I have been following the discussion of the
'separability/inseparabilty' of the individual and the community(ies)
in which s/he paerticipates with considerable interest. I had never
imagined that one could subsume the individual within the social. Any
visit to a classroom provides convincing evidence of the unique
contributions that individuals make to joint activities.
There are, it seems to me, a whole number of reasons for rejecting
the inseparibility hypothesis:
1) We are each conscious of ourselves as having continuity across
different activities/communities of practice. That is to say,
although we adjust to the demands and expectation of the particular
activity system in which we are currently engaged, we are conscious
of a continuing identity that is able to contribute in varying ways
to different actiivity systems as a result of our previous experience.
2) In any joint activity, it is quite evident that different
individuals are able to contribute differentially, as a result of
different life trajectories. If this were not the case, the common
experience of a group being able to achieve more than any individual
member would not be possible.
3) Unless talk of 'individual agency' is empty, it is clear that the
way in which individuals exercise agency is related to their unique
trajectories of previous experience and the identities that each has
constructed in the process.
4) There can be no question of the separability of the different
biological organisms who make up an activity system/community of
practice, and it is these separate organisms who participate in the
shared practices, including their idiosyncratic use of of various
kinds of artifacts, both material and symbolic, that are collectively
used in mediating the achievement of shared goals . While it is quite
reasonable to talk of collective memory as a situated achievement, it
seems clear that it arises from a joint construction based on the
contributions of individual participants, whose memory is based on
their individual experiences of particular events as well as of their
interpretations of shared events in the light of their previous
experiences.
As far as I can see, none of the above emphases on individual life
trajectories contradicts the fundamental tenet that individual
development depends on the appropiation of values, knowledge and
skills that are first encountered in joint activities, and
appropriated and transformed from action and interaction with other
members of the culture. But to give precedence to the social doesn't
to my mind require one to reject the importance of individual modes
of participation that can only be understood in terms of individual
life trajectories.
-- Gordon Wells UC Santa Cruz. gwells@cats.ucsc.edu http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/
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