Situated Action (not that I like it!)

From 'Studying Context: A Comparison of Activity Theory, Situated Action Models, and Distributed Cognition'. Bonnie A. Nardi. 11995 (pp.2)

SITUATED ACTION MODELS

The two main references for situated action which are used in Nardi's explanation are Suchman (1987), and Lave (1988)

Situated action models emphasize the emergent, contingent nature of human activity, the way activity grows directly out of the particularities of a given situation. The focus of study is situated activity or practice, as opposed to the study of the formal or cognitive properties of artifacts, or structured social relations, or enduring cultural knowledge and values. Situated action analysts do not deny that artifacts or social relations or knowledge or values are important, but they argue that the true locus of inquiry should be the ``everyday activity of persons acting in [a] setting''. That this inquiry is meant to take place at a very fine-grained level of minutely observed activities, inextricably embedded in a particular situation, is reflected in Suchman's (1987) statement that ``the organization of situated action is an emergent property of moment-by-moment interactions between actors, and between actors and the environments of their action.''

Lave (1988) identifies the basic unit of analysis for situated action as ``the activity of persons acting in setting.'' The unit of analysis is thus not the individual, not the environment, but a relation between the two. A setting is defined as ``a relation between acting persons and the arenas in relation with which they act.'' An arena is a stable institutional framework. For example, a supermarket is an arena within which activity takes place. For the individual who shops in the supermarket, the supermarket is experienced as a setting because it is a ``personally ordered, edited version'' of the institution of the supermarket. In other words, each shopper shops only for certain items in certain aisles, depending on her needs and habits. She has thus ``edited'' the institution to match her personal preferences .

An important aspect of the ``activity of persons-acting in setting'' as a unit of analysis is that it forces the analyst to pay attention to the flux of ongoing activity, to focus on the unfolding of real activity in a real setting. Situated action emphasizes responsiveness to the environment and the improvisatory nature of human activity. In emphasizing improvisation and response to contingency, situated action deemphasizes study of more durable, stable phenomena that persist across situations. It is a highly particularistic accounting of a single episode that highlights an individual's creative response to a unique situation.

A central tenet of the situated action approach is that the structuring of activity is not something that precedes it but can only grow directly out of the immediacy of the situation. The insistence on the exigencies (necessity) of particular situations and the emergent, contingent character of action is a reaction to years of influential work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science in which ``problem solving'' was seen as a ``series of objective, rational pre-specified means to ends'' and work that overemphasized the importance of plans in shaping behavior. Such work failed to recognize the opportunistic, flexible way that people engage in real activity. It failed to treat the environment as an important shaper of activity, concentrating almost exclusively on representations in the head—usually rigid, planful ones—as the object of study.