I think some of the ideas in the chapter will be easier to follow if we think about there being two activities, A and B. Many of the distinctions in the chapter revolve around the impact of non-participation in A on participation in B.

To distinguish peripherality and marginality:

• peripheral; non-participation in A enables participation in B
• marginal: non-participation in A prevents participation in B

Demands of multi-membership: A is a practice of one community, B of another. To be allowed to participate in B, one has to not do A.

I just wanted to draw attention the parallels between "paradigmatic trajectory" and "group prototype" from the  Hogg reading last week. In both cases, they are idealized notions, not necessarily matching any individual, but things that many individuals may aspire to. They may be reified as individual people ("be like Mike"), but don't have to.

Following the format of my chapter 6 entry...

Reading notes

- Are there different degrees of non-participation? On p. 165 Wenger claims that realizing that I'm not a member of the claims processors CoP is "inconsequential." But I'm not a member of the SI PhD students' CoP, a realization that seems much less inconsequential to me, given the opportunities to participate in it. My non-participation in that group is a much larger part of my identity than my non-participation as a claims processor, is it not?

- Ah, he seems to be getting at this question with his definitions of peripheriality and marginality (165-6)

I'm going to switch things up a bit since I'm late to the party and there are already several excellent summaries of Wenger that should get us started. I'll include some notes here for my own selfish paper-writing purposes, and then try to give back to the blog by adding notes from our in-class discussion.

Notes
- Identity and practice as parallel
- Identity as a social process of lived experiences of participation in specific communities
- Identities form trajectories in and across communities as we participate (154)
- The "temporal notion of trajectory characterizes identity as:" (158)

Nika and David both posted nice summaries and applications, but don't forget trade-offs!

• For engagement, we may become so competent in our practice that we lose the ability to see other viewpoints, or recognize when it is worthwhile to step outside of/change the direction of our practice.
• For imagination, we may become ineffectual and disconnected -- basically too off-topic.
• For alignment, we may become autocratic, performing practice in lockstep and becoming disempowered in the process.

Much as in Wenger's example of the two train passengers reading the same newspaper, imagination can offer wiki citizens a sense of community and belonging perhaps from the simple disclosure of statistical trends in their wiki-editing habits. This may "not involve the joint development of a shared practice," but in a wiki it certainly could (Wenger 182).

I was amused by Etienne's insistence that "what we are not can even become a large part of how we define ourselves" (164). As though he needs to tell us this after using it as his modus operandi for the whole of the text. Defining himself by what he is not, over and over again. But I guess it's important to him. I thought David's application of non-participatory analysis to the Fighting 44s was especially well executed.

So, peripherality and marginality (my take, anyways):
Peripherality seems to be more about choosing less-than-full participation, and recognizing that non-participation can support that choice. Marginality (as in marginalization) is more about being prevented from participating fully (when you actually want to) by some from of non-participation. (At Alinsu, the claims processors were - later on in their practice - restricted in their actions by not being able to engage fully with the context of the COB forms.)

I found Wenger's breakdown of trajectories compelling:

• Peripheral trajectories: don't lead to full participation
• Inbound trajectories: newcomers become full participants
• Insider trajectories: members continue to evolve their practice
• Boundary trajectories: "Sustaining an identity across boundaries is one of the most delicate challenges" (Wenger 154). I like that.
• Outbound trajectories: leading out of communities, either by choice or by a process of maturation. This reminded me of graduation, and the notion that we outgrow old shoes. When it is time to leave a place, it is very much time to leave that place, because the shoes are beginning to pinch our feet. In other words, we have been on an outbound trajectory.

It's very possible I'm missing something, but the distinction between the two parts of this chapter seemed fairly clear to me, at least in the sense that the first part concerns situations in which a person is basically free to determine his or her level of participation in relationship to a community.

But the institutions of the second part are taking away an important part of that voluntarism. The most obvious example would be, of course, a person's need for a steady paycheck or for benefits which effectively removes their ability to end membership in the community of their place of work--unless they're willing to risk a potentially serious period of financial instability and uncertainty. There seems to be a real difference here.

I found Wenger's point that old-timers may not necessarily be knee-jerk defenders of tradition and newcomers may not necessarily be hostile toward that  tradition to be a useful caution against making assumptions about the roles people take in a community. It makes sense that while some long-standing members of a community may become overly vested in established practice, others may challenge that practice from inside. I'm reminded of exceptional scientists like Richard Feynmann who seem to delight in seeing established traditions overthrown (provided better ones replace them), even if they themselves had a part in creating those traditions.