ant foucault

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COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, FOUCAULT AND ACTOR

NETWORK THEORY

Abstract

The paper discusses some of the main contributions to the theory of communities of

practice (COP theory), especially as it relates to organizational learning. The paper

does not attempt a full overview but concentrates on the notion of power relations.

Early COP theory, was formulated as part of situated learning theory, and promised to

work on issues of social context and unequal power relations. Foucaults work and

actor network theory (ANT) is introduced and forms the basis of a constructive

critique of COP theory. If it appears that ANT and COP theory are in agonistic

dispute, then the point of the paper is to seek a path of rapprochement through an

emphasis on Foucaultian notions of practice, power and force-relations.

[All comments welcome]

Paper for presentation at the 3rd

International Conference on Organizational

Learning held at Lancaster University, 6 - 8th June, 1999.

Contact Addresses:

Dr Stephen Fox

Dept of Management LearningThe Management School

Lancaster University

Lancaster

LA1 4YX

UK

Tel: 01524 594023/594019

Fax: 01524 844262

Email: [email protected]


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1. INTRODUCTION

One reason communities of practice fascinate us is that through them, learning, which

has long been the province of psychological theories is now open to social theories

(Wenger, 1998: 279). Indeed, the idea of organizational learning opened learning

up to theories of all kinds (Easterby-Smith, 1997; Huber, 1996), amongst which the

tradition of sociology and organization theory and the social constructionist

perspective in particular are prominent (Easterby-Smith, 1997). One of the problemsfor psychological learning theory, however, which has come with this opening up, is

that it finds the field of social theory is not at all unified, not even in its most

fundamental assumptions. Nonetheless, Lave and Wengers (1991) account of

communities of practice, seeks to build up a unified theory based on lucid summaries

of ethnographic studies of communities of practice. These studies of recovering

alcoholics, US naval quartermasters, Vai and Golan tailors and Mayan midwives in

Yucatec, vary widely. Lave and Wenger seek to understand these cases of

apprenticeship learning through the idea of legitimate peripheral participation within a

community of practice. That is, newcomers are peripheral to masters of whatever

practice but participate in a legitimate and useful way.

Lave and Wengers (1991) account of situated learning is consistent with a wider

tradition in learning, education and cognitive theory which, since the 1980s, has been

examining learning in social and situated contexts both within and beyond the contexts

of formal schooling, education and training, especially in the workplace and in

occupational communities (Abbot, 1993; van Maanen and Barley, 1984; Lave, 1988;

Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989; Marsick and Watkins, 1990, Nicolini and Meznar,

1995; Nicolini, Gherardi, and Odella, 1996). The field of management learning, in

particular, has pursued a socially situated and contextual way of looking at the learning

of managers as an occupational group for some time (Burgoyne and Hodgson, 1983;

Davies and Easterby-Smith, 1984; Fox, 1987, 1990). The field of psychology too has

been increasingly recognizing the social and contextual dimension to cognitive and

learning processes (Sampson, 1981; Gergen, 1985; Farr, 1989; Resnick, Levine and

Teasley, 1991; Augoustinos and Walker, 1995; Goody, 1995). Collectively, these ideas

suggest that our understandings of learning processes can no longer be the exclusive

preserve of psychology and that formal educational settings are not the only, or even

most promising, places to study learning in practice.

2. THE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE PERSPECTIVE

As COP theory has developed in the 1990s, two broad positions have emerged. On theone hand, the early COP and situated learning theory, based largely on the book

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation and subsequent papers(Lave

and Wenger, 1991; Lave, 1991; Brown and Duguid, 1991; Brown, 1991; Lave, 1993),

stressed the socially and organizationally situated nature of communities of practice

and examines implications for integrating with theory. On the other hand, in a rather

more expository style, Wengers book Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning

and Identity, published seven years later in 1998, sets out a model or framework for

explaining the main ideas underpinning the idea of communities of practice, and

downplays the relations between the framework and wider social theory.


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In the early book, Lave and Wenger left the idea of a COP rather vague. As they note:

The concept of community of practice is left largely as an intuitive

notion which requires a more rigorous treatment. In particular

unequal relations of power must be included more systematically in

our analysis. (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 42).

