> I have been most struck by the discussion of Jay and Eugene about "open
> communities". In my work at the moment I am struggling to support and
> maintain an open community of multidisciplinary researchers and colleagues
> as a means to make/support change in very established and rigid
> institutional settings. My experience suggests that maybe we have always
> underestimated the extent that most communities are open and blurry about
> the edges and that if respect and practice are made central to membership
> then open communities seem to flourish in a liminal and very fluid and
> ephemoral way within the cracks of the more stable institutional structures
> Etienne Wenger (in press) describes the multiplicity of communities to
> which people can and do belong in his communities of practice. I am coming
> to the conclusion that the major challenge is to maintain the fluidity
> rather than to institutionalise the new forms.
>
> Kate
>
>
>
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Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
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