Week 9 - Why do We Need Lurkers? (Marc 11-18)
Preliminary question is directed to active participants: Why do we need lurkers?
Being a week earlier than I planned a diversion seems wise at this point:
Prior to starting Lurkers Week Clarissa Bezerra and Dave Cormier have presentations to do really soon and need some advice on the topic from the great Rhizome. As I understand how rhizomes work, all ideas eventually lead to the right idea and some advice is better than none. Soooo...
“When Group Membership Gets Personal: A Theory of Identity Fusion”
https://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/ICEA/ICEA_publication_pdfs/HW_Swann_2012_fusionPR.pdf
Abstract
I am what I am because of who we all are.
—Characterization of the African philosophy Ubuntu by Leymah Gbowee
“Identity fusion is a relatively unexplored form of alignment with groups that entails a visceral feeling of oneness with the group. This feeling is associated with unusually porous, highly permeable borders between the personal and social self. These porous borders encourage people to channel their personal agency into group behavior, raising the possibility that the personal and social self will combine synergistically to motivate pro-group behavior. Furthermore, the strong personal as well as social identities possessed by highly fused persons cause them to recognize other group members not merely as members of the group but also as unique individuals, prompting the development of strong relational as well as collective ties within the group. In local fusion, people develop relational ties to members of relatively small groups (e.g., families or work teams) with whom they have personal relationships. In extended fusion, people project relational ties onto relatively large collectives composed of many individuals with whom they may have no personal relationships. The research literature indicates that measures of fusion are exceptionally strong predictors of extreme pro-group behavior. Moreover, fusion effects are amplified by augmenting individual agency, either directly (by increasing physiological arousal) or indirectly (by activating personal or social identities). The effects of fusion on pro-group actions are mediated by perceptions of arousal and invulnerability. Possible causes of identity fusion—ranging from relatively distal, evolutionary, and cultural influences to more proximal, contextual influences—are discussed.”
In and Out of Time: Festivals, Liminality and Communitas Victor Turner http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/articles/turner.pdf
“Liminal people or “threshold people” are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transitions. Thus, liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon.”
Liminality Further Defined http://cyborganthropology.com/Liminality good picture of cars and trucks.
Just interesting: http://dev.icea.ox.ac.uk/about-us/people/dr-iain-morley/dr-iain-morley-publications/