Situational Note-taking: The Ecological Practice Approach (Oliver Ding, 2019–2023)

Oliver Ding

Published in

Curativity Center

21 min readJan 4, 2024

5 concepts and 15 possible books.

This long post is part of my 2023 annual review. You can find other posts below:

From 2019 to Dec 2023, I wrote 26 possible books (drafts). The above diagram selects 15 books about the Ecological Practice Approach. I also used five concepts and one theme to frame six thematic spaces.

Curativity
Attachance
Themes of Practice
Supportance
Lifesystem Framework
Application

The Ecological Practice Approach was inspired by Ecological Psychology. I defined it as a meta-theory.

My work is inspired by James J. Gibson’s Ecological Psychology, Roger Barker’s Behavior Settings Theory, Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecology of Human Development, and practice theories.

There are two goals behind the Ecological Practice approach:

1) Expanding Ecological Psychology from the native natural environments to the modern digital environments.
2) Expanding Ecological Psychology from perception-centered psychological analysis to social practice analysis.

On August 15, 2023, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to review the landscape of the Ecological Practice Design Toolkit (v2, 2023). See the diagram below.

1. A theoretical approach is formed by a set of theoretical concepts under a unified worldview.

2. How did I develop the Ecological Practice Approach and write 15 books?

2.1 Define the difference between the approach and similar approaches
2.2 Developing Primary Theoretical Concepts
2.3 One Book One Concept

3. What did I do from 2021 to 2023?

3.1 Developing abstract models and concrete models as knowledge frameworks
3.2 Conducting case studies about these knowledge frameworks
3.3 Running creative dialogue between the approach and other approaches

4. How many versions did the approach have?

4.1 The “Toolkit” version (2019)
4.2 The “Germ-cell” version (2020)
4.3 The “Hierarchy” version (2021)
4.4 The “Social(Cognition)” version (2023)

1. A theoretical approach is formed by a set of theoretical concepts under a unified worldview.

In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism and contemporary embodied cognitive science.

In 1942, Stephen C. Pepper pointed out that there are four root metaphors of world views or conceptual systems: formism, mechanism, contextualism, and organicism in World Hypotheses: a study of evidence. In 1987, Altman and Rogoff reviewed the world views of psychologists and suggested a similar typology: trait, interactional, organismic, and transactionalism.

According to Harry Heft (2012), the foundation of various ecological approaches to psychology is transactionalism, “Frameworks more sympathetic to ecological thinking had been simmering among psychology’s early writings, notably in William James’ radical empiricism and Kurt Lewin’s field theory, but became realized only in the 1960s through the works of James J. Gibson, Roger G. Barker, and others. These frameworks share many of the assumptions of the ecological sciences and, collectively, can be located within a transactional worldview.”

The major difference between the interactional worldview and the transactionalism worldview is their unit of analysis.

Interactional worldview: The unit of analysis is the individual viewed as a bounded, independent entity, operating separately from the surrounding, while subject to influences from outside its boundaries.
Transactionalism worldview: The unit of analysis is the person-environment dynamic system. The components of this system operate in a relational, interdependent manner, rather than as independent entities.

The Ecological Practice approach adopts the Transactionalism worldview and its unit of analysis is the thing-environment dynamic system.

In the past years, I kept a set of Primary Theoretical Concepts as the core of the Ecological Practice Approach. See the diagram below.

Based on primary theoretical concepts, I also developed several Secondary Theoretical Concepts. For example, the concept of Projectivity is an application of the concept of Attachance.

The concept of Thematic Space is inspired by the concept of Container (Containee) and Themes of Practice.

The concept of Infoniche is an application of the concept of Container (Containee).

Theme (Concept), Life (Self), Context (Mind), are applications of the concept of Container (Containee).

These two types of concepts are high-level abstract concepts. They can be used to develop Perspectives and Frameworks.

Primary Concepts and Secondary Concepts can be used to develop Perspectives.

