Did you know that Peg Syverson's *The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of
Composition* is JUST about to be available in print, it isn't out yet, but
can be ordered at Amazon.com? And when it comes to work on Xlist conflicts,
you would also want to mention Francoise Herrmann -- she has a brief
section about conflict resolution in her Xlist-based 1998 article in
Educational Technology (38:1, 16-23). This is based on one 1994 episode
starting over a gender issue, and elsewhere she has worked with another hot
gender spot in 1995...
At 09.07 -0700 99-08-07, Mike Cole wrote:
>It seems my concerns about discussion of emotional charged issues
>that go beyond the professional competence of xmca members were/are well
>founded. Peggy Syverson at Texas has written about the discussion of
>the Gulf war and perhaps Eva or someone else interested in the discussion
>archives has done the same for other examples, like the Daley example,
>where their is general failure to establish common ground, and the
>discussion spins out of control
-- As for myself: no, I haven't worked with conflicted moments in
particular, although I suspect that neither the emotionality (albeit of
diverse temperatures and orientations), nor the lack of common ground and
convergence are unique to _conflicts_ in mailinglist conversation. It is
just easier to READ the more euphoric side of emergent multiloguing as
gracefully convergent.
Coming back from some days in offline country into this cascade of ad
hominum/womanum discussion I was NOT eager to jump in. But I felt summoned
by your nod in my direction, Mike.
As for the curious politics of US academia, the more I learn, the less I
understand how to say anything sensible about it from where I am... There
hasn't been a lot of international input on this XMCA topic, has there?
The gender aspect of the thread makes me associate -- wildly -- to the XMCA
mailflow statistics I have completed for the first half of -99 (you've seen
it, Mike), and where the participation of women is at the lowest since the
list got its current name and form:
95au 96sp 96au 97sp 97au 98sp 98au 99=
sp
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-- messages 990 2132 1117 1273 1753 1259 1342 15= 08 f-messages 37% 37% 33% 33% 36% 37% 35% 2= 9%I don't have an explanation, nor do I even know if it's a lasting trend, but these are the figures.
Eva