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Using resources: Conceptualising the mediation and reflective use of tools
and signs
Running head: Using resources
Alex Gillespie
1
Department of Psychology
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
UK
alex.gillespie@stir.ac.uk
Tania Zittoun
Institute of Psychology & Education
FLSH, University of Neuchâtel
Louis Agassiz 1
2000 Neuchâtel
Switzerland
tania.zittoun@unine.ch
Accepted for publication in Culture & Psychology published by SAGE:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X09344888
1
Author for correspondence. Alex Gillespie would like to acknowledge the support of an
ESRC research grant (RES-000-22-2473).
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Using resources:
Conceptualising the mediation and reflective use of tools and signs
The idea that culture comprises resources which are used has become a
popular means to re-conceptualise the culture-agency antinomy. However,
the theorisation of using resources is fragmented. The present article reviews
several attempts to theorise resources, arguing that there has been too much
focus upon the resources themselves while the notion of use has been
neglected. Focusing upon mode of use, as opposed to the resources used,
the article underscores the importance of distinguishing between tools, which
are used to act upon the world, and signs, which are used to act upon the
mind. The article also argues for a distinction between non-reflective use, or
mediation, and reflective use of resources. Future research should focus upon
the transformation of tools into signs and the transformation of mediation into
reflective use. The article concludes by discussing problematic issues which
remain in conceptualising the use of resources.
Keywords: tools, signs, mediation, reflection, resources, use
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Using resources:
Conceptualising the mediation and reflective use of tools and signs
It is now widely accepted that creating an opposition between agency
and culture is unproductive. Previously culture had often been conceptualised
as a force external to the individual. Hegemonic norms, socialisation
practices, institutions, collective representations and discourses were
conceptualised as coercive and deterministic. Indeed, implicitly it often
seemed as if only an individual outside of culture could be fully independent.
However, more recently in anthropology (Bourdieu, 1990), sociology
(Giddens, 1986) and psychology (Valsiner, 1987) there has been a move to
conceptualise individual agency as culturally constituted: people do not act
against culture, rather they act through culture. A child growing up alone on
the proverbial desert island is not free, but rather is enslaved by basic
instincts. Culture enables distanciation from the environment, and thus self-
regulation, planning and creative action.
At the core of this re-conceptualisation are new words to describe
culture in terms of resources, tools, artifacts, capital and semiotic mediators.
Although each of these terms has its own context of use, they all imply that
culture is used. Things become resources, tools, artifacts, capital or semiotic
mediators through being used in the course of human action. The
etymological origin of the term resource comes from Latin resurgere, meaning
to splash back, resuscitate or rise again. In the face of a rupture or great
need, a resource enables adaptation and restoration. It is this embeddedness
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in a ruptured goal oriented and meaningful activity which give the terms
resource, tool, artifact, capital, mediator and semiotic mediator their particular
value. Each of these terms denote something akin to a resource, namely,
something which does not exist in itself but which comes into existence by
enabling meaningful human activity.
Examples of using resources abound. Vygotsky (1978, p. 51) provides
one of the classic examples in his discussion of using a knot in a handkerchief
as a mnemonic aid. Since then, the same idea has been applied to the use of
an abacus as either an external aid or an intra-psychological representation to
aid thought (Cole & Derry, 2005), to the study of heuristics, mental strategies
and rules of thumb (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999), and the use of stickers, post-it
notes and other memory aids by people with declining cognitive faculties
(Baltes, 1997). In the field of development, the concept of resources has
proved popular (Arievitch & Stetsenko, 2000; Neuman & Bakeman, 2001).
Children use transitional objects as emotional resources (Winnicott, 1968),
argumentative styles as rhetorical resources (Psaltis & Duveen, 2006) and
fingers, calendars, and arithmetic as resources to mark time (Wyndhamn &
Säljö, 1999). In the field of education, there have been studies on how
education guards access to resources (Bourdieu, 1986) and how certain
resources are needed even to participate in education (Rochex, 1998).
Outside of the educational frame, religious fables, traditional stories, films and
pop songs can all provide resources for dealing with life’s problems, from
naming a child (Zittoun, 2004a) to adapting to war (Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish
& Aveling, 2008). Soldiers (Hale, 2008) and migrants (Markovitzky & Mosek,
2006) use personal artifacts from home as resources for identity and memory,
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and communities and nations use memorials to achieve a similar end
(Wertsch, 2002; Zittoun, 2004b). While we can take heart in the breadth of
contexts in which the re-conceptualisation of culture is taking hold, and with it,
the notion of resource, this very breadth is also a cause for concern. Do
people use language (Austin, 1962) in the same way as they use tourist
guidebooks (Gillespie, 2006)? Is the mediation provided by a pole-vaulting
pole (Wertsch, 1995) equivalent to the mediation provided by religion (Belzen,
1999)?
Moving beyond the antinomy between personal agency and culture is a
paradigm shift which is still in its early stages and as such there is
considerable volatility in the terminology and conceptualisation. The terms
resource, artifact, capital, tool, mediator, and semiotic resource are
overlapping and polysemic. The problem is that with too much polysemy,
there is little consolidation and advancement of the field (Witherington, 2007;
Zittoun, Gillespie & Cornish, 2009).
The aim of the present article is to review conceptualisations of using
resources. We begin by reviewing efforts in the social sciences broadly
conceived, and then hone in on the unique contribution of cultural psychology.
In each case we review the main conceptual distinctions which have been
made. We argue that the majority of these conceptualisations have concerned
themselves with distinguishing cultural elements, and that theorisation of the
way cultural elements are used has been neglected. Accordingly, we focus
upon the process of use rather than the resources used and outline two
distinctions. First, we distinguish using a resource to act upon the world (tool),
from acting upon the mind of self or other (sign). Second, we distinguish non-
