Full Circle Associates

Elisabeth over at Dans le meilleur des mondes possibles has a poll this week for all of you who think you are an aid worker or think you know what one is. Now, this is not just about drawing a line in the sand. So first, pop over to Dans le meilleur des mondes possibles :: Who is an “aid worker”? and read -- all the way through the comments.

"Therefore, I’m asking all of you to give your opinions: What is an aid worker? Who qualifies, who doesn’t? I found a new pollster, happily, that allows for multiple responses. I’ve made two. The first one is for people who consider themselves aid workers. The second is for people who are not aid workers, but who would like to answer (I want to disaggregate the data).

I realize the list is not exhaustive, but the poll only allowed ten answers. Your theses, definitions, arguments, etc. are welcome in the comments section."

As someone who often works in support of or peripherally with aid workers, I personally don't think there is one definition that fits all. The practices and politics are diverse enough alone to make your head spin.

But what interests me here is how we self identify and thus put ourselves in or out of a community. Our belongingness or our outsiderness. It is a peculiar quality of groups and group dynamics.

I think about outsiderness and insiderness in online groups and I suspect, without the F2F reinforcements, we tend to feel more often like an outsider. I wonder if aidworkers, often working outside of their own organizations, feel like outsiders?

Tags: outsiderness, membership, community