer-Scholar“ Theme: From Peifeng Academy to Theoretical Inquiry, 2) The Freesoul Theme: From Campus Culture to Digital Activism.
However, after submitting the book to the Kindle store, I realized that I had missed a third life theme, "Investigating Identity," which connects the CIS theme (2000s) to the Project Identity System (2020) model and the recent Genidentity Theory (2025).
The thematic focus "Identity" also brings me back to an email conversation with a friend in May 2025. At that time, a friend asked me about my references and research on youth narrative and identity.
Although I haven't worked in the field of youth development research, I shared the following papers with her:
- Digital Media and the Dual Aspect of Adolescent Identity Development (Hiromitsu Morita, Nastasia Griffioen, and Isabela Granic)
The authors introduce a Model of Adolescent Identity Development (Granic et al. 2020), as shown below.
The model also considers the concept of "Narrative Identity," which was developed by Dan P. McAdams, as a core concept.
- Dan P. McAdams on Personal Myth and Narrative Identity
McAdams introduced the concept of "Narrative Identity" in his 1993 book The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. I reviewed his work in this direction in 2023.
This week, I republished that review on the Activity Analysis Center site under a new title: the Concept of Narrative Identity. In the article, I also highlight the difference between McAdams's account and my Life-as-Project framework.
An important aspect of McAdams’s idea of Personal Myth is not merely telling our life stories, but making ourselves through myth. According to McAdams, life stories are subjective meaning-making, "There is a narrative truth in life that seems quite removed from logic, science, and empirical demonstration. It is the truth of a 'good story.'" (1993, p.28)
The Life-as-Project approach doesn’t follow this kind of “narrative truth” because logic, science, and empirical demonstration are useful tools for discovering new insights from our pasts.
- "The Narrative Self": an Analysis of Ricoeur's Notion of "Narrative Identity" (Huiming LIU)
LIU's paper introduces Paul Ricoeur, the world-famous phenomenological hermeneutist, and his distinction between "identity as sameness" and "identity as selfhood."
- World of Activity and Genidentity (Oliver Ding, 2025)
I also shared my recent thinking on the concepts of "theme" and "identity" with my friend. Later, in June 2025, I edited a relevant book draft titled GO Theory: Genidentity, Opportunity, and World of Activity (Introduction, Contents)
For readers of this newsletter, the following items are recommended too.
- Epistemic Identities in Interdisciplinary Science (Osbeck, L.M. & Nersessian, N.J. ,2017)
The paper introduces “epistemic identities” as a helpful concept for understanding the dynamics of interdisciplinary science practice. After acknowledging the ambiguity of “identity” and examining divergent meanings, authors argue that analysis of identity is necessary in order to account for social and personal dimensions of practice non-reductively, and to better understand values and implicit hierarchies in science practice, which in turn influence cognitive practices.
- Identity Theory (Peter J. Burke, Jan E. Stets, 2009)
Identity theory is a social psychological theory that attempts to understand identities, their sources in interaction and society, their processes of operation, and their consequences for interaction and society from a sociological perspective. This book describes identity theory, its origins, the research that supports it, and its future direction. It covers the relation between identity theory and other related theories, as well as the nature and operation of identities. In addition, the book discusses the multiple identities individuals hold from their multiple positions in society and organizations, as well as the multiple identities activated by people interacting in groups and organizations. Finally, it covers the manner in which identities offer both stability and change to individuals.
- Identity as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: The Dialectics of Belonging, Being, and Becoming (Nikolai Veresov, 2020)
In this paper, Nikolai Veresov selected five key papers that challenge traditional views on identity and develop new approaches based on Cultural-historical Activity Theory (CHAT).
The author also presents key dimensions of the study of identity within the framework of Cultural-historical Theory (CHT), suggesting possible directions for studying identity as a cultural and social phenomenon through the dialectics of belonging, being, and becoming.
According to Veresov, "Both CHAT and CHT emphasise the importance of cultural mediation in the process of the formation of identity as a sociocultural phenomenon. However, they provide different perspectives in relation to what is the basic unit of analysis. For CHAT this unit is a mediated action; cultural-historical theory [CHT] emphasises dialectical and dynamic aspects by introducing the mediating activities of an individual within changing social environments. In other words, cultural-historical theory is not focused on mediated actions, but on a human being who uses or creates cultural tools in order to reorganise the social situation and overcome existing challenges."
