Week 3 Post

Figured Worlds

In coming to the concept of figured worlds, I am exploring the idea of considering different spaces, contexts or worlds I occupy as uniquely constructed entities or "realms" as Holland et al (1998) describe them. Within each of my distinct yet often overlapping figured worlds, I co-construct, along with other agents (people) the amount of importance that is assigned to certain specific actions through the emotions and feelings assigned to those actions.

Whew, is that a lot to try to hold still?!?

With that working definition, then, I am seeing a clear link (relatively clear, as all this is :)) between activity theory and figured worlds. In their description of the intersection of these ideas, Holland et al (1998) refer to figured worlds being "formed and re-formed" as we engage in everyday activities (p. 53). They go on to discuss the ways in which figured worlds serve as abstractions. So, for example, in considering the figured world of academia, specifically the space we occupy as part of the figured world of doctoral students in the College of Education at Mizzou, no one activity in which we engage (e.g., gathering important theoretical knowledge via coursework; teaching undergraduate courses to gain experience, etc.) is the definition of that figured world. Rather, it is the increasingly abstract nature of these activities together that shape the way we come to know, describe and move through our shared figured world.

I found it insightful that Holland et al (1998) emphasized the importance of analyzing people's activities rather than trying to "theorize at the figured world level" (p. 57). Last week in our small group, Sarah, Edwin and I were discussing how one would take up activity theory in an educational space. Which activities do you observe and why? How many activities inside of activities inside of activities are necessary to observe and study in order to say we can make some claims about our observations? I think that I was posing some of those questions because I, unknowingly, was emphasizing theoretical conclusions at the figured world level, rather than focusing on the importance of individual activities (which certainly are embedded within and amongst one another). This week's readings are helping me rethink those initial questions. 

Materiality

As I try to incorporate ideas of artifacts and materiality into figured worlds, I want to focus my discussion here around objects as tools. I do this intentionally because my analytic gaze (thanks for introducing that phrase to me last week, Angie!) so often emphasizes d/Discourse. While clearly I want to maintain the importance of talk, discourse and body language as central to the conversation of artifacts, I also want to push myself to think more about materiality this semester. So, in thinking specifically about how artifacts contribute and subsequently help create the figured world of life as a doctoral student in the College of Ed at Mizzou, I'm specifically drawn to thinking about the role that my laptop, specifically the brand of my laptop, played in helping to construct that world.

Before I began my doctoral work, I had always been a PC user. The first computer my parents bought was a Gateway. I had a Dell in college and subsequently was given another Dell while working for my prior school district. I walked into my first doc seminar and noticed something as I sat with and among my peers. There were Macs everywhere! I read this artifact/tool/object as something that contributed to the construction of this figured world I was just entering. By the end of the course, I had invested in my own Mac (about which I have absolutely not regrets). To me, this artifact speaks to the ways in which materials shape figured worlds. 

                                      

Identity, Agency, POWER

"Identity is one way of naming the dense interconnections between the intimate and public venues of social practice" (Holland et al, 1998, p. 270).

I found this to be an important idea as I was wading through the ways that identities are co-constructed (maybe that's even too dualistic sounding…multiply constructed?) within figured worlds. First, I found the idea of historical landscape to be particularly important when discussing identity. Holland et al (1998) point to the importance of recognizing that history exists within the landscape of a society but also at the individual level of a person. Therefore, I do not completely reconstruct my identity from scratch each and every time that I enter a new or existing figured world. Rather, I bring with me both my historical and overlapping identities as well as the conscious or subconscious history of society (perhaps too broad a term).

To unpack these ideas, I found myself arriving at the dichotomy between the concepts of "positional identity" and "narrativized or figurative identities" (Holland et al, 1998, p. 127). I'll use the same example of life as a doc student to discuss how I'm thinking about each of these.

So, in this doctoral figured world, my positional identity would be my understanding of the ways my social position shifts and changes depending on the other players in my world. I select and choose specific linguistic forms to which I have access in order to navigate the daily instances of power and power structures that I encounter. Perhaps I do this through a specific set of predictable actions (e.g., I remember which professors want to be called by their full title and which are cool with first names; I jump through the hoops of forms and paperwork; I pump egos that seem to need pumping, etc.) but, sometimes, I use agency in a way that requires me to improvise (Holland et al, 1998). My improvisations, then, are unpredictable but not uninformed. I use agency in ways that are interconnected to the identity I've formed with artifacts, power structures and other characters in my figured world. 

My narrativized or figurative identity within this space, then, might be related to the stories that exist within the figured world. As Holland et al (1998) describe this identity, they describe it as the "generic" version. So, as I'm thinking about this description of identity, I'm wondering if it would fit the way that students are discussed collectively or perhaps even individually in faculty meetings. Perhaps this would also include the way my identity is interpreted by others, since positioned identities are interpreted by self (but that could be an overgeneralization). Even more broadly, perhaps my figurative identity doesn't include much about me, specifically, at all. Perhaps my figured identity is more about the ways a doctoral student passes through the university and creates a narrative of the experience alongside other seemingly homogeneous doctoral experiences.

Further Wonderings

As we really delved into talking about different ways to describe identity this week, I'm wondering how everyone else is thinking about the concept of "self." Last spring, in Philosophical Perspectives of Social Science Research, we spent a lot of time discussing whether or not each of us has an actual "self," a core at the center of us. Is there something that stays consistent within us over time or are we constantly using aspects of certain identities that intersect with new identities and at the center, there is just this mess of identities? I'd love to hear how others might think about this idea.