I list eight items with short names and full names. These “Perspectives” are based on the Configurations of Concepts. For example, the Affordance — Supportance Loop and the Affordance — Supportance Cycle are Configurations of the concepts of Affordance and the concept of Supportance.

The Attach — Container — Detach Flow (link: 1, 2)
The Subject — Potential — Object Focus (link)
The Affordance — Attachance Chain
The Affordance — Supportance Loop (link: 1, 2)
The Affordance — Supportance Cycle (link)
The Ecological Zone (link: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
The X — Y — Z Echo (link: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
The Network — Container — Platform Move (link:1, 2)

We can use these Perspectives directly, or use them as resources to develop Frameworks. For example, the diagram below uses the “Network — Container — Platform” Move to understand the “Platformba — Project — Platform” triad.

We can also use two Perspectives together. For example, Lifesystem Framework is based on the Affordance — Supportance Loop and the Subject — Potential — Object Focus. See the diagram below.

You can find more details about the Lifesystem framework in Lifesystem: Modeling Ice Skating and Other Social Practices.

A knowledge framework is a bridge that connects theory and practice. An ideal knowledge framework should contain two types of concepts:

Theoretical Concepts
Operational Concepts

Theoretical Concepts are adopted from Meta-theory or Specific Theory. Some frameworks don’t associate with any theories, they only have operational concepts.

Operational Concepts are framework-dependent concepts for guiding research and reflection. For example, the Lifesystem framework defines the following eight operational concepts:

Actor
Group
Intention
Result
Material
Information
Resource
Reward

These operational concepts are used to guide the research and reflection in order to understand the structure and dynamics of Lifesystems. You can find more details in Lifesystem: Modeling Ice Skating and Other Social Practices.

2. How did I develop the Ecological Practice Approach and write 15 books?

From 2018 to 2021, the early stage of the journey, I used a simple strategy to develop the approach.

Define the difference between the approach and similar approaches
Develop a set of primary theoretical concepts
Write a book each year. Each book establishes a primary theoretical concept.

2.1 Define the difference between the approach and similar approaches

I have over twenty years of work experience which can be divided into three stages: the creative stage, the strategic stage, and the innovative stage. At the creative stage, I worked for the advertising and media industry as a creative copywriter and designer. At the strategic state, I worked for pre-IPO stage enterprises as a business strategist and fundraising consultant. At the innovative stage, I worked on making brand-new digital tools and platforms as a researcher and designer.

Before 2014, I spent most of my spare time on digital nonprofit communities as a digital activist. From 2014 to 2015, I transformed my focus from nonprofit activities to theoretical learning. Since then, I have been spending most of my spare time learning ecological psychology, creativity research, and other related subjects.

2014–2020: Ecological Psychology and Creativity Research
2014–2018: Action Science, Activity Theory and Cognitive Science
2018–2019: Practice Theory, HCI, Strategy and Work
2020: Social Theory, Social Media, Information Systems and Platform

The above list indicates that social theory is the newest focus of my learning activity. Why did I switch the focus from ecological psychology to social theory in 2019?

After learning ecological psychology for five years, I wrote a book titled Curativity from Sept 2018 to March 2019. During the process of writing, I developed a new theoretical approach called the Ecological Practice Approach which aims to build an Affordance-based theory of action and apply ideas of ecological psychology to analyzing various social practices.

In 2019, I focused on defining the difference between the Ecological Practice approach and other social practice approaches.

In Feb 2020, I wrote a 160-page private document titled Life Theory.

The “Life Theory” document is both a theoretical plan and a toolkit. As a theoretical plan, it describes the position and the direction of expanding the Ecological Practice approach to a social theory. As a toolkit, it curates six frameworks together. It is the beta version of the Ecological Practice approach.

The picture below shows several milestones of the project for developing the approach.

All books are drafts, not published yet.
The term “published” means publishing articles on Medium.com, not academic journals.
I often wrote private documents to develop my thoughts about the approach. These private documents were shared with some friends.

