Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions

Collaboration is the central aspect of human practice; without it and the associated division of labor human society as we know it today would not exist. Successful collaboration enables a collective subject to produce more than the sum of what its members can do individually. But which conditions e...

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Main Authors: Sung Won Hwang, Wolf-Michael Roth, Lillian Pozzer-Ardenghi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Outlines Association 2005-04-01
Series:Outlines
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/article/view/2111
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author Sung Won Hwang
Wolf-Michael Roth
Lillian Pozzer-Ardenghi
author_facet Sung Won Hwang
Wolf-Michael Roth
Lillian Pozzer-Ardenghi
author_sort Sung Won Hwang
collection DOAJ
description Collaboration is the central aspect of human practice; without it and the associated division of labor human society as we know it today would not exist. Successful collaboration enables a collective subject to produce more than the sum of what its members can do individually. But which conditions enable successful collaboration and how does it come about? In a case study of artifact designing in a class of sixth- and seventh-grade students, we articulate how the social interaction produces and reproduces the prerequisite and required intersubjectivity for successful collaboration and thereby constitutes a configuration of successful collaboration at two dominant modes of design practice. In face-to-face communication, human bodies produce a variation of available social and material resources and thereby concretely realize the generalized possibilities of making individual subjectivity available to others. This, we show, produces and reproduces intersubjectivity. During cooperative action, human bodies take up different parts of the collective labor and thereby achieve a division of labor, but the different contributions are accomplished into a collective one through human bodies in action, which constitutes a form of communication. We conclude that evaluating collaboration requires reading the productive value from communication and the communicative value from the division of labor, which, in dialectical unfolding of collaborative interactions, articulates itself in and as of creating new action possibilities (room to maneuver) through acting human bodies and therefore requires reading between the actions.
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spelling doaj.art-09178e98a7dd4c708f8f54006b1394032023-01-03T01:08:45ZengThe Outlines AssociationOutlines1399-55101904-02102005-04-017150691921Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines ActionsSung Won Hwang0Wolf-Michael Roth1Lillian Pozzer-Ardenghi2University of VictoriaUniversity of VictoriaUniversity of VictoriaCollaboration is the central aspect of human practice; without it and the associated division of labor human society as we know it today would not exist. Successful collaboration enables a collective subject to produce more than the sum of what its members can do individually. But which conditions enable successful collaboration and how does it come about? In a case study of artifact designing in a class of sixth- and seventh-grade students, we articulate how the social interaction produces and reproduces the prerequisite and required intersubjectivity for successful collaboration and thereby constitutes a configuration of successful collaboration at two dominant modes of design practice. In face-to-face communication, human bodies produce a variation of available social and material resources and thereby concretely realize the generalized possibilities of making individual subjectivity available to others. This, we show, produces and reproduces intersubjectivity. During cooperative action, human bodies take up different parts of the collective labor and thereby achieve a division of labor, but the different contributions are accomplished into a collective one through human bodies in action, which constitutes a form of communication. We conclude that evaluating collaboration requires reading the productive value from communication and the communicative value from the division of labor, which, in dialectical unfolding of collaborative interactions, articulates itself in and as of creating new action possibilities (room to maneuver) through acting human bodies and therefore requires reading between the actions.http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/article/view/2111collaborationintersubjectivity
spellingShingle Sung Won Hwang
Wolf-Michael Roth
Lillian Pozzer-Ardenghi
Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
Outlines
collaboration
intersubjectivity
title Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
title_full Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
title_fullStr Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
title_full_unstemmed Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
title_short Understanding Collaborative Practice: Reading between the Lines Actions
title_sort understanding collaborative practice reading between the lines actions
topic collaboration
intersubjectivity
url http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/article/view/2111
work_keys_str_mv AT sungwonhwang understandingcollaborativepracticereadingbetweenthelinesactions
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