Intersubjectivity in Joint Activity as a Key for Success
Based on Tharp’s teachings, the power of propinquity does not lie within itself (it common motives are created, at least within the bounds of the shared situation. When the theater company mounts a play, when the new software version is under team design, when the Volunteers for Cleaner Beaches are recruiting and planning, “no one succeeds unless all succee”. Individual goals are subordinated – “the play itself is the thing”.
When individual priorities are subordinated to shared priority, conflict is replaced by harmony. That transformation from conflict to harmony is almost certainly mediated by the creation of Subject-Subject relationships rather than Subject-Object relationships. Because you and your coworker have the same desires, empathy is easy; it is easy for him to imagine that you want as he wants, in another word it is called intersubjectivity. Feeling together the pleasures of progress and the disappointments of setbacks is radically different from experiencing the other as an object to be manipulated for one’s own purposes. Joint productive activity a fellow worker, one with feelings and aspirations like one’s own. Thus working together for a common objective is not one among an infinite and casual variety of social arrangements, it is an existential condition with unique powers for human transformation. Shared transformations of understanding and valuing create intersubjectivity; and even when the project is complete and the stage is struck, there will remain the ramifying consequences of intersubjectivity – increased felt affinity resulting in improved levels of productivity
We have understood for decades that affinity is increased by frequent interaction. Now we also understand that affinity does not flow directly from interaction, but rather is mediated by the condition of intersubjectivity (meanings, understandings, and values held in common) developed through joint productive activity.
Intersubjectivity as a term suffers from a variety of usage. In Tharp’s discussion, he emphasizes its simple, surface meaning of the prefix “inter,” which denotes between or among people, shared ; “subjectivity,” denotes the world-as-experienced, different from the “objective” world, presumed to exist independent of human interpretation – the “scientific” level that exists independent of anyone’s individual perceptions or values.
This has been insisted on since the time of Lev Vygotsky, other semiotic systems can carry that same function. Communication systems have been shown in the laboratory to emerge in the context of joint activities. between two experimental subjects can drive the creation of nonverbal symbolic communication systems that help establish common ground between co-actors. As Cultural-Historical Activity Theory has insisted, such symbolic exchange systems are not tied specifically to language; in the natural world of joint activity, symbolic exchanges of other sorts accompany activity and language: song, gesture, visual inscriptions, and symbols. All contribute to the common ground of intersubjectivity. During joint productive activity, members that are more knowledgeable about the task and/or context use their own language and visual symbols as they assist novices.
Negotiated terms develop during conversation, of course, and peers develop word meanings and discourse routines during their cooperative work: The denotative, connotative and affective components of word meaning are acquired in discourse accompanying action. Thus words, flags, badges, gestures, images, tunes and the full panoply of symbols are the “stuff” of subjectivity, and accepted common meaning of word, sign and symbol among people is the condition of intersubjectivity. In working together, and talking about the purposes and meanings of the activity, strategizing and problem solving together – all these aspects of an increasing intersubjectivity mediated by the appropriation of the new code of language, sign and symbol.
As a conclusion, intersubjectivity - it is what male people feel closer to each other, it is also increases the level of productivity in the group and helps to build strong, deep relationships. Intersubjectivity is present when people perceive things in the same way, interpret them in the same way, use the same categories for understanding them, value them in the same way, respond to them in the same way, and expect the same response back from the world. During joint productive activity, these shared meanings, understandings, and expectations arise by using common cognitive strategies and problem solving and by developing a shared language to improve social interaction and achieve shared goals.
