Re: theatre vs. a theatre, you’re right, I got mixed up. I think what confused me was the material description that you gave which made me think of an actual theatre. Also, by analogy to the field of journalism, I suppose I automatically think of the field of *acting* rather than the field of theatre because when I think of a field I visualise its practitioners – in this case actors – and their uneven distribution across an invisible set of positions (Bourdieu again).

Just as journalists can work throughout their careers for different kinds of media organisations (radio, TV, newspapers, newsagencies, etc.), it is common for actors to work not only in the theatre but also wherever else they may get paid (TV, films, radio, schools, etc.).

‘Follow the practitioners’ is my rule of thumb when seeking to determine the existence of a field.

P.S. Are you confusing perhaps a theatre, i.e., a place where plays are performed, with theatre, the hobby, profession, obsession of thousands of actors and wannabes worldwide?

I’ve used the term ‘action-set’ to mean a set (not a group) of human agents who come together to attain a common goal but without a unified, corporate identity. This is a variation of the definition given in the glossary of Barnard and Spencer (1996), Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Action-sets are not built to last; they are designed, as it were, to be unsustainable, and yet they can have lasting repercussions (a lesson here perhaps for our contemporary fixation with social sustainability?).

As for your example of a theatre, I would regard is as a field *site* rather than a field – a key site for many (Western) practitioners in the field of acting.

As I have continued to think about groups and fields, it has occurred to me that, not only do groups have boundaries where fields do not, their constituent elements are also distinct. A group is made up of persons (individuals or smaller groups treated as individuals, e.g., corporations) and relations between persons. A field is made up of practices and relations between the objects and actions that constitute those practices.

Thus, for example, theater is a field, whose elements include scripts, stages, costumes, stage-directions, choreography, musical scores, etc. Actors participate in groups, called casts (for single productions) or troupes or companies (whose members jointly perform multiple plays). Their performances are practices that embody or, if particularly powerful, may modify the field.

John, M.T., how does this sound?

From time to time it is worth reminding ourselves – and one another — about the possible new uses of half-forgotten anthropological concepts we may have learnt years ago. For instance, I have found the notion of ‘action-set’ (which I first came across as an undergrad but quickly forgot) to be a useful addition to my conceptual repertoire when studying internet activism in Malaysia.

Another important area worthy of public discussion is conceptual innovation. Chris Kelty’s book Two Bits has been mentioned already on this thread. In this remarkable ethnohistory of Free Software geeks Kelty coins the notion of ‘recursive public’ to refer to Free Software practitioners – a notion that allows him to think beyond the ubiquitous (and, like community, overused) notion of ‘public sphere’. This is a good example, I think, of a conceptual innovation that raises new questions and opens up new research avenues.

To reiterate a point I made earlier, as a discipline we need to broaden our conceptual lexicon, as I’m sure my tocayo John McCreery will agree with me on this one.

Doesn’t this conflate the study of art with the study of artists? The question seems germane to Adam’s research. Adam, do you foresee your research more as a case study of (an) individual commune(s) or are more as a study of processes and social institutions?

bq. In every true group that comes to mind when I try to envision a prototype there’s a lot more going on than members sharing uniform attributes.

So would you agree that cohorts of students at art schools, members of artists’ unions, and (to try to make some effort to bring this back around to Adam’s original post) residents in artists’ communes are all groups and not just epiphenomena of a field of practice?

bq. Even a baboon troop has age and gender differences and a pecking order to consider, as well as a boundary and a territory that distinguish it from other similar groups. Leave those out, and there doesn’t seem to be any point to saying “group” instead of, for example, an unordered set whose members share properties x, y, and z.

I am curious as to what you would make of the common Latin American “tocayo” relationship, in which individuals sharing a common given name immediately enjoy a familiarity with one another. Is it really so wrong to conceive of this as a number of groups the members of which share a dyadic relationship?

I find it strange that this sort of discussion isn’t more common among anthropologists. Elman Service, for example, touches on the difficulties of defining the ‘community’ concept in the introduction to his _Primitive social organization_—if it was an interesting enough topic to him then, why not to more of us today?

But that’s just a quibble. Let’s think some more about this. Let us assume with M.T. that group=class=a set whose members share certain attributes.

What, then, is the difference between a group and a field? A field has no boundary. An electromagnetic field is generated at a point from which it diminishes as it extends — to infinity.

Are there ethnographic data that illustrate a similar phenomenon? Yes. A classic example is the traditional Southeast Asian kingdom, the sort of polity that Geertz describes as a theater state. There is the capital where the king resides, where his power is celebrated and appears absolute. His power diminishes with distance from the capital until we reach zones where it intersects with the power radiated by other kings sitting in their capitals. These are not, however, sharp boundaries. They are zones of interference, whose scale fluctuates with the rise and fall of kings.

