CHAPTER 8: Modes of Belonging

Imagination is an important component of our experience of the world and our place in it. It can make a big difference for our experience of identity and the potential for learning inherent in our activities. This brings to mind the story about the two stonecutters who are asked what they are doing. One responds: "I am cutting this stone in a perfectly square shape." The other responds: "I am building a cathedral." Both answers are correct and meaningful, but they reflect different relations to the world. The difference between these answers does not imply that one is a better stonecutter than the other, as far as holding the chisel is concerned. A the level of engagement, they may will be doing exactly the same thing. But it does suggest that their experiences of what they are doing and their sense of self in doing it are rather different. This difference is a function of imagination. As a result, they may be learning very different things from the same activity. (176)

My use of the concept of imagination refers to a process of expanding our self by transcending our time and space and creating new images of the world and ourselves. (176)

...imagination involves a different kind of work of the self--one that concerns the production of images of the self and images of the world that transcend engagement. (177)

Mutual engagement merely creates a shared reality in which to act and construct an identity. Imagination is another process for creating such a reality. (177)

The creative character of imagination is anchored in social interactions and communal experiences. Imagination in this sense is not jus the production of personal fantasies. Far from an individual withdrawal from reality, it is a mode of belonging that always involves the social world to expand the scope of reality and identity. (178)

Through imagination, we can locate ourselves in the world and in history, and include in our identities other meanings, other possibilities, other perspectives. It is through imagination that we recognize our own experience as reflecting broader patterns, connections, and configurations. It is through imagination that we see our own practices as continuing histories that reach far into the past, and it is through imagination that we conceive of new developments, explore alternatives, and envision possible futures. (178)

The process of alignment bridges time and space to form broader enterprises so that participants become connected through the coordination of their energies, actions, and practices. Through alignment, we become part of something big because we do what it takes to play our part. What alignment brings into the picture is a scope of action writ large, or coordinated enterprises on a large scale, not inherent in engagement or in imagination. (179)

Alignment amplifies the ramifications of our actions by coordinating multiple localities, competencies, and viewpoints. It expands the scope of our effects on the world. We can contribute to producing actions and artifacts that no specialized practice can produce. We can manage levels of scale and complexity that give new dimensions to our belonging. Alignment can thus amplify our power and our sense of the possible. (180)

In fact, most of what we do involves a combination of engagement, imagination, and alignment, though more emphasis on one or the other gives a distinct quality to our actions and their meanings. (183)

• The work of engagement: The work of engagement is basically the work of forming communities of practice. As such, it requires the ability to take part in meaningful activities and interactions, in the production of sharable artifacts, in community-building conversations, and in the negotiation of situations. It implies sustained intensity and relations of mutuality. (184)
• The work of imagination: Imagination requires the ability to disengage--to move back and look at our engagement through the eyes of an outsider. It requires the ability to explore, take risks, and create unlikely connections. (185)

Characteristically, the work of imagination entails such processes as

• defining a trajectory that connects what we are doing to an extended identity, seeing ourselves in new ways.
• documenting historical developments, events, and transitions; reinterpreting histories and trajectories in new terms; using history to see the present as only one of many possibilities and the future as a number of possibilities
• generating scenarios, exploring other ways of doing what we are doing, other possible worlds, and other identities (185

Imagination requires the ability to dislocate participation and reification in order to reinvent ourselves, our enterprises, our practices, and our communities. (185)

• The work of alignment: Alignment requires the ability to coordinate perspectives and actions in order to direct energies to a common purpose. ...alignment requires the ability to communicate purpose, needs, methods, and criteria

Because engagement, imagination, and alignment each have different but complimentary strengths and weaknesses, they work best in combination. ...in fact, by combining them effectively, a community of practice can become a learning community. (187)

...the full reificative paraphernalia of practice in the course of its use: symbols, tools, language, documents, and the like. (184)