Perhaps we can understand what happens on xmca, and how different people
respond to it in different ways, if we unpick it a bit as an activity
system.
An Email listserve is an artifact that mediates, in this case, intellectual
discourse. The artifact has the quality of egalitarianism because the
mediational rules that govern access to it make it open to anyone. Once a
member of the system there is no active moderation, and we can all say what
we like.
On the other hand the lack of anonymity serves to mediate behaviour. In my
case I have no prospect of, or aspiration to, join the American tertiary
academic system. My actions here are culturally mediate primarily by my
desire to have some legitimate acceptacne in an intellectual community of
practice. But that is a very different matter from how I might act if I were
a graduate student, very much aware that there are people here who may one
day hold by career prospects in their hands.
Now if I am here and already on the plateau of academic status (and
possibly, tenure), then the way in which Arne contributed will be familiar
to me. As I recall his postings they could be considered typical of the
challenging intellectual rough housing that is typical of European (at
least) senior common rooms. If you operate in that environment the
prevailing culture expects you to be able to take it and dish it out (gender
issues here? - my mental picture as I write this is of the common room at
Christ Church, Oxford, with wall to wall males drinking fine wine, indulging
in intellectual sparring and preening and even, in one case, keeping score
on the back of an envelope using the scoring system of tennis). These same
people can be extraordinarily gentle and nurturing in tutorials with
undergraduates.
But if I bring such a mental model to my participation in xmca, assuming
that this is a forum for intellectual rough housing of that kind, then there
are undoubtedly many who will be intimidated by such an approach to
discourse, sceptical of its value, or contemptuous of it. Accordingly I may
be intimidated into departure or silence, or I may choose to depart because
I assume that is the sort of forum that it is and I despise it... and so on.
Given that xmca is a self-organising community with no formal rules for the
conduct of discourse, it is scarcely surprising, then, that it waxes and
wanes, and goes through phases of different character. My personal choice
has been NOT to withdraw completely, but to lurk when I feel that the phase
is not congenial. There have been long periods when I have deleted all xmca
messages from xmca unread - occasinally peeking in to see if anything has
changed.
Of course, when I choose to become engaged, like now, I have the effect of
reinforcing xmca in the voices that I feel comfortable with. At other times
I have felt that things were not entirely the way I was at ease with, but
they were close enough to justify coming in and challenging. I am especially
prone to do that at times when I feel that the United States is dominating
too much, because I feel the need for this forum, recognise that there is no
critical mass without the Americans, but want my non American voice to be
able to be heard.
However I also recognise that in behaving in a way which reinforces xmca as
a place that mirrors my personal needs and values, then I am almost
certainly helping to make it uncongenial for some with different needs and
different values - but also that some of those people are voices that I want
to hear even though they might irritate me. Out of these perceptions I try
to act here in a way that is inclusive. I only occasionally bite back when
someone demeans or insults me, and try to model the golden balance of
advocacy and inquiry that nurtures participation.
So all in all xmca is an interesting study in what happens when an Activity
System is defined by an abstract goal and high level needs, while being
mediated by artifacts and cultural rules that are fundamentally chaotic, and
with a division of labour which is also chaotic and non-perscriptive. Order
comes from the individual choices made by individual members, and these are
mediated by the socio-cultural artifacts of other systems to which groups of
members belong.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:13 PDT