The above picture highlights the milestone of writing the “Life Theory” document.

It happened in Feb 2020 before writing the book After Affordance.

You can find more details in Slow Cognition: The Ecological Practice Approach in Feb 2020.

The mission of the Ecological Practice Approach is to explore Possible Practices.

Since 2001, a group of philosophers, sociologists, and scientists have rediscovered the practice perspective and used it as a lens to explore and examine the role of practices in human activity. Researchers called it The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. As Schatzki pointed out, “there is no unified practice approach”(2001, p.2). Davide Nicolini curated a toolkit to introduce the following six different ways of theorizing practice in his 2012 book Practice Theory, Work, & Organization:

Praxeology and the Work of Giddens and Bourdieu
Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)
Activity Theory / Cultural-historical activity theory (the Marxian/Vygotskian/Leont’evian tradition)
Ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel, 1954)
The Site of Social (contemporary developments of the Heideggerian/Wittgensteinian traditions, by Theodore R. Schatzki)
Conversation Analysis / Critical Discourse Analysis (the Foucauldian tradition)

Nicolini also pointed out, “Practice theories are fundamentally ontological projects in the sense that they attempt to provide a new vocabulary to describe the world and to populate the world with specific ‘units of analysis’; that is, practice. How these units are defined, however, is internal to each of the theories, and choosing one of them would thus amount to reducing the richness provided by the different approaches.” (2012, p.9)

I suggest “Possible Practice” as a new term that expands the scope of contemporary practice theories from “actual actions and existing practice” to “possible actions and possible practice.” I consider “Possible Practice” as the special unit of analysis for the Ecological Practice approach. Again, the Ecological Practice approach is not an alternative to contemporary practice theories, but expands their scope and contains more theoretical concepts such as James J. Gibson’s Affordance.

2.2 Developing Primary Theoretical Concepts

From Sept 2018 to March 2019, I wrote a book titled Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice in order to reflect on one of my life themes: Curation. The Ecological Practice Approach was born from the process of writing Curativity.

After March 2019, I continuously worked on revising Curativity and developing the Ecological Practice Approach as a new project. In May 2020, I wrote another 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. I also introduced the concept of Attachance and the Infoniche framework in the book.

A major development of the Ecological Practice approach is the concept of Supportance. I have been searching for a concept for expanding Ecological Psychology from perception-centered psychological analysis to social practice analysis for about two years after I finished the draft of Curativity.

It took about five months to develop the concept of Supportance. The concept of Supportance was born on Oct 27, 2020, after I wrote the Ecological Practice Approach Toolkit on Oct 19, 2020. I had several private discussions with my friends for several months. On Dec 13, 2020, I published the Platform for Development (P4D) Framework (1.0), I applied the concept of Supportance to develop the framework. This was also a test of the concept of Supportance. From Dec 26, 2020, to Feb 3, 2021, I worked on Project-oriented Activity Theory. I returned to the P4D project on Feb 9, 2021. On Mar 12, 2021, I wrote a long article about the concept of Supportance.

The concept of Supportance means the Ecological Practice approach has transformed from a curated toolkit to an original theoretical framework. This is a major milestone of the approach.

2.3 One Book One Concept

From 2019 to 2021, I wrote three books to establish the primary theoretical concepts of the approach.

Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice
After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action
Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century

Each year I write a book and each book establishes an important theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach. Curativity introduces the concept of Curativity and develops the toolkit version of the approach. After Affordance introduces the concept of Attachance and develops the germ-cell version of the approach. Platform for Development introduces the concept of Supportance.

Both Curativity and After Affordance were written in Chinese. They are still unpublished drafts. Curativity is a 615-page Google Doc file while After Affordance is a 371-page file. Platform for Development is written in English. If you want to know more details about Platform for Development, you can click here to see the contents of the book.

I used the template below to manage the writing plan of Platform for Development.

