At first I was so intimidated by the idea of saying something cogent about
Wenger that I couldnıt write anything at all. So now, in lieu of writing a
pithy and eloquent monologue, I will start something like a travelogue,
where I jot down my thinking about Wengerıs text, as I work through it
systematically, which is not, btw, how I like to read. (BTW=by the way)
I had a haircut yesterday. Big deal, you say. Well, try being a middle-age
woman and walking into an old established barber shop. Yes, the barber shop,
a bastion for the formation and reproduction of masculinity. I do it all the
time now, so it is no biggy, except that it is of course, because I donıt
belong. As I enter the door, I disrupt the CULTURE, which is partly about
policing hence COP. Literally. Corny, I know, but it is a place to
begin. Now you see why I wanted Diane Hodges MCA article to be amongst the
points of reference.
Wenger writes (7) Communities of practice are an integral part of our daily
lives...so pervasive that they rarely come into explicit focus....²
Says you.
They come into explicit focus for members of one or more minority groups
constantly.
I have been reading Wenger through Goffman. I like Goffman (not just cuz he
was a Cannuck) because I think he was a damn good ethnographer and he really
was fascinated with the perverse and the deviant like me. (lol)
(lol=laughs out loud)
And he was so smart. He precisely rubbed his research crayon over all the
knobby bits that didnıt quite fit and showed in vivid technicolor just how
effortful life really is as we negotiate what appear to be benign
communities. I like his ³total institution² concept, as well as his way of
using the construct of ³stigma² to highlight the ways in which our
participation in communities of practice is all about assuring, at the same
time (easier to spell than concommitantly) both our own ³I fit in here²
identity and the exclusion of some One else.
A couple of days ago I wrote a letter to the Editor of Canadaıs big
newspaper, The Globe and Mail. I do this a lot. It makes it possible for me
to read the paper every morning. Itıs arguably Canadaıs best paper, but it
is also rather right-wing. Anyway, my gf asked me, after, why do you do
that? (She canıt help asking these questions cuz she is trained as an
analyst). Then she answered her own question before I had a chance to,
offering, helpfully, ³...because you are participating?² Well I knew that
wasnıt going to work. ³No.² That came out rather forcefully. Why? Because
there is no way in which I want to accept being interpellated into the
culture of the Globe. ³It is my way of writing-back of reading against the
grain.² blah blah.... Of course, I thought about it all day, and it bugged
me.
What do we mean by ³participation²? The notion of participation here is
crucial not to my penchant for writing letters to the editor, but to
Wengerıs book.
IS Ariel (one of the main characters of his ethnography² a participant in a
community of practice, or a wage slave, or both?
mary
On Goffman and total institutions
http://www.cspi.org/cgi-bin/netforum/soc215/a.cgi/3\5
------------------
School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of
teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Ivan Illich.
Mary Bryson, Associate Professor, ECPS, Faculty of Education, University of
British Columbia
Research Site: http://www.shecan.com and http://www.e-capacity.ca
Digital Studio Site: http://www.digital-studio.org
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