The duality of participation and reification, and a little Bolero

This post explores the idea that meaning is negotiated through a duality of participation and reification. It then looks at a performance of Bolero as an example. Let’s face it — Bolero is more interesting, so here’s the video to watch first. My thoughts about why I think this is an example follows toward the end of this post.

Ravel’s Bolero, performed by Maya Plisetskaya, with dance choreographed by Maurice Bejart

Negotiating meaning

According to Wenger (1998), meaning is negotiated, in two senses of the word:

By reaching an agreement, as in ‘negotiating a price’
Through readjustments as needed, as in ‘negotiating a sharp curve’

Negotiating meaning requires both participation and reification. Participation and reification are two aspects of a duality, not opposite ends of a spectrum. They always interact together, with each helping the other.

Participation

Participation involves engaging with members of a community of practice. It is a part of becoming a member of the community, and in the process it shapes the self. This shaping of identity is part of a practice. Practice is not just applying knowledge. It is ‘becoming’ and it involves change (Boud and Hager, 2012).

Gourlay (2015) argues that when the ‘mind:local’ perspective is removed, you can have a ‘sociomaterial framework’ in which engagement:

Includes reading, writing, and communicating
Can be via text, devices, and multimedia
Can be at any location, not just a school setting
Has resources that are part of the network of agency, not part of the context

Wenger’s definition of participation is in agreement with Gourlay’s sociomaterial framework. He explains:

“A child doing homework, a doctor making a decision, a traveler reading a book — all these activities implicitly involve other people who may not be present… By ‘social’ I do not refer just to family dinners, company picnics, school dances, and church socials. Even drastic isolation — as in solitary confinement, monastic seclusion, or writing — is given meaning through social participation” (Wenger, 1998, p. 35).

Examples of participation:

Interacting
Conversing
Reflecting
Thinking
Consuming media

One caution: If there is too much participation without reification, then nothing documents what was agreed and learned.

Reification

Wenger (1998 and 2010) provides these examples of reification (both the objects and also the creation of these objects):

Forms and documents
Plans
Tools
Stories
Monuments
Slogans and logos
Symbols
Theories
Money
Paradigms
Signs and signifiers

Boud and Hager (2012) list metaphors that can also be seen as reifications. They argue that the metaphors currently in use are now limiting our understanding of learning, and so we should use new metaphors, which will provide new understandings. This strongly mirrors Sfard’s (1998) earlier work.

Older metaphors: Knowledge ‘acquisition’ and ‘transfer’
Better metaphors: ‘Participation’, ‘knowledge construction’, and ‘becoming’

While Wenger discusses ‘reification’, socioculturalists use the term ‘cultural tools’ (Rogoff, 2003). These terms are roughly the same, except that some socioculturalists exclude language and sign systems from their definition of cultural tools, while Wenger includes them in his definition of reification.

Two cautions:

If there is too much reification without participation, then meaning cannot be generated from the participation.
Reification is so succinct that sometimes people learn the shortcut without learning or remembering the concepts or meaning behind it.

Bolero as an example

There are many great examples of the above, but this one might be a little off-beat. Here are my thoughts about why the performance of Bolero is an example of negotiating meaning through participation and reification:

First, it is Ravel’s interpretation of the Spanish dance music, an addition to an ongoing conversation of composers.
Then, Ravel has each instrument in the orchestra individually play the song’s structure, each with small differences, and finally building at the end.
Next you have Bejart’s choreography — with a single dancer on a stage, dancing with darkness and light, then later encircled with other dancers who add complementary interpretations of the music.
The amazing Plisetskaya dances as choreographed, but adds her own part to it with just expression, the shape of her hands, and slight movements that make it hers (just as other dancers did when they performed the same choreographed piece).
And lastly, the audience brings bits of themselves to their understanding of the performance, based on their membership within different communities.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?