Appropriating Activity Theory

The chair sat in Fuzhou through all of it. Now it is on the cover of a book that tries to say something about what that journey means.

Turning a column into a possible book

This post is part of the "Appropriating Activity Theory" series, which reflects my creative journey of engaging with Activity Theory from 2015 to 2026.

In 2022 I called it Slow Cognition. In 2026, it has a more accurate name: The Art of Theoretical Activity.

The tool kept changing its purpose. But it never stopped being a mediating tool. That, perhaps, is what Activity Theory would have predicted all along.

After editing that chronicle, “watershed” became a new theme for me. I began to wonder whether similar dividing lines existed in my decade‑long journey of appropriating Activity Theory. This issue of the column is dedicated to that theme.

Tracing the Self–Other relationship back to its ecological foundations — from the Thing-People Relation model of 2017, through the Typology of Relevance in 2021, the Activity Circle, the ACS development of 2026

When I sat down to write this issue's column, I found myself asking a question I hadn't asked before: Does the tradition of Activity Theory have anything analogous to the four boundaries of the World of Life?