Subsequently they point to contradictions inherent in the structure of social

communities of practice especially contradictions which concern continuity anddisplacement (1991: 113-7). For example, in the case of Vai and Golan tailors (69-72),

it is not clear that the master tailors wish their apprentices to learn the whole business

quickly, or whether there is a conflict between the masters desire for labor and the

apprentices desire to learn (ibid.: 115). The same possibility pervades the case of the

meat-cutters in the context of a modern super-market (76-79).

More generally, newcomers are caught in a dilemma:

On the one hand, they need to engage in the existing practice, which

has developed over time: to understand it, to participate in it, and to

become full members of the community in which it exists. On the

other hand, they have a stake in its development as they begin toestablish their own identity in its future. (ibid.).

This dilemma has multiple dimensions which are left hanging in the early book; partly

they are a matter of market forces, as understood by some form of Marxist analysis of

the social reproduction of labour (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 32), and partly they are a

matter of personal identity, suggestive of inter-generational cultural differences, and

partly of the development of new, innovative practices (a theme picked up by Brown

and Duguids paper). What is clear from the early work is that ..learning and a sense

of identity are inseparable: They are aspects of the same phenomenon (115).

Brown and Duguid (1991) describe organizations as communities of communities of

practice. They also distinguish between canonical groups which have official or

formally recognized standing (such as departments, task forces and project teams) and

non-canonical groups which are informal peer and friendship networks and may or may

not be recognized by upper levels of management. Brown and Duguid also distinguish

canonical practices from non-canonical practices (1991: 41-44). The first are

practices in accordance with an appropriate code (eg. job description, operating

instructions, the formal chain of command) and non-canonical practices are improvised

as the situation demands as people see fit.

As an example, Brown and Duguid draw heavily on Julian Orrs ethnographic studies

of photo-copier technicians (Orr, 1990a; 1990b; 1987). Photo-copier repairers are aformal canonical group in the eyes of the management because they exist as a category

of employee; but they also participate in a non-canonical community that includes

suppliers and customers as well. One of the non-canonical practices which this wider

non-canonical community share is telling stories about the various photo-copiers, with

which they are all personally familiar, which provides a folk-lore of war-stories about

fixing them. Through this practice of story-telling the work of servicing and repairing a

dispersed population of photo-copier machines is handled by the wider non-canonical

communities.


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From such examples Brown and Duguid argue that the canonical organization

becomes a questionable unit of analysis (1991: 49), from the COP perspective.

Organization learning theory should not presume conventional concepts of the well-

bounded organization; nor for that matter teams, task forces, work groups,

Trainees or other conventional categories. Instead it should recognize that

communities of practice emerge and change over time, that people work and learn

collaboratively, and that vital interstitial communities are continually being

formed and reformed (49). Organization theorists who ignore such social processesare in danger of holding an impoverished understanding of organizational learning

which they see only within formally bounded organizations or certain groups within

them.

One consequence for organizational practice is that managers who re-structure the

work-place into new canonical departments and teams of their own can unwittingly

disrupt highly functional, informal and therefore invisible non-canonical communities

of practice, to the detriment of their organizations capacity to either learn or meet its

objectives.

Both Lave and Wenger (1991) and Brown and Duguid (1991) deal with communitiesof practice situated in social and organizational context. But for Lave (1993) the

question of context is dealt with differently by alternative social theories, methods

and perspectives. She distinguishes two broad versions of context. One view sees

context as a relatively stable structure of macro social relations, between macro social

actors, classes, genders, etc., providing the stage on which a particular COP may be

studied. Power relations in the wider social fabric may be found in microcosm within,

or impinging upon, a specific community of practice. Such a view includes activity

theory and critical theory, both derived from Marxist practice theory (Lave, 1993: 17-

9; see Fox, 1997a for a further discussion). On the other hand, a broadly

phenomenological, social constructionist view of context sees it as an emergent

property of action itself. Action produces its own context (Lave, 1993: 19-22). Within

this broad view of context we find, interactionist, ethnomethodological and

conversation analytic approaches to practice.

Turning now to Communities of Practice: Learning Meaning and Identity, the interest

in wider social context and organizational politics and theory are largely missing. The

social constructionist version of context drives the account of communities of practice.

Wenger suggests that theories of social practice are concerned with ..the production

and reproduction of specific ways of engaging with the world.. (1998: 13). A

footnote explains that his interest in the idea of social practice originated in his earlier

work with Jean Lave, who drew on the work of Marx. Rather than explain this point,he then cites a long list of other social practice theory influences ranging eclectically

from Bourdieu, De Certeau, Engestrom, Habermas, Vygotsky, Star, Wittgenstein, and

more. The nature of their influence remains unclear. Subsequently, the power relations

aspect of practice, in part one of the book devoted to practice, is barely discussed

except in that power could be ..benevolent or malevolent.. (p.80).

