Socializing Affordances

Abstract

Modern disciplines both reflect and perpetuate a basic dualism. The natural sciences deal with a `material world', abstracted from human concerns, while the social sciences have, in their turn, constructed a world of `agents' disconnected from material things. James Gibson's theory of affordances was an attempt to counter this deep schism in modern thought by emphasizing the material conditions of human activity. He came to see that psychology, as traditionally conceived, was itself a creation of dualistic thinking. Yet, Gibson failed to engage in a corresponding exploration of the sociality of the material. This paper examines the reasons why Gibson retained a dualism of the natural and socio-cultural in his theory; points to some of the ways in which the concept of affordances should be socialized; and, finally, raises the question: what would ecological psychology stand to lose if all affordances were social?