Writing Selves/Writing Societies
Research from Activity Perspectives

The chapters in this edited collection, published solely in electronic format, consider human activity and writing from three different perspectives: the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves and communities; and the role of writing formal education. The editors observe, "The activity approaches to understanding writing presented in this volume give us ways to examine more closely how people do the work of the world and form the relations that give rise to the sense of selves and societies through writing, reading, and circulating texts. These essays provide major contributions to both writing research and activity theory as well as to the recently emerged but now robust research tradition that brings the two together."

Publication Information: Bazerman, Charles, and Russell, David (Eds.). (2002). Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and Mind, Culture, and Activity. ISBN 0-9727023-1-8. Library of Congress Control Number: 2003100499. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/

Publication Date: February 1, 2003

Contact Information:
Charles Bazerman's Home Page: http://www.education.ucsb.edu/bazerman/
Charles Bazerman's Email: bazerman@education.ucsb.edu

David R. Russell's Home Page: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~drrussel/drresume.html
David R. Russell's Email: drrussel@iastate.edu

Table of Contents

Open the entire book: 10.5 Megs

Front Matter

Introduction, Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell

Acknowledgements

Producing Work and the Economy

A Central Bank's "Communications Strategy": The Interplay of Activity, Discourse Genres, and Technology in a Time of Organizational Change, Graham Smart, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Structure and Agency in Medical Case Presentations, Catherine F. Schryer, University of Waterloo, Canada; Lorelei Lingard, University of Toronto, Canada; Marlee Spafford, University of Waterloo, Canada; Kim Garwood, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

Compound Mediation in Software Development: Using Genre Ecologies to Study Textual Artifacts, Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin

When Management Becomes Personal: An Activity-Theoretic Analysis of Palm Technologies, Cheryl Geisler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Writing and the Management of Power: Producing Public Policy in New Zealand, Derek Wallace, Victoria University, Wellington

Producing Selves in Community

Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity, Paul Prior and Jody Shipka, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Intercultural Knowledge Building: The Literate Action of a Community Think Tank, Linda Flower, Carnegie Mellon University

Participant and Institutional Identity: Self-representation Across Multiple Genres at a Catholic College, Katrina M. Powell, Louisiana State University

Creating a Writer's Identity on the Boundaries of Two Communities of Practice, Jean Ketter and Judy Hunter, Grinnell College

Producing Education

'Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians': Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education, David R. Russell and Arturo Yañez, Iowa State University and University of the Andes

Legends of the Centre: System, Self, and Linguistic Consciousness, Janet Giltrow, University of British Columbia

Accounting for Conflicting Mental Models of Communication in Student-Teacher Interaction: An Activity Theory Analysis, Kathryn Evans, University of San Francisco

What is Not Institutionally Visible Does Not Count: The Problem of Making Activity Assessable, Accountable, and Plannable, Charles Bazerman, University of California at Santa Barbara

Dissertation Writers' Negotiations with Competing Activity Systems, Dana Britt Lundell and Richard Beach, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Abstracts

Editors

Contributors

Perspectives on Writing

Series Editor: Susan H. McLeod, University of California, Santa Barbara

This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).