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38649 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1440 of 1933

  • 17 - Contractional regimes

  • Haakon Fossen, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
  • Book:
    Structural Geology
    Published online:
    30 November 2020
    Print publication:
    03 March 2016, pp 354-375

  • Summary

    Contractional faults occur in any tectonic regime, but they are most common along destructive plate boundaries and in intracratonic orogenic zones. Contractional structures received much attention from the last part of the nineteenth century up to the end of the twentieth century, when the focus shifted somewhat towards extensional structures. The study of contractional faults resulted in the development of balanced cross-sections, and brought attention to the role of fault overlaps and relay structures, the relation between displacement and fault length, and the mechanical aspects of faulting. Understanding contractional faults is important not only for better understanding of orogenic processes in general, but also for improved petroleum exploration methods, because a number of the world’s oil resources are located in fold and thrust belts. The fundamentals of contractional faults and related structures are covered in this chapter, with a focus on thrust structures found in orogenic belts.

  • 2 - Feminist theory, feminist practice

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 4-14

  • Summary

    There are two main ways of interpreting the question, ‘What is feminism?’ The first is to interpret it as asking what the general flavour of the thing is – what is its content? What is it about? What does it stand for? But another, equally important, question to ask is the question of what sort of thing feminism is, in a more basic sense. All sorts of objects can have ‘content’, or be ‘about’ something – books, films, utterances, gestures. What kind of thing is feminism?

    A likely answer to this is that feminism is a form of theory: the theory which identifies and opposes what it calls sexism, misogyny or patriarchy. But feminism is not just a matter of words; it is also a way of living and struggling against the status quo. This aspect is often treated as secondary, in the order of meanings offered in dictionary entries for the word ‘feminism’, and also in terms of where political philosophers tend to place emphasis – feminism may be acknowledged to have a practical aspect, but the focus of philosophers is on feminist theory (with practice regarded as primarily a matter of the application of theoretical insights). Against this, some feminists have chosen to emphasise feminism as a practical struggle. bell hooks, for example, has defined it as ‘a movement to end sexism and sexist oppression’ and as a ‘liberation movement’. This book sides with hooks in mounting some resistance to the dominant approach, and emphasising the practical side of feminism. But in order to see more clearly what it even means to take sides on the issue of ‘theory versus practice’, it's useful to say something more about the notions of theory and practice, and about the relationship between them.

    Theory and practice are not two cleanly separate types of feminism, or alternative forms that feminism can take: the protest and the treatise. To expound a theory is also an action, and sometimes an important political intervention – as we'll see, the insight that to say something is to do something has been an extremely important one for some feminists. The radical feminist Andrea Dworkin asserts the self-conscious status of her own writing, her theory, as practice with unmistakeable force in the opening lines of her first book, […]

  • 12 - Goodbye to all that …

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 226-229

  • Summary

    To pre-empt disappointment, I should say now that I really have very little idea what is to be done, and I don't intend to pull some stillborn rabbit out of a hat here. But I suppose I have to say something, by means of a parting shot. These final comments are the best I can do, for now.

    In January 1970, during a temporary women's takeover of the magazine Rat, Robin Morgan published a statement under the heading ‘Goodbye to all that’ – a sustained railing against ‘the friends, brothers, lovers in the counterfeit male-dominated Left’:

    Let's run it down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It could just make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women – with men relating to that the best they can. A genuine Left doesn't consider anyone's suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or coin as well). Goodbye to all that…

    Goodbye, goodbye forever, counterfeit Left, counterleft, male-dominated cracked-glass mirror reflection of the Amerikan Nightmare. Women are the real Left. We are rising, powerful in our unclean bodies; bright glowing mad in our inferior brains; wild hair flying, wild eyes staring, wild voices keening; undaunted by blood we who hemorrhage every twenty-eight days; laughing at our own beauty we who have lost our sense of humor; mourning for all each precious one of us might have been in this one living time-place had she not been born a woman; stuffing fingers into our mouths to stop the screams of fear and hate and pity for men we have loved and love still; tears in our eyes and bitterness in our mouths for children we couldn't have, or couldn't not have, or didn't want, or didn't want yet, or wanted and had in this place and this time of horror. […]

  • 7 - Faces and facades

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 82-100

  • Summary

    In the first chapter of this book, I defined the core of feminism, the common thread running through various different feminisms, in terms of (i) a descriptive recognition of the fact of patriarchy, and (ii) the opposition to this state of affairs. These bare bones are fleshed out in very different ways by different schools of feminist political philosophy. The way in which patriarchy is characterised will vary, as will the manner of opposition to it.