The impression one is left with is that Wenger simply wants to explain his idea of a

COP in more detail than the earlier book and to avoid thorny issues: especially social

theories which concern power. Perhaps because of the exegetical style, intellectual


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Wenger clearly distinguishes his situated learning theory from actor network theory

(1998: 284 and 286), he claims to have much in common with Foucault (1998: 284,

289, 291 and 296), taken as an instance of ..theories that consider power relations in

the symbolic realm (284), while cautioning that ..what his [Foucaults] theory misses

is a notion of identity and identification to explain why the power of institutional

discourses works in the first place (296), which is a view that one might challenge. I

will argue that Foucault and ANT provide a view of practice which has much in

common with social constructionism, but one which places much more emphasis uponpower relations, are seen as central to changes in knowledge and meaning i.e. learning.

3. A DISCUSSION OF FOUCAULT AND ACTOR NETWORK THEORY IN

RELATION TO COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE THEORY

I want to discuss ways in which a Foucaultian conception of power might contribute to

COP theory and I want to do that by reference to actor network theory (ANT), which

works within Foucaults conception of power. Actor network theorists, however, do

not employ the term community of practice. As in the case of COP theory, ANT is

too extensive to summarise here, nor is it my purpose to summarise COP theory andcompare it at every point with a similarly systematic summary of ANT. My suggestion

in this paper is that COP theory has things it could gain from ANT and vice versa. In

the process, by picking and mixing ideas from both traditions we might be changing the

aims of both and creating something new, or we might be finding an area of common

ground between them.

3.1 Foucault and COP Theory

Before we consider the contribution ANT may make to COP theory, I briefly want toaddress Foucaults conception of power, which is intertwined with his ideas on

knowledge, power and the self. Foucaults idea of power is that power is not the

possession of some people who wield it over others, dominating and constraining

them, but that it is relational and productive (Foucault, 1984). Without power nothing

is achieved. But if power is not to be found in some bodys hands, or in this or that

class of social actors possession, then what is it and how does it manifest itself?

Whereas COP theory hinted that macro social actors and structures had some part to

play in a Marxist analysis of socially unequal distributions of power as a way of

contextualizing particular communities of practice, a Foucaultian and the ANT

approach will examine power relations from the bottom upwards and outwards. Andwhereas structural approaches tend to examine macro social structures as if frozen in

time, as captured by official statistics, the Foucaultian and ANT approach examine

local social practices as they they change in time.

One of the theoretical difficulties with the early COP theory was how to look at

practices, which essentially include a temporal element, like action or activity, within a

context of wider and relatively stable social structures. This difficulty with handling

social and material context is discussed by Lave (1993) where she examines the

difference between context as a pre-given (before practice commences) and as


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emergent (through practice). Foucault, in contrast offers us a way out of the tension

by arguing that macro social actors cannot be assumed, but their existence needs to be

explained by reference to nests of practices.

Foucault explains what power is not. It is not a group of institutions and mechanisms

which ensures the subservience of the population of a given state. It is not a general

system of domination exerted by one group over another. Analysis should not at the

outset assume an overall unity of domination, whether this be seen as the law, or thesovereignty of a state, or any other single principle. The possibility of power is not

conditional upon and ..should not be sought in the primary existence of a single point,

in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would

emanate.. (1984: 93). He also clarifies what power is; it should be understood ..as

the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and

which constitute their own organization.. (1984: 92, my italics); this seems consistent

with the view of context as emergent, rather than given. Rather than a central point of

sovereignty, power is ..the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of

their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the latter are always local and

unstable (93). Power is omnipresent, not because of any central authority, unlike

Orwells 1984 or Huxleys Brave New World, but:..because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point,

or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is

everywhere, not because it embraces everywhere, but because it

comes from everywhere. (ibid.)

And everywhere is always local.

Foucaults analysis is certainly pluralist, but it is more than that; the consequence of his

analysis is that we should not only analyse the relations of force between organizations

and institutions (such as employers and unions, competitor firms in an industry, private

and public sector, one state versus others, etc.) but within them. Rather than looking

top down, we should be starting with the force relations in play at one point and work

outwards; asking how are macro actors constructed out of accumulations of local

practices and force relations? It is this that makes his approach so relevant to COP

theory and SLT, which also start analysis with the micro-practices of a situated case.

