It occurred to me sometime back that Mary Parker Follett, the turn-of-the-(20th)-century management maven, author, and activist would make a delightful blogger. Follett (1868-1933), whose work was essentially ignored by a number of organizational theorists in her day, finally gained attention in the 1950s when Peter Drucker called her his "guru". Today, her writings are frequently studied in business schools, in community education, and among organizational communicators for their wisdom and managerial philosophy. That said, Follett was a frequent essayist, speaker, and commentator too. She was a student of organizations and business, certainly, but she also found time to read extensively in education, politics, sociology, ethics, world affairs, psychology, and the arts. Some say she is best known for her work in community development and the idea of community centers in particular. And it is this notion of community that focuses my point.
Were she alive today, I think Follett would be blogger in addition to a speaker, essayist, and scholar. She would find the essence of a weblog both fascinating and essential to developing a community within a global environment. In her article, "Community is a Process," written in 1919, Follett argues that: "...community is a creative process. It is creative because it is a process of integrating....The creative power of the individual appears not when one 'wish dominates others, but when all 'wishes' unite in a working whole....What then is the law of community? From biology, from psychology, from our observation of social groups, we see that community is that intermingling which evokes creative power....As the process of community creates personality and will, freedom appears."
I should like to think that Follett would see the weblog as a community, as a creative process that through individuals creates a whole, and an interchange that strengthens and unifies when other forms of collectivity fails. While Follett expands on larger issues than the essence of community, she always seems to relate it to freedom and the "practice of community."
Is blogging a practice of community?
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I agree that Follett would cheer the blog as a tool to educate and encourage community. Considering it a community in itself might give her pause, though. Her ideas of community and "group work" involved much more that isolationist commentary on our world. Her paradigms involved interaction on more levels than soliloquy and response. In her work, The Training For the New Democracy , Follett espouses human contact and interaction as essential for socialization. Weblogs, and the internet in general, seem to encourage the opposite. It is exciting, though, to envision the blogger as a participant in group-based Problem Based Learning contracts, researching possible solutions to the dilemmas of hubris and anti-social behavior. Perhaps, with the right encouragement, this infante tete a tete may evolve into multi-participant creative tool...pleasing Mary Parker Follet no end!
Well, perhaps I should stand corrected. The venerable Pueblo Chieftain, that cutting edge epitome of Journalistic fibre and roughage, has just published an article on blogging that quotes Gretchen Lair, accomplished blogger, as a community. I still feel that there is more to a viable community than this form of communication, but hey, who am I to argue with those who have gone before?
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