Abstract
The “situated” perspective in the analysis and design of socio-technical systems reveals how people conceive of activities as social-interactive settings, thus relating situated cognition to themes in the philosophy of place. In the socio-technical approach to developing technology, social scientists and computer scientists ground designs of automation (e.g., software, devices, vehicles) in ethnographic studies of how people interact with each other, tools and representations (e.g., computer displays), and their environment (e.g., facilities). These studies characterize people’s activities – how they conceive of what they are doing in particular settings. A person’s understanding of activities that a physical location affords for certain socio-technical purposes – the spatial conception of activities – makes a location a meaningful place. Technical knowledge and methods (“what I am doing now”), personal identity (“who I am being now”), and behavior norms (e.g., “how well I am doing now”) co-develop in the activity setting. This paper elucidates the multi-dimensional physical, conceptual, and interactive nature of settings with examples from ethnographic studies of robotically mediated field science on Mars and analog expeditions on Earth. The felt and aesthetic experience of being in places that are Mars-like and working on Mars itself further reveals the emotional aspect of cognition that motivates and orients scientific work, exploration, and associated artistic expressions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We can view “setting” in workplace studies as an etic term (a structural, conceptual distinction of the people in the culture being studied, which may or may not be in their lexicon), and “place” as an emic term (an analytic, culturally general distinction, named and often graphically related to other places as in a map). In human culture the place–setting distinction blends; for example, constructed (e.g., buildings, plazas) and natural places (e.g., lakes, mountains) alike are known as both physical places and cultural settings for activities. Of particular interest are settings in which only certain people are allowed to participate and activities are circumscribed, such as the settings related to Mars field science discussed in this chapter.
- 2.
Affordances are dynamic relations among a physical place/thing and the intentions and behavioral capabilities of actors; they are not properties that reside in either the place/thing or the actor. Other examples: the upper bunk of the stateroom affords sleeping and being used as a standing desk; the table affords seating for six people at meals or four people using computers.
- 3.
The image has been white-balanced to show what the Martian surface materials would look like if under the sunlight of Earth’s sky.
- 4.
From “Rationale – Situatedness and Place.” Cf. also the Preface of this volume.
- 5.
For a related description of expeditions as liminal experiences see Clancey (2012, Chapter 9), particularly the references to Martin Rudwick’s analysis.
References
Alexander, C., S. Ishikawa, and M. Silverstein. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, R. 1994. Representations and requirements: The value of ethnography in system design. Human-Computer Interaction 9 (3): 151–182.
———. 1997. Work, ethnography and system design. In The Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, ed. A. Kent and J.G. Williams, vol. 20, 159–183. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Barker, R.G. 1968. Ecological Psychology: Concepts and Methods for Studying the Environment of Human Behavior. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bartlett, F.C. 1932/1977. Remembering – A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clancey, W.J. 1993. The Biology of Consciousness: Comparative Review of Israel Rosenfield, The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten: An Anatomy of Consciousness and Gerald M. Edelman, Bright air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. Artificial Intelligence 60: 313–356.
———. 1997. Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1999. Conceptual Coordination: How the Mind Orders Experience in Time. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
———. 2001. Field science ethnography: Methods for systematic observation on an arctic expedition. Field Methods 13 (3): 223–243.
———. 2002. Simulating activities: Relating motives, deliberation, and attentive coordination. Cognitive Systems Research 3 (3): 471–499. special issue “Situated and embodied cognition”.
———. 2006a. Observation of work practices in natural settings. In Cambridge Handbook on Expertise and Expert Performance, ed. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. Feltovich, and R. Hoffman, 127–145. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2006b. Participant observation of a Mars surface habitat simulation. Habitation: International Journal for Human Support Research 11 (1/2): 27–47.
———. 2008. Scientific antecedents of situated cognition. In Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, ed. P. Robbins and M. Aydede, 11–34. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2012. Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2014. Working on Mars: Translating planetary field science to our distant lands. KERB Journal of Landscape Architecture 22: 56–59. Special issue “Remoteness”.
Clancey, W.J., P. Sachs, M. Sierhuis, and R. van Hoof. 1998. Brahms: Simulating practice for work systems design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 49: 831–865.
Clancey, W.J., M. Sierhuis, B. Damer, and B. Brodsky. 2005. Cognitive modeling of social behaviors. In Cognition and Multi-agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation, ed. R. Sun, 151–184. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Clancey, W.J., C. Linde, C. Seah, and M. Shafto. 2013. Work Practice Simulation of Complex Human-Automation Systems in Safety Critical Situations: The Brahms Generalized Überlingen Model. NASA Technical Publication 2013-216508, Washington, DC.
Damasio, A. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.
———. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company.
De Botton, A. 2002. The Art of Travel. New York: Pantheon.
Dewey, R. 2014. Hacking remoteness through viewpoint and cognition. KERB Journal of Landscape Architecture 22: 26–33.
Downes, S. 1990. Herbert Simon’s computational models of scientific discovery. In Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 97–108. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/192696.
Fox, W.L. 2000. The Void, the Grid, and the Sign: Traversing the Great Basin. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Greenbaum, J., and M. Kyng, eds. 1991. Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hall, E.T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday.
Harper, R. 2000. The organisation in ethnography: A discussion of ethnographic fieldwork programs. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 9 (2): 239–264.
Hughes, J., T. King, T. Rodden, and H. Andersen. 1994. Moving out from the control room: Ethnography in systems design. In Proceedings of computer supported work, October 22–26, 417–428. New York: ACM.
Jordan, B., and A. Henderson. 1995. Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences 4 (1): 39–103.
Keltner, D., and J. Haidt. 2003. Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion 17: 297–314.
Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Langley, P.W., H.A. Simon, G. Bradshaw, and J.M. Zytkow. 1987. Scientific Discovery: Computational Explorations of the Creative Process. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Lave, J. 1988. Cognition in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, P. and G.R. Osinski. 2005. The Haughton-Mars Project: Overview of science investigations at the Haughton impact structure and surrounding terrains, and relevance to planetary studies. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 40 (12):1755–1758.
Leont’ev, A.N. 1979. The problem of activity in psychology. In The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, ed. J.V. Wertsch, 37–71. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
Luff, P., J. Hindmarsh, and C. Heath. 2000. Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, K. 1955. Perceptual form of the city. Kevin Lynch Papers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States), MC 208, Box 1, General Notes.
———. 1960/2001. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mikulak, A. 2015. All about awe: Science explores show life’s small marvels elevate cognition and emotion. Observer 28 (4): 16–19.
Nardi, B. 1996. Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rönkkö, K. 2010. Ethnography. In Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, ed. P. Laplante. New York: Taylor and Francis Group.
Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Salvador, T., G. Bell, and K. Anderson. 1999. Design ethnography. Design Management Journal 10 (4): 35–41.
Spradley, J.P. 1980. Participant Observation. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
Treib, M. ed. 1995/1999. An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Valdez, R. 2011. Seattle’s Land Use Code: Kevin Lynch on Cities. April 11, 2011. Retrieved from https://seattleslandusecode.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/kevin-lynch-on-cities/. Accessed 15 Nov 2016.
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, J.V., ed. 1979. The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
Whyte, W.H. 1980. Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, DC: Conservation Foundation.
Zubrin, R. 2003. Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic. New York: Tarcher Penguin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Clancey, W.J. (2018). Spatial Conception of Activities: Settings, Identity, and Felt Experience. In: Hünefeldt, T., Schlitte, A. (eds) Situatedness and Place. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 95. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92937-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92937-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92936-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92937-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)