I have used the same diagram for my interpretation of Yrjö Engeström’work on developing the model of human activity and Andy Blunden’s “Project as a unit of analysis of activity” approach. However, these two projects are knowledge curation work. That time, I used it for knowledge creation.

You can use this diagram as a map for reading my articles. The most important piece is the five steps.

The first article introduces the Supportive Cycle model as the core of the Platform-for-Development framework (2.0).
The second article introduces the concept of Platform-ba. The third article defines the Developmental Platform as an intermedia concept.
The fourth article introduces the Infoniche framework for understanding platforms.
The fifth article introduces the concept of Supportance at the level of meta-theory.
The sixth article introduces the Concept-fit framework for understanding platform innovation

You can also pay attention to my methods: Creative Adaptation, Intermediate Construction, and Diagramming as Theorizing.

Creative Adaptation: I adopt Project-oriented Activity Theory and the Ecological Practice approach as the theoretical foundation for guiding the development of concepts and diagrams.
Intermediate Construction: By developing intermediate concepts and adopting intermediate frameworks from meta-theories, I develop new concepts and new frameworks for Platform-for-Development.
Diagramming as Theorizing: I design a series of diagrams that help me better understand the complexity of platform-based adult development.

You can find some related links below:

3. What did I do from 2021 to 2023?

From 2021 to 2023, I moved to test these concepts and develop some new concepts by …

Developing abstract models and concrete models as knowledge frameworks
Conducting case studies about these knowledge frameworks
Running creative dialogue between the approach and other approaches

3.1 Developing abstract models and concrete models as knowledge frameworks

On May 17, 2022, I edited a possible book titled Ecological Practice Design: The Lifesystem Approach to Everyday Life Innovation.

This name is a concept curation of six concepts. Each concept refers to a special meaning.

Ecological: It refers to the source of the Ecological Practice Approach approach: Ecological Psychology.
Practice: It refers to a major theoretical resource of the Ecological Practice Approach: Activity Theory and social practice theories in general.
Design: It refers to a social practice of making something new creatively.
Lifesystem: It refers to the Lifesystem Framework.
Approach: It refers to a knowledge enterprise that contains theoretical concepts, operational concepts, frameworks, methods, etc.
Everyday Life Innovation: It refers to improving the quality of individual daily life.

The above six keywords define the boundary of the new book. I didn’t want to deal with complex system thinking since we have CAS (Complex adaptive system), Systems Dynamics, Activity System Model, etc.

The primary focus of the book was the Lifesystem Framework. However, I expanded it with other relevant frameworks and theoretical concepts from the Ecological Practice Approach. Thus, I used “the Lifesystem approach” for the subtitle of the book.

3.2 Conducting case studies about these knowledge frameworks

From May 2022 to July 2023, I worked on developing some theoretical concepts of the Ecological Practice approach, especially the concept of “Attachance”, the concept of “Thematic Space”, the concept of “Genidentity”, and the unit of analysis of “Theme(Concept)”.

I also wrote four new possible books.

As mentioned above, the Ecological Practice approach is a meta-theory. I used it to generate new knowledge frameworks for some practical domains such Product Engagement. In this way, the process of making practical knowledge frameworks is a test of the meta-theory.

For example, Perspectives on Product Engagement collects a knowledge framework called “Product as Thing”.

The “Product as Thing” Framework uses five concepts of the Ecological Practice approach: Affordance, Attachance, Supportance, Curativity, and Genidentity.

The basic unit of the Ecological Practice approach is the “Person — Thing” interaction and relationship.

Potential: the potential possible opportunities that a person could act with a particular thing.
Actual: How does a person act with the thing? Act 1 and Act 2 refer to two types of acts.
Focus: it refers to the thing the person is acting with.

I select the following five aspects to connect the Ecological Practice approach and the “Person — Thing” interaction and relationship.