Foucaults idea that practices involve force relations, has the potential to add an

understanding of power to the activity of learning-in-situated-action, because power in

this sense is immanent in knowledgeable technique, i.e. practice itself as well as identity

formation.

If we consider some of the cases cited by Lave and Wenger (1991), we can see that

Vai and Golan tailors are exerting force on the very cloth they work with; thecustomers constrain the tailors to compete on price; the masters constrain their

apprentices allowing them to do the simplest most peripheral tasks first, so that no

cloth is wasted. Every bit of a practice involves some relation of force. In the case of

recovering alcoholics, the alcoholics must force themselves to attend; they must

inspect their inner bodily feelings and their personal history and seek to relate these

experiences within the litany of the Twelve Steps as a story with which other non-

drinking alcoholics may identify.


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To negotiate meaning, as Wenger (1998) suggests is central to any practice, but this

process too involves relations of force, as social constructionists Berger and Luckmann

(1966) implied with their comment that he (sic) who holds the bigger stick has the

better chance of imposing his (sic) definitions.

Practice inevitably involves relations of force according to social constructionist and

Foucaultian perspectives. So the question for Wenger is why does he leave this out of

his framework? For Foucault, power and knowledge are indisociable. Knowledge andthe means for operationalising it come together in one complex: power/knowledge

(Foucault, 1980). In a regime of power/knowledge the techniques of power and

discourse of knowledge function together. The evolution of such discourses and their

associated technologies is studied over several decades and centuries. Unlike the

ethnographic studies cited by SLT and COP theory, Foucaults studies are historical,

they look at how, for example, madness came to be differentiated from sanity and

rationality in the period from the renaissance to modernity (Foucault, 1967), how

medicine moved from being a folk practice to a profession (Foucault, 1973), how

prisons and numerous other organizations took on an ability to discipline people

(Foucault, 1979). ANT works within this Foucaultian perspective but accumulates

both historical and ethnographic studies as we shall see subsequently.

Summarizing this section, I want to reinforce two points. First, Foucaults

understanding of power is consistent with a view of context as emergent through

practical action. Second, that in this view, power is produced one moment to the next.

At any moment it couldbreak down as we shall appreciate when we consider ANT.

As an aside, we might note that Foucaults later interest in processes of subjectivation

(self-directed subjection) do not do away with regimes of power/knowledge nor with

force-relations. Subjectivation, involves the self actively acting upon itself. But the self

also participates in relations of force with other selves than itself and with objects in

the material and social world.

Perhaps more so than Foucault ANT has taken the idea of force-relations further and

analysed the interplay of technology, the objects it handles and changes in knowledge

and action i.e. learning. Learning in this sense is seen as the outcome of a process of

local struggle, including the struggle of scientists seeking (in Bacons phrase) the

advancement of learning.

3.2 Actor Network Theory and COP Theory

Actor network theory is a body of work which, like Foucaults, also studies the

emergence of specific practices historically over decades and centuries. For example,

John Laws, (1986) historical account of the methods of long-distance control

developed by the Portuguese in regard to their vessels, navigation technology and

route to India. But actor network analyses can also ethnographically study a local

community, such as Callons seminal study of the domestication of the scallops and

fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay (1986), on a much shorter time-span; or an industrys

attempt to innovate, as in Callons study of the case of the electric vehicle in France

(1986), or Bloomfields (1991) study of the role of information systems in the UK


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national health service. ANT brings Foucaults ideas closer to COP theory through the

use of ethnographic cases, which it shares with SLT.

In order to show how ANT differs from COP theory we need a worked example which

illustrates how power and knowledge together account for learning of a sort. I will

draw upon Latours (1990) discussion of the printing press to illustrate some key

concepts in ANT. Following the illustration I will show some striking points of

similarity between some of Latours concepts and some of Wengers key ideas onpractice. I will also show that ANT relates to social learning, although that term is

not used in ANT and needs considerable qualification.

