Appropriating Activity Theory #1: Misunderstanding and Repurposing (2018)

On December 31, 2022, I completed the editing of a book titled Appropriating Activity Theory: A Journey of Knowledge Engagement, a reflection on my path of learning and applying Activity Theory.

My first encounter with Activity Theory dates back to 2015, during an online discussion hosted by a cognitive science club. There, I learned about it from a psychologist who later became my mentor.

Now, looking back, this journey has already spanned ten years.

This series is an attempt to share the stories, experiences, and insights I gathered along the way.

Misunderstanding and Repurposing (2018)

This post was originally written on April 2, 2025, for the Frame for Work project.

Contents

1. The Activity System Model
2. The BagTheWeb Project (2018)
3. The Curating Activity System (2018)
4. Misunderstanding
5. The General Curation Model (2019)
6. The Global Curation Model (2020)
7. Repurposing

1. The Activity System Model

Activity Theory, or the “Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)”, is an interdisciplinary philosophical framework for studying both individual and social aspects of human behavior. From this perspective, human activity or — what people do — serves as the basic unit of analysis when examining human behavior. The key contribution of Activity Theory is its focus on understanding both individual and collective aspects of human practices within their cultural and historical contexts.

Yrjö Engeström expanded Activity Theory by shifting its focus from individual activity to collective activity. To facilitate its application in education, organizational development, and other fields, he introduced the Activity System Model (Engeström, 1987).

A major outcome of his work, Learning by Expanding, is a diagram that visualizes Leontiev’s concept of an activity system. This diagram, now widely recognized, is often referred to as “Engeström’s Triangle.”

Engeström’s Triangle is built upon the cultural-historical psychologists’ concept of mediation, which originally framed individual action as a triadic relationship between subject, instruments, and object — represented at the top of the diagram.

Engeström (1987) argued that “a human activity system always contains the subsystems of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption” (p.67). To account for these broader social dimensions, he expanded the original individual triangle by adding a lower section that incorporates:

• Community (other people involved in the activity),
• Rules (social norms and regulations guiding interactions), and
• Division of labor (the distribution of roles and responsibilities between the subject and others).

This extension allowed Activity Theory to better capture the collective and systemic nature of human activity in educational, organizational, and other social contexts.

According to Engeström, “What used to be adaptive activity is transformed into consumption and subordinated to the three dominant aspects of human activity — production, distribution, and exchange (or communication). The model suggests the possibility of analyzing a multitude of relations within the triangular structure of activity. However, the essential task is always to grasp the systemic whole, not just separate connections.”

For more information on the Activity System Model and other models within the field of Activity Theory, visit the Activity Analysis Center.

2. The BagTheWeb Project (2018)

In April 2018, I reflected on one of my early projects, BagTheWeb, a web content curation tool. I applied the Activity System model and the concept of “mediated artifact” from Activity Theory to develop a framework for understanding both the BagTheWeb project and the practice of curation more broadly.

The concept of mediation in Activity Theory, along with the Activity System Model, inspired me to reflect on the BagTheWeb project. BagTheWeb is a web content curation application that has been in operation since 2010, where I serve as the Chief Information Architect.

As a web curation tool, BagTheWeb enables users to collect and organize information pieces within an “information container” — which we call a bag. Each bag, created by a user, is structured around a specific theme, typically expressed in its title.

A bag consists of five key components:

• Theme — The title and description that define its focus.
• Bagged Web Content — Weblinks and embedded content curated within the bag.
• Original Notes — User-generated annotations and insights.
• Related Bags — Links to other bags with relevant themes.
• Identity Information — Details such as the author, URL, image icon, creation date, and modification date.

The screenshot above displays an early version of BagTheWeb’s UI design. In 2012, I led a redesign project, and we launched a new version in 2013. This updated version introduced several enhancements, including the ability for users to write original notes (see the screenshot below), with support for Markdown formatting.

