From Dar

This page is initially created by extracting two sections from User:Andy_Roberts/unh3602#Developing_my_Taxonomy_of_CoPs

Contents 1 Developing my Taxonomy of CoPs 1.1 Proletarian CoPS 1.2 Bourgeois CoPS 1.3 further discussion 1.4 Some original CoPs 1.5 Domain Types 1.6 Other factors

Developing my Taxonomy of CoPs

This is part of a continuing conversation about the widely differing concepts which participants hold about what constitutes a community of practice. From "com-prac" the public yahoogroup owned by John Smith

I wrote:

Pete and all,

Thanks for your explanation of "definitional dissensus" which we have been seeing quite a bit of around here lately.

I have been reading "Reembedding Situatedness - The importance of power relations in learning theory" by Contu and Wilmott, and also Andrew Cox's " What are communities of practice ? A comparative review of four seminal works".

My own work is leading me to conclude that current stark differences in perspective which keep surfacing in the discussions around the nature and application of concepts relating to CoPs are an indirect reflection of existing class relations in society. From what I can gather, Contu and Willmott seem to have begun heading in a similar direction, from within the educationalists point of view.

My reading of Cox also suggests that the definitional dissensus stems from the original literature, and points to the contradictory definitions In Wenger's earlier and later works. The definition in Wenger, McDermott and Snyder is described as "a much vaguer definition than that used in the 1998 book... The purpose is specifically to learn and share knowledge, not to get the job done.... This is genuinely a different concept from that proposed in (3), not just a change of tone or position; it is simply a different idea"

So we would appear to have at least two quite different ideas going by the name of CoP. Does one need to "win out" over the other or can the terminology be stretched to allow both to happily coexist? If the latter, then surely at the very least we need to be more aware of the different ideas so that when somebody new starts to talk about CoP as if we all know what they mean, we can ask "which kind do you mean?" rather than try to create a false consensus based on extreme fuzziness and unconscious ambiguity.

I think my contribution will be to offer a simple tool for analysis of the diverging structures which are being called CoPs, a tool based on power relations, economics, and class. By this method I will suggest that the theory which Lave and Wenger derived from observing proletarian organisations, when applied from the later managerialist perspective will produce quite different structures and outcomes, replicating the material and philosophical interests of the bourgeois corporations and institutions.

As Fred wrote here a few weeks ago:

"Well, FWIW, I think most of us in the Western World are serving the same master: "the ruling class" -- which consists mainly of a network of the very, very wealthy (a.k.a. "the swells who run the show") and their paid hirelings and lackeys (mostly second-tier execs and second-rate politicians). The rest of us subsist and succeed on whatever trickles down. (If you think that's "a stretch," take a look at income distribution statistics.)"

By raising the issue of class, Fred inspired me to apply a class analysis approach to the taxonomy of COPS, which I feel helps to peel away the fuzzy thinking, compromise and dilution of theory. Lave and Wenger(1991) suggests that CoPs have existed since at least feudal times, when the main classes would have been the aristocratic Lords as landowners, and the serfs, with a fledgling mercantile and craft class just beginning to emerge. But what has happened is that the principles observed have been grafted straight onto 'modern' society by looking at practices within enterprises, in some ways echoing the Peter Senge myth of "whole organisational learning". But this only looks at one side of the equation for a capitalist society, the side of the bosses. A more accurate class analysis would look at the two main classes in society, and classify CoPS accordingly.

Hence my simple but fundamentally essential starting point for any taxonomy, having only two top level categories

Proletarian CoPS

( self organised groups of fellow workers )

Bourgeois CoPS

Management controlled, profit orientated, having "experts" respected not for their expertise, but demanded through their position.

Which are perhaps more likely to become known in common parlance as "Workers CoPS" and "Corporate CoPs".

This is not a simplistic distinction based upon some kind of average class composition of the individual members, but on the perceived and real sense of ownership, control and purpose which have been present or gained the upper-hand in the CoP.