The comparison will allow me to argue that ANT offers COP theory an alternative way

of understanding socially situated learning, one which is more sensitive to the

historical, material and social context. Lave and Wenger (1991) and Lave (1991, 1993)

emphasised that:

..learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often

unrecognized as such. Situated activity always involves changes in

knowledge and action and changes in knowledge and action are

central to what we mean by learning (Lave, 1993: 5).ANT also describes changes in knowledge and action and may be more easily

synthesised with early COP theory than with Wengers recent exposition.

Latour (1990) is concerned to explain a key concept: immutable mobiles which is

pivotal to what I would call the implicit learning theory in ANT. An immutable mobile

could be a map, for instance, which has the following characteristics:

(1) It is optically consistentwith what it represents, i.e. it is immutable: it will retainits shape and internal proportions even when moved, transposed or translated

elsewhere.

(2) It is mobile: it can be taken away from the territory or thing it represents and thelatter can still be held in the mind at a distance.

(3) It is flat, or two-dimensional, which means it can be laid out, looked at andmentally grasped or mastered in all its detail, unlike the territory iteself.

(4) The scale may be modifiedat will, making it larger or smaller, without any changein the internal proportions of the map.

(5) It can be reproducedand distributed at comparatively little cost, unlike the objectsit represents.

These characteristics apply to maps, but they also apply to graphics of many kinds,

such as histograms, pie-charts, photographs, in fact any kind of visual representation of

any kind of object: brain scans, finger prints, corporate annual accounts, government

balance of payment figures, etc.. All kinds of object - both natural and social - can be

represented by an immutable mobile.

However, Latour is concerned to make two points central to ANT (and four more

points about immutable mobiles which I will specify shortly), which I will also show

are relevant to COP theory and SLT. First, that maps and other graphics not only

possess the above five properties, but, second, they are dependent upon a very specific

set of technologies, the proto-type for which is the printing press. Before print, maps


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were drawn by hand and subject to error. Print made inscriptions immutable and

mobile and this is what facilitated changes in knowledge and action, to use Laves

formulation of situated learning. After a brief explanation, I will add four more

characteristics of immutable mobiles.

Latour draws extensively upon Elizabeth Eisensteins remarkable book The Printing

Press as an Agent of Change (1979). The invention of print and its effect on science

and technology is something of a clich amongst historians but Eisensteins bookshows how the printing press is a device which makes both the mobilization and

immutability of inscriptions of all kinds possible. For Latour, these properties of the

press are key to the development of knowledge after its invention. Prior to the press,

books were hand-copied and hence rare, often inaccurate (after the third or fourth

copy) and remotely dispersed amongst the monasteries, university libraries and private

collections of Europe. Scholars located at isolated sites had only a selection of

Europes books and these contained inaccuracies. After print is invented there follows

a period in which all the canonical texts from antiquity down through the renaissance

are produced and distributed widely. It is now possible for many scholars to study the

same book and because printed books simply repeat the inaccuracies in the hand-

written copies from which they are struck, by making the inaccuracies visible on a widescale, it becomes possible for the learned people of Europe to detect the errors and

correct them for future production runs, although this takes time. Eventually, there is a

vastly larger body of texts distributed (because mobile) amongst the centres of

learning; often the same books may now be found in each collection - a standardisation

has occurred. The books include graphics, models, calculations, formulae and

illustrations which were originally subject to the same inaccuracies as written texts but

which now are systematically corrected and the possibility of exact representation has

become possible (because immutable).

But then after all the typographical errors have been eliminated, it is now possible for a

single scholar to juxtapose facts and ideas in a completely new way. An example is

Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, who was the last of the great naked eye

observers of the night sky. He certainly was not the first astronomer to look at old

books as much as at the sky, but

..he did have at his disposal, as few had before him, two separate sets

of computations based on two different theories, compiled several

centuries apart which he could compare with each other. (Eisenstein,

1979:624, quoted by Latour, 1990:43).

Whereas conventional historians say that Brahe was the first to look at planetary

motion with a free mind without the prejudices of the dark ages, Eisenstein says that

the important thing is not the freedom of his mind but that he is the first to look at allthe former predictions and his own written down in the same form:

..he was also the first careful observer who took full advantage of the

new powers of the press - powers which enabled astronomers to

detect anomalies in old records, to pinpoint more precisely and

register in catalogs the location of each star, to enlist collaborators in

many regions, fix fresh observation in permanent form and make

necessary corrections in successive editions. (Eisenstein, 1979:625,

quoted by Latour, 1990:43).


