From Transactional Friction to Emergent Reattunement: Grounding Activity Systems in an Ecological-Emergent Ontology

Summary

Educational theory often separates societal structures from individual bodily experience. This article bridges that gap by proposing an ecological-emergent ontology of educational sense-making, using critical realism. It argues that the educational system's performative logic physically shapes classroom affordances, directing attention instrumentally and creating a clash with the body's natural striving for resonance—termed transactional friction. This friction can lead from visceral micro-breakdowns to systemic transformations. Expansive learning is redefined not as an abstract cognitive leap but as a collective, material reorganization of the affordance landscape, reclaiming the subject's being-in-the-world and preserving the risk inherent in Bildung.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Educational philosophy frequently grapples with a persistent analytical divide betweensociocultural macro-structures and the embodied, existential microdynamics of the individual.While Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provides robust tools for analyzingsystemic contradictions, it often leaves the operational level of the lived body undertheorized.Conversely, 4E cognition and phenomenology offer powerful accounts of perceptual sense-making but struggle to explain how historical and institutional forces format the immediateenvironment. To bridge this conceptual vacuum, this article constructs an ecological-emergentontology of educational sense-making, drawing on critical realism as an ontological lens. Itdemonstrates how the educational system's performative logic exerts a structural mediationthat physically formats the classroom's cultural affordances. This formatting educates theintercorporeal subject’s attention in an instrumental direction, producing a forceful clash withthe lived body's existential striving for resonance. This disruption is conceptualized astransactional friction. By tracing this friction from visceral micro-breakdowns to systemictransformations, the article redefines expansive learning as emergent reattunement. Ratherthan an abstract cognitive leap, learning is understood as a collective, material reorganizationof the affordance landscape, reclaiming the subject's mode of being-in-the-world andsafeguarding the beautiful risk of Bildung.