((in)ter)dependence/Communities of Practise

Appears in Misplaced Concretism and Concrete Situations: Feminism, Method, and Information Technology (Susan Leigh Star, 1994, find it here on the bootleg library), that builds on the concept from Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1992).

A community of practise...
    ... is composed of people and things, 
        themselves in ecological relation, 
        with numbers of representations 
        and signals, and ways of working
    ... as a term emphasizes the ways in which people work together and act together to form communities
    ... is a way of talking about a linked web of actions, people, and artifacts

Objects in a community of practise...
    ... come to be only in the context and action and use
    ... exhibit a level of familiarity, 'taken-for-grantedness'
    ... are on a trajectory of naturalization 
        -- the removal of contingencies of an object's creation and its situated nature
        -- that has elements of ambiguity and duration
           -> it is not predetermined an object will ever become naturalized or how long it will remain so

People in a community of practise...
    ... are considered 'newcomer' 
        not through their relation with other people in the community
        but through their relation with the objects in the community
    ... are on a trajectory of membership
        (which ranges from illegitimate peripheral participation
                      to   full membership)
        that consists of a series of encounters with the objects in the community
        and increasingly being in a naturalized relationship with them