While bagged web content is curated from the Web, original notes are curated from the Mind. To develop a model that describes both the BagTheWeb project and the broader curation activity, I identified six key elements:

• Actor — The individual engaging in the curation process.
• World — The environment or domain that the individual seeks to understand or engage with.
• Mind — The curator’s internal thoughts, insights, and interpretations.
• Web — The digital network that serves as the source of information.
• Theme — The central idea or focus that organizes a collection of content.
• Bag — The container that holds and structures curated content.

The diagram above was modified from the Activity System Model diagram. The original six elements were replaced with Bag-related elements. Below are excerpts from the email I sent to my co-workers, who are team members of the BagTheWeb project:

• I add “theme” as the “mediated artifact” between “subject” and “object”.
• I add “web” as the “mediated artifact” between “world” and “theme”.
• I add “bag” as the “mediated artifact” between “actor” and “theme”.
• I add “mind” as the middle element between “actor” and “world”. The mind is not a mediated artifact but rather a channel through the actor understands the world.

Following these modifications, I created my own version of the Activity System diagram for BagTheWeb. This diagram uses the same visual format as the Activity System Model developed by Yrjö Engeström in 1987. However, my version differs in content from Engeström’s original version.

3. The Curating Activity System (2018)

Building on the diagram above, I developed a generalized version applicable to various Curating Activities, including talent curation, museum curation, and more. The key step modifications involved replacing Bag with Container and Web with Network, as shown in the diagram below.

The final version introduced three pair concepts:

• Actor — World
• Container — Network
• Mind — Theme

Additionally, these elements form two distinct groups:

• Personal side: Actor — Container — Mind
• Social side: World — Network — Theme

Through this structure, I formulated the Curating Activity System, a model designed to analyze curating activities broadly, reflecting on my BagTheWeb experience while drawing on Activity Theory.

I initially told my coworkers, “Anyway, this is just an academic exercise, not related to business plan writing.” However, I later discovered the Curating Activity System model had significant business practical value when we worked on a new project in 2018. I used the model to inspire our product discovery process. That turned out to be a fantastic experience for me. It made me realize that this was an example of organizational knowledge creation in action.

4. Misunderstanding

While I was satisfied with the Curating Activity System model because it allowed me to develop abstract knowledge applicable to different products, I eventually realized that I had misunderstood the Activity System model and Activity Theory as a whole.

If you compare the Curating Activity System diagram with the original Activity System Model diagram, you’ll notice they share the same visual layout. However, my conceptualization is fundamentally different. My six elements don’t correspond to the six elements of the original Activity System model. Additionally, I didn’t recognize that I was developing a model specifically for individual curation activity, whereas the Activity System model is designed to study collective activities.

To remind myself of this mistake, I coined the term “Misdiagramming.” While the final result of the Curating Activity System was useful, the process revealed that I hadn’t fully grasped the Activity System model and Activity Theory. I was tricked by my visual preference: the layout was easy to adopt, but the conceptual structure was much harder to learn.

5. The General Curation Model (2019)

In March 2019, I wrote a book draft titled Curativity: The Ecological Approach to General Curation Practice.

The book draft goes beyond the BagTheWeb project, transitioning from a case study to theory-building. I began by focusing on ontological-level innovation, then moved to epistemological-level creation.

At the ontological level, I coined the term, Curativity, which refers to the process of turning pieces into a meaningful whole. To establish the concept of Curativity, I defined it using the “Pieces, Parts, and Whole” Traid. Additionally, I identified two distinct types of Parts: Container and Network.

The diagram below shows the third element of Curativity: Container. The basic assumption behind the diagram and the new term is: “In order to effectively curate pieces into a meaningful whole, we need a Container to contain pieces and shape them.”

At the heart of Curativity Theory lies a fundamental triad: Pieces, Container, and Whole. This triad serves as the basic unit of analysis for Curativity Theory, establishing a new theoretical category at the ontological level. Curativity Theory identifies three distinct statuses of things:

• Things-in-Pieces
• Things-in-Container
• Things-in-Whole

Curativity Theory is dedicated to exploring the structure and dynamics of these three statuses.