Consider, then, a more modern example, the art world conceived, a la Bourdieu, as a field of practice. Here, too, there are centers where exemplary figures (artists, objects, museums) reside. Influence radiates from these figures but diminishes with (more social than physical) distance. Critics constantly struggle to impose them, but there are, in fact, no well-defined boundaries. In fact, some would say, the very essence of art lies in boundary violation; but where those boundaries lie is subject to unending debate.

Serendipitously, we are translating a Japanese curator evoking the philosophy of Marcel Duchamp, famous for challenging the art world boundaries of his time by placing a urinal in a gallery and calling it a work of art. Duchamp argued that all art is made of found materials; in the case of modern art industrially produced ones, the commodities sold at art supply stores. What, then, is art? Art is whatever the spectators who see it are willing to regard as art. And that, of course, is hugely variable. Once again, the image of fields intersecting and creating interference zones seems far more to the point than the classifications deployed in classical taxonomies. What does one gain by thinking of artists as a group? Not much, it appears.

It sound like a very interesting research pitch you’re developing. If you’re curious for more on open source communities (prime examples of collaborative, intentional communities online). Make sure to check out Chris Kelty’s book “Two Bits”.

Also, you might be interested in reading my thesis on the Ubuntu Linux community, which touches on some of the issues you raise – like the difference between virtual and non-virtual engagement. You can find the thesis here:
http://andreaslloyd.dk/thesis/

Also, I’ve written a blog post addressing some of the typical misconceptions about doing fieldwork online: http://andreaslloyd.dk/2009/02/online-ethnography/

As a resident of commune myself, I find these issues most fascinating, and I’d love to hear more about your work.

Cheers,
Andreas

Yes – they are all members of the class ‘individuals who play football.’ Not the same as the class ‘members of River Plate’ or even ‘anyone playing in the Primera División,’ but a group nonetheless.

bq. It is not out of sheer caprice that mathematicians distinguish unordered and ordered sets from groups and groups from fields, to distinguish different types of entities and relationships. Could we learn something here?

Yes! That there are different types of groups. I could go on and on, but I won’t, as I have noticed the tendency from many on this blog (not you, John!) to be more takers than givers.

bq. “Field of practice” is a way of trying to be more specific.

To me, there’s an uncomfortable circularity to the concept. If I buy into it, then I recognize myself as engaged in shaping my field of practice. Anyone who disagrees with the concept and contests me/it is simply proving that the concept exists. As with much of Freudianism, this logic does not on its own invalidate the concept. But it does strike me as convenient.

I do find the concept interesting and perhaps useful. I think I am turned off by the Bourdieuian tendency towards rigidity and polemics. It is liking trying to enjoy an Oliver Stone movie for me – it is interesting in its own unique way and it seems to say something to me, but the director comes off as so self-righteous and hell-bent on proving that this is the way it is that I feel like he puts me in a with us or against us corner. YMMV.

The art world, the business world, indeed almost any profession or craft you can name are all similar examples.

It is not out of sheer caprice that mathematicians distinguish unordered and ordered sets from groups and groups from fields, to distinguish different types of entities and relationships. Could we learn something here?

bq. When a naval officer says she is a member of ‘the naval community’ she is using a perfectly valid colloquial English expression in the context of an informal conversation or, say, in that of a service memorial or a bit of a PR spin for the local press.

The Naval officer in question (my daughter, Annapolis, Class of ‘98) wasn’t talking about “the naval community.” She might have said, “The Navy community” referring to the service to which she belonged, which in uniforms, traditions, ranks, military specialties, ships, submarines, aircraft, and other technologies–not to mention favorites in the annual Army-Navy football game — is about as objectively real as any institution gets. The specific usage I referred to, however, was that by which the U.S. Navy is formally divided into Aviation, Submarines and Surface Warfare communities. Annapolis graduates choice of or assignment to one of these communities has a major and material effect on their careers.

Consider the following bit of ethnographic data, an answer to the question “What does black shoe and brown shoe Navy mean?”

bq. Naval aviators and naval flight officers (back-seaters) are authorized to wear brown shoes with their khaki uniforms while all other officers wear black.

bq. I think the “split” is because only aviatiors can command aircraft carriers. These high profile assignments are stepping stones to flag rank. Additionally, command track aviators often have a deep draft command before commanding a carrier, so I’m sure it is felt that too many at sea commands are reserved for aviators, limiting opportunity for those officers whose careers are spent on ships.

bq. I’m not sure how prevalent this split is today, but I know it was particularly acute during and immediately after WW2 when the carrier became the centerpiece of naval warfare.
bq. Source(s):
bq. USN 1985-92

See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080509115219AAc3HrY