After reading this paper I was left wondering if it makes sense to divide categorization into social versus non-social categorization. I think the part that bothers me the most is the assumption that all social categorization involves the self, while non-social categorization does not. I can think of instances of social categorization that do not appear to involve the self in a meaningful way (e.g. trying to determing membership of two outgroups who are rivals with each other). Also, there may be instances of self-relevant categorization of objects. For example, people who have collections (say, of stamps) probably have a sense of what genres of stamps they prefer, and preferences for objects seem to implicate the self (e.g. the "endowment effect"). Similarly, when purchasing clothes people have to determine which articles of clothing "are me." Again this seems to be a level of choice that implicates the self.

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 authors quote a study arguing that "[the common identity and the common bond] perspectives might instead be viewed as describing two separable processes in the development and maintenance of groups" (p.5), but Ren et als. later discussion and speculation of how identity-based attachment might shift over time to bond-based attachment suggests these two notions are not so easily separable.

If one was to view these two types of bonding as separable, then an e-community could be structured so that information-seeking (i.e., common identity) members could have a designated place where the conversation is always on-topic, and members looking to socialize (i.e., common bond) members could have an informal, commons area. Yet the trade-off of doing this, the authors point out, would be to make it difficult for members seeking both types of bonds to go about their business, and also for common identity-based relationships to develop into common bond-based relationships.

Summary

The general assumption is that "people categorize others in order to render the social world a meaningful and predictable place in which we can act efficaciously." (p. 59) We place people - including ourselves - in categories as a way to handle complexity (both Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and Gigerenzer's work on heuristics may be related to this aspect of cateogorization).

Members of a social category bear to varying degrees resemblance to a category prototype, an abstraction of properties. Depersonalization is the process by which individuals are not perceived in terms of their unique characteristics and contexts, but are perceived in terms of their match to the relevant category prototype. Polarization in groups can also be explained in terms of the category prototype - "polarization emerges where people identify with a group that has a polarized prototype" (p. 64).

In chapter 1, Minow points out several paradoxes, both in terms of identity and in terms of the the political pluralism that mirrors it.

Paradoxes of identity:

1. Individual efforts to express unique experiences, based on membership in oppressed groups, resonate with broad audiences as universal tales (p.23).
2. The recognition that each person is ultimately unique and alone must be somehow reconciled with the acknowledgment of this as a universal, common human condition (p.24).

Paradoxes of political pluralism:

1. A tolerant political system must, to some degree, tolerate the intolerant (p.25)
2. A pluralist political system enables apparent autonomy for subcommunities while subjecting them all to centralized permission, which sets the scope of their autonomy (p.25).

Critique and Connections

Summary
Race and physical body features have been defined in relation to one another for centuries. In an online environment in which cues about physical features are absent, the question is quite literally: how is race read?

Burkhalter proposes that race is read online in several ways: through establishing or assigning a racial identity; use of racial frames (using a phrase like "sisters"); by using an identity (anonymity as disqualifier); through disputes about identity (self-revelation and identity cues); through community collaboration and characterizations; and through exposure to different audiences when items are cross-posted.

Summary
Apologies for the length. This paper will likely factor heavily into my final papers about Cool Running, so I wanted to document it well.

Ren, Kraut, and Kiesler examine the design implcations for online communities given certain social psychological theories of common identity and common bond. They also make the larger point that theory matters and can provide a "more principled approach" to the design of online communities.

Common identity: a feeling of attachment to the group as a whole rather than to fellow group members. The authors assert that common identity online implies a commitment to the purpose of the online community.

I can't help but think of (I believe it was) Kim's comments that members "come for the content but stay for the relationships." It seems Ren et al might think that view slightly simplistic.

DragonRealms has implemented quite a few ways of maintaining both Identity- and bond-based attachment.

Bond-based:

• They have a yearly convention
• They allow OOC discussions in certain forums
• They have implemented an OOC verb which allows players to whisper OOC to each other in game.

Identity-based

• Players are divided into guild groups
• Players are divided into race groups
• Premium members can become a citizen of one of the four provinces.

I'm running out of steam now, but I will elaborate more on this in my paper.

As has already been stated, Burkhalter's basic argument is that racism and stereotyping are at least as relevant online as off, and that they may in fact be even more reified in online settings -- where people's "perspectives resist modification" (73). That is, resolving discrepancies by modifying stereotypes is more challenging in the absence of a visible body.

I'm not swayed by the suggestion that Burkhalter's findings wouldn't hold if he were investigating other communities. I guess I just assume that these phenomena, while more overt in racially-focused newsgroups, are at work whenever we interact, regardless of the topic or make-up of the community. A roomful of white men gleefully rhyming along with Snoop Dogg is enacting racial understandings just as much as posters in SCAA.

This paper was a nice read for me since it discussed implications of different design decisions besides the theoretical framework.

Once again, I am having difficulties applying theories to 43T. Being a huge and very heterogeneous community, members of 43T have motivations of all kinds. Intuitively, it is hard to satisfy different groups of members with different needs. Below I will try to apply the concepts discussed in the paper to 43 one by one.
   
It is difficult to decide whether 43T is a common identity or common bond community. First of all, I don’t think that social categorization is applicable to 43T since there isn’t an umbrella identity that unifies all community members. Yes, the members are interdependent on each other to achieve their goals. But the only form of interdependence at play is “common purpose” and I get the sense that it is not utilized enough to create a sense of group identity. What I mean is that different people with the same goal collaborate on the same task but this doesn’t necessarily establish a strong group identity among them.