Nate,
I'm sorry about confusing you with Eugene, I simply found the voting page on
a web site you created, or do I have that wrong too?
Some responses to your thoughts:
> Respectively, it reminds me of the definition of society or community
being
> merely a collection of individual agents.
This is not at all I was indicating and the issue of agency was never
raised. I tend to see it as an overlapping (multi-dimensional and
constantly changing) of several different, more or less institutionalized
COPs (e.g., lchc is an institution that supports a COP), additionally there
are certainly many xmca members who have marginal participation in anything
except xmca. Furthermore, I did say that xmca as a mailing list is a COP
but as such it's genre should respond to a "mailing list" activity
system--it can't be derived from any one of the individual COPs that make it
up. I guess a key question is whether there are forms and utterances that
are unacceptable from the perspective of the practices of one COP that are
indispensable from the perspective of the practices of another one.
<SNIP>
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>
> 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.
As I've indicated I think all of this is a matter of discussion. You've put
forward one "object" of XMCA. Now that I've begun to look at the Bourdieu
stats (very lightly), I'd say that its pretty comparable to xmca in its
intellectual objects, though as I've also indicated, as far as I know it
doesn't have the tight connection to other COPS (e.g., MCA journal, lchc,
AERA SIG, etc.)
>
> 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.
All of what you say is true, but very general so, as far as I can see, not
immediately applicable to making a judgment concerning any given case.
Nothing I've written about this was ever intended to indicate anarchy,
rather SYNERGY seems to be the operant concept. Nevertheless, most people
think of synergy as conflict free. I think the convergence of COPS in xmca,
and both the compatibilities and conflicts between the specific objects
and genres (rules?) that apply in the specific COPS, need to be worked out
in the process.
Paul H. Dillon
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