M. M. Bakhtin

Abstract: Knowledge-intensive firms are composed of multiple communities with specialized expertise, and are often characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical organizational forms. We argue that producing knowledge to create innovative products and processes in such firms requires the ability to make strong perspectives within a community, as well as the ability to take the perspective of another into account. We present models of language, communication and cognition that can assist in the design of electronic communication systems for perspective making and perspective taking. By appreciating how communication is both like a language game played in a local community and also like a transmission of messages through a conduit, and by appreciating how cognition includes a capacity to narrativize our experience as well as a capacity to process information, we identify some guidelines for designing electronic communication systems to support knowledge work. The communication systems we propose emphasize that narratives can help construct strong perspectives within a community of knowing, and that reflecting upon and representing that perspective can create boundary objects which allow for perspective taking between communities. We conclude by describing our vision of an idealized knowledge intensive firm with a strong culture of perspective making and perspective taking, and by identifying some elements of the electronic communication systems we would expect to see in such a firm.

Abstract: Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge. After the impetus for understanding the influence of social and cultural factors on cognition is reviewed, mechanisms hypothesized to account for learning from this perspective are identified, drawing from Piagetian and Vygotskian accounts. The empirical research reviewed illustrates (a) the application of institutional analyses to investigate schooling as a cultural process, (b) the application of interpersonal analyses to examine how interactions promote cognition and learning, and (c) discursive analyses examining and manipulating the patterns and opportunities in instructional conversation. The review concludes with a discussion of the application of this perspective to selected contemporary issues, including: acquiring expertise across domains, assessment, educational equity, and educational reform.

Abstract: Diversity and mobility in education and work present a paramount challenge that needs better conceptualization in educational theory. This challenge has been addressed by educational scholars with the notion of boundaries, particularly by the concepts of boundary crossing and boundary objects. Although studies on boundary crossing and boundary objects emphasize that boundaries carry learning potential, it is not explicated in what way they do so. By reviewing this literature, this article offers an understanding of boundaries as dialogical phenomena. The review of the literature reveals four potential learning mechanisms that can take place at boundaries: identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. These mechanisms show various ways in which sociocultural differences and resulting discontinuities in action and interaction can come to function as resources for development of intersecting identities and practices.

Abstract: THE 1724 FRONTISPIECE of Father Lafitau's Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains portrays the ethnographer as a young woman sitting at a writing table amidst artifacts from the New World and from classical Greece and Egypt. The author is accompanied by two cherubs who assist in the task of comparison and by the bearded figure of Time who points toward a tableau representing the ultimate source of the truths issuing from the writer's pen. The image toward which the young woman lifts her gaze is a bank of clouds where Adam, Eve and the serpent appear. Above them stand the redeemed man and woman of the Apocalypse on either side of a radiant triangle bearing the Hebrew script for Yahweh. The frontispiece for Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific is a photograph with the caption "A Ceremonial Act of the Kula." A shell necklace is being offered to a Trobriand chief who stands at the door of his dwelling. Behind the man presenting the necklace is a row of six bowing youths, one of them sounding a conch. All the figures stand in profile, their attention apparently concentrated on the rite of exchange, a real event of Melanesian life. But on closer inspection one of the bowing Trobrianders may be seen to be looking at the camera. Lafitau's allegory is the less familiar: his author transcribes rather than originates. Unlike Malinowski's photo, the engraving makes no reference to ethnographic experience-despite Lafitau's five years of research among the Mohawks, research that has earned him a respected place among the fieldworkers of any generation. His account is presented not as the product of first-hand observation but of writing, in a crowded workshop. The frontispiece from Argonauts, like all photographs, asserts presence, that of the scene before the lens. But it suggests also another presence-the ethnographer actively composing this fragment of Trobriand reality. Kula exchange, the subject of Malinowski's book, has been made perfectly visible, centered in the perceptual frame. And a participant's glance redirects our attention to the observational standpoint we share, as readers, with the ethnographer and his camera. The predominant mode of modern fieldwork authority is signaled: "You are there, because I was there." The present essay traces the formation and breakup of this authority in twentieth century social anthropology. It is not a complete account, nor is it based on a fully realized theory of ethnographic interpretation and textuality.1 Such a theory's contours are problematic, since the activity of cross cultural representation is now more than usually in question. The present predicament is linked to the breakup and redistribution of colonial power in the decades after 1950 and to the echoes of