TALE: A possible theme called “Social Moves”

From Mental Moves to Social Moves

I have mentioned the theme “Social Moves” in several articles. This post aims to give it an independent page with a URL for further reference.

The theme of “Social Moves” is part of my journey of developing Attachance Theory.

2020: After Affordance

In 2019, I started working on my own theoretical account of the Ecological Practice approach after finishing a book (draft) titled Curativity. The 2019 version of the approach is a curated toolkit version. The concept of Attachance is part of the toolkit.

In May 2020, I wrote a book titled After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action in which I proposed several new theoretical ideas for expanding ecological psychology to the modern digital environment. The primary theme of After Affordance is the concept of Attachance.

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core idea of Ecological Psychology.

Affordance means potential action opportunities offered by environments. I want to highlight the meaning and value of actual action itself, however, the term Affordance only refers to potential actions. Thus, I coined the term Attachance to emphasize the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, especially the attaching act and the detaching act.

The concept of Attachance is planned to develop as 1) an ecological practice concept for practice studies such as interaction design and startup innovation, and 2) a philosophical concept for developing a social theory.

The book After Affordance only achieves the first goal and it focuses on the following acts:

• Attaching to an environment
• Detaching from an environment
• Attaching to an object
• Detaching from an object

I use the concept of Attachance in many ways.

• The Attachance Perspective refers to its philosophical meaning. You can find more details in D as Diagramming: The Attachance Perspective.
• The theoretical concept of “Attachance” for the Ecological Practice Approach. It refers to what I explored in the 2020 book After Affordance. For example, I used it and Affordance together for discussing creative actions. You can find more details in Creative Actions: Second-order Affordance and Attachance.
• The word “Attachance” is for informal discussions. I often discuss some stories or topics from the perspective of Attachance. You can find an example in Possible Practices: Attach, Detach, and Opportunities.

You can find more details in The Attachance Perspective.

2022: Moving between Thematic Spaces

A Germ Cell of a theoretical approach is its smallest entity which can represent the whole of thinking in different levels of analysis. The diagram below shows the germ cell of the Ecological Practice approach.

The Germ Cell of the Ecological Practice Approach

The above diagram combines three core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach together: Affordance, Attachance, and Containance. The term “Offers” is an affordance-inspired concept, it refers to opportunities afforded by the Container. The group of “Offer — Act” forms “Event” which changes the status of the Container. The new status of the Container affords new opportunities which guide new acts and events.

In 2022, the development of Attachance was tied to the development of Thematic Space which refers to a specific type of container: cognitive container.

You can find more details in [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”.

August 24, 2023: The “Social Moves” Knowledge Project

In July 2023, I finished the “Mental Moves” knowledge project and edited a possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition.

On August 24, 2023, I started the “Social Moves” knowledge project which uses “Social Territory” as the primary concept.

The term “Social Territory” was inspired by Ping-keung Lui’s term “Social Territory” and his Subjectivist Structuralism which is part of his theoretical sociology.

I have claimed that “Knowledge Center” is a type of Social Territory. You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Creative Course Framework.

I use “Social Territory” in general in the “Social Moves” knowledge project.

If we put “Mental Moves” and “Social Moves” together, we see a new unit of analysis of Social Cognition. While “Social Moves” are about Social Actions, “Mental Moves” are about related Mental Activities.

Social Cognition = Social Moves (Mental Moves)

At the methodological level, I adopted the Optimal Context Canvas as an operational framework for studying Social Moves.

The Optimal Context Canvas offers the following four areas of Social Territory:

• Structural Dynamics: social structure
• Cultural Significance: social discourse
• Embedded Activity: situated activities.
• Project Engagement: goal-oriented projects

The Optimal Context Canvas presents 16 blocks that can be seen as thematic spaces. Social Moves can be understood as moving between these thematic spaces.

You can find more details in The Territory of Concepts (August 21, 2023) and Themes of Practice: Concept, Activity, and Cognition (Sept 21, 2023).

Sept 29, 2023: A Case Study of “Social Moves”

On Sept 29, 2023, I launched the Activity Analysis & Intervention (AAI) Project on the Activity Analysis Center’s website.

Then, I sent it to a friend of mine.

On Sept 30, 2023, I made the following draft visual note and sent it to him.

I just now realized that the AAI model can be used to understand “social moves”.

See the attached visual note.

I added more circles to expand the original AAI model. Now it has 6 types of roles.

Supporters such as investors
Founders
Coaches
Consultants
Clients
Followers

Each circle is located in a “social zone” such as Markets, Clans, etc.

Moreover, each circle can be understood as an “AAS” (Anticipatory Activity System).

Now we have a rough theory of “social moves”.

People’s social life can be understood as moving between different types of “Activity Circles” and “Anticipatory activity system”.

Good mindsets could guide people to moving on the path to his ideal life, and bring positive Life experience, activate positive emotions.

Bad mindsets could lead to unsuccessful moves which cause negative Life experiences and negative emotions.