As you can no doubt tell, this post is not a fully thought out or properly written up account of my proposition, just a very early version which I am prematurely sharing here because I felt the current direction of the conversation warranted it. So I'm sorry for taking that liberty, and nonetheless welcome comment, looking forward to further debate leading to eventual clarification.

further discussion

On the com-prac yahoogroup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac one academic authority on Wenger replied "an interesting approach - I look forward to reading more about your marxist approach to looking at communities of practice" and Pete Bond, author of "Communities of Practice and Complexity : Conversation and Culture" 2004 responded:

Andy, I can appreciate where you are coming from. As you are thinking about it, you might be interested in reading the following title, if you have not done so already. The Regulation of Capitalism: A US experience, written by Michel Aglietta (1978??) ( French Marxist writing from Harvard University).

This is about the self-regulatory dynamics of capitalism as a system of 'economics', Its depressing, as its about how impossible it is to take any initiatives that are against the logical imperatives of capitalism. The 'boss' the 'ruling class' is Financial Capital, The myriad of very powerful financial investment institutions at the 'head' of the capital investment cycle.

In particular you might be interested in the 'canalization' of working class initiatives, such as the trades unions (proletarian CoPs). Essentially, this means that the working class initiatives were 'guided' toward the boss's objectives by the logic of the capitalist system of production and consumption.

The trades unions are an obvious example of CoP but I'm not sure whether they even get a mention in the literature (I wonder why not, could it be that they are examples of subversive CoPs?) . The point of mentioning the book is that your workers CoPs will be subject to the imperatives of profit making and capital accumulation.

I've not read Professor Aglietta's book but the theory sounds remarkably similar to the pessimistic revisionism of Antonio Gramsci.

I would agree that any organistions such as trades unions or workers CoPs and the individuals within them are in no way immune from the influences of the economic system that predominates in any particular society. As such the aims, objectives and repertoire of workers CoPs will be found to be pragmatically grounded in seeking ways to further their own interests within the current system, and not to try and create some kind of utopian microcosm of a possible future society. This will not always be a progressive thing, since the interests of any one particular group of workers may not always coincide with the interests of the proletariat as a whole. I suspect that the extent to which different CoPs cooperate in solidarity with each other, perhaps through Wenger's model of 'constellations of CoPs' will depend more on the events playing out in the wider society than on any processes occurring inside the CoPs themselves. This looks a promising area for further research and action.

Some original CoPs

Pete Bond again, more recently:

So, what has Wenger and Jean Lave really stumbled across in their research?

It could be that what they began to reveal is simply the natural way in which role specialisms arise from a wider community, from the host social system, and how such specialists go about coordinating their activities, maintaining their presence, and their roles as specialists. Miguel's fishermen, for example, or the craft gilds of yore. the craft based trade unions of the 19th century, perhaps.

The gilds, and those Xerox photocopier technicians, emerged with new technologies, from which precipitated these distinguishable communities of experts. Such communities grew as the new technology diffused. Then from these communities emerge sub-specialists, new and even more specialist roles, and with them the language of the specialism, which then had to be learnt by new members.

Domain Types

Within the overall scheme of things, how does the type of domain affect the functioning of a CoP?

To answer this, first we might need to discover what types of domain there are. Ideally, this wold be done by collecting some information about lots of different CoPs and listing the Domains. Perhaps some broad groups of domain type or category would then emerge. From these categories we could then try and determine if the CoPs associated with each category have any particular properties in common related to the way in which they function.

Other factors

Hypothesising about general factors which are likely to have a bearing on the way a CoP operates...

• Domain type - eg technical, craft, agricultural, military, health etc
• Public facing, Private or mixed.
• Culture of the wider community from which CoP is drawn, eg national cultures, linguistic, urban/rural
• type of technological platform mainly used
• personality, preferences and style of key people eg convenor, faciltators, initial group of regular participants.