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This brings us to the four further characteristics of immutable mobiles when these are

in the form of figural and graphical inscriptions. Immutable mobile inscriptions:

(6) Can be reshuffledand recombinedas in the case of Tycho Brahes re-ordering ofold records of planetary motions, reframed by his own theory.

(7) It is possible to superimpose several images of totally different origins and scalesin order to abstract, similar patterns and structures, that is, to theorise.

(8) Graphical inscriptions can be made part of a written text, after only a little cleaningup.

(9) Most importantly, the two-dimensional nature of inscriptions means they can bemerged with geometry to depict and enable the manipulation of three dimensional

space and objects out there.

In summary, one key point about actor network theory is that changes in knowledge

(i.e. learning) are not simply the result of mental processes, or even the negotiation of

meaning amongst individuals. But rather:

Most of what we impute to connections in the mind may be explained

by this reshuffling of inscriptions that all have the same opticalconsistency. (Latour, 1990: 45).

And contradiction, like connections,

is neither a property of the mind, nor of the scientific method, but is a

property of reading letters and signs inside new settings that focus

attention on inscriptions alone (1990: 44)

The negotiation of meaning, that Wenger talks about as being fundamental to learning,

is heavily dependent upon the inscriptions, objects and technologies shared by the

community of practice. Indeed many practices are impossible without shared

technologies, documents, images and objects.

A second key point about ANT that Latour makes concerns the two way relationshipwith the object that an immutable mobile makes possible. Through the regular avenue

through space opened by an immutable mobile, the scientist can not only visualise but

decide and plan courses of action that could affect the object.

From Latours discussion of the printing press, we can see firstly, that the significance

of technology as a prosthetic aid to the functioning of the learned mind, cannot be

underestimated in the study of socially situated learning. As our own generation

encounters the internet, digitalization of information and the new information and

communication technology, we are witnessing a gear-shift in printing press technology,

which at least speeds up the learning process for people who, like Tycho Brahe, learn

to use it. As Harvey (1989) describes it, we are facing a heightening of time-spacecompression in which everyone can have access to every bit of information, but the

quantity of information to be accessed is too great to be absorbed.

A second point Latour draws from his discussion, is that ..the cost of disagreeing will

increase.. (Latour, 1990: 34). The effect of printing press technology was that

scientific arguments were now settled by reference to figures, graphs, images,

regression lines, supporting any truth claim with the customary: from figure 1 it can

be shown that statement S is the case. To disagree with any such claim, an opponent


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would have to marshal a similar body of data and represent it using the same or better

technology. Thus the history of science is full of new inventions (electron microscopes,

telescopes, satellites, ultra-scans,etc.) all designed to help us see and know better than

before. As Latour (1990: 35) puts it:

..the proof race is similar to the arms race because the feedback

system is the same. Once one competitor starts building up harder

facts, the others have to do the same or else submit.

This point relates to another point central to ANT which does much to crystalizeFoucaults conception of omnipresent force-relations which are immanent in any

activity.

Who will win in an agonistic encounter between two authors and

between them and all the others they need to build up a statement S ?

Answer: the one able to muster on the spot the largest number of

well aligned and faithful allies. This definition of victory is common

to war, politics law andnowscience and technology. (Latour,

1990:23).

ANT has developed a schematic language for describing the processes of creating

alignment amongst potential allies. Callon (1986) talks about four stage process. Firsta stage ofproblematization in which one set of actors defines a problem in such a way

that the others can recognize it as their problem too, but in the process, the first set of

actors indicate that they have the means of resolving the shared problem. In the case of

St Brieuc Bay the marine researchers point out the pending problem of declining

stocks of scallops, to the fishermen and local community. They also suggest they have

a technology for domesticating the scallops breeding patterns. If all the actors accept

the researchers technological claim then the researchers become an obligatory point of

passage in what follows.

Second, a stage ofinteressementin which the researchers lock their allies into the roles

they propose for them by gaining their commitment to a set of goals and a course of

action, dependent upon the researchers. The fishermen agree to stand back and give

the technological experiment a try, the researchers have become an obligatory point of

passage in the process of managing scallop stocks.

Third, a phase ofenrollment, in which the allies are defined and co-ordinated by the

researchers through many means, persuasion, threat, inducements etc. Enrollment is

the process in which the proposed course of action is carried out consolidating the

roles and activities which the researchers originally suggested.

