>wondering about complicity...
Complexity breeds complicity, Latour might say? Implicitly. . We are all
braided/woven together, more and more.
Implicate, employ, complex, complicity, implicit--all from the same root
meaning to braid together? Similar to text as weaving (context as being
woven together), as Mike develops the point in Cultural Psychology.
I suspect we want to forget about the xmca as institutional for certain
times and spaces and coversations, conversions. We want sometimes for
e-mail lists to be more "human", as we want classrooms to be more "human".
I certainly do.
Families are where this "comes home" to me. So much of who I am is a given
from my family. Family for me is an institution only when it is on the
lips or pen (mounting pin) of a sociologist, as in THE instition of THE
family. Pe(i)nned down. Reified, commodified, for use in another activity
system.
As XMCA perhaps is for UCSD, for bragging rights in reports, for data on
e-mail listserv use, for billing Mike's Communications Department. (Is the
UCSD administration aware that such a fine thing exists? That it is
underwritten by them? Has it entered the cycles of academic credit, however
modestly?).
To connect with another thread, are there some institutions perceived more
often as "pulling" rather than "pushing"? When students open textbooks,
they are not ordinarily aware of all the human activity that went, over
many generations typically, into the production of the actifact, all the
battles still going on that will produce the next editions. And they (and
their teachers) may not be aware that some of the students will keep the
activity going and make future editions.
When we log on to Xmca, we don't really know much about its history either
(despite archives and web sites, which are a great help). I wonder if
there is a short [textbook?] history of LCHC? XMCA? When I see the web
page there is a link from MCA to LCHC to 5Ds, UCSD depts, UCSD, . . . But
no history written down, commodified. Only the archived data, not an
official or authoritative interpretation. No need for it . . . yet?
Later there will be . . . if it is successful in growing.
>It is curious to me that this term, "non-institutionalized", is being used
>to describe the
>xmca email site, when all of the participants work in institutional
>settings, when the site itself is maintained through an instutitions
>mainframe computer,
David R. Russell
English Department
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011 USA
(515) 294-4724
Fax (515) 294-6814
drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu