CHAPTER 6: Identity in Practice

Key terms: trajectory, multimembership, reconciliation

There is a profound connection between identity and practice. Developing a practice requires the formation of a community whose members can engage with one another and thus acknowledge each other as participants. As a consequence, practice entails the negotiation of ways of being a person in that context. This negotiation may be silent; participants may not necessarily talk directly about that issue. But whether or not they address the question directly, they deal with it through the way they engage in action with one another and relate to one another. Inevitably, our practices deal with the profound issue of how to be a human being. In this sense, the formation of a community of practice is also the negotiation of identities. (149)

The experience of identity in practice is a way of being in the world. (151)

An identity, then, is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other. As we encounter our effects on the world and develop our relations with others, these layers build upon each other to produce our identity as a very complex interweaving of participative experience and reificative projections. Bringing the two together through the negotiation of meaning, we construct who we are. In the same way that meaning exists in its negotiation, identity exists--not as an object in and of itself--but in the constant work of negotiating the self. It is in this cascading interplay of participation and reification that our experience of life becomes one of identity, and indeed of human existence and consciousness. (151)

When we are with a community of practice of which we are a full member, we are in familiar territory. We can handle ourselves competently. We experience competence and we are recognized as competent. We know how to engage with others. We understand why they do what they do because we understand the enterprise to which participants are accountable. Moreover, we share the resources they use to communicate and go about their activities.

Mutuality of Engagement: In a community of practice, we learn certain ways of engaging in action with other people. We develop certain expectations about how to interact, how people treat each other and how to work together. We become who we are by being able to play a part in the relations of engagement that constitute our community. Our competence gains its value through its very partiality. As an identity, this translates into a form of individuality defined with respect to a community. It is a certain way of being part of a whole through mutual engagement. For instance, I have reported that among claims processors it is more important to give and receive help than to know everything oneself. This results in a definition of individuality that differs from, say, forms of individuality in certain academic circles, where knowledge is a form of personal power and not knowing is largely construed as a personal deficit. (152)

Accountability to an enterprise: As we invest ourselves in an enterprise, the forms of accountability through which we are able to contribute to that enterprise make us look at the world in certain ways. Being a claims processor, doctor, parent, social worker, salesperson, beggar, folk dancer, or photographer gives us a certain focus. It moves us to understand certain conditions and to consider certain possibilities. As an identity, this translates into a perspective. it does not mean that all members of the community look at the world in the same way. Nonetheless, an identity in this sense manifests as a tendency to come up with certain interpretations, to engage in certain actions, to make certain choices, to value certain experiences--all by virtue of participating in certain enterprises. (152-53)

I have argued that identity in practice arises out of an interplay of participation and reification. As such, it is not an object, but a constant becoming. The work of identity is always going on. Identity is not some primordial core of personality that already exists. Nor is it something acquire at some point in the same way that, at a certain age, we grow a set of permanent teeth. Even though issues of identity as a focus of overt concern may become more salient at certain times than at others, our identity is something we constantly renegotiate during the course of our lives. (153-54)

In the context of communities of practice, there can be various types of trajectories (trajectory: has a momentum of its own in addition to a field of influences):

• Peripheral trajectories
• Inbound trajectories
• Insider trajectories
• Boundary trajectories
• Outbound trajectories (154)

As trajectories, our identities incorporate the past and the future in the very process of negotiating the present (155).

Learning events and forms of participation are thus defined by the current engagement they afford, as well as by their location on a trajectory. (155)

From this perspective, a community of practice is a field of possible trajectories and thus the proposal of an identity.... It is a field of possible pasts and of possible futures, which are all there for participants, not only to witness, hear about, and contemplate, but to engage with. They can interact with old-timers, who offer living examples of possible trajectories. A community of practice is a history collapsed into a present that invites engagement.

learning in practice is negotiating an identity...that identity incorporates the past and the future (157)

Our various forms of participation delineate pieces of a puzzle we put together rather than sharp boundaries between disconnected parts of ourselves. An identity is thus more than just a single trajectory; instead, it should be viewed as a nexus of multimembership. As such a nexus, identity is not a unity but neither is it simply fragmented. (159)

If a nexus of multimembership is more than just a fragmented identity, being one person requires some work to reconcile our different forms of membership. Different practices make competing demands that are difficult to combine into an experience that corresponds to a single identity. (159)

elements of one repertoire may be quite inappropriate, incomprehensible, or even offensive in another community (160)

The work of reconciliation may be the most significant challenge faced by learners who move from one community of practice to another...learning involves more than appropriating new piece of information. Learners must often deal with conflicting forms of individuality and competence as defined in different communities. (160)

proceeding with life--with actions and interactions--entails finding ways to make our various forms of membership coexist, whether the process of reconciliation leads to successful resolutions or is a constant struggle. In other words, by including processes of reconciliation in teh very definition of identity, I am suggesting that the maintenance of an identity across boundaries requires work and, moreover, that the work of integrating our various forms of participation is not just a secondary process. This work is not simply an additional concern for an independently defined identity viewed as a unitary object; rather, it is at the core of what it means to be a person. Multimembership and the work of reconciliation are intrinsic to the very concept of identity. (160-161)

And yet, the work of reconciliation can easily remain invisible because it may not be perceived as part of the enterprise of any community of practice. (161)

Identity in practice...

• Lived
• Negotiated
• Social
• A learning Process
• A nexus
• A local-global interplay (163)