[Air-L] Communities of Practice from a Technocultural Studies Perspective

John Postill jpostill at usa.net
Thu Feb 26 00:44:13 PST 2009


Hi Mike

one useful ref may be Gee (2005):

Gee, J. (2005) Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. In D. Barton and K.
Tusting (eds) Beyond Communities of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press

James Gee argues in this chapter that the popular notion of ‘communities of
practice‘ (Wenger, see also Lloyd 2007) is of little use to understand
increasingly common forms of sociality that do not entail group membership or
a sense of belonging, e.g. real-time strategy computer games. Instead of
communities of practice he proposes the notion of ‘affinity spaces’. These
are spaces in which people from a variety of backgrounds come together to
pursue a common endeavour or goal. Gee’s epitome of an affinity space is the
strategy game Age of Mythology (AoM), a plural world in which the common
endeavour of playing and transforming the game takes precedence over questions
of racial, class or gender identity; a world with various routes to
participation, informal leadership and status in which newbies and masters
share the same space, and different kinds of knowledge (tacit, intensive,
extensive, etc) are fostered and valued. The author suggests that
educationalists have much to learn from affinity spaces such as AoM. Thus most
school classrooms appear to be hierarchical, lack a common endeavour or
opportunities for participation, value one or two hegemonic forms of
knowledge, and so on.

John

Dr John Postill
Senior Lecturer in Media
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield S11 8UZ
United Kingdom
j.postill at shu.ac.uk
http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/


------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:51:32 PM GMT
From: Mike Chapman <mcchapman at mac.com>
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: [Air-L] Communities of Practice from a Technocultural Studies
Perspective

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm starting to dig into research related to Wenger's communities of  
> practice.  That said, I was wondering if there were any "must reads"  
> related to his ideas, both supporting and critiquing them.  Though I'm  
> interested in hearing about any resources, I'm particularly interested  
> in works that discuss CoPs from a technocultural studies perspective.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> Mike
> __________________________________________________________
> Mike Chapman
> Ph.D. Student
> Cultural Foundations, Technology, & Qualitative Inquiry
> School of Educational Policy & Leadership
> Ohio State University
> http://web.me.com/mcchapman
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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