In the 2019 book draft, I also introduced the General Curation model. See the diagram below.

In the fields of museums and art, curators often use the term Curatorial Practice to refer to their professional activities. I see Curatorial Practice as a subcategory of what I term General Curation. From the perspective of Curativity Theory, the following social practices fall within the broader category of General Curation.

• Educational activities
• Event organizing and curating
• Web content curation
• Knowledge curation
• Publishing and editing catalogs or magazines
• Toy curation
• Grocery shopping and other types of shopping
• And more

General Curation encompasses social practices that involve selecting, collecting, organizing, presenting, and reflecting, extending well beyond the traditional boundaries of professional curatorial work.

The above diagram highlights several pairs of concepts:

• Pieces vs. Whole
• Whole vs. Container
• Collect vs. Present
• Actor vs. Audience
• Experience vs. Theme

As an application of Curativity Theory, the General Curation Framework represents the structure and dynamics of general curation practices. The activity of general curation aims to collect pieces of things and turn them into a meaningful whole to present a theme to a group of audience.

There are three inherent contradictions within the activity of curating: “pieces — whole,” “things — themes,” and “curator — audience.” For the first dichotomy, I use the concept of “Container” to balance the pieces and the whole. For the last dichotomy, I use the notion of “Everyone A Curator” to deconstruct the concept of “Curator” because I want to emphasize that the activity of curating is a general social practice.

The dichotomy of “things — themes” refers to two classical debates in social science: “mind-matter” and “individual — collective.” After reviewing the concept of “theme” across various disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology, Counseling Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and the Philosophy of Science, I developed a new concept, “Themes of Practice,” to propose a process-oriented view of “Theme.”

6. The Global Curation Model (2020)

In 2020, while discussing Curativity Theory with some friends, I realized the need for a new model to represent the two types of Parts: Container and Network.

The basic model of Curativity and the General Curation Model had primarily focused on just one type of Parts — the Container. However, in the BagTheWeb project, both Container and Network played essential roles.

To address this, I revisited the Curating Activity System (2018) and redesigned its visual diagram. The result was the Global Curation model — see the diagram below.

This new diagram introduces three sets of elements: Container–Network, Actor–World, and Mind–Theme.

Container–Network

The relationship between these two elements primarily discusses the migration of fragmented things between them.

The original inspiration for this diagram came from reflecting on my work with BagTheWeb. BagTheWeb allowed users to collect fragmented web information, organizing it into thematic bags to enhance individual cognition and support work, life, and learning. A Bag is a Container, an information container that holds fragments, with each bag having its own Theme. The Web represents the Network, where information fragments are interconnected.

Actor–World

This pair of elements explores the relationship between people and the world, including cognition and action, constraints and construction.

People understand the world and exist within it through their actions. The world, as an external condition, constrains human cognition and action.

However, as agents with agency, people can transform and construct the world through their actions, thereby altering the external conditions of their existence.

Mind–Theme

This pair focuses on the interaction between individual cognition (Mind) and the thematic structures of the world (Theme), which are shaped by social and cultural contexts.

This is closely related to the concept of “Themes of Practice” introduced in the 2019 book draft Curativity.

7. Repurposing

In this case, we see two typical ways of engaging with a meta-framework.

Initially, I used the Activity System Model to analyze the BagTheWeb project. While the outcome was a useful situational model for practical applications, it was based on a misunderstanding of the original model. From a learning perspective, this was an error. If someone unfamiliar with the Activity System Model wanted to learn it properly, I wouldn’t recommend my case as an example of correct understanding.

In 2020, I revisited the Curating Activity System Model, but this time with a different focus. Instead of anchoring my thinking in Activity Theory, I shifted my perspective to Curativity Theory. This led to the Global Curation Model, which repurposed the original framework to better fit its new conceptual context.

By doing so, I resolved the mismatch between the content and its visual representation, ensuring that the model aligned with its intended theoretical foundation.

v1.0: 2355 words - September 4, 2025