Constructing Meaning, Constructing Selves

During the course of their lives, people move into, out of, and through communities of practice, continually transforming identities, understandings, and worldviews. ¹ Progressing through the life span brings ever-changing kinds of participation and nonparticipation, contexts for “belonging” and “not belonging” in communities. A single individual participates in a variety of communities of practice at any given time, and over time: the family, a friendship group, an athletic team, a church group. These communities may be all-female or all-male; they may be dominated by women or men; they may offer different forms of participation to women or men; they may be organized on the presumption that all members want (or will want) heterosexual love relations. Whatever the nature of one’s participation in communities of practice, one’s experience of gender emerges in participation as a gendered community member with others in a variety of communities of practice.