An important thing about imagination is that it is done socially, and in this regard, should be subject to the same interplay of participation and reification. Wenger stresses its applications to learning – the pianist playing scales who imagines a concert hall was a powerful image for me.  I was also reminded of collective imagining surrounding ideas like the ‘good life’, and the stories my friends and I tell as we “see through” our current studies and trials. For reifications of this, look no further than RnB videos.

I liked Wenger’s example of the distinction between alignment and imagination among the claim processors.  They had trouble imagining what their higherups were like, and did very little to “situate” themselves in the context to their higherups of their own accord.  But, they would dress up and clean their desks when a visit was announced – this was alignment with the expectations of their employer, and made them part of something bigger than their own community of practice.  

Identities of non-participation
    Non-participation is an inevitable part of living in a landscape of practices.  On mixi, the landscape of practices manifests as communities the users have built.  You come into contact with communities you do not participate in when you see their icons on a friends home page, or when a member of such a community refers to his group in a response to one of your journal entries.

    Sometimes, participation and non-participation interact to define each other.  For example, a novice unable to understand a conversation between old-timers is significant because the experience of non-participation is aligned with a trajectory of participation. Im thinking of my own experiences trying to learn Japanese, and all the conversation I didn’t really participate in because I couldn’t keep up.  

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 liked the way Nika structured her post--I think I'll try that for my community. According to the different ways that identity runs parallel to practice . . .

Identity as a BaWer (or a regular Webhead for that matter) isn't a label as it is way of doing things. The only people who explicitly identify themselves as BaWers and Webheads are those who participate in--and thus experience--community life. Someone asked me at the ExpoSItion if I was a BaWer, and I just couldn't bring myself to say that I was one because as  someone studying the community, I observe, rather than participate in, community life. Identity is lived.

Wenger uses his three dimensions of practice (mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repretoire) to explain identity issues surrounding joining a new community.  The individual joining doesn't exist in a vacuum, they are members of other communities, from which they bring adjacent concepts of these three dimensions.  But, Wenger focuses on the fact that this person wont be wholely comfortable with what consitutes engagement in this new place, the nuances of the joint enterprise, etc.  This "confrontation with the unfamilar" will likewise shape the identity of the joiner. 

Summary and Critique 

Imagination and alignment make contrasting use of participation and reification.  Imagination requires openness; you should be able to open to new interpretation of identities, histories, and reification. So a direction may not be pre-decided. On the other hand, it seems that a direction is often pre-decided for alignment so that a group can concentrate their energy on a common purpose.  However, imagination and alignment can coexist, and a mode can be seen differently depending on a perspective.  For instance, the leaders in 19 century tried to achieve nationalism (alignment) by appealing to imagination of people.  People could not have been able to go to the mode of alignment right away without going through the mode of imagination.  It was because the ideals of leaders were against/beyond their natural communities (i.g. engagement)  so they first needed to get out of their mode they were in through imagination.  While inviduals were in the mode of imagination; however, what drew their imagination was alignment leaders intended.  In other wors, the alignment qualified the space for the imagination.  Wenger also took a ritual as an example where engagement, imagination, and alignment coexist and bolster each other (p 183).  It seems that a leader or a coordinator of alignment should have a deep understanding abouth the phyche and desires of the group she or he tries to influence on.  Without a public acceptance, the leader or the coordinator may not acquire alignment he or she intended (the failure may be good though).

One interesting finding in this chapter is reification plays critical roles in imagination and alignment.  You freely explore reification in the mode of imagination while you carefully coordinate the use of reification for alignment.  I will think about the connection of this concept to the use of real names.

Summary and Critique

The concept of nonparticipation is important because it is inevitable that (1) you become outsiders to some (many) communities of practices, and (2) you come in contact with communities you do not belong to.  However, the consequence of non-participation in a community might be trivial unless you ever want to participate in that community.  Furthermore, participation and non-participation do not necessarily define each other and “merely have distinct effects on our identities” (p165). So in this case, participation and non participation sketch only a fuzzy spectrum for “who you are” and “who you are not.”  The spectrum is fuzzy because belonging to one group does not exclude the possibility of participation in the others in the past, now, or in the future.

However, there are cases in which participation defines non-participation and delineate clear the map of identities: They are races, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, social statuses in hierarchical systems (in a given time), and genders.  Writing them down, I realize that they are the major sources of conflicts in the world.  

Overall, I liked the second part of the book better than the first part. And I definitely found the framework of belonging presented in this chapter useful for understanding different kinds of communities, how they are constituted, etc.

I believe we discussed engagement more than the others. Imagination is about finding out common links whereas alignment is about forming an alliance. Maybe we can discuss imagination more in the class, it is not as clear as alignment (to me at least).

The work of belonging

Most of what we do involves a combination of engagement, imagination, and alignment. Various proportions result in communities with distinct qualities.

The work of engagement – authentic access to participative and reificative aspects is necessary.

Highlights from the kind of work engagement entails:
-    negotiated definition of a common enterprise
-    the accumulation of a history of shared experiences
-    the production of  a local regime of competence
-    a sense of interacting trajectories
-    the opening of peripheries for various degrees of engagement

The work of imagination – dislocate participation and reification to create novel situations of learning.

Highlights from the kind of work imagination entails:
-    being in someone else's shoes
-    locating our engagement in broader systems in time and space
-    opening access to distant practices through excusions: visiting, talking, observing, meeting
-    creating reifications (models, patterns, etc.)
-    using reifications (assume meaningful)

The work of alignment – requires coordination of perspectives and actions in order to focus on a common purpose.

Highlights from the kind of work alignment entails:
-    imposing one’s view via power and authority
-    convincing, inspiring, uniting
-    defining broad visions and aspirations
-    devising procedures and control structures (usable across boundaries)
-    spanning boundaries, creating boundary practices

Once again the author mentions that participation and reification should travel together across time and space.