Beyond Adaptation

Introduction

Till Manderbach, Johanna Ruge, Peter Brook, Eileen Wengemuth & Sigga Waleng

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

—Karl Marx in Theses on Feuerbach (2002 [1845/1888])

Subjectivity, for Cuban-Brazilian psychologists Gonzáles Rey and Mitjáns Martínez (2020, p. 54), “expresses the human capacity to transcend what is objectively dominant, making individuals, groups, and social instances capable of creating new realities and processes that in the beginning could have seemed idle fantasies.” Our everyday lives are structured by the interplay of change and adaptation. We acquire the ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that are considered appropriate in the sections of society we inhabit. Yet, what distinguishes this social world from the natural world of animals is that it presents itself not as stimuli that cause responses but as structures of meaning that are accommodated and interpreted by the subject through her individual set of needs and motives (Holzkamp, 2013a, pp. 34–36; Leont’ev, 1978, pp. 128–30). This implies an indelible residue of indeterminacy (or “fuzziness,” cf. Valsiner, 2000, pp. 39–40) in social rules. Even if we try to follow the suggestions imposed on us perfectly, our attempted replication will still bear the marks of our interpretation. Our modification is fed back into the social world and interferes with its (re-)constitution. Thus, we are always already involved in the perpetuation of social change, even without being aware.¹ It is for this reason that social processes are always open-ended. The quality, often theorized as contingency,² is the result of these countless acts of interpretation combined. Sometimes they may neutralize each other, but other times they may slowly—invisible to the consciousness of one generation—lead to a different way of life, or they may rapidly be thrown in one direction by significant events. Either way, the reproduction of our common world is, also, our doing.

But these coincidental acts of change are just one side of the coin. Contingency also implies the option to turn the necessity of participating in this interpretation of societal meaning structures into the opportunity to purposefully change them. Such a change can only be brought about in cooperation with others (Holzkamp, 2013b, pp. 20–22). This collective action is not frictionless. More or less strong power structures, themselves a product of subjective actions solidified into a second nature, will stand in the way. Nevertheless, the possibility remains to change our living conditions by expanding the scope of action available to us and thereby to change ourselves as well (ibid.).

We find it necessary to explore contingency in the face of the multiple crises of our time. As researchers and practitioners in psychology, social work, and education, we see it as a crucial introductory concept for this book. The range of approaches across the different disciplines represented in this volume—Cultural-Historical Theory (CHT), Activity Theory (AT), and the Critical Psychology (CP) of the German-Nordic tradition (all sharing roots in Marxism) among them—are united in the effort to grasp dynamics of change. This shared aim has profound methodological implications: Research methods must not be static but developmental both to adequately depict the ever-changing social reality and to generalize the potential knowledge to enable purposeful interventions.

From Marx, we draw the idea that change cannot be understood as a mere abstraction but is only comprehensible in its concrete context: practice. As long as the world is considered to be an object, our own part in its development remains concealed (Jensen, 1999). Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach have been central to various interpretations within Cultural-Historical Theory (CHT), Activity Theory (AT), and Critical Psychology (CP). For instance, Motzkau and Schraube (2015) and Sannino and Engeström (2018) have drawn on these theses. These works have collectively shaped the fundamental concept that to grasp and facilitate change, we need a comprehensive understanding of actual human activities within their practical contexts. Some researchers even argue that it is only through trying to change the world that we can really get to know it (Jensen, 1999).

In this volume, we bring together diverse voices from the fields of CP, AT, and CHT. These scholars, coming from a variety of national contexts, are united to bring about the entanglement of their research fields with oppressive forces and to situate their own research in relation to struggles for social change. In this introduction we will begin by situating this volume, recounting its origin and development. Second, we will address its major overarching theme through the argument that it is necessary to break with the suggestion that adaptation can be the dominant strategy to cope with the multiple crises we experience. Also, scholar-practitioners in the psychosocial and educational field can play a role in either foreclosing or envisioning an alternative future. Third, we will provide inroads to the individual chapters found in this book.