Hi Sara, This is tough stuff to get a handle on. Another practical
suggestion -- form a group, and analyze each other's data. I had one while
I was doing my thesis, and a bit after, about 6 years altogether. We met
once a week, and each week one person shared their data with others. We
were doing very different kinds of topics, so that made it
richer. Sometimes someone else can see your data much more clearly than
you can -- or at least open up another way of seeing it. Hope this helps Leigh
>Mike and Leigh,
>
>Thanks for the responses. Leigh, I will try to track down the info about
>Wenger's article. Mike, I certainly agree with you about the features of
>durability and resiliency as being important to the analysis (although in my
>area there are terrible budget cuts which are making quite a few community
>centers shut their doors -- so much for durability in the face of bad
>political decisions). But it's the analysis of WHAT that I'm struggling
>with.
>I'm not observing anything that I've set up in terms of the culture of the
>organization. My study is not experimental in the least. So, it's not an
>easy thing to determine how to slice it -- it being (I'm assuming) multiple
>and overlapping communities of practices. There is certainly, after much
>observation, interviews, etc. "deep knowledgeability" (Lave, 1992) about much
>at the site, and I'm thinking that I have have to do some backtracking to
>determine what the valued knowledge is structured around. Does this make
>sense? Sometimes it doesn't to me. But, I'm still kind of swept up in the
>process, so I'm going to give myself some slack. The "cultural practices of
>exclusion" that you mentioned, at my site, are very powerful, and work
>strongly in both directions, that is, keeping people from the site out of the
>mainstream (university, government, etc.) and, at the other end, keeping
>people out for a lot of other reasons that I can't begin to describe here.
>Certainly my entry into the settings wasn't a joy ride, although I'm glad I'm
>there now. Anyway, thanks a lot again for the suggestions.
>Sara Hill
>
> w>===== Original Message From xmca@weber.ucsd.edu =====
> >Hi Sara-- I think our work on the 5thdimension at the boys aned
> >girls club might prove interesting in figuring out how to separate,
> >even analytically, communities of practice from the spaces they
> >inhabit. What I see are shifting aliances and forcefields within
> >the community center, but INCREDIBLE durability of the basic
> >structures including local cultural practices of exclusion. But
> >the context of the Club has changed radically over the years, and
> >I find that one can experience incredible opportunities to study
> >how organizations/people change over time while remaining the same.
> >mike
>
>Vanderbilt University &
>Partnership for After School Education
>New York, N.Y.
______________________________________________
Susan Leigh Star, Professor
Department of Communication
9500 Gilman Drive
University of California at San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0503
lstar@ucsd.edu http://weber.ucsd.edu/~lstar/
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