title: Getting Reference to Calling Activity from AsyncTask (NOT as an inner class)
body: <p>Is it at all possible, from within an AsyncTask that is NOT an inner class of the calling Activity class, to get a reference to the instance of Activity that initiated execution of the AsyncTask?</p>
  
  <p>I am aware of <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2379233/android-asynctask-in-external-class">this thread</a>, however it doesn't exactly address how to reference the calling Activity.  Some suggest passing a reference to the Activity as a parameter to the AsyncTask constructor, however, it's reported that doing so will always result in a NullPointerException.</p>
  
  <p>So, I'm at a loss. My AsyncTask provides robust functionality, and I don't want to have to duplicate it as an inner class in <em>every</em> Activity that wants to use it. There must be an elegant solution.</p>