OK, Yong mi lit a fire in my heart to draw graphics.

I thought this was what Wenger was explaining in chapter 6. Each thread represents an individual's trajectory of his/her identity, and the top pipe is the side view of a community trajectory. The bottom circle one is the x-z facet of the community, where you cut the pipe.

"The future are not in a simple straight line, but embodied in interlocked trajectories. It is a social form of temporality, where the past and the future interact as the history of a community unfolds across generations."

Wenger makes the following statements about identity:

• "[identity in practice] is not equivalent to a self-image" (p. 151)
• "An identity ... is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other." (p. 151)

It appears to me that Wenger is not talking about identity in general, but is carving out a specific notion of identity, calling it identity in practice, that is a type of identity that emerges from being part of a community of practice. The individual reconciles the events from the various communities that he or she belongs to, putting the various pieces together to form one identity.

This is how I interpreted Wenger:

Each person belongs to one or more communities. Identity is the interplay between the individual and the community. Identity is dynamic, will vary according to the community, and can also be seen as a buffer or membrane between the individual and the community.

"An identity is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other"

This adds an additional layer of complexity to Wegner's conception of identity. Information about who we are is not only provided by us and by a community (by virtue of belonging to it) but identity is also interpreted by both ourselves and the community as a whole. In turn these, interpretations probably influence the kind of information provided about identity in a kind of feed back loop

Self-provided info   <-----------       Self-Perception

I agree with Jesse's point about the existance of social-individual dichotomy in the 'analysis' as a necessary evil. I once talked with Mimi Ito, an anthropologist (e.g., study camera phone users in Japan), about Wenger's book, and she commented that in the education systems, they learn (practice) collectively, but gets evaluated individually. There's a mismatch between the ideal educational practice and the outcome of the evaluation, still going back to the individual basis of analysis at the end of the day.

However, I guess Jesse's point about supposing physics together with sociology is fundamentally against Wenger's supposed readers of his book.

Wegner points out that individuals and the community are not dichotomous, nor do I think that they mutually constitute one another as Wegner claaims. Instead, I think that they represent two different languages used to describe observations about the world. I think that the presumed struggle between these ultimately two "levels" ultimately comes from disagreements about the appropriate level of analysis to answer a question being reduced to disagreements about the value of each level of analysis (the types of question posed are mistaken for the types of answer given).

This short introduction gives an overview of the second part of the book that focuses on identity. The takeaway is that we all belong to a community but with unique identities. Beware! As usual, Wenger uses fuzzy terms and discusses what they are not rather than what they are.

Key points:
-    The focus is narrowed onto the individual, but from a social perspective. Identity is the social, the cultural, and the historical with a human face. The focus is also expanded beyond CoP, calling attention to the broader social and identification processes.

I went to look this up and I can't find the document.

Meta-contrast is the ratio of between group differences and within group differences.

Prototype of a social category is determined with this ratio, and helps explain why the average of the group beliefs is not the prototype.

Some implications of meta-contrast in group identity formation:
- Groups pick a prototype that maximizes this ratio; polarization happens b/c people move towards the prototype
- Decisions about who is in and who is out are based on this prototype
- Leader of group tends to be close to this prototype

On page 31, the author says:

"Perhaps identity becomes important when it becomes a question. It often becomes a question when individuals and groups are mobile and able to change some of their identifying traits. When people come into frequent contact with others unlike themselves, they can both heighten and put in jeopardy their sense of distinctiveness."

This quote was, for me, the central connection between this reading and online communities. Does participating in an online community put us on the path of needing to form an identity, to feel distinct? I think in most communities this is certainly the case, even where the central theme of the community is not racial/social/gender/other identification. For instance, the most active private forum I am involved in is 99% white, with one lone woman who identifies herself as Mexican-American and a "Southern belle". Her identity is clearly important to her because she uses it as an explanation for why she acts or thinks differently than some of the other members (somewhat reinforcing what Smith's article stated), and she only directly references her identity when she feels that it is being threatened by comments made by with the largely white, Northern female contingent in the forum. She is at the same time affirming her individuality while also adhering to several group stereotypes, proudly.