    Feminism is often divided into three main traditions, with the expectation that contemporary feminist philosophers will fall unambiguously into one or other of them:

  • (i) liberal feminism;

  • (ii) radical feminism;

  • (iii) Marxist feminism.

    • There are two points to make about this division straightaway. First, it by no means exhausts the range of feminist perspectives. It does not include anarchist feminists, such as Emma Goldman, who wrote on the status of women in the early twentieth century. It leaves no obvious place for the black feminists who have been critical of all mainstream feminist traditions, or perhaps for self-described ‘eco-’ and ‘techno-feminists’. (It leaves no obvious place for Sarah Palin, either, but we might be less worried about that.)

    The second point to note is that the three categories distinguished above are not particularly transparent, either in themselves (what is e.g. ‘liberal’ feminism?) or in their relation to one another (is liberal feminism compatible with radical feminism?). So not only do these three labels not cover everything; it's not even all that clear what they do cover. And the lack of clarity is not just a product of a lack of information. We cannot simply go and look the terms up in a dictionary. There is a slipperiness inherent in the categories themselves. There can be no simple and satisfying fact of the matter as to what defines these varieties of feminism: definitions are products of agreement, and this is an area where people simply do not agree.

    So if we assume that these three categories are all there is to feminism, then our horizons will be unduly narrow. And if we assume that these are three discrete, non-overlapping, clearly defined types, then we will be disappointed, and will also tend to misunderstand the force of various usages of the terms.

  • 10 - Among sisters: anarchism, socialism and feminism

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 167-197

  • Summary

    The last chapter examined the issue of pornography, an issue that divides liberal and radical feminists, and tried to show how we might resist the misrepresentations, double standards and the attempts at ‘de-radicalisation’ which characterise the usual discussions of that issue. In the process, surprisingly strong affinities emerged once again between the emphases and habits associated with ‘radical feminism’ and with the Marxist-influenced tradition of ‘critical theory’ respectively. The quick-yet-convoluted dismissals of the empirical case against porn in the dominant liberal discourse, as ingenious as they are seemingly inevitable, cry out for a critique in terms of the notion of (patriarchal) ideology – and that is exactly what they get, in effect, from figures like Catharine MacKinnon. In the attempt to resist what I regarded as the reduction of the critique of porn to a matter of lifestyle-policing, I also stressed another point that is of central importance to critical theorists: the need to critique society as a totality, recognising the interconnectedness of social life and the pervasiveness of its oppressive character, rather than attempting to break it up into isolated fragments, patches of light and dark. I stressed the links and parallels between the critique of porn and the critique of capitalism, the limitations of ‘atomistic’ approaches centred on doomed attempts to live individual lives that are politically unproblematic and morally squeaky-clean under a system which is anything but. As Adorno puts it, ‘Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.’

    So whilst the issue of porn is most usually regarded as a battlefield between ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ feminists, central themes from socialist and Marxist feminism hover unavoidably in the background. What I want to do next is to drag those themes into the foreground, and focus more closely on the relationship between feminist ideas and left-wing critiques of capitalism. I already said a little, in Chapter 6, about the historical clashes and affinities between Marxists (or other socialists) and feminists. In this chapter, I take a different tack, and consider a face of feminism that is very rarely seen or acknowledged: anarchist (or ‘anarcho-’/‘anarcha’-) feminism. By giving anarchist ideas the consideration they deserve, I suggest, we can get a clearer view of the vexed question of the relationship between feminist and socialist ideas: we may better see where there is a war, and where there isn't.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 1-3

  • Summary

    There are lots of introductions to feminism, and many of them begin by pointing out that there are lots of introductions to feminism. Then they normally say how the present book is special and different. So I will now try to do that.

