In chapter 8, Wenger tells us to turn our heads to the bigger community - the world. He's saying that it is the next step to think about oneself in a big picture of history that flows from the past to the future and also in a  mechanism of  inter-influential nature of the multimembership.

Wenger explains this idea in detail with three concepts of beloning; engagement, imagination, and alignement. Based on engagement that facilitates us to see the boundaries and to define our competence, we can begin to imagine the different types of our relations to the world. And through the process of alignment, we can bridge the time and space from previous history to borader enterprise of present day so that participants can get connected through their practices, and this will promise a better future for us. (this meets with what was said in chapter 6; "With less past, there is less history to take into consideration. With less future, there is less urgency to reconsider history. (p. 157)"

In chapter 7, Wenger talks about the significance of the interplay between non-participation and participation. Full participation, full non-participation, peripherality, and marginality are the degrees that people participate. By experiencing these, people begin to learn to extend the range of the 'world' that their identities care about.

I think one thing that Wenger has to emphasize more in this whole discussion of identity is the "coherence of identity (p. 165) " for us to better understand this chapter. Through of experience of being participants, non-participants, perpherality, and marginality, people come to realize some "coherent" aspects of them regardless of their degree of participation in the communities of different kinds. And these coherent/consistent aspects of them compose their identity. The perceived identity is considered as true "identity" only when it is applied in a consistent way in any situation.

The image is the graphical representation of my understandings on Wenger’s chapter 6. I couldn’t represent the ‘peripherality’ and ‘marginality’ because I coudn't figure out 'how', not 'what'.

As a student who studies education, this week’s reading reminded me again of the missions I have to accomplish; making the world a better place by providing “good” education. Many scholars have discussed about the kinds of “good” education that helps students develop their identities, which consequently lead them to be more self-actualized persons, from several different perspectives according to their domains.

I had a little difficulty in connecting this article to the idea of "identity in an e-community" because 1) the context of identity of a person discussed in this article was much broader than I thought, and 2) the author's perspectives on the development of the discussion seemed to embrace the dynamics of people's interaction within the whole society rather than in an online community. However, this article gives me an insight to the kinds of reifications that an online community should support. Chapter 1 talks about the kinds of mind set that members of a community are expected to possess. It asserts that we should be tolerant. We have to be tolerant to the kinds of differences we encounter in a community. It says that a society/community is supposed to be a place where different individuals live in harmony, and that’s how a society evolve. A person should learn to be a tolerant one by trying to be ‘tolerant’ to the differences, not to the ‘incorrectness’ (as the subtitle “Both right, both wrong” on page 19 implies). Chapter 2 gives us the ideas on “what the community should do, then?” The highlight of this article, I think, is on page 50-51 in chapter 2. It is argued, “people who lack power can nonetheless find space for free action by constructing identities that fulfill the expectations of others and thus distract them……..People with the advantage of power may nonetheless find their purposes defeated, and their identities challenged and changed by the actions of those in their employ or below their social station.” I think this phrase gives us an indication to the types of reification that a community should facilitate – plurality with degrees of freedom and constraint (reification of tolerance). People have ability to shape their identities by taking advantages of the pluralism over time and these dynamic changes in people’s identities bring evolution to the community.

The discussions Sproull et al., seem to give a partial answers to some questions I've had - "what makes people join the community and how the 'shared repertorie' of the community grow?" Pro-social behavior is drived from social learning and social identification which encourage people to do something good for common good. The unique characteristic of online environment - having no clue about the other person's visible social status - people tend to make generous gestures to others more than in real-life. In addition, visible peer recognition plays a part as a learning reinforcement. The relational bonds built between frequent contributors and other members make the frequent contributors become the center of the community and the newbies apprentice observing them in the context of peripheral legitimate participation.

After skimming the article again to refresh my memory, I think this article is contradicting  what's discussed in Smith's article. In Smith's article, on page 160, it is stated that things that make an e-community different are 1) open boundaries and 2) substantial social diversity.

However, Kollock's article discusses the boundary issue in quite an opposite direction - "the most important features of successful communities is that they have clearly defined boundaries (p 16)" Moreover, Kollock argues that "one of increasing the stability of a group is by actively restricting its membership (p 17)". It seems that Kollock is posing the negative perspective on conflicts (as explained in Smith's article) while Smith is being positive.

Summary:

Under the assumption that good learning is affected by the relationships among the learners, the goal of this study was to explore the kinds of social dynamics occured in MicroMUSE. Smith begins the paper with the introduction of conceptual framework behind the comprehension of the dynamics of social conflicts in a community. Betwenn two kinds of perspectives toward social conflicts, Smith took positive view (conflict is becomes the energy to evolution of the organization) againt the negative view (conflict must be prevented for greater system unity) to develop the discussion. In addition to conflicts, the diversity of population is another beneficial property of social systems  in a way it becomes the source of conflicts.

Summary:

It seems to me that Chapter 3 is the detailed elaboration of the concepts discussed in previous two chapters. The dynamic, interactive, and reciprocal relationship between the participation and reification allows the community to evolve as shared histories of learning. Wenger discusses that the histories of learning are formed in the influence of the following facts; 1) practice is not stable, but combines continuity and discontinuity, 2) learning in practice involves the three dimensions – mutual engagement, negotiation of enterprise, and shared repertoire, 3) practice is not an object but rather an emergent structure that persists by being both perturbable and resilient. The members of the community learn from each other, and the things that are learned are not limited to the knowledge about accomplishing tasks. The new comers learn how to negotiate meaning, mutually participate, how to negotiate an enterprise, and how to contribute to and compile the shared repertoire from old members.