Quilt INC./Membership

In Star's Misplaced Concretism, the discussion of 'membership' is sandwiched between writing on objects/communities of practice and borderlands/boundary objects. Membership is integral to Star's discussion of marginality - understood in the technical, sociological sense. But what is membership? Star reflects on Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's discussion of membership which they take to be the polar opposite of 'illegitimate, peripheral participation'. However, for Star, membership would not exist without the processual naturalisation of objects. This differs to Lave and Wenger's concept and contributes to Star's argument that membership has both individual and collective dimensions. '[I]ndividually', membership can be understood 'as the experience of encountering objects and increasingly being in a naturalised relationship with them'. 'Collectively membership can be described as the processes of managing the tension between naturalisation..., on the one hand, and the degree of openness to immigration on the other'.