The ethico-moral nature of identity: Prolegomena to the development of third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which had been termed the best-held secret of education about 15 years ago, has had an exponential growth over the past three decades. Because it thematizes largely the structural aspects of activity systems, the theory only recently has been developed to include emotional, motivational, and identity-related aspects of everyday human praxis. Identity itself is a difficult concept so that we are only at the beginning of understanding how to theorize it. In this article, I use empirical data from my ethnographic fieldwork in one rural community generally and its middle school specifically to expand CHAT so that it can be used to theorize identity and its relation to the moral nature of agency. The inclusion becomes possible through the concept of action, which is central to CHAT, identity, and agency.