CENTER
The Core of the Activity Analysis Center
Over the past two weeks, I have been working on the World of Activity approach and related ideas.
A major milestone is a book draft titled Being by Doing: World of Activity and Creative Life Theory (v3.0), which I edited on September 20, 2025.
Two years ago, I edited Creative Life Theory (v2.0): Building A Knowledge Enterprise, collecting articles to represent the landscape of a theoretical approach for understanding knowledge workers’ creative life.
After October 2023, the approach has evolved into a new stage, especially over the past 12 months. There are three major changes between version 2.0 (2023) and version 3.0 (2025) of Create Life Theory.
- Expand from a specific theory to a general theory
- The “Self-Life-Mind” schema serves as a new meta-framework; the old one, the Creative Course framework, remains as a reference.
- The concept of the World of Activity originally served as a unit of analysis in version 1.0 (2022) and a core concept of the Creative Course framework in version 2.0 (2023). In 2025, it was developed as an independent concept; now, the Creative Course framework is one of the approaches to understanding the concept.
These changes are not a revolution, but an expansion. My creations from old versions remain, but they are reorganized with new creations. By using the Self-Life-Mind schema, I made the “Theorizing Creative Life” Landscape on June 2, 2025. See the diagram below.
The new book draft, Being by Doing: World of Activity and Creative Life Theory (v3.0), curates a collection of articles reflecting the creative journey and the landscape of Creative Life Theory (v3.0).
The book is organized around a main question:
How does a person achieve a creative life and creative development?
The main question is further divided into three sub-questions:
- How does a Creative Self develop?
- How does a Creative Center develop?
- How does a Creative Mind develop
More details can be found in Being by Doing: World of Activity and Creative Life Theory (v3.0) and The “Self-Life-Mind” Schema and How to Achieve a Creative Life.
I also published an article titled Cultural Frameworks: A Canvas for Reflection and Innovation on the Activity Analysis Center site.
This article continues my exploration of cultural reflection and the Thematic Enterprise framework, particularly introducing a tool called the Frame-for-Work Canvas.
This line of exploration will become a new focus of the Activity Analysis Center.
CIRCLE
The Context of the Activity Analysis Center
As mentioned earlier, in the past several years, I worked on several theoretical projects, such as the Ecological Practice Approach, Curativity Theory, Creative Life Theory, and Thematic Space Theory.
Inspired by creativity researcher Howard Gruber's idea of "Network of Enterprises," I used the "Knowledge Center" approach to manage this large knowledge system. Each knowledge center hosts one or two related theoretical approaches.
- CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab): the Ecological Practice Approach and Creative Life Theory
- Curativity Center: Curativity Theory
- TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement): Thematic Space Theory
- Frame for Work: A theory about Knowledge Frameworks
Within the past two weeks, four creations have emerged in the creative circle:
- The Landscape of "World of Activity"
- The Ecological Formism Framework (v1.2)
- The "Create - Curate - Weave" Schema
- The Social Landscape Framework (v2, 2025)
The “Create-Curate-Weave” schema was developed as a new member of the World of Activity toolkit. It offers a simple solution to connect the Project Engagement Approach, the Ecological Practice approach, and Creative Life Theory. See the diagram below.
This is a four-dimensional model, weaving together the following ideas:
- Creative Life
- Thematic Enterprise
- Activity as Project Engagement
- Opportunity as Ecological Actualization
In addition, I identified four intersections in the model.
- Event: Activity + Thematic Enterprise
- Project: Activity + Ceative Life
- Concept: Opportuity + Thematic Enterprise
- Object: Opportunity + Creative Life
More details can be found in [Frame for Work] The “Create-Curate-Weave” Schema.
Over the next 12 months, the Activity Analysis Center will serve the entire network as a meta-center, and we can expect to see more collaborations among these centers.
World
Me, You, and We
My name is Oliver Ding. I am the founder of the Activity Analysis Center. I am based in Houston, Texas, US.
Where are you?
v1.0 - 2305 - September 29, 2025