The Natural aspect of Thing: Affordance > Object
The Social aspect of Thing: Supportance > Artifact
The Commercial aspect of Thing: Attachance > Product
The Digital aspect of Thing: Curativity > Platform
The Cultural aspect of Thing: Genidentity > Brand

You can find more details in A Possible Theme called “Product as Thing”.

From March 2023 to July 2023, I worked on the Mental Moves project which aims to explore a new idea: Ecological Creative Cognition.

I took a simple strategy. First, I adopted Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988), especially the concept of Mental Elements, for my case studies. Second, I conducted several case studies about Mental Moves between Thematic Spaces without considering Mental Elements.

Traditional Creative Cognition tends to focus on the perspective of cognitive psychology. According to Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A. Finke, “Although there are many useful and productive approaches to understanding creativity, the creative cognition approach (Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992) focuses on the cognitive processes and structures that underlie creative thinking.” (The Creative Cognition Approach, 1995).

Attachance Theory is about the ecological meaning and value of detaching acts and attaching acts. In other words, we pay attention to the process of moving between containers. The Attachance approach to Ecological Creative Cognition considers the following unit as the basic model of creative thinking:

Container [Configuration (Mental Elements)]

Each project corresponds to a thematic space.
Each project is supported by a digital platform.
A mental element can move between two thematic spaces.

Moreover, we can use the concept of “Nested Containers” to define several containers for case studies. For example, we can find the following three types of containers from my case studies.

Projects: social containers
Thematic Spaces: cognitive containers
Digital Platforms: physical containers

In this way, Ecological Creative Cognition highlights a new perspective to creative thinking: moving from head to head-body-environment.

The Mental Moves project represented my effort to turn the concept of Attachance into Attachance Theory. It marked the start of a new journey of theory development:

Case studies on the various processes of developing theoretical concepts, such as Subjectification, Initiation, Objectification, Variation, Curation, and Validation.

From August 2023 to Nov 2023, I worked on the “Territory of Concepts” project and developed an ecological view of concept study. I also worked on a project about the concept of Mindset as a case study.

You can find some related links below:

3.3 Running creative dialogue between the approach and other approaches

On Sept 15, 2022, I launched the Thematic Engagement Toolkit (v1.0) which is for understanding knowledge engagement, thematic conversation, controversy, thematic reflection, etc. The toolkit refers to a dialogue between the following two knowledge frameworks:

The Themes of Practice Approach (2019, 2021)
The Project Engagement Approach (2021, 2022)

In fact, this is a milestone in my journey of “Activity — Opportunity” Thematic Dialogue.

In the past several years, I worked on connecting THEORY and PRACTICE. Since I didn’t work on only one theory, there was a challenge for me. I had to maintain the boundary between one theory and the others. For example, Activity Theory and Ecological Psychology.

However, I found the zone of boundary is a great creative space for developing new ideas. Sometimes, I can find similarities between these two theories.

Eventually, I found a new way to develop a thematic dialogue between two different theories.

The above diagram represents the process of the journey of making the Thematic Engagement framework by running a thematic dialogue between Activity Theory and Ecological Psychology.

What’s my strategy behind the process?

Move from “Theory” to “Thematic Space”
Move from “User” to “Maker”
Switch between Host and Guest
Second-wave Development
Close A Thematic Dialogue

You can find more details in the links below:

4. How many versions did the approach have?

I have published public articles to introduce four versions of the Ecological Practice approach.

The “Toolkit” version (2019)
The “Germ-cell” version (2020)
The “Hierarchy” version (2021)
The “Social(Cognition)” version (2023)

4.1 The “Toolkit” version (2019)

This 2019 version is a curated toolkit version. In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism and contemporary embodied cognitive science. Inspired by practice studies theorist Davide Nicolini's (2013) “tool-kit approach” which curates various concepts from different theoretical accounts based on a family relationship, allowing a network of dissimilarities and similarities, I consider the Ecological Practice approach a toolkit.

