A few thoughts /clarifications.
Paul, the voting window you describe is not mine nor how I'd tend classify
the various approaches to CHAT. I was asked by Eugene, last summer I
believe, if I could find websites that related to the classification scheme.
In your last few messages there is a particular theme that I'd like to take
up. It could be summarized as xcma is not a community of practice but
rather where multiple community of practices or genres converge.
Respectively, it reminds me of the definition of society or community being
merely a collection of individual agents.
I tend to see XCMA as a community with its genre, rules and object although
often implicit. One such object could be attempting to break down the
academic, insitutional, and cultural boundaries of Mind, Culture, and
Activity. The thread you offered earlier is one that loosely responds to
trust in the domain of knowledge that is popular at conferences, journals,
and academic insitutions. One in which ones ideas, knowledge, and research
is put in front of a critical jury of their peers.
The idea of "half backed" ideas is floated around quite often yet it can be
taken in two ways. One way, as I see you describing it, is a multiplicity
of COP's converging on a listserv with the listserv itself not being a COP
in the true sense of the word. Another being that xcma has as its explicit
object creating an atmosphere that loosens the academic, insitutional, and
cultural boundaries that are so visable when one goes to conferences, writes
in journals, or partipates in insitutional COP's.
I think the two descriptions point toward different questions, the second
"half baked ideas" as an object would assume the insitutional COP's are not
value free and are one of the contradictions that would need to be addressed
so XCMA can be "developmental" (as much as I dislike the word). I think we
need to go farther than a collection of multiple COP's to understanding what
genres support or don't support the XCMA activity system. A reaction against
the thread you posted may have to do with how it contradicts the object of
XCMA. Others can probally speak better to this than myself, but it seems
there has been this object (implicit or explicit) to avoid the hierarchies
of acadamia.
I guess a question I'd have is, does the thread you forwarded support the
object of XCMA (I believe XCMA has one) or does it reinforce the hierarchies
XCMA aims (maybe idealistically) to transcend? I would assume the object and
the genre used are very much interconnected and maybe the tension of a
particular genre has a lot to do with how it contradicts the object of the
activity system.
It seems how we see activity or COP is central here. If we assume it is
simply a convergence of multiple COP's and genres it puts forward a notion
of anarchy in which the strongest genre will mold the activity system. A COP
becomes reducible to the genres used by the agents entering the COP. We are
a multilougue activity system so I would think genre or how we talk about
things is important here. Not every genre will support XCMA's object.
nATE
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