Across the Scales of Time:
Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial Systems

Jay L. Lemke
City University of New York
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

This paper is based on a presentation at the 1998 ISCRAT Congress in Aarhus, Denmark. It will be submitted in a revised form to the journal Mind, Culture, and Activity. The work here develops the notion of multiple timescale analysis for human social activities and institutions, with education as a primary example. For the more general theory as applied to physical and biological systems, see my Ghent conference paper (to be published in the proceedings volume series, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences), the original notes in the WESS and TIME webs on this site, and my earlier work on ecosocial-semiotic systems (included in Textual Politics, chapter 6, and my paper in the journal Cultural Dynamics in slightly different versions).

Introduction and Overview

Activity in Time

TABLE: Timescales for Human Activity

The Adiabatic Principle

Heterochrony and Semiotic Mediation

Identities and Trajectories

'It takes a village ...'

References