The “Social Moves” theme was born from my recent projects.

One important insight about the “Social Moves” theme is a case study about a web3.0 platform which is founded by a friend of mine.

I see the multiple circle structure in the web3 platform.

The multiple circle structure is also inspired by Ecological Psychologist Roger Barker’s Behavior Settings Theory.

I mentioned Barker’s Behavior Settings Theory in my email. Barker developed a systematic analysis method for the Behavior Settings theory. One module of his method is “Zone of Penetration” which refers to the penetration dimension of Behavior Settings. He identified seven Zones of Penetration(1989, p.127–128).

• Zone 6: Single leader
• Zone 5: Joined Leaders
• Zone 4: Active functionary
• Zone 6, 5, and 4: Operative or performers
• Zone 3: Member or customer
• Zone 2: Audience or invited guest
• Zone 1: Onlookers
• Zone 0: Potential inhabitants

This visual note is about the “Social Moves” project. The theme of Social Moves was inspired by the theme of Mental Moves. While the Mental Moves project is more about knowledge creators’ creative cognition, the Social Moves project is more about startup founders’ creative social action.

This is not a final solution to building a theoretical framework for understanding “Social Moves”, but a case study about it.

On Oct 10, 2023, I made the above diagram to reproduce the visual draft note.

I use a Psychological Counseling Platform as an example to run the case study. There are seven key roles in the platform:

• Influencee
• Supporter
• Founder
• Supervisor
• Counselor
• Client
• Follower

Each Circle refers to an “Activity Circle” which refers to the social structure of “Self, Other, Thing, Think”.

We can also use “AAS (Anticiparoty Activity System)” to understand “Activity Circle” because AAS is about “Self, Other, Present, Future”.

The four types of activities indicate four types of AAS.

• Clan
• Hierarchy
• Market
• Network

People’s social life can be understood as moving between different types of “Activity Circles” and “Anticipatory Activity Systems”.

2021: The NEXT Way

This case study only features the Chain of Activity Circles. If we return to the NEXT Way (2021), we can find two types of network structures: hub and chain. See the diagram below.

In 2021, I used the iART system to name the social structure of “Self, Other, Present, Future”.

The above left diagram represents the Hub model. A person connects to several other people. The diagram below puts three iART diagrams together:

• Self — Other 1
• Self — Other 2
• Self — Other 3

The Self can adopt different perspectives for these three different iART systems because there are different types of relationships. For example, if the Self is a founder of a startup, Other 1 may be an investor, Other 2 may be a family member, and Other 3 may be a mentor.

The above right diagram represents the Chain model which shows a chain of social relationships:

• Self > Other 1 > Other 2 > Other 3 > …

Each two people form an iART system with a particular relationship. The whole social network is a networked system of many iART systems. This is a very complicated model because each person has his/her own perspective of his/her iART system. Each person has his/her social position. Also, the interpersonal relationship is dynamic.

I named the networked iART Systems The NEXT Way on Sep 5, 2021.

• N: Networked
• E: Expectation
• X: Uncertainty
• T: Trust and Trends

These four keywords are useful for understanding “Social Moves” too.

2023: Platform Ecology (v3.1)

In 2021, I wrote a book titled Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century.

In 2022, I developed the Platform Genidentity Framework and moved to test a related concept called “Knowledge Center”.

In the past several months, I worked on a strategic design research project about a web 3.0 platform. A by-product of the project is the idea of “Spontaneous Concept System”.

On July 18, 2023, I made the above diagram for the Platform Ecology project.

In the above diagram, the theme of “Social Moves” was assigned to the User's side. We can see users’ moves between platform-related social spaces as their developmental process.

The Platform Ecology project uses “Developmental Platform” as a primary concept to develop theoretical frameworks.

As an interdisciplinary concept, the term Developmental Platform refers to a social environment that could strongly support adult development in various ways. There are three keywords in this definition:

• social environment
• strongly support
• adult development

I discovered five types of Developmental Platforms, see the diagram below.

You can find more details in The Developmental Platform and City as Developmental Platform.

I also used the “Network — Container — Network” triad for the Ecological Practice Approach.

The above diagram is called “The Landscape of Ecological Practice Approach”.

Based on the concept of Container, I coined two related ideas: Network and Platform. The Network refers to the pre-container status which means pieces loose coupling outside the container. The Platform refers to the post-container status which means pieces loose coupling within the super large container. These three ideas form a triad: Network — Container — Platform. I consider the triad as the basic form of collective contexts.

The above diagram represents a large map of the ecological practice approach. Here we see three basic types of collective context and attaching/detaching acts inside contexts and between contexts.

You can also find “Attach/Detach” in the above diagram. In other words, we can use the diagram as a meta-framework for the Social Moves knowledge project.

You can find more details in A Possible Theme called “Social Pieces”, A Possible Discipline called “Platform Ecology”, and Platform Ecology (v3.1).