Fourth, a phase involving the mobilisation of the allies, which is a stage in which theresearchers have reduced the fishermen to a handful of spokesmen, so that as the

action unfolds, they can communicate with the aid of a few diagrams and charts

(immutable mobiles) the progress which is being made towards their shared goals and

thus maintain the fishermens commitment to their course of action and themselves as

the obligatory point of passage.

This set of concepts is useful for understanding force-relations within and across

communities of practice. The fishermen have to alter their fishing practices in order to

give the experiment a chance to work. To persuade the fishermen, the marine


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researchers have to insert their technology based practices for farming scallops and for

mobilising all the evidence, and all their allies at one spot in regular consultation

meetings with the representatives of the fishing community whose income was

reducing as the experiment was given time to work. No matter that in this case, some

fishermen broke ranks and against the intentions of their spokesmen went fishing at

dead of night and destroyed the experiment. The point is that all situations of conflict

amongst and within communities of practice may be understood in terms of such

concepts.

4. CONCLUSIONS

I now want to link the discussion of ANT and Foucault back to the issues raised in my

earlier discussion of COP theory, organizational learning and social theory. First, Lave

and Wenger suggested that unequal relations of power needed further analysis, but

Lave (1993) noted that two social theoretical views of context - as pregiven and as

emergent - were possible. Activity theory, and critical theory, is more inclined to see

context as pre-given affording macro social actors, such as class and gender, a prior

existence within which studies of situated learning can take place. Whereas, social

constructionism is more inclined to see a stream of situated action as giving rise to itsown emergent context.

Our discussion of Foucault shows that he does not agree with activity and critical

theory, but at the same time he does not treat power relations as a footnote to social

constructionism. Rather, for Foucault, macro social actors come into existence through

local practices and force-relations. His version of social actors include centres of

calculation such as tax offices, scientific laboratories, and the medical profession,

rather than class, sex and GNP. ANT agrees with Foucaults view on macro social

actors and suggests some of the mechanisms through which wider networks and

centres of calculation arise. Thus a concept like class or gross national product is not a

social actor but could be the product of a some centre of calculation, whether that be

Karl Marx compiling the statistics sections for Kapital, or some government office. As

Callons discussion of the marine researchers at St Brieuc Bay shows, a centre of

calculation has no power unless it can problematize something in ways other actors

will accept, and can manage to enrol and mobilise a number of allies. But then the

centre still has no power in itself, rather power is an effect of an association of allies

acting in concert.

Second, applying ANT to organizational learning and communities of practice, it

makes little sense to talk about the organization or the top team or any other

canonical group, as possessing power; this point is consistent with Brown andDuguids questioning the organization as a useful unit of analysis (1991). Any power

which a person or a group has is an effect of them and allies acting in concert to do

something specific. Once the joint action stops, the power is gone. Power is not a

possession. Each practical action or project needs to mobilise a unique set of allies.

For organizational learning theory Foucault and ANT show us that communities of

practice, have to be mobilised to be of use to a group that represents the organization

or indeed any community of practice. It is the linkages between allies proposed by one

of them and supported by the others that achieves mobilisation, and success or failure.


14/18

Having said that, communities of practice are one kind of centre of calculation, or

obligatory points of passage. As Callons example shows, obligatory points of passage

can be ignored by other groups of actors. Whether they are or not depends on the

continuing efforts of problematization, interessement and enrolment pursued by the

would-be point of passage.

Finally, Lave and Wenger (1991) talk about the unequal relations of power within a

COP; which they relate to issues of vested interest and issues of access to learning.ANT suggests that different master practitioners, and the different technologies,

techniques and ways of seeing they can muster and mobilise, can be obligatory points

of passage within a COP for newcomers seeking to learn. In the light of ANT, studies

of communities of practice could examine unequal internal relations of power less as an

instance of a presumed wider social structure (such as market forces, kinship etc.), and

less as a negotiation of meaning, but more as locally situated force-relations amongst

protagonists and allies.

The social constructionist account of communities of practice and the identification of

individuals with them provided by Wenger (1998), adds to ANTs understanding of

how centres of calculation arise in the first place. While ANT may be able to shed lighton the relations amongst the masters within a COP; COP theory tells us some of the

processes whereby people like Marx, Brahe and other such masters of a specific

practice achieve follower-ships. Which may explain the agonistic struggle between the

community of practice called actor network theory and the actor network called

community of practice theory.


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