Dear people --
First, an apology regarding my message in which I listed a whole lot of bad
things that I see happening around me here in the US which are problems that
discussions on xmca can address: I violated my own admonition, which is to
contextualize, and talked as if these problems were problems that people from
all the different geographical locations of xmca would share or understand from
experience. I dont' want to take a whole lot of space up by contextualizing
them but I should have flagged that they are specific to us here in the US and
that if people in other places share them, they can self-identify or if they
don't share them they can offer a contrast.
Second -- Geoff Hayward wondered how the Collective Activity System and
Community of Practice "models" are analytic. Maybe I shouldn't call them
models. But I don't know another word to describe them. Both of them lend
themselves to a diagram drawn on paper, on a napkin, even. You can sit with
someone who is working on something with you and quickly draw a triangle to
explain the CAS (simplifying, yes), or a circle for C of P. You can say, "Look,
see what our tools are; who actually is our community here? Are there people
involved in this activity who are NOT our community? " Similarly, you can say,
"There a community of practice operating here; any time someone is on a path
toward becoming part of that community of practice, you can expect some bumps in
the road and in the community." Now, is this analysis? Yes, I think so. And
the model, and the relationships among parts of the model, help us analyze
what's going on so we can figure out what to do next and how to understand
what's happening.
Third -- posting something? Yes, but let's look at what David is doing first,
OK? I've got a 10-page informal version of our project (called Building
Bridges, for any of you who know Chicago; I'm working with the Interfaith
Committee on Worker Issues); then there's a conference coming up next week to
which we've invited a set of people from unions, churches, community development
organizations, and contractors and developers; then there's a paper that I and
the pastor I'm working with -- Rev. Anthony Haynes -- will present at the
conference of my professiona association (UALE, or United Association for Labor
Education, available on the web) in April, and finally, we got another paper on
it accepted at ISCRAT but I don't know if I can get money to go to it. Let me
work up something out of all of these for after our little conference (Feb 19)
and, when we've worked over David's material, people might be interested in
turning to what I put out.
Thanks for asking -- Helena
Mike Cole wrote:
> Dear Xmca-ites--
>
> So many interwoven topics.
>
> David, could you send us a draft of the paper you refer to which we could
> post for people to read. I am sure it would enrich the discussion. We
> are having a new MCA article posted which involves AT and gender since that
> issue has been raised but not responded to.
>
> Helen-- Is there a description of your work that we might post. There has
> been almost no response to my query about support of minority group folks
> and like you, a lot of my work involves work in the community where the
> issue of helping people gain access to employable knowledge, although we
> go about it differently (in so far as I understand how you go about it).
>
> A long day of seminars and meetings ahead. Our very warm weather has
> brought a devastating fire with it.
>
> Lets see. Some questions.
>
> How can we best address the issue of complemetarity versus incommensurability
> in thinking about different theoretical positions?
>
> Does grounding our discussions in concrete practices help us in that
> former endeavor?
>
> hasta luego
> mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 01 2002 - 01:00:19 PST