Quilt INC
consisting of
- Wang - Riviera - Rosa - Anita - Lorenzo
Misplaced Concretism
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'.
Boundary Objects
Boundary objects are, as described in the Misplaced Concretism and Concrete Situations: Feminism, Method, and Information Technology, 'things' that are part of multiple Communities of Practice, but have a different meaning for each community. The thing itself does not change when being passed around communities, but the way the 'thing' is interacted with or approached, (so the relationship with the thing) changes, or the reason why the thing is used changes.
Boundary objects are only boundary objects if they are acknowledged as boundary objects, when various communities of practice collaborate/intersect. If this doesn't happen, we might actually be dealing with a monster.
Coming from a programmers community of practice, the idea of a thing having various meanings has it's difficulties, as explained in the text as well. In the community of practice, we assign variables all day long, but they can only have one value. How can these various meanings be "handled" and can they even? Maybe this is the spot to show the seam, instead of trying to achieve the "seamless" experience. Are boundary objects created by showing seams, acknowledging the various interpretations and that they are open to change (use let not const)
Method(ol(atry)ogy) is a way of surviving experience
Method is a way of surviving experience. The post-coping mechanism of someone on a journey to the center of the data. How does one look. Is it the landscape of hexadecimals, binaries, flying bits or deeper digging. A mole goes into depth in a different matter than the human does.
As I kinda recalled in my 'essay'(as Rosa called my methods remark ;)), this word or experiment/experience has been quite the quilt on its own, I'm a bit confused but it also feels like the step after coping? Method on its own feels like a way to practicalize whatever the ---- I'm struggling with.
Yes, I'm currently linking this sentence to my own surviving experience as I'm trying to create my own method in how to live this
◹xpub / ◹carer / ◹own life ◹triangle◹.
...But about the text; the word first makes an entry in the title. And it introduces feminist methodology as a radical alternative.
../
My current method is just doing a quick scan through the text and react quickly and associative through the text. (Whilst making comments on the side)(to process text, this worked, to read, it didn't work
)/..
When searching for methods vs methodology;
"Methodology vs. method. 'Methodology' is not just a fancier-sounding term for 'methods' – it refers to the school of thought by which you conduct research. Method, on the other hand, is all about practicalities: surveys, experiments, observations and so on
Luckily the text goes back to the nature of method, which contextualizes it to 'normal everyday life stuff' as a cleaning habit towards radicalizing (mobilizing) in order to protest injustice. As I'm writing about Methods, I hear Victor talk about methods and I'm not sure if I'm doing this right but I'm doing it in my own method?
It mentions methodolatry; "Worship of a method that employs it uncritically regardless of ever- changing particulars and steadfastly ignoring past negative results."
Text I'm responding to / with:
"A method is distinct from a recipe or formula, in exactly the sense that science is not embodied in a textbook and cooking is not a cookbook. It is a real-time, lived, and experiential form of ordering practice. In the words of Isabelle Stengers: Indeed, you do not follow a challenge, you do not obey it, it does not direct you. You have to invent the way to answer it, it proposes risks for your answers, but gives you no model. Thus it is consonant with my conception of science. It is consonant because our “social experience,” the moral and political options which situate us cannot become self-conscious just by a process of honest self-examination. It must be created through an active process of learning. Learning how we are situated, inventing the situations from which we can learn more about our situation does not give power to emancipation over cognition. It associates both emancipation and cognition. (1993, 46)""... It is a word at once stronger than para- digm, in the sense that it often crosses, both historically and spatially, most uses of the Kuhnian term. It may be part of several paradigms; it may persist after other attributes of a paradigm have fallen away. Methods considered in this fashion may have many of the features of surviving experience, depending on the values of the community using them: they can become imperialistic or monolithic (if one only has a hammer, the world becomes a nail, etc.); they can become a means of enforcing fundamentalism (reducing the world to that which can be perceived using the method); or they can become ways of encompassing multiplicity, complexity, and ambiguity. It is in this latter sense that feminism is important methodologically, I think, although we have sometimes used it in the monolithic or reductionist senses. Feminists have written some extremely powerful methodological pieces, not always recognized as such..."
"Considered formally, then, the attributes of feminist method that are particularly important are: 1. experiential and collective basis; 2. processual nature; 3. honoring contradiction and partialness; 4. situated historicity with great attention to detail and specificity; and 5. the simultaneous application of all of these points."
Reductionism
Reductionism, akin to a pervasive gender binary, exerts its influence across society, culture, and literature, giving rise to stereotypes amid the remnants of past homophobia. This simplifying lens distills the intricate tapestry of human experiences, confining them within rigid boundaries and perpetuating societal norms. In literature, reductionism constrains character portrayals, limiting them to narrow archetypes that reinforce pre-existing prejudices.
Against this backdrop, some resilient social movement has emerged, determined to challenge and dismantle these reductionist paradigms. These movement strives to create a more inclusive and accepting societal fabric, one that recognizes and celebrates the diverse and fluid nature of individual identities. By pushing back against reductionist thinking, it aims to cultivate a culture that appreciates the multifaceted spectrum of human experiences, transcending the limitations imposed by binary perspectives.