This is also an extremely interesting question for me. I'm very
interested in understanding how we can talk about beliefs as shared
(and there must be some shared component--interactions are like
dances, and if there's no shared understanding of what the dance is
and what the appropriate steps are, then we only step on each other's
toes; admittedly this happens at times, but things go smoothly often
enough to suggest some real "sharedness"...)--and yet we are each
uniquely different. I've been conceptualizing it as a continuum of
shared discourse representing different levels of commonality. At
one extremely broad level we are all human beings, and so there is
the potential for understanding one another at that level. At other
levels, I'm a psychologist, and a northeasterner, and a liberal, and
a catlover, and a Yalie, and so on--and I can share certain types
of discourse with others who fit into these categories that I can't
with those who don't. I'm also middle-class, white, and American,
and these also shape the sorts of discourses that I share. But I also
don't think of these different discourses as a randomly scattered,
heterogeneous collection of possibilities within myself; instead,
they seem hierarchically ordered--some seem more salient and more broadly
defining than others. I think probably being white, middle-class, and
American are the most broadly defining for me. Well, just some
half-baked thoughts...
Robin