I think Mike's counterpoint about AR is a good place to open up more of the
discussion concerning xmca, and that can be counterbalanced against the data
that Eva has so painstakingly distilled, AND her xmca iscrat paper, AND the
crises paper. AR was before my participation and I can't speak personally
about him and his writing. And I'd rather not. What I'd like to counterposit,
is to apply some activity theory expertise to participation in xmca. Arguably
the most important point of LG's paper is to move from consideration of the
individual to the "transformation of social relations" and this object, and its
associated practices are where IMHO it might be beneficial to see some of our
labour focussed. I do think it is counterproductive, and counter-theoretical
to spend attention on any individual, when "our" perpective places emphasis on
the enactment of social relations, i.e. practices. The last thing we want to
do is to point to any one xmca member and claim "so-and-so is the culprit",
when we know better. Such indictment serves to build antagonist relations --
and, if our goal is collaborative inquiry, I think we want to do just the
opposite. Mike's point of online discourse also being an interpretive game is
also well put -- two people in interaction can come away with quite different
impressions of what went on between them.
It is also with the division of labor in mind, and Eva's paper concerning the
maintenence of xmca that I'd like to bring to attention. I have in mind a
handbook for facilitating online courses that I think would be fascinating to
bring Eva's analysis to -- because the guidelines in the book seem to be mostly
about spending effort in shifting practices -- spending regular time, attention
and effort working on the transformation of social relations. The one simple
formula, if it could all be boiled down to something simple, seems to be the
same one that makes 5D work -- time on task. What I'd like to posit is that
one practice to incorporate with regularity on xmca, that addresses the
problems of interpretation and the challenges of improving our social
relations, is just simply to continue discussions about what online *practices*
are most beneficial and which ones are most damaging.
I don't think this is a profound point. Shifting the distribution of labor is
one of the things that hierarchical institutions do to sustain their own
existence in a capitalist society, especially as they grow. But with such
institutions, the tasks involved with the maintenence of the organization are
usually accomplished through shifts in job descriptions, with particular people
charged to complete these tasks. In business, this separation is sometimes
called "indirect labor" and comes with its own financial category. But this is
not to say that xmca should become an hierarchical entity with membership
enacting specialized functions. Rather, this is to say that in the mix of
labour about the "official" topics, we spend some time thinking-and-writing
about how we relate to each other when we do write about offical topics.
Keeping the communications open and spending time thinking-and-writing about
xetiquette are but two of the practices that could make for more engaging
inquiry.
Keeping it short would probably be good too. Sorry!
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:13 PDT