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Things and people are always multiple, although that multiplicity may be obfuscated by standardized inscriptions. In this sense, with the right angle of vision, things can be seen as heralds of other worlds and of a wildness that can offset our naturalizations in liberatory ways. Holding firmly to a relational vision of people-things-technologies in an ethical political framework, there is a chance to step off the infinite regress of measuring the consumption of an object naturalized in one centered world, such as the objects of Western science, against an infinitely expanded set of essentially-defined members as consumers. |
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By relational here we argue against misplaced concretism or a scramble unthinkingly to assimilate the experiences of things to pregiven categories. We affirm the importance of process and ethical orientations. We also mean to take seriously the power of membership, its continual nature (i.e., we are never not members of some community of practice), and the inherent ambiguity of things. Boundary objects, however, are not just about this ambiguity, they are not just temporary solutions to disagreements about anomalies. Rather, they are durable arrangements among communities of practice. Boundary objects are the canonical forms of all objects in our built and natural environments. Forgetting this, as people routinely do, means empowering the self-proclaimed objective voice of purity that creates the suffering of monsters in borderlands. Due attention to boundary objects entails embracing the gentle and generous vision of mestiza consciousness offered by Anzaldúa. |
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Casual versus Committed Membership |
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Another dimension to acknowledge here is the degree to which membership demands articulation at the higher level. Being a woman and African-American and disabled are three sorts of membership that are nonoptional, diffused throughout life, and embedded in almost every sort of practice and interaction.
56 So it is not equitable to talk about being a woman in the same breath as being a scuba diveralthough there are ways in which both can be seen under the rubric community of practice (Lagache 1995). But if we go to the framework presented above, there is a way to talk about it. Where the joint objects are both multiply naturalized in conflicting ways and diffused through practices that belong to many communities, they will defy casual treatment. So for scuba divingit is primarily naturalized in a leisure world and not |
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