    Much contemporary feminist political philosophy belongs squarely within a liberal framework. Students unfailingly learn about John Stuart Mill, sometimes with almost the idea that he was feminism's founding father. They learn about ‘gender justice’, and about the attitudes that liberals should take towards the family, if they are to be good feminists as well as good liberals. They are asked to consider whether the liberal commitment to an attitude of ‘tolerance’ towards cultural minorities is compatible or incompatible with the liberal feminist commitment to women's autonomy and equality. They also consider whether the liberal commitment to ‘freedom of speech’ is compatible with feminist critiques of pornography.

    I don't want to ignore these familiar debates and questions, but I do aim to provide a different and more distanced take on them, asking about the presuppositions and hidden implications of the way in which these debates and questions are selected, set up and presented. I also want to pay attention to some of the many facets of feminism that are neglected by the standard treatments. For example, I devote a larger portion of the space than is usual, for an introductory text, to the relationship between socialist or Marxist ideas and feminist ones. I also include a chapter dealing with anarchism and ‘anarcha-feminism’. If Marxism and socialism are side-lined in mainstream political philosophy, including mainstream feminism, anarchism is often virtually invisible – perhaps because it is thought too obviously stupid or impractical to deserve serious consideration. This can only be ‘obvious’, however, if anarchism is grossly misrepresented (hence, anarchism is grossly misrepresented). I hope to make a small gesture against this misrepresentation and neglect. But perhaps the most important respect in which my discussion differs from the mainstream liberal approach to feminism (and to political philosophy in general) is in the much heavier emphasis I'll place on practice: on the actions and activism that make up a crucial part of what feminism is and has been. Feminism is not just a body of theory. Just as socialism was for Marx, it is a real movement to abolish the present state of things.

  • 9 - The porn wars

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 136-166

  • Summary

    At the time of writing, pornography is all over the media. Of course, it is always all over the media, in the sense that our TV programmes, advertisements and newspapers are typically saturated with images of naked and semi-naked women, offered up for our enjoyment, judgement or ridicule. But every so often, alongside these images (sometimes literally alongside them), there are also flurries of identikit journalistic articles about whether porn – in particular, internet porn – is harmless fun or the sign of civilisation's end, degrading to women or a means of liberation. There are self-described ‘feminists’ on both sides (and never any shortage of undisguised misogyny).

    Pornography (and its regulation) is also a controversial topic amongst political philosophers. It divides not only political philosophers, but feminist political philosophers; and, increasingly, it divides not only feminist political philosophers, but liberal feminist political philosophers.

    This debate very quickly gets messy, and one of the main aims of this chapter is to gain a clear overview of the main issues that divide those engaged in it. I'm not so much interested in pushing for one position or other within this standard debate. I'm more concerned to issue some correctives to the course which this debate usually runs and to the assumptions on which it rests. In particular, I want to bring out a couple of points which tend to be lost, insufficiently appreciated, or never raised at all. The first sounds obvious: that porn is an issue belonging to real politics, not an abstract academic problem. And perhaps it is obvious, but philosophers in particular are not known for their ability to grasp obvious things, and the signs suggest that many of them have not grasped this one yet. The second, related point is that the issue of porn is not just about censorship. In fact, as we'll see, the issue of porn is not even just about porn.

    When it comes to the issue of pornography, feminists argue amongst themselves and with their opponents over three main questions: what is porn? What (if anything) is wrong with it? What (if anything) should be done about it?

  • 3 - Outposts in your head: ideology, patriarchy and critique

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 15-24

  • Summary

    The word ‘ideology’ is one of those words that gets used in a disconcerting number of ways. For example, it may be used to refer simply to a system of beliefs (‘my ideology…’), or it may be used more pejoratively, to indicate an outlook – usually a political one – which is judged to be dogmatic, inflexible, exaggerated, or in some other way misguided (‘your ideology…’).

    The sense of the term that is most relevant here is neither of the above, but one which I associate with Marx. Marx also used the term ‘ideology’ in more than one way, so we will need to zoom in further. ‘Ideology’ in Marx's work can refer to a particular view of history (historical ‘idealism’, which he dubs ‘the German ideology’), and it can also refer in general to the sphere of reality that is composed of ideas (the ‘ideal’ as opposed to ‘material’ component of social reality). But there is a further sense of ‘ideology’ which may be detected in Marx, and which has been extremely important for later theorists. This is the sense of ‘ideology’ which is bound up with another term Marx uses: ‘false consciousness’ (falsches Bewusstsein). To class something as ‘ideology’, in this sense, or as ‘ideological false consciousness’, is to identify it as an instance of a particular kind of illusion. I'll say something first about how we should understand the idea of ‘false consciousness’, before moving onto the ‘ideological’ bit.

    ‘False consciousness’ just means – here, as well as for Marx – ‘error’ or ‘illusion’, in the broadest sense: consciousness which is, in whatever way, false or inappropriate. This might be a matter of having a false belief about the world – e.g. the belief that it is Tuesday when really it is Wednesday. But the ‘falsity’ might also take other forms. In cases of so-called ‘body dysmorphia’, a person perceives her body (it is disproportionately often the body of a ‘her’) as other than it is ‘objectively’, and other than it is seen by others. To fix on a very common instance: a woman sees her body as bigger and heavier than it really is.

  • 6 - Deeds not words

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 68-81

  • Summary

    The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

    – Emmeline Pankhurst

    Depending on whether we look at feminism through the lens of ‘theory’ or through the lens of ‘practice’, we will see different things. Disagreements and issues which are visible through one lens may not be visible through the other. The same is true of political theory and practice more generally. We know that Marxists, non-Marxist socialists, anarchists and liberals all have different analyses of the world and its workings, but that they can also unite (at least to some extent) in struggles such as the fight against higher student fees and the marketisation of education. In the context of that struggle, there might be substantial overlap between the things that all these parties say about the policies they are opposing: e.g. that these will tend to increase the inequality between rich and poor, and that they will seriously damage the quality and diversity of the education that is available. Conversely, there will be cases where people seem to agree at the level of theory, but come into conflict with one another in their efforts to put their commitments into practice. These may be disagreements about the means and ends which are permissible or impermissible, or likely to be effective, ineffective, or counterproductive. They may concern the forming of alliances – who should and should not count as an ally? They may have to do with the connections we draw (or don't draw) between the issue in question (e.g. student fees) and other issues (e.g. privatisation or capitalism).

    The sorts of issues that I've suggested might be visible only in practical contexts are issues of strategy and transition, but they can also be issues of morality (what are the limits to the means we think are morally acceptable to attain some end? What are the limits to the people or groups we are prepared to co-operate with?), and of our underlying view as to how the political world works (‘Power concedes nothing without a demand’, to take the famous words of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass as one example). Clearly, there is nothing about these issues which means that they can't appear at the level of theory: what is Marxism if it is not an analysis of how the world works and of how history develops?

  • 4 - (De-)constructing coat-racks: feminism, sex and gender

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 25-51

  • Summary

    Usually, we do not stop to ask what women and men are, as this is taken to be too obvious a matter to ask about. But it is an issue of some importance for feminists, who have consistently pointed out that the matter of what makes us women (or men) is not nearly as straightforward as we are encouraged, from our first moments, to believe. Is being a woman a matter of biology? If it is, does that mean that it is a matter of a person's physical shape, genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, or some complex calculus of all of these? Or is being a man or woman a matter of adopting certain characteristic styles of dress, sexual preference, bearing and demeanour? Or are women simply those who ‘self-identify’ as women – that is, who think of themselves as women and expect others to relate to them accordingly (e.g. by using the pronoun ‘she’ to refer to them and granting them access to women-only spaces such as women's public toilets)?

    The line we take on these questions can have important implications for both theory and practice. It will determine the population we are talking about when we say things like ‘women are oppressed’ or ‘women must liberate themselves’, and it will have a bearing on questions such as the extent to which being a man or a woman is seen as pre-given and relatively fixed or as something subject to our (individual or collective) voluntary control, or whether we see men and women as fundamentally alike or as fundamentally different.

    I will not aim to devise or promote one particular definition of ‘women’ (I don't think that this is a project which ultimately makes a lot of sense). Instead, I hope to clarify what it might mean for feminists to ask for or to offer an account of what women are, and in the process, I'll try to help locate more precisely some of the worse pitfalls into which feminists might be in danger of falling.

    A distinction which has been extremely important to many feminists – but which (as we'll see) has also come in for strong criticism from among their own ranks – is the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.

  • 5 - Whose story?

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 52-67

  • Summary

    ‘Herstory’ is a term associated with the ideas of (a) telling women's history, (b) women telling their own history and (c) feminist critique of the way the discipline of history is practised, with a particular critical focus on language-use (e.g. making a big deal out the fact that it's his-story not her-story).

    I decided to include a brief comment on the idea of herstory here because it is a point on which feminism is particularly likely to attract ridicule – in fact, the term is probably used more often by those taking the piss out of feminists than by feminists themselves. It is ridiculed on the following main grounds:

  • ‘History’ is just a word! Why not focus on the things that actually matter to women, rather than engaging in this tedious policing of language?

  • Feminists are simply mistaken about the etymology anyway! ‘History’ doesn't come from ‘his’ + ‘story’. So the ‘herstory’ brigade are not only tedious but laughable.

    • As far as the second point goes, it is certainly true that ‘history’ doesn't come from ‘his’ plus ‘story’. The actual etymology, for what it's worth, is as follows. The two terms, ‘history’ and ‘story’, were used interchangeably in Middle English, and are cognate, i.e. they come from the same source: the Latin term historia (taken over from Greek). The Greek term comes from histor (‘judge’ or ‘wise man’), which gives rise to the verb historein (‘to enquire’), so that historia refers to the results of that process: an ‘enquiry’ or ‘account’. Very much nothing to do with the male possessive pronoun. But are we really supposed to believe that these feminists simply don't know that? That they haven't bothered to look it up? Instead of assuming so, we would do better to ask what feminists might be trying to do by introducing and using the term ‘herstory’, and thus how they might also respond to the first charge above. Here is what they might say:

    Of course we don't want to suggest a mere change in the use of words, keeping our practices the same. What feminist would be satisfied with that? The term ‘herstory’ stands for a different way of practising history, after all. And of course we should focus on things that are politically significant, things that matter.

  • 8 - Everyday rebellions: revolution in the private sphere

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 101-135

  • Summary

    He said: There was, in Medina, a shameless woman called Sallama al-Khadra (the Green). It happened that she was caught with an effeminate man while she was fucking him with a dildo; so she was hauled up before the governor, who punished her with a beating and had her paraded on a camel. A man who knew her looked at her and said: ‘What is this, oh Sallama?’ So she said: ‘By God, shut up! There is nothing in the world more oppressive than men. You have been fucking us since the beginning of all time, and when we've fucked you one single time you are killing us!’

    – From Jahez, Rasa'il (Epistles)

    In the last chapter, I outlined the three most widely recognised approaches within feminist philosophy: liberal, Marxist and radical feminism. I warned against the reification of these categories, and stated my intention to focus on those places where real disagreements between feminists emerge most clearly and concretely. Among those places, there is no place like the home. Radical, liberal and Marxist feminisms are associated with quite different attitudes to what has traditionally been called the ‘private sphere’, clashing over issues such as the unpaid labour of women in the home, the rearing of children, and the institutions of marriage and the family. Radical feminists have accused Marxist feminists not so much of getting these issues wrong, but of treating them as unimportant – tending to privilege the role and perspective of the (male) waged industrial worker above all else. Some Marxist feminists have sought to remedy this by emphasising the role of unpaid ‘reproductive’ labour (mostly performed by women in the home) in sustaining capitalism and producing wealth. We briefly encountered, in the last chapter, the preferred solution of socialist feminist and economist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: the collectivisation of household labour.

    Meanwhile, those usually considered ‘radical feminists’ have produced a wide array of controversial suggestions, some of which will be mentioned in the course of this chapter. Liberal feminists, for their part, while stopping short of calling for the abolition of the family (a demand notoriously characteristic of some radical feminists), have been keen to advocate its reform – breaking with the traditional liberal view of the ‘private sphere’ as a realm of ‘individual choice’ into which politics should not intrude.

  • 11 - Not in our name: colonialism, capitalism and the co-option of feminism

  • Lorna Finlayson, University of Essex
  • Book:
    An Introduction to Feminism
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    11 February 2016, pp 198-225

  • Summary

    In the chapters so far, I've had more to say about now-unfashionable political and philosophical traditions, and about movements (such as anarcho-syndicalism) which might now appear to be dead or dormant, than about the situation of feminists in the twenty-first century. The decision to focus on these things was deliberate, since my view is that we have much more to learn from anarchist and socialist ideas and practice or even from Suffragette militancy than we do from anything that contemporary liberal political philosophy has to offer – and yet these themes are almost entirely absent from mainstream introductions to feminist thought. In this last main chapter, however, I want to turn to consider the current state of things, what feminism means today, and some of the main obstacles it faces. Obviously, what is up-to-date very quickly becomes out-of-date, but my aim here is to look at some contemporary themes with the aid of concepts that are of more enduring significance. In fact, although my examples are current, the main phenomenon under consideration here is far from new. This is the phenomenon of ‘co-option’. To ask about the co-option of feminism, as we'll see, is to ask about the ways in which feminist theory and practice is absorbed, hijacked, twisted and betrayed by the world it seeks to change.

    The first thing to say about the question of ‘where feminism stands now’ is that, yes, it is still relevant – for the reasons I listed at the close of Chapter 2, and more: it is still a response to something real, i.e. the fact of patriarchy. But of course patriarchy takes vastly different forms across different times and across cultures. The sort of patriarchy feminists are confronting now is obviously not the same as that confronted by feminists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example – and it is not adequate to express this just by saying that things are less bad than they used to be (‘we've come a long way…’). It is certainly true that formal legal inequalities between men and women have dramatically diminished, in some cases as a result of feminist struggle.

  • Introduction

  • Michael Glassman, Ohio State University
  • Book:
    Educational Psychology and the Internet
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 February 2016, pp 1-11

  • Summary

    I had my most significant Internet-driven education experience long before I realized the role that the Internet could play in creating a new type of education. It was as a participant in one of the most successful initiatives into Internet-infused education long before most anybody put the two ideas – Internet and education – together, before almost anybody had even considered using Web-based/Internet tools in teaching and learning processes. My experience in educational psychology and the Internet started in the mid-1990s. A colleague, David Kritt, knowing I was feeling separated from discussions of ideas that were close to my heart in my new job, suggested I join a listserv run out of the University of California San Diego called XLCHC established by Michael Cole and the Laboratory of Human Cognition. The initial reason behind the listserv was to maintain a vibrant educational community during a period of dwindling resources, especially for the type of sociocultural/sociohistorical research central to the work of many of the laboratory's members and affiliates. The list was completely accessible to anybody who wanted to join. I can remember sitting in the second bedroom in our townhouse in Clear Lake Texas (just down the road from NASA), firing up my modem, which I used for very little in those days, listening to the crackle and the long beep, and typing in the Universal Resource Locator that David had given me, following the directions for joining and waiting. Hours or perhaps days later (at this point I can't remember) messages from members of the community started showing up in my mailbox.

    The first few messages were welcomes to the list, one from David, a couple from people I had met at conferences. And then I experienced something that could be described as nothing less than extraordinary: Ideas started falling out of the list and into my computer. People were offering me (and of course the list) a continuous stream of ideas, sometimes three lines long, sometimes three pages long – and inviting comments, additions, counterarguments. Discussions could go on for days. Posters would make recommendations for reading, new individuals would emerge and push the discussion in new directions.

Page 1440 of 1933