Communities of Practice and Place
Communities of practice are all around us, but we don't always recognize them as such. "Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly," writes social learning theorist Etienne Wenger, who coined the term in his 1991 book with Jean Lave.
According to Wenger, the three primary characteristics of communities of practice are:
- Members share a domain of interest.
- Members are practitioners, working to address challenges that are common among the community.
- Members participate by sharing activities, discussions, and information.
Time was, communities of practice (CoP) were largely rooted in place, but technological progress has enabled an ease of far-flung community engagement. Wenger's recent book, Digital Habitats, with coauthors Nancy White and John D. Smith, is devoted to the use of digital tools for stewarding community participation.
I've been thinking about a type of spatially re-aware CoP that I call: communities of practice and place – an idea that seems obvious but returns only six results on Google.
Take the local food movement. The regional value chains or food systems that connect producers to eaters – including distributors, processors, wholesalers, retailers, and chefs, along with farmers' market operations, community garden operations, food service operations (at schools, businesses, and hospitals), waste management operations, and others – function as communities of practice, but seldom as effectively as they might.
From this perspective, the work of rebuiliding a local food system is largely about learning how to better become a CoP steward, which probably includes the use of some digital tools as well.
One article by Wenger, with coauthors Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder, is entitled, "Seven principles for cultivating communities of practice."
These design principles are:
- Design for evolution
- Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives
- Invite different levels of participation
- Develop both public and private community spaces
- Focus on value
- Combine familiarity and excitement
- Create a rhythm for the community
This is an initial post on a topic I look forward to discussing with others and exploring further.
[Update: See also, a related post on: Technology and Environmental Conflict Resolution.]