The above diagram shows several theoretical concepts. Some concepts are adopted from theoretical resources. The concept of Selectivity is adopted from William James’ Radical Empiricism. The concept of Affordance is adopted from Ecological psychologist James J. Gibson. The concept of Reflectivity is adopted from Donald Schön. I also developed several original concepts such as Attachance, Containance, Curativity, and Themes of Practice.

4.2 The “Germ-cell” version (2020)

In 2020, I developed a new diagram to represent the germ-cell of the Ecological Practice approach.

According to Andy Blunden (2017), “The idea of the ‘cell’ originates with the philosopher of history, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In his effort to understand the differences between peoples, Herder introduced the idea of a Schwerpunkt (‘strong point’)…Herder’s friend, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), sought to utilize this idea in his study of botany during his Italian journey in 1786, to understand the continuity and differences between the plants found in different parts of the country. Goethe came to the idea of an Urphänomen ‒ not a law or principle, but a simple, archetypal phenomenon in which all the essential features of a whole complex process are manifested.”

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 above diagram combines three core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach: 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 that guide the new acts and events. In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism.

4.3 The “Hierarchy” version (2021)

On Sep 29, 2020, I published an article titled Activity U (VI): The Hierarchy of Human Activity and Social Practice. The article is part of the Activity U project. A side-product of the article is a universal hierarchy of activity and practice.

Human activity and social practice are extremely complex, the hierarchy is a great thinking tool for understanding them. Based on perspectives from activity theorists and other researchers, I found there is an eight-level hierarchy of activity and practice. The six mid-levels are adopted from activity theorists. The top-level is adopted from anthropologist Morris Opler (1945). The low level is adopted from ecological psychologist James J. Gibson (1979).

I also classify these eight levels into three types: “logical level”, “actual level”, and “possible level”. We can call the logical level as ideal level too. I don’t have perfect terms to name these types.

On Mar 12, 2021, I published an article to introduce the concept of Supportance. I used the diagram below to discuss the actualization of supportances.

On April 2, 2021, I combined the above two diagrams and made a new diagram for the Ecological Practice approach.

The above diagram summarizes the core concepts of the Ecological Practice Approach. It is an expansive version of the Germ-cell version.

4.4 The “Social(Cognition)” version (2023)

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”.

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.

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)

Both “Mental Moves” and “Social Moves” shared the concept of “Thematic Space” and the concept of “Attachance”.

From August 2023 to Dec 2023, I worked on the Social Moves project. The outcome was an integrated ecological approach to social cognition.

It was formed by two sub-frameworks: the Ecological Formism framework and the Ecological Actualism framework.

The diagram below shows three layers of the Attachance Approach to Social Cognition.

Ontology: Social Moves (Mental Moves)
Realism: the Ecological Actualism framework
Hermeneutics: the Ecological Formism framework

You can find related links below:

Situational Note-taking: The Ecological Practice Approach (Oliver Ding, 2019–2023)

Contents

1. A theoretical approach is formed by a set of theoretical concepts under a unified worldview.

2. How did I develop the Ecological Practice Approach and write 15 books?

3. What did I do from 2021 to 2023?

4. How many versions did the approach have?

1. A theoretical approach is formed by a set of theoretical concepts under a unified worldview.

2. How did I develop the Ecological Practice Approach and write 15 books?

2.1 Define the difference between the approach and similar approaches

2.2 Developing Primary Theoretical Concepts

2.3 One Book One Concept

3. What did I do from 2021 to 2023?

3.1 Developing abstract models and concrete models as knowledge frameworks

3.2 Conducting case studies about these knowledge frameworks

3.3 Running creative dialogue between the approach and other approaches

4. How many versions did the approach have?

4.1 The “Toolkit” version (2019)

4.2 The “Germ-cell” version (2020)

4.3 The “Hierarchy” version (2021)

4.4 The “Social(Cognition)” version (2023)

Related books (Drafts)

Written by Oliver Ding