Organized action theories have enjoyed considerable development in the last ten years. Such different approaches as situated action theories, distributed cognition, activity theories inspired by the Russian school, as well as French approaches of sociology of action, of sciences sociology, of ergonomy, and the research carried out in the " Work and Language" network (Groupe Langage et Travail) have contributed to this renewal..

These different approaches and theories do not share identical views of action and of ecology of activity. They do not give an identical status to knowledge and action, language, or artefacts; they are at odds over the transformations to be achieved; they do not give identical scope to the actors' point of view and do not necessarily consider the question of the subject of the action. Some are more external and descriptive, trying to understand "how it works", others have more comprehensive insight, and others are deliberately developmental.

• Symposium objectives

To set up an intellectual debate by confronting French, European and American specialists of the different disciplines and research trends interested in action, situation and activity, and build a dialogue around a set of structured theoretical and methodological questions.

Introduce the corpus of work composing the different traditions, with the assistance of English/French, French/English translations.

• Format
The contributors will be invited. The talks aim at confronting a variety of approaches around the key questions de-scribed above that set at odds current action and activity theories and their implication on methodologies and on the objects under study.
The speakers will be allowed time to give their talks, followed by debates.
The speakers will be allowed to use their native tongue thanks to simultaneous translation.
Round tables will be organised to promote discussion

• Intended Constituency
The Symposium is intended for French and European researchers and post-graduate students in a variety of disciplines (sociology, ergonomics, psychology, language sciences, cognitive sciences, management sciences, information and communication sciences) that are interested in the proposed themes (capacity: 120 persons).
The Symposium will be circulated in the relevant European networks (EGOS, ISCAR, etc.